thevinn

Originally posted by: SC4BOY These pic's all exceed the posting limits imposed by the guidelines for this site.. 600x800 is the max size unless its been recently changed.. quote> I sure hope thats not true, I spent 2 hours putting these images together and the prospect of having to recreate them makes me a sad panda.

Originally posted by: UnassignedEverything went fine until I reached a pop of approximately 73000. At this point the power plants & water pumps started to wear out & it became necessary to replace them...I did this too late, so a few industries, say 5 3x3 tile factories, became abandoned due to water shortage. Then I bulldozed these plants. After these changes my budget went bust, the city is losing money and nothing spawns on those vacant industrial spaces.quote> You will have to replace water pumps and coal factories periodically. Try to do this before there are shortages. Check the Power and Water graphs frequently so you will know when to replace them. To replace, first pause the game, bulldoze the structures, then plop new ones. Be sure to adjust funding as needed. With zero spending on education the budget is in the green, as this gives a monthly surplus of approx. 800§. My question is, how do I increase city income so I can afford a decent educational budget (and without expanding beyond the 64x64 size)? Or perhaps the question is how to make industry spawn on those vacant industry lots?quote> Raise taxes on Dirty Industry to 14% before plopping schools.

un1, I would love to know how you got 100,000 on a small tile without industry and without developed neighbor connections. I've tried, starting with schools, and migrating to Manufacturing, even some High Tech. But when I let the medium and high wealth sims in, the population inevitably goes down.

Originally posted by: szarkoz Well, first of all you shouldn't connect industrial areas with water as it helps nothing but pollutes the water.quote> Can anyone else confirm this? I find that my high density industrial zones won't develop fully unless they have access to water. Another thing is that, if you base your city on dirty industry, schools serve no purpose (everyone works in dirty industry, which doesn't require high level of education). quote> Yeah thats mostly true, but I wanted to show that you can fit full educational facilities in there. The population can't realy go higher than 80,000 because of the pollution. I believe I have found the largest number of high density tiles that can be reliably populated for a small city. Also consider that if you are using this city layout for your region, you can educate the low wealth sims and they will drive demand for manufacturing and medium wealth office/service in neighboring towns. Dirty Industry will happily remain even at 14% tax, even with no interested workers (on account of the education). Overally, I'd rather just start with industry, then gradually changing it to a mixed res-com city. That way you could make much more residential areas and increase your population.quote> That sounds good in theory but I have tried it several times. On a per-tile basis, low wealth always generates the highest population. So if you convert your low wealth sims into medium and high wealth sims, the overall population will always go down. Although your scenario does work in most situations involving neighborhood connctions. I've tried educating the sims and then lowering the taxes to convert this city into a manufacturing town with medium wealth sims but the result was always budget shortfalls and tons of no job zots. Can anyone show me how to make that conversion successful?

Since we are daydreaming, if there is sufficient interest (i.e. developers) I would be more than happy to help implement the pathfinding algorithm using a parallelized method that is suitable for off-loading onto the graphics card (since SimCity isn't particularly graphics-card intensive). There have been a number of research papers written about this subject. Search for "GPU Pathfinding". Personally I think SimCity is awesome the way it is, I the only changes I would make would be in terms of performance, interface, and slight functionality: - Faster pathfinding - Option to hide buildings from the view, showing only their foundation (allow bulldozing, unlike Zone view) - Customizable, hierarchical menus - Customizable quick-toolbar, option to show the last 10 tools used - Improve the TE enabled lots so the pathfinding doesn't shortcut through lots - Properly set Transit Switch Cost on all lots - Expand TE lots to better support multiple network types, for example have separate capacity values for each supported network Better integration of plugins with the game: - in-game facilities for downloading new content - dependency resolver that retrieves required dependencies for you in the background - enhanced BAT/DAT format that provides links to EA-hosted site where each plugin/BAT author gets their own free web page and mod hosting - quality assurance program that certifies BAT/DAT files to have a basic level of quality, polish, and function - expand the City Ordinance system to allow for unlimited add-on ordinances with a good programming level interface - improve the programming level interface to accomodate the new network types (glr, high speed rail, etc)

Is this good? Bad? Can anyone do better? Do I have it all wrong? No comments?

I like to min/max the game (find out what the limits are). This tutorial represents my highest population achieved on a small city tile with no gameplay changing addons, except for the Network Addon Mod and simulators updated (required for onramps and correct pathing). I use the "Plugin A, Hard" simulator. The other restriction is that there are no developed neighbor connections or neighbor deals. Connections to SimNation are ok as long as the neighbor is undeveloped. In order to qualify as a proper city, the population must be stable, without no job zots or dilapidation. The budget must be balanced or in a surplus state. I don't know if this is the "best" method, or the highest population possible but I can't find other meaningful ways of getting the population higher. So here we go. Start with a small city tile (64x64) with no developed neighbors, on the Easy setting. Raise taxes to prevent middle wealth and high wealth development: Place a highway in the exact center. Lay roads exactly as shown. Do not allow the game to place onramps. Using the Network Addon Mod, place the onramps exactly as shown. Residential zones are medium and high density. Commercial zones are high and low density. The roads parallel to the highway in the commercial and residential areas are one-way roads, and the onramps are of the highway parallel one-way road variety. There are two small fire stations, two small plaza, and seven water pumps in the residential area. The industrial zones are high density, and 4, 8, 8, 8, and 7 tiles in thickness respectively, from top to bottom. There are six coal power plants, two garbage burning facilities, and two small fire stations here. Dezone three tiles per industrial strip so that nothing develops there. These spaces will be used for mass transit later. Make sure the entire map has water coverage Run the simulation. Your spending will exceed income. Keep it running until you are under $20,000. You should be offered two business deals, the army base and federal prison. Cut funding on the Waste to Energy Plants to zero to bring the budget in balance. You may need to destroy one or more water pumps depending on how much money you used up laying out the city. Place the Federal Prison at the top, near the highway: Remove just enough water pumps. We need a high budget surplus now. Run the simulator as needed to generate revenue and increase population until it stablizes. Place a Hospital as shown, adjust coverage radius and funding: Place tennis courts in between the high density residential zones as shown. There are 15 tennis courts on the left side and 13 on the right side. The space between the tennis court and the road will be used for mass transit. Place two more hospitals exactly as shown. Adjust local ambulance funding to zero for all three hospitals. Adjust local funding as needed:

I guess what is confusing to me is some of the terminology. Is a "TE Lot" one that merely has a "Transit Switch Point" in the Exemplar? Or does it mean that roads can be connected / pass through the lot (for example, HKABT's MTR Transit Center)? When you say that having two types of transport is bad, are you referring to for example a lot that functions as a combination bus stop / subway? Or do you mean a lot that supports busses, but also has a piece of rail running through it that you can connect up? You said "...Maxis/EA did not always follow this rule, and Sims walk through bus stops (for example) as a result...", but I have done a lot of tests and I can't get that to happen. On the other hand it happens quite easily with a bus stop that is bigger than 1x1.

Found the NAM thread here: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2763.0

To make a long story short I am placing these bus stops I downloaded (several varieties) and when I use the route query tool, I see that passengers are "station hopping". In other words, they are taking the bus to a bus stop, but along the way they are stopping at every other bus stop in between. I have figured out the reason - it happens when the custom bus stop is bigger than 1x1 tile and the lot file has a zero value for "Transit Switch Entry Cost". What is happening is that, since movement within the tiles of a single transit switch are zero cost, it is faster to enter the multi-tile bus stop, travel across it (for free) then exit back on to the road. This problem is apparently solved by putting a small value in for "Transit Switch Entry Cost". I used 0.1 but I am doing more research and tests to see if I can lower it. I recall there was some NAM thread that talked about this. The problem of station hopping is that it over-utilizes the bus stops. A bus stop in the middle will receive all the through traffic of every passenger whose destination is a farther stop. Can anyone comment on this?

Originally posted by: hamishIt just depends on what you think is a finished city and how you play the game.quote> The city is 'finished' when there is no possible way to increase the population. Playing the game in any way possible is permitted, provided that no cheats are used and only the addons in the original post. So I guess, what I am asking is the precisely the following: "In what way must the game be played in order to reach the maximum population possible on a small map using the Easy setting, without using cheats, with no developed neighboring cities (connections to SimNation in any direction are allowed) and with no addons other than the Network Addon Mod, and the Industry Quadrupler?" and of course the related question "What is the highest population that can be reached using this play method?" I hope this illuminates the question sufficiently.

What I am asking is, what is the highest population that can be achieved given the conditions stated in the original post? Or, what is the highest population that you have personally gotten, with the conditions stated (i.e. no addons and no other developed regions)?

Anyone else having this problem?