jlvannat

Hey, I've downloaded a variety of buildings for my cities, but there aren't any lights at night! It's depressing to see a dark building in the middle of my skyline. I KNOW there is a MOD for it, but I'm not sure which one. Help?! Thanks

I've had problems with this, mainly with suburb capacity not being enough for the demand of my sims. For example, they want more housing, more business and office space. What you should do is just create cities around your big one that are designed similar to the big one, so in the future it can support capacity if need be, but you can still maintain the quite feel of a suburban neighborhood/city. Make sure you have good connections too, but not too many. Eventually those immediate surrounding cities will get full, so you spread out even farther creating new suburbs for your once suburban cities. Plant lots of trees too to help with the nasty trailer parks! good luck

I've been working on the New York region provided by Maxis for about a year now. I'm about 20,000 away from 1 million sims, which is a first for me. I have 2 big cities, one with 250,000k and another with about 160,000k, and growing fast. The cities surrounding those are pretty big also, ranging from 80,000 to 30,000. I don't know how people here manage to squeeze 2 million people or w/e into 2-4 tiles. That's outrageous! I'm sure traffic and pollution is horrible.

I've done many of the things posted in here already, and they have worked for the most part. If you have a big city with lots of highways and avenues like I do, they attract sometimes more pollution than industry (which should be placed on the edges of the cities). I try to leave a block or two on the edges of my highways and avenues to place a dense line of trees and that keeps the concentration of pollution within the area of those roads and not into any other areas. It's worked very well and is a quick fix if you don't have time to do a city-wide planting spree. Good luck!

There aren't any buildings on simtropolis that fit my city preferences. I'm from North Carolina, so for some reason no one has added any of our stuff... for example the Greensboro Colliseum: ACC tournaments have been held here on numerous occasions and is the largest indoor colliseum I believe on the east coast. Would look great to put next to a university or business district! Bank of America Tower in Charlotte: It's our tallest building and has that modern/futuristic look everyone on here really loves. But for buildings on here.. I have enjoyed the Library Tower and Wells Fargo tower from L.A.! They look great in almost any cityscape

I like to have highways all throughout my cities. In my larger downtown cities, I'll basically have a highway that circles most of the district, with arterial highways from the suburbs out to other cities. The downtown loop and innercity highways actually get a lot of traffic. I've spent the last year trying to perfect it so people actually use them. It's tough. I'll usually build an outer loop too not only for the realism, but to help connect all of my cities. It helps the economy and keeps cars and freight moving. It's more of a bypass to avoid traffic and intersections. I probably don't use mass transit as much as I should. I REALLY love using subways and elevated rails because they can connect, are easy to squeeze into a densly populated city, and have a high capacity for the sims.

I probably haven't searched well enough on the site for this, but I'm very much interested in looking at other peoples transportation maps to see how their infrastructure system works. I've looked on mapquest at large cities, but simcity 4 isn't exactly flexible enough to work the way they do (main example is not being able to zone on diagonal roads. This pisses me off a great deal). I've been having issues with commute time despite multiple mass transportation routes and a good highway system. I think it would be beneficial to myself and others who are having this issue to look at successful transportation maps and compare it to their own. It might sound like cheating, but I'm not trying to copy anyone's design. This could be a good educational discussion topic for us. Beginner or expert to this game, there is a lot that could be learned here that instruction manuals don't teach us! Anyone who has anything they'd like to share, go for it! Maybe I'll post my largest city thus far (140,000 city/ 260,000 regional) people.

I agree with the original post on this. My cities will stagnate after about 60 years because 70% of my population is over age 50. I noticed younger people will move into suburbs and medium-high density apartment buildings within the city. That's about it. It's unfortunate right?

What I've been doing to solve that problem is for my highways, I start them off as avenues with limited intersections, or create a free-flowing avenue with exits and onramps built with one way roads. I don't typically zone any commercial along the sides of these avenues either because I know eventually when I highway is placed, those commercial zones won't be able to be reached by sims. For mass transportation lie ground rail and elevated rail systems, I leave a block between residential areas and roads so I can put them in later if I need to. Don't be afraid to destroy some stuff in the process, as long as it benefits the greater majority. There is no one way to prepare for the future higher capacity transportation except to take it slow and have a goal set in mind for the future. I spend most of my time playing the game doing just that.

thanks for that information! I really hope I can get this into my gameplay asap.

I've installed the NAM and any other road update provided to us. I was browsing around and saw a picture (but not the download) of an avenue that had turning lanes in the middle instead of medians. I'm not referring to the left turn lane that is built at an intersection of two avenues. I was wondering if anyone knew where to find this! I've looked everywhere, and it must be in existence or in use by someone because I've seen it in pictures before. If I could have these turning lanes then my sims could get to the adjacent side much easier. Thanks!

I've noticed that searching around for some fun stuff to make my cities a little more interesting, I would see avenues with a middle turning lane. I'm not referring to the one that comes with the NAM add-on with the middle turning lane only at the intersection. I've search all over the site for it, but can't seem to find it. I know it's in existence and if anyone could lead me in the right direction, I'd REALLY appreciate that. This would mean that I don't have to add little turnarounds on longer sections of my avenues so people can get to the other side of the street for work, etc. Thanks!