Traveller

Detroit is hardly an outlier. Many amerikan cities, large and small and also flirting with bankruptcy as well. Not to mention counties, states and so on. Almost every level of jurisdiction in the US has overt, or covert cash flow problems. The rot is just more advanced in Detroit is all. As far as resources go, the US is far more interested in giving billions of QE dollars to the so-called 'stock market'(welfare for billionaires) AND over a trillion dollars a year to its even more corrupt military and 'intelligence agencies, whose primary mission is to monitor its own citizens communications and squash any attempt to challenge corporate power. The well-being of cities, is nowhere on that list. Detroit is too big to fail, and too big to save. Be interesting to see what they come up with. Think the US would scrap a few carrier battle groups, close a few useless military bases, divert QE to cities instead of giving it to billionaires so they can drive up the price of stocks with it? I am going to guess, no.

Maybe I am reading him wrong, but he seems all upset that EA botched the launch and other technical snafus.

If I remember correctly, didn't lots of people do exactly that long before release? And I also recall it was quite clear from the responses during development, that were not really listening to anyone then.(or now either) So, why expect different now? I clearly recall them promising that in Sc13 each little 'sim' would have there own 'life'. Get outta bed, hop in there gas-burning mobile trash-bin. Clog roads, slowly commute there way to work, eat lunch, surf porn on the companies computers, commute back to work, watch Dancing with the Sims with Ms Sim, fall asleep, rinse, repeat. Well, they couldnt even deliver on that promise. But there is rather deeper problem in that no one was really interested in that feature at all. I certainly wasn't. It wasn't a selling feature, or anything that make me want to buy SC13. In fact, I saw right away the computing requirements for a such a fine-grained, and useless feature couldn't really be implemented in anything like a realistic fashion even with the most powerful of desktops, even if anyone actually wanted that feature. And that only touches on *one* small corner of a crap filled sandbox. Scrap 2013, start over from scratch. Give Simciters what they actually asked for in first place. I doubt current release is salvageable in its current state no matter how much tinkering around the edges they promise to do.

Q/The development team at Maxis and publisher Electronic Arts are asking the fan base of SimCity to offer their feedback on the features that they might want to see in a potential expansion for the game, which has not yet been officially announced. Ummm, were they not told about a million times what the fan base(mostly) wanted, in essence, a modernized and updated version of SC4D and not the rancid dud the were hell bent on producing? What part of that did they not understand?

Hey, hows that SC4D patch coming along. You know, the simcity all of us are actually playing....

All I can say is, I sooo glad I didnt waste any money on this turkey. Here is a suggestion to Mr Script writer, how about doing a mega-patch fix\update for SC4D?, and just leave it at that. Hell, I would be even willing to *pay* for a patch\overhaul of SC4D, just to keep the EA bean counters happy. One thing I *wont* be doing-ever, is buying SC2013. Maybe when you downgrade it to freeware and ditch the origin requirement, I might look at if, if I was bored enough, but even then Im pretty sure Id find a better way to waste my time. Cheers!

Are there any good threads, articles w/e on how to consistently grown the big HK residential bats? I have a gotten a few to grow, but its more luck than anything else. And If I have to doze any of them for w/e reason, good luck getting them to regrow ever again. Whats more, there seem to very few sources that actually talk about what to do to make them grow. The smaller growable HK tower packs grow like weeds in my cities, the big ones.....not so much. Are demand mods necessary, or is there some other trick? Tired of zoning for them and running for hours on end, only to see the zoned lot as empty as ever.

While its a little hard to say exactly what is going on in your city, here is few things to do\check. Throw in neighbor connections if you haven't already-they always help(cant tell from pic if how many you have). What are the pollution levels, both air and water?. Sims response to air\water pollution is VERY highly correlated to desirability in SC4. Its been my long experience that relatively small changes, up or down can sometimes have dramatic impacts. Sims love their parks as noted, they like there non-park civic improvements as well, so dont neglect those either.

W/E lingering doubts I had up to this point, about whether I would hold my nose and buy SC5 have pretty much be resolved. No thanks EA, all yours!

A much more comprehensive(and bug free) region play. Something that would allow true region wide transport systems and much more realistic economic model would be a few things that would come from that. IoW a dynamic real-time region, or something much closer to it than what we have now. Remove abandonment due to commute time, and replace it with a better game mechanic. Make ALL landmarks and civic structures so they specifically add to employment, Hospitals schools etc all create good paying jobs, but SC4 doesnt really account for that currently. Same with Landmakrs. There are course landmarks with jobs, but they should have been incorproated into the game from the start-same with civic, transport etc,

Right, but I'm willing to bet you have a computer with an Intel i7, a 10000 RPM hard drive, 8 GB of RAM, and a nice video card. I'm running on an i3 with a pretty low-end hard drive, 2 gigs of memory and only the machine's built-in graphics hardware, and I can tell you there is definitely a correspondence between population and SC4 performance/stability. If our friend Likk has low specs like me, I would say this issue is unavoidable. Im sorry, but the issue IS avoidable. I know this, because I fixed my own problems, and very recently too, which is why I posted what I did. My 'high-end' system was crashing SC4 constantly, yet I overcame that, and I certainly didnt run out and by an I7 or an overpriced SSD drive to do it. Yes, it is possible to overtax SC4, but you should know enough to recognize that for what it is. If SC4 is overtaxing your PC, then your likely crashing in most every other 3d title on your system as well. Anyone is capable of dialling down the video settings to mitigate that problem. No, in most cases, crashes in SC4 come from conflicting plug-ins, incomplete patching, and also probably high on the list, trying to run SC4 on dual core system, for which an easy fix exists. Its takes time and patience to fix crashes in SC4, and its not always easy, but simply saying LOW END SYSTEM, -CANT FIX, is hardly sound advice.

I too had a problem with persistent crashing until recently. What fixed it for me, was I completely stripped out my plug-in folder and re-introduced them singly or in small batches, and went through each one to insure it was the latest version possible. Youd be suprised how many lots get updated and the old ones dont get removed on stex. This makes it easy for older, possibly buggy lots to remain in your plug in folder. I used cleanitol as much as possible as well. Lastly, I made sure Sc4 was running in single core mode. Between all that, my crashes practically disappeared. I suspect it was probably the plug-in over-haul that did it, but im sure the rest of fixes helped too. Previous to this, crashes were frequent and frustrating. Now, my region 5million+and over a dozen towns cites is pretty much error free.

I too, suggest making a reqion w/o cam. Im working on a huge region atm with a lot of the standard plug-ins and bats, no cam. Populations form 10k to 1.3 million spread over more than 14 tiles and growing. Maybe someday Ill try CAM, but Its too much at once for a newcomer imo. Ive SC4'd for years and have still not taken the CAM plunge. You can make awesome regions with all the standard stuff here on STEX. Can spend years just going though all the 'basic' stuff here along and still find new things all the time. If I remember correctly, all your lots and bats need to be Cam-compatible in addition to the MoD itself. Too much work

Commuters dont really matter so much, automata certainly doesnt. What matters is, are the jobs available in your Ind. zones being filled or not. If you got NaM, and the jobs available are being majority filled...no problem. And it sounds like you got near 100% employment at the one factory, Id say all good...

Use Ninja Boulevard Station. Its rail Capacity of only 25k, but I increased it to 35k using the editor. Its also a subway and bus station as well. Very popular one. For standard rail, there is also 50k Capacity. Nice station, but it seems to block freight. So really only suitable for passenger networks.

Are you using industry doubler mod? Maxis default factories just dont provide near enough jobs for the land they occupy. If your not using it, that will help open up a lot of new jobs in your industrial areas.

Here is the CBD of Virconium, the largest city in Newarkham on the NW coast. The city itself has a pop. of 1.3 million, 78% of the workforce are employed in the commercial district. The cities extensive mass transit system of subways and GLR, moves over 600,000 passenger a day to work in the commercial and government center.

D\L the Super Waste to energy Plant. Turn off the Garbage related ordinances, Paper recycling etc. Also helps to get rid of any recycling depots as they divert garbage that the plants can use. Later on, once you have the trash more or less balanced out, you can re-introduce depots to get rid of any minor trash buildup once the W2E plants capacity is maximized. This is a very effective way to save money too, as paper recycling tends to get very costly as as cities pop. grows. Trash-pre sort is set @ $50 for some reason and tire recycling is way too cheap too, but forgoing paper ordinance and burning it for fuel is a win\win Just a few of these can take care of most trash easily, and as a added bonus, you can sell any excess power to surrounding tiles. I also use For smaller cities, or to fill in gaps. W2E plants need to be monitored to insure they have an adequate supply of 'fuel' (trash) if the plant is burning too little, power out drops off and trash builds. Surrounding tiles with excess trash can send garbage if your W2E plants are running below capacity. Turn around and sell any surplus power to the surrounding areas. If balanced correctly, you can save lots of money on power plants you dont need to buy. But Imo, if you dont like cheats, W2E is the best way to handle trash.

While I cant argue with the OP point, I too, wont hold my breath waiting for it to happen. The next best to ask for, would be for them to pour over Sc4 and do a much needed patch\update. I know thats not likely either, but at least that is something that could be done, as opposed to open source, which is a remote chance at best. At the end of the day, well all, I think, want the same thing. Longstanding bugs fixed, and the software updated, for our modern hardware

Another reason not to buy this title. I have no interested in forced online, or keeping cities stored in the 'cloud'. At this point, I would be willing to pay for a updated and patched SC4 rather than support this Sc5, which is sounding more like a dud every day.

Why do you need cheats to deal with trash? DL the super-Waste to energy plant and use it to burn trash. I also use the PEGs smaller plasma plant as well. Cities generate trash, and if you cant deal with it, then you dont know how to play Sc4. I can easily manage cities with ~1.5 million and the garbage they generate, and provide power to surrounding areas by doing it. One of the ideas in SC4 is to learn to plan and organize cities. Anyone can plop a garbage chute and make the trash go to that most magical of places...away. Use recycling yards, ordinances and W2E plants-not outright cheats.

I dont know if this anything new really, a quick summary High EQ. College Min. University helps Rewards! -Stock Market -Convention center -Movie studio Larger population 250k can support CO, but in order to really sustain demand, I find larger pop always helps Busy Airport. Airports support business travel-more travellers=more demand. Regions never hurt. Again, connections with surrounding cities boosts demand for commercial Tax rates, YMMV but once your city is in the black, keep taxes low to moderate. 4-7% range. I have little problem keeping demand +, but keep in mind, once you fill demand for CO$$$, demand tends to shift to CO$$ and CS a lot.

Ok, that sounds like an idea. How about this. Remove the HK tower and pencil packs for now, demolish any standing ones, zone for the larger bats, see what happens?