Rady

thanks .. will go and search the water source. Didn't come to my attention so far...

May I ask - how do you "place a water source" - is there a mod or something, or is this part of the vanilla game?

Hi all, I hope someone can help me here, 'cause the fuc**** STEAM forum won't even upload my images (sorry, utterly upset at the moment). My problem is, that after the latest "free" patch that came with the mass transit DLS, after loading an existing or new map I only see this: Any help is appreciated ...

Hi all, there's something I cannot understand with regard to demand and abandonment: First, I had pretty high industrial demand, thus I zoned industrial areas. Then, industry complained abouot a "lack of workforce" --> with unemployment at aroudn 3 .. 4%, I estimated this would trigger residential demand. But no. So residential demand was near nil, ant industry at the same time complaining that not enough workforce is in the city, advising me to zone residential. >> Deadlock #1 Finally, my only solution (apart from continously bulldozing abandoned industry buildings) was to dezone industry areas. After half an hour of gameplay, industry demand skyrocketed again .. Same happens with commercial: I have medium demand, and at the same time (without zoning any more commercial areas!) commercial building start to abandon due to "lack of customers" in large numbers. >> Deadlock #2. And that is with commercial areas beeing "sandwiched" in between residential areas. So, what am I missing? Why doesn't indutrial demand for workers stimulate residential demand? How can there be commerical demand if there are to few customers at the same time???? Actually, my game is stalling. I'm at about 50.000 inhabitants, with an increase rate of around 120. Glad for any help / explanation :-) Cheers

Good idea .... I'll give it a try ... ty

Thanks Celeast for this helpful insoght :-) Which unfortunately raises another question / incompatibility: I pupmped up my edu System, cause industry and Commercial business was complaining about lack of educated workers. So now I miss the uneducated. In case I scale down education, I will solve this Problem, only to Exchange it for them complainng about missing educated workers. Uahhh. I guess I'll go for that mod ... but seriously, how could I handle that without using a mod? I cannot imagine tuning my education System that accurate so that I always meet the right proportion betwenn educated and uneducated workers ...

So, let me add on more confusing observation with respect to demand: I have an unemployment rate of 15%, my education is all in the green. Industry demand was high, and now industry is complaining about "lack of workers" again. How the hell can that be, with 15% beeing unemployed? I already know that for some stupid reason available jobs do not trigger residential demand, but now even unemployed people will not count against the job requirements of the industry? Maybe someone can point me to an explanation of this demand system, as for the moment it seems to be f* stupid. At the moment, this is breakng the game for me actually. Any hints are warmly welocme :-)

Hi all, after long years of beeing a fully devoted SC4 player, I recently switched over to C:S. Playing for some hours now, I'm impressed by a few thing, like e.g. buidling curved and elevated networks. WHat an improvement compared to SC4. However, I'm really surprised about the lack of functionality that one is used to coming from SC4. My current main problem is building decent urban interchanges "out of the box" ingame. I browsed the Steam workshop, but all I found was ugly, unrealistic looking waste-of-space-interchanges. Well, more or less, at least if it comes down to urban interchanges. I therefore started the asset editor and buildt my own interchange between a (major) 6-lane-avenue and a 4-(upt to 8-)-lane street, where the main avenue has now crossings, but goes through an underpass: I'm satisfied with the result so far but for one detail: it seems I cannot get a decent slope constructed. As you can see, the slope from 0 to -9 is only in tha last third of what I would assume to be the ramp. Looks more like an San Francisco kind of underpass ... I suppose this is due to the fact that the 6-lane-road narrows down at the tunnel entrance, thus creating an (unnecessary) crossing. I also tried to create the slope in two steps - 0 to -6 m, then -6 to -9. However, in that case the crossing area remains even, so the slope is diveded in two slopes. Additionally, this creates a graphic glitch in the sides of the tunnel ramp .. parts of the wall appear blue. Whatever I tried, I cannot get a decent slope that evenly goes form ground level (where the ramps enter) to -9 m at the tunnel entrance. It might be possible if I move the on-/offramps a little bit more out, but my main target is to keep it small. Final note on mods: I used the "Road Anarchy" mod to create the on-/offramps, as the vanilla game So, before uploading that onto the STEX I would like you to comment, suggest, improve ... I also can upload the source file if somene likes. Cheers, Peter FIrst edit: Ingame there appears to be a problem with the terrain at the crossings ... have to look into that. Maybe this is caused by the faxt that the slope already begins in the area where the on-/offramps join ....

Thanks, downloaded the Move it! mod .. I already have the Fine road mod installed. Reworked it meanwhile, here are the first ingame pictures:

Hi folks, been playing SC4 for a long time and now went over to try C:S. SO my first question is - is there a possibility to change the default location for addons? Actually they are installed under the "Users\AppData\..." location. However since this is the system disk I already have problems with free disk space, so I would rather like to install the addon files on another disk ... Is there any chance to do so? Thanks in advance!

For the developement issue - have a look at you demand graphs. It might be that you're missing commercial zones. It also might help to turn down taxes in order to encourage growth. As for your highway: be sure to place it in a way that provides proper traffic connections between your residential and commercial/industrial areas. Building the highway around your city might not help at all - sims tend to be afraid of commute times, and will possibly use the inner-city network instead of circling the city on a highway. I think you should consider an inner-circle highway that extends into the residential and industrial areas. Sorry, cannot upload a pic right now ... What I have learned is that you should not place the highway where there is free place at the moment. Highways need to placed where they are neccessary and useful. This will mean to demolish quite something in this process. If you are afraid of destroying existing developements, you will most likely end up with an nice highway that remains unused.

A few thoughts on that: (#) You might check out your traffic connections. How big is the distance between the industrial and residential areas? How about your sims in your residential city - do they have a long commute time? If so, you might consider adding a railway that connects your residential and industrial areas. (#) It's always wise to put the commercial area somewhere between the residential and industrial area and to force your sims going through it. That way, you can increase number of customers. SIms don't like to travel long distances, so they will prefer a setup like this RES ------ COM ------ IND to this (let's see if I can manage that ASCII art): IND | | | | RES -------COM (#) Maybe you started out to fast. There's no sense in zoning large areas at once. Let it grow slowly (#) Take care of your Sims needs. Your sims like to have some parks and trees in the surroundings. Even plantnig trees with the Mayor Mode Tool will help. (#) Best would be to share a picture of your current setup ...

You just might have a look at the Omnibus section of ST, which features a lot of tutorials, like: and many more ...

FIrst: can u see a brown box? You could then query that LOT to get an idea which plugins is creating the problem. In case you don't see brown boxes, go on as follows: Move half of your plugins out of the plugins folder and start SC4. Does SC4 still state the dependency as missing? -- > OK, the plugin in question is in that half of your plugins. Move half of the plugins in your plugin folder out of there and proceed as above. If SC4 runs ok, then the plugins in question is in that half that you have moved out just before. That way you can narrow down yuor search up to the plugin that's missing the dependencies. But, on a side note, I never heard that missing plugins result in CTD. Normally you only get brown boxes from that. IMHO the CTD is caused by another problem, like some conflicting plugins, e.g. like PEG's functional Seaports and the BCS (?) Functional Airports which will cause CTD's when installed together.

Well, to me it's just the question of "What do you want to do?". You can play SC4 and simply build up a city of rectangular roads with residential commercial and industrial zone in between. It will grow and you prbably will end up with a giant city. But will it look realistic? Most likely not. So the other way of playing SC4 (my preferred way) is to (1) follow the natural developement of the city and (2) keep a sense of reality when building new stuff. For example, you plan to build a road over a slope. Using the standard (or even custom) slope mod will sometimes result in a kind of un-natural slope. In that case, I for example first lay a highway or even railrod, which will give you a much more gentle (and tus realistic) slope. ANother example: You try to lay out a stretch of road through the countryside. You can easyly drag a straight road. On the other hand, you can spend some time and examine the terrain. Then, consider how a "real" road would go in this terrain. That way, you will get something that is not just a city simulation, but something that looks like some RL picture. On your every day RL paths, just examine how cities and villages are set up. This will give you so much examples of what to do in SC4. Once you are on that trail, you never ever will think of just "doing it the easy way" in SC4.

First, this looks promising. A very nice region that provides plains, coastal areas and also some hilli areas. I's a good idea to at least have some idea how to organize your city in terms of what goes where. But first of all, i think you should define "successful". What is more important to you: that the city can live on it's own? Or that the city is perfectly desigend? In case of the first ("city management"), you need to start out carefully. Zone low density only in the beginning. Don't put in public services too early. You don't need water, police, health in the first. A small fire covereage will do. Add public service only as you see your city grow. Water is only needed if you want to upgrade the zoning to medium density. That way you will maybe have to wait a long time until you can build a harbor or resort area, 'cause everything needs to be funded from the cities income. Over all, in this case much more (detailed, long-term) planing will be necessary in advance to zoning, building transportation, and so on. In case of the second ("city creation"), you might make use of the "Extra Cheats Plugin" that (beside other marvellous functions) gives you the possibility of adding funds to your city as you need them. Of course planning what to do should be part of the process, but it doesn't hurt that much do demolish an alley and some buildings in order to get a highway in place there if you don't have to look on your balance sheet. I tend to be the latter. However, when growing my city, I tend to let them grow naturally. So there's a basic plan of zoning, but the final outcome often is somewhat different. This is especially true for transport networks. It's nice to draw a line and decide a highway has to go here, but it's worthless if your Sims won't make any use of it. So in my experience upgrading and expanding the transport network is always connected to massive demolition work. Troughout my first cities I always hesitated to destroy this or that building and instead tried to fumble in the new or upgraded network. What should I say. I failed regularly. Once you overcome the hesitation to demolish buildings, you will succeed in transport management. Sims will tell you where they want to go. Period. No way around this fact. A second hint that I would want to give you is "take your time". If you want to have a real beautiful city rich of stunning details (have a looke at these stupendous MD's out there ..) you cannot simply zone out, drag roads, plant trees, whatch the buildings grow, and start over the same process. I did that in the beginning, because of course I wanted to have a huge city. However, it looks .. well .. uhmm ... Nowadays, I take care about every tile. A plaza here. A park there. Some walkways connectiong the streets. It helped me much to just open my eyes when driving around (IRL, not UDI ) and look at how a city or village or landscape is "organized". All these little details. That way you get a whole bunch of ideas for your city. So as a matter of fact, it might well be that adding some 10 x 10 tile part to my city takes me half an hour of gameplay to finish it. Of course this means to first go and download tons of stuff from the STEX/LEX. But I think (never tried, tbh) that even with the vanilla version of SC4 Rushhour you can create good-looking cities if you just dont rush it. So, my first thoughts on creating a "successful" city. Ah, and don't forget to spend some time within the Omnibus section of this site, there are a lot of helpful tutorials and tips to help you make your way. Looking forward to your MD ahh .. it's called City Journal here - sry!

Are you possibly looking for this sort of mod? https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/25809-railway-upgrade-mod/ Second, currently I'm looking for some prop packs that contain tools (like barrow, shovel, ... - anything that you would expect to find at your barn at home) flora that you see growing along such barns, like e.g. grapewine rowing on the wall, little bushes, grass, for my BAT project. I have tons of prop packs in my plugins directory but havent found a way to get an overview of their content, so if someone could point me to the right prop packs ...?

So, you have zoned residential, industrial and commercial zones, and still you have not enough jobs? However, skyscrapers are not the first thing to develop in a city. It took me (sim)years of gameplay until the first went up. I think it also has to do with park effect .. commercial zones need plazas and parks to develope into that high-rise-areas ... and good transportation, ... Maybe you could post a screenshot of your city layout that might help us understand the problem ...

To me it seems the only way to avoid this is to place your water pumps far away from any pollution. I experienced the same in an rural area. I placed a water pump amidst agricultural zones. The pump immediately failed due to pollution, so I placed a treatment plant right beside the pump. Despite that, the water pump will fail every so often because of water pollution ..

Maybe you have a texture mod installed?

In general, I think it should be possible. All you have do is to raise the tiles that will build up the spiralway seperately. How wide should that spiralway be? One tile, or wider? 'Cause the God Mod Tools do affect a wider area than the equal tool from the mayors mod menu (speaking of the "raise terrain" tool for example. By using the NUM and SHIFT+NUM keys you can adjust the effective area and the power of the tool used. So hitting "1" and "SHIFT"+"1" will set the tool to smalles area effected and minimized effect. Considering the fact that using a "raise/lower terrain" tool on a single tile will almost effect the nortwestern edge of the tile, youo can fugure out which tiles to raise to create your spiralway. However, it might be easier to prepare the spiralway while creating the mesa: start out creating the measa with a large radius / effected area and raise the terrain say about 1/4 of it's final height. Then decrease the effective area and raise for another 1/4. Do twice so do reach then final height. This will leave you with somthing like this (cross section view): /-------\ / \ / \ /--/ \--\ / \ /--/ \--\ / \ /--/ \--\ / \ (Edit: sorry, this ascii art doesn't show up in the post cause all the "spaces" are somehow deleted) That way you don't have to single-raise all the tiles of the spiralway the whole way up to their final position but just adjust from the height received by those four steps of creating the mesa. Just a thought .. On a second thought, you might try to create a map with the terrain generator, there u can use a greyscale bitmap to define terrain level (black - sea level; white - highest altitude). You should have a look at the forum threads or the omnibus for a detailed description, I haven't done this so far. Have a look here: https://www.simtropolis.com/omnibus/_/simcity-4/mapping-and-terraforming/ Good luck, and hope to see this in a City Journal!!

Basically what has been said is true, but there are two workarounds, so you might be interested in these downloads: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/17166-highway-under-bridge/ https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/files/file/4524-underbridgeroad/

Ther are several things that can help you: (1) Add elevated rail or subway lines to decrease road traffic. For them to be useful, you however have to carefully analyze the traffic flow with the traffic query tool. Sims are car-fanatics, so they will use other means of transport only if they fit perfectly into where they want to go. You additionally will need bus stations for the sims to reach the el-rail / sub stations. Our sims are not fond of walking large distances, either. Personally I place a bus station every 6 .. 7 tiles along a road. (2) Add higher capacity road networks that are included in the NAM, like the new NWM (Network Widening Mod)

In order to documentthe city building progress, I would like to save the city tile image that is displayed when a certain city tile is loading (right after selecting a tile in the region view and clicking "play": I tried sawtooth's region census, but when saving the tile image an error occurs and I get only empty files. So is there another way of saving this images?

Thanks, already happy with the iLive thinggy ...