The Good King

I could not find a section for city building questions specifically, as most of the topics sections here are quite specific. So, I apologize if there's a better place for this post. Now, to the point: I used to be an avid SC4 Player until my hard drive crashed a few months ago. I've just recently got back into the city building spirit, but it seems I'm extremely rusty on my SimCity mayoral skills. When I first got good at the game, I know there was a tutorial I followed like a sim bible, but I can't seem to find it anymore. I've recently tried to revive an old beloved city of mine, Vault, which is the neighboring city to a large metropolitan, Orin. Fortunately, Orin was backed up on another PC, so I was able to start Vault off just like the old one. The city specializes in having more total jobs than population, being a very high-end business center for only taking up a single corner of its own map space. I used a strict discipline while building this city: extreme patience. I never expanded into a new map area until the old one was near perfection or at least making good income, and I never did end up filling the map more than halfway before it was lost. Anyways, while rebuilding this city I ran into a problem I never faced in the old vault: unemployment. It started in only the infant stages of my city with 4,000 population, and yet with that I had 8,000 total commercial and industrial jobs being filled. So, I upped the education pool and raised the quality of life to inspire more demand. I then created even more commerce and industry in an area just north of the main residence. For a moment people were satisfied, but then, in a whole different area of the city, buildings which had been perfectly fine throughout were suddenly jobless. These buildings are literally surrounded by commerce, high industry, and manufacturing, and are primarily dense medium/high wealth buildings. It seems that every time I create a bigger job pool, it fills up instantly and leaves another pool of medium and high wealth citizens without work. It sounds like total nonsense, having double your population in jobs, and an unemployment problem. I never had this problem with the old Vault either. I believe it to be an equilibrium problem concerning my neighbor, Orin. Orin, which now holds about 65,000 residents and only 35,000 total jobs, used to be in total equilibrium with my city business-wise, back when my city had a population of 40,000 and a job pool 70,000+. Now however, I've barely made it to 8,000 population, and it sounds to me like Orin is draining my job pool. (They're my only neighbor.) Anyhow, I've posted here because I'm not sure what to do. I don't have enough population for a huge mass-transit system to see if reducing commute time will help. (Tried it, and it completely tanked my city funds while not even improving the situation.) My buildings are becoming stressed thanks to unemployment, and it's completely stunting the growth of my city which isn't even old enough to have a convention center. I realize I write way too big of posts, too btw.

I know this topic is basically over and done with, but I would like to point out for anyone who has had an issue similar to this that what local_authority01 said is very good advice. Very sadly, vault has been long lost thanks to my broken mirror luck with computers. However, if I remember correctly, Vault's low-wealth neighborhood was a very specific and separate area (one of the tips of the L-shape that was vault) from the downtown. (The corner of the L-shape.) I had have forgotten to remake the low wealth section when I remade vault, and so I had a no low wealth problem.

So, I've recently run into a major problem with my old laptop's AC adapter, (the third problem since I bought it in October, but that's just my luck,) and so I've moved my cities onto an HP Netbook for now. The game runs far better than I would have expected, except for one problem: the resolution. This darn thing runs in 1024x576 mode, which constantly creates issues with other programs including SC4. In this case, it cuts off a great deal of the screen. Using a freeware program called NRC, I can change the netbook's res to match the game's res settings, but that creates a small dilemna: a) I can run it in non-stretch mode and have to pan up and down just to play in 1024x768, or b) I can run it in 1024 x 768 no pan (downsized) mode, which slows up the gameplay. I looked up an alternate solution and found post after post describing this -CustomResolution:enabled trick in the shortcut, which I in turn used. Unfortunately, for my resolution it still shaves a bit off the top, which almost didn't affect my game play until I noticed it cuts off the Residential Zones button. (Why couldn't it just be the terra forming tools...) I've looked everywhere for a better solution, but so far I have found nothing. Any suggestions? EDIT: On a hunch, I used NRC to change my resolution to 1024x600, and with the shortcut still specifying -r1024x576x32, I can now see the whole screen,but still have to pan around to do so. So, same problem in other words, but at least now I know the real problem is that it's assuming 1024x576 as 1024x600.

It's called the Netbook Resolution Changer, and it's free/legal. This link should work: http://f60s.com/cache/t/485948.aspx Good luck EDIT: If the link doesn't work correctly and/or you can't find another good one, I still have the installer and fortunately it's legal to download, so I can upload/give a link if necessary.

It's been quite some time since I played SC4, and thanks to college I've forgot most of what I used to know about wealth classes. Mainly what I've forgotten is the exact requirements for each class, (low, medium, high), and as much as I've tried to dig into my memory I just can't remember where I learned that info from. I've looked up tutorials but most of those simply give you guidelines and instructions, (the best of which was the one found on the main site), rather than the actual details about what raises a commercial job pool, what inspires a high-industry, etc. It could have even been one of the in-game tutorials, but I can't remember though I will make note to try them out and see when I have time. (Have finals this week.) Basically, I'm wondering if anyone has a good list of the requirements to attract each type (res, com, ind) and level (low, med, high) of zone. It's not so much low-wealth that I need to remember, seeing as you almost always have low-wealth residential and industrial demand; it's the higher wealth commerce, industry, and manufacturing that I'm having trouble recollecting.

Checked the In-game Big City tutorial and that somewhat answered my question. Also, ty tysons4 for the list, that helped as well.

@N_O_Body: I have taken all measures to kill pollution, and desirability is at full. I was thinking of installing a small busing system, as that was the first alternate transit the old Vault incurred. The problem could be derived from me not taking things slow enough. I rushed into the new Vault because I could half remember the old city plan. Again, patience is my virtue in SC. The main problem is, Orin has always held its commercial base in Vault, but now that the proportions and job pools are a little skewed, (4,000:8,000 vs. 40,000:70,000) , Orin is literally sucking the life out of Vault. I have 2 options I can think of to fix this: 1) Recreate Orin so that it once again grows with vault rather than draining it. 2) Cut off all ties to Orin, grow a normal city without the exaggerated commerce, and when I have a large enough population to supply the true vault, (Again, it starts to drain me before I've even been awarded anything,) remake the ties and reconstruct the city back to its original form.

Indeed, I was pretty sure it was a problem with fixed size dashboards after seeing different resolutions at work, but I was hoping for a downscaling solution. Anyway, I've just been using NRC to run the game in 800x600 with panning, and it hasn't been that terrible. It's slower than normal, and annoyingly sluggish on commands such as zoom, but other than that I've successfully re-created the city of Vault that I lost with my hard drive crash back in November of last year.

If you look closely at his list, You'll notice that all the resolutions he posted are either a 16:9 or 16:10 ratio, which is the ratio I'm having problems achieving. Yours is a 4:3 and has nothing to do with the issue seeing as it's a SC4 default.

I understand that. If it was supported I wouldn't be posting at all. I posted to see if anyone had a suggestion on how to achieve either that resolution or perhaps adjust my netbook's to 1024x600 without panning. (I would actually be ok with stretching in this instance since it's only a 24-pixel difference, but NRC doesn't support switching to 1024x600.)

While designing a hydro-electric powerplant, I came across a major problem when designing this dam. I believe it can be circumvented since it's largely just a problem with the programming rules of the BAT. (most specifically, the lot editor.) I was planning on calling 'ground level' the near top of the dam, mostly consisting of a stone walkway and circuit breaker on one end, and leaving the actual dam to be 'below ground'. However, the Lot Editor requires that all grid spaces have a lot tile (road, grass, brick etc.) in order to save the lot. Why do I think there's a way around this? Well, if you have to have some grass or road there, then how does a marina work? The marina building has a coastal lot, but is otherwise completely on water. So, I opened the marina lot with the editor and saw that, as I had suspected, it had no lot tiles beyond the coast. I tried to save the lot, and sure enough the program told me it couldn't save without the lot tiles. Keep in mind I changed absolutely NOTHING in the lot; I merely opened it, tried to save it, and was rejected. So, I'm wondering: does anybody have a way around this silly lot saving problem?

In order to get better experienced with BAT and just improve the game for myself altogether, I've been making a series of functional buildings. My next project is a Hydro-electric power plant. I've got the design idea down, but it's the technical info that's driving me crazy. I want to be realistically fair with the Cost and Power output of this thing, and I've been searching through Google for 2 hours now trying to get a good estimate on how much power Hydro-plants produce compared to the other plants in SimCity. For whatever reason it's very hard to find a straight answer, and unfortunately every source I read seems to give a different estimate than the last. Also, when I actually found a what I thought to be a good answer, about 1300 MWh / day as compared to a nuclear plant supposedly producing 1700 MWh / day, that didn't really match with SimCity's statistic..It seems most sites like to give worldwide statistics, rather than for the average plant. Also, proper plop costs and monthly maintenance costs are proving a tough search and comparison, so basically I'm wondering what power output and costs you all think would do real life hydro plants justice. Lastly, I apologize if there was a better forum heading to put this post in.

Update* Been a while since I've worked on anything SC4. Unfortunately right around the time I got to working on this and a bank land mark, I started freshman year of college. It's been, well, a bit busy and this semester is proving especially rough. In all, I almost completely forgot about this, but I remembered and so I'm starting back on it. I did come across a major problem when designing this dam that I think can be circumvented since it's largely just a problem with the rules of the BAT. (most specifically, the lot editor.) To create the dam I'm basically just going to call the very top of the thing, mostly consisting of a stone walkway and circuit breaker on one end, the 'ground level' and the actual dam will be below ground. However, the Lot Editor requires that all spaces have a lot tile (road, grass, brick etc.) in order to save the lot. Of course, this didn't make any sense to me. If you have to have some grass or road there, how does the marina work? (the marina is has a coastal piece, but is otherwise on the water.) So, I opened the marina lot, and saw that as I suspected it had no lot tiles in the middle. I pressed save, and sure enough the program told me it couldn't save without the lot tiles. So, I'm wondering: does anybody have a way around this silliness? EDIT (March 8, 2010): Seeing as it's been months without a single reply, it may within my best interest to just make a new topic designating my question specifically. My guess is a lot of people only look at the intro post, consider the ? answered, and leave without seeing WHY this post was moved.

Originally posted by: Ephemeron The most important thing to get right is the ratio of (monthly) cost to power. This is something a lot of people seem to get wrong. Most people make power plants too cheap (not sure if this is intentional or not). I wouldn't care too much for the values of real world power plants, as Simcity is different to these. I suggest that you use the ingame values for reference. The ingame solar and hydrogen and nuclear power plants should have a monthly cost of $0.20 per unit of power. The wind plants are slightly higher at $0.25, but they have the added bonus of being able to build at the beginning of the game. Gas, oil and coal power plants are cheaper at $0.13, $0.09 and $0.04 respectively, but this is in exchange for the pollution they produce.quote> From what I read online, those figures are actually pretty true to the real life estimates, being $/MWh. As for the initial cost I'm thinking pretty high due to the fact that hydro-plants need dams to be built. Most likely, I'll just call it 13,000 MWh / mo. Originally posted by: Nuck97 Thing is, the operating costs of a dam that's already installed and functioning can't be too much, IMO.quote> I'd probably assume the same. I found a good articale that said the maintenance costs are about 1/3 of nuclear, oil, and coal plants, so I'll find some value with that in mind. My thoughts are to set a high initial cost to offset a low maintenance cost, or perhaps just leave the "disadvantage" to being the fact that you have to have a river or tributary blocked to make one.