jwsteele

Hey all, question. For years I have understood that plopping residential is impossible. Frustrated with the aesthetics of my city, I started messing around with it, and have had significant success using the Extra Cheats Building Plop mode under the following conditions: 1. Zoning for housing 2. Waiting for housing to be built 3. Plopping a housing unit with less units on the spot where housing has grown 4. Waiting for the "No Road Access" zot to pop up 5. Deleting any streets the structure is touching, and then replacing them Using these five steps, 95%+ of my plopped residential buildings are not only still standing after many game years, but almost all are pretty much maxed out on occupancy. I have only had to delete one building thus far that was abandoned due to "commute time". It seems to be (for me anyways) that the keys are not plopping on unzoned land, and then not upping the density (plopping a skyscraper on a townhouse). Has anybody else had success with this method before?

In your experience, doing it this way (I don't even bother to demolish, I just plop right on top of the grown building and make sure it's smaller/similar occupancy and the same wealth level), do you see abandonment problems down the line? 98%+ of my buildings have stayed occupied for a couple game years. I plopped two buildings not on zones and they abandoned almost immediately.

Hey all! Long time lurker here, with my first city journal. My city is based heavily on the cities I grew up in, Palo Alto and San Francisco (as well as Northern California in general), and inspired by the geography of Hong Kong, as well as the density of New York City. It is named Palo Alto (not to be confused with the actual Palo Alto!) and is envisioned as being north of San Francisco, yet still maintaining SF's Mediterranean climate and geography. Street names and some history have been borrowed heavily from Palo Alto, as well as local cities Atherton and Menlo Park, as an homage to the area I grew up in. In this alternate reality, the gold rush heavily affected the Palo Alto Bay region, catapulting Palo Alto into the world’s economy as a heavy financial and tech sector, leaving San Francisco as a regional economy with strong tourism (think Austin, New Orleans, San Diego, etc). I’ve envisioned most of the institutions that define the San Francisco Bay Area (both current and those that have relocated) as originating in Palo Alto instead, as well as some notable companies from the Pacific Northwest. The Palo Alto economy is defined by many financial, tech, and Fortune 500 companies, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Google, Chevron, Gap, Apple, Facebook, McKesson, Hewlett Packard, Safeway, Visa, Oracle, Salesforce, Clorox, Charles Schwab, Starbucks, Nike, Nordstrom, Levi’s, Union Bank, Electronic Arts (!), Intel, Adobe, the Hearst Corporation, and PG&E, as well as being the national hub of venture capital, and hosting the (still intact in this world) Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, in addition to the Federal Reserve Bank for District 12. This diversity and strength of industry has allowed Palo Alto to become a Global Alpha city, and a major population and commercial hub of the United States of America. I’m still learning to play the game, so this is just as much about my experiments with creating a city as it is with perfectly polished regions. My focus is going to be on neighborhoods, developing infill over time, and transportation routes (particularly subways and buses). My goal is to create a city (primarily wall-to-wall) that feels like it grew naturally rather than disjointed, and each post will feature a different area, project, or transportation system. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy!

He's back!!! The undisputed king of BATs as far as I'm concerned. I literally fell in love with Melbourne's architecture because of your work. What's next? Federation Square? Docklands condos? Crown casino?

where did you get the townhouses 4th from bottom, and the corner building with the cupola on the 6th photo from the bottom? Amazing work.

Hey all, this is so frustrating. So I have a copy of SC4 Mapper in Wine. However, I cannot get the region to show up in my game. There is an error every time I try to do so. Error while saving region - "A problem has occurred while saving the cities files. Some or all of the cities might not have been saved correctly". And then nothing in game. I am using the aspyr app. How do I link SC4 Mapper to the app so this works? This has been a giant headache but hopefully you all know how to do so.

OK, I hate to be such a pain, but will Federation Square ever make the list of active projects? I have a beautiful empty space waiting for that BAT!! It is such a rarity in the game, because (to my knowledge) we do not have a single high-quality BAT for a city center with bars/entertainment/iconic status like an LA Live, Union Square, etc that are so common in big cities. Thanks for your continually amazing creations. You truly are the best of the best!

In my opinion, we can NEVER have too many smaller W2Ws to create varied streetscapes...real cities may have a couple dozen skyscrapers, but hundreds of smaller W2W buildings. And yours are consistently some of the best...the Anchor Bar looks fantastic! More of that size are always appreciated, but I have no doubt whatever mipro creates will be fantastic.

YES! The BSP releases are some of my absolute favorite BATs to include in my city. Love it all, from the big to the small!

Love it! I love how you often work on 20-30 buildings, which are so essential to the game but tend to get lost inbetween smaller buildings and massive skyscrapers. Looking forward to dropping this in my city!

Unbelievable. That is gorgeous.

AMAZING

Oh my gosh how do you keep churning these out!! I wasn't expecting Freshwater Place nearly as quick as you did! Just as a Q, the tower on the other side of Freshwater Place, are you planning on BATing it and if so, what will the dimensions be? Just trying to make sure I zone/grid accordingly for the future when I grow Freshwater. Continue to be obsessed with your work.

WOW! Maritime Exchange looks incredible in my city! Count me in amongst those who would prefer Daily News next over Empire State Building, because I try to avoid buildings in my city that are "obviously" in another real world city, but totally get that I'm likely in the minority. Your art deco work is impeccable!

Add me to those who think the podium would be a good standalone. We need more a) midrises, and b) ugly/nondescript buildings, since obviously our most talented BATers go after the large scale and architecturally significant buildings. But every metropolitan city needs its fair share of ugly architecture! :kitty:

Un. Be. Lievable. Might as well rename November Melbourne Art Deco Month! What an insane surprise to wake up to, and even better that they are C$$...currently facing a real shortage of high-level C$$ buildings in the game, and these three are gorgeous. The transformation of my city into Melbourne continues... Just out of curiosity, is Federation Square still moving (slowly) through the channels, or is it simply too big of a project for right now? Since LA Live, Times Square, type city centers are sorely underrepresented, I think this fits a need. But then I'm also excited for Freshwater...Sofitel...all the treasury/parliament type structures...heck...EVERYTHING!!

I like the way this city is slowly growing and "spidering"...seems very realistic, in terms of city growth.

Loving it!

Incredible. Cannot wait!

Oh my God. These are stunning, but the nightlights on the Palais Theatre...

I love it! We can haz R$ and R$$?