eggman111

Yes! Thank you so much for updating this incredibly useful tool!

No problem. I guess that will be the first RHW piece with a traffic light on it, unless I'm forgetting something.

Hmm, I didn't see any traffic lights so I figured it was supposed to replicate a roundabout. Yeah, I see the volleyball now.

The Type E1 ramp interface does not have a draggable stub for the MIS. You need to use it with the FARHW puzzle pieces. EDIT: *thud* That's a really neat way to fit a roundabout under a highway. I like it! I hope the Sims remember to yield to traffic in the roundabout!

Hi, I like the idea of planning it out! I just started doing this for a small region that I'm starting. I think you have a good overall plan. There are a couple of freeways that I think could be optimized. The freeway crossing the river should be a bit further north so it crosses the large island. That way you can better develop it (think Mercer Island in Seattle). The two freeways that parallel each other seem a bit close to each other. Moving the east one toward the ocean seems like a better bet to me. See the picture for my suggestions. Freeways I think you should remove are crossed out in black, and freeways that I think you should add are in red. Of course, it's your city, so feel free to dismiss my ideas!

I'll go through your post and answer what I can. This is all based on my experience with the game so far, so hopefully it's helpful. I'm still learning things about this game, so if anyone feels the need to correct me, go ahead. My answers are in bold. Cheers!

The thing is, overcrowded stations don't actually make a difference in Sims' commutes. It looks bad on the map, but Sims will happily go through a crowded subway station and it won't negatively affect them. From what I recall, Z did quite a bit of testing for the RTMT project to set the capacities, and in the end it turned out that it doesn't matter (except if you hit some super large number). You can read more about it here.

You should also see a green line that looks like it goes underground, as Tarkus described. If the paths just go to the end of the city map and that's it, it won't work. That's been my experience.

Just a quick note about the RHW: the RHW-8S type D2 ramp appears to be mis-labeled between entrance and exit (at least, based on what the piece looks like). I'm impressed with the quality overall! The things that I've seen so far are minor, and I'm happy to see a few small bug fixes being attached in threads like this.

I've really been enjoying the new NAM series! In particular, RHW has some great new pieces that I've been wanting to have for a while. I'm glad to see that ERHW-6S is draggable over MAVE-6; however, if I drag two in opposite directions with a tile in between, the MAVE-6 reverts to a road under the overpass and on the tile in between. The MAVE-6 works fine with ERHW-4, so it's not a big deal, but it would be nice to see some more stability for these types of crossings in future versions. Is this a possibility?

I believe there is also a piece for avenue overpasses over RHW-6C. I'm not sure if that's what you're looking for, but it would at least be functional.

I think this is a great idea. I've been thinking about making a region like this for a while. It seems that every time I try to, I end up making sprawling cities and I fill up the tile. I will get to it, though. My main suggestion (if you're looking for any) would be to fill up a lot of space with farms and maybe some trees. I'm not sure if you're interested in the SPAM (SimPeg Agricultural Mod) but I think it would really enhance the small-town feel.

This is really well made. I know it's been a while since there's been a comment, but I have to ask, where did you get the staircase up the embankment in the top right of the first picture?

Are we talking about two separate issues here? I was just replying to the post about hovering over a transit enabled (TE) lot with a puzzle piece. It doesn't matter what part of the TE lot you hover over, the game will crash. If we're talking about crashing when you hold a puzzle piece over another puzzle piece, then I have no idea. I've never had that happen.

Anywhere will crash it.

There are several airport options on the STEX and LEX. Most packs are not functional. There are some functional airports available as well. This one is my favourite (on the LEX, where you'll need to register). Airports increase the cap for commercial offices, along with affecting desirability. The airports I linked to have similar effects to the Maxis airports.

Excellent. Just a question: any reason the pillars on the upper level of the ERHW are offset from the lower level? It looks good with more supports on top than on the bottom, but it seems to me that they should line up in the instances they occur on the same tile. Not to take away from what you've done - I'm really impressed with all this new functionality!

Wow wow wow. Awesome! That will be so handy. I like that there are several new transitions, as well. Will you be keeping the ploppable transitions or is the plan to do away with them eventually?

If you add in cosmetic items after your city has developed, it shouldn't affect your population. In some cases, it might even help (say, adding parks). Taxes directly affect demand. If you have demand for a certain commercial type hovering around 0, lowering the tax will often increase demand to a level where development is encouraged. If you have a large negative demand, though, changing the tax won't end up helping you because the demand will still be negative. Similarly, if you already have high commercial demand, there's no incentive to lower taxes. In fact, you could likely raise them slightly without a detrimental effect. Personally, I like to have a prohibitive tax rate for R$$$ (say 12-13%) for the starting stages of my city. Once I've got a good base started, then I lower the R$$$ tax a bit (say to 10-11%) to encourage them to move in. I don't like to have R$$$ taxes lower than R$ or R$$ because then I find my city gets imbalanced too easily. Another point is that the game has a tendency to upgrade to R$$$ too easily. This mod increases the desirability threshold for R$$$, which means that it takes a bit more for R$$$ to move in. It also means that they're less likely to move out since they move to better locations. Read the description of the mod for more information. Since I started using it, my problems with R$$$ got way better.

Good points above. This came up on a recent thread. It looks to me like you don't have enough jobs for your high-wealth sims. I always set high-wealth taxes high so that they don't move in so frequently. Cities can only support a small percentage of high-wealth Sims (just like real life). A large population of low- and medium-wealth Sims is normal. Consider using the bug fix for high-tech jobs, zoning some industrial and encouraging high-tech growth. With fewer R$$$ and more $$$ jobs, things will balance out. As I mentioned before, commute time is not the issue here. As I've read from some of our transportation experts, with the NAM, any commute within the city will be marked as "Short". Any commute time out of the city (to a neighbour) will be marked as "Long". The only effect this has is on desirability, and usually it's not enough to make people move out. The reason you see "Long" commute times within a city with the NAM is because the residents of the building aren't finding anywhere to work. Therefore, the simulator returns a value of "Long" for the commute, even though it really means people can't commute at all. Soon, residents will move out, as you're seeing. If you see "Medium" with the NAM, it means that about half of people are working and half aren't. Honestly, I just ignore the commute time graph with the NAM. The number is just an average of everyone's commutes. Because the commute time doesn't have a huge effect on Sims, it doesn't tell you all that much. In short, 1) Get more high-wealth jobs 2) Have more low- and medium-wealth residential 3) Ignore commute times and just focus on whether people can find somewhere to work or not

Are you using the NAM (Network Addon Mod)? The default traffic simulator with the game has been drastically upgraded when you use the NAM. The original game's pathfinding engine isn't optimized. Honestly, commute time doesn't really matter. What does matter is if Sims can find a job to work at. A longer commute time will decrease desirability, but it's not that important when you compare it to other factors like city services.

Welcome to the community! You don't have to do the UDI missions to get the reward buildings. They'll come when your city reaches certain targets (all available online). Difficulty doesn't change that. I usually just switch off the UDI icons. I believe the downloaded version comes with the latest patch (if you got it from Steam) - someone else should be able to confirm that. If you right-click on your SimCity 4.exe file (not the shortcut, but the one in Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps) and hit Properties, it'll tell you what version you have. Oh yeah, and make sure you check out the STEX for lots of great downloads. The NAM in particular is awesome, but there are so many other great mods out there if you want to play around with them.

I remember the demo for that game... I thought it was the coolest thing back then. To the OP, that sounds like a neat project. I wish you luck, and I hope that your county's roads are mostly on a grid.

My comments above in bold really speak to the quality of the SC4 community, since most of the issues that came with the original game have been fixed or lessened due to great custom content. It's really amazing when you think about it - and new stuff is coming all the time.

I agree with you that default industry values are low, so I don't really have a problem with that mod. I don't find it's necessary, though, since I use the CAM and have downloaded several growable industrial lots. I find that there are rarely as many commuters going to an industrial building as there are jobs, so adding the extra jobs doesn't help that much. I like have large industrial areas, though. If your play style doesn't focus on industry, then that's fine. The other mod I would recommend is the SPAM (SimPeg Agricultural Mod). It fixes the whole farming system and makes it way better, IMO. Having street capacities so much lower than road capacities is actually unrealistic. There are the same number of lanes on a street as a road - the only difference is that the speed limit is lower. The NAM traffic simulator sets the street capacity as the road capacity times the ratio of street speed limit to road speed limit, which is as realistic as it gets. I do agree that some of the higher capacities are too big, but again that comes down to playing style. I find Low or Medium works well for my style of city, but someone building a large tile with only skyscrapers might not.