Alky

Some incredibly good information here folks, thank you. So far I've had no luck in sustaining a small village but I haven't given up yet. Thanks again.

Ok guys thanks, I was hoping for a magic solution. lol I'll check out Cori's Terrain Shoppe.

Is there a trick to plopping a beach or do you just keep playing with the terrain tools till it works? Thanks.

Ok, I figured it out, after re-installing, practically the whole game is duplicated in the users/<userxxx>/documents/SimCity 4/ folder. All the plugins are there even though I emptied the game folder plugins, the game still saw them. So I deleted the whole SimCity 4 folder from there and we are starting with a clean canvas! LOL I appreciate all the help and now I'm going to try out your scenario.

That's an awesome example, I really appreciate your input. I have one small issue. As I mentioned in my OP, I haven't played since I got Windoze 10, gotta be 3 or 4 years I guess. Somewhere in my previous sim life I activated a couple of mods that seem to have stuck with the game even though there's nothing in my plugin folder. I think it's from the extra cheats mod where you use CTRL X. It seems I've turned on the water and power to blanket the entire city without pipes or power lines just by adding a pump or power source. Is there any way of undoing the CTRL X cheats short of re-installing? Thanks.

Thank you both for your informative replies. I'm going to try out CorinaMarie's model as it sounds exactly the way I'd like to start out instead of chasing the RCI bars. I'll be checking out the links you provided too Cyclone, much appreciated. BTW, I do have an assortment of mods but I'd like to do this without using them.

I've been away from SimCity for quite some time because it wouldn't run in Windows 10, I've since resolved that issue. Whenever I've played the game it always seemed like a race to get the city to at least show a profit and be self sustaining which ends up being a giant megatropolis. I'd like to try and build something on a smaller scale that supports itself, is that even possible? If anyone has suggestions or a link to someone else's successful efforts, I'd be appreciative. Thank you!

I guess it hurts them because I didn't pay full price. They may be hurting themselves more with this DRM thing. I bought Silent Hunter 5 and it had the same thing going on. People refused to buy it until they relaxed it some. It never occurred to me that SC13 had it in place. Maybe I should have read the forums more. I've bought the SC games since SC 3000 and enjoyed them a lot, but some of the reviews I saw were kinda negative about this edition, so when I had an opportunity get it cheaper, I went for it. I'm not big on demos because usually they aren't a full game or they're time limited which doesn't really give you a good chance to evaluate them. Oh well, I won't be buying a new copy of SC13, I will just continue with Rush Hour. Thanks for the input folks!

I picked up a copy of SimCity 13 at the flea market today and it turns out I need the product code to install it. I used the one in the jacket and of course it's been used. Did I waste my money?

I only have enough trees to cover at most, double my expenses. Even that gets to be too much & I have to chop one or two down. It amounts to rarely more than $100k per month that the trees put out. The cities after a few years are around a couple million in the black with this minimal effort.

I'm not against cheats or mods that give you an advantage over the default game. I find it hard to not turn my small city into a giant metropolis. I strive for an area that's city-like and several small areas that are more rural. Problem is I can't stop from adding just that one more thing and soon the whole thing gets out of hand. LOL I like to connect adjoining cities with rail and roads/highways, get some neighborhood deals going and so on to see how they interact. I have the CTRL X menu with the assorted cheats which has the moolah on it and it works fine but I still like the Simolean tree because I can plop & forget, depending how many I need to stay ahead of the expenses. Since I'm trying to NOT fill every square in my city, the use of the money tree isn't a problem for me. I started playing SimCity way back with SimCity3 and got SimCity4 as soon as it came out. There's been a lot of gaps in my use of the game, several years at a time in some cases, so I forget a lot of stuff and then there's so much content being added that it's like starting all over again. It's kind of incredible how active the old game and the forums are still.

Excellent thank you... I sure hope I can retain that in my old noggin. LOL

I found a Simolean tree mod that each time you plop it, it gives you an additional $10k per month, so 10 trees would be $100k. I've been planting them as needed to always be slightly ahead of expenses, if I get too far ahead I can always bulldoze one or two.

Thank you. After I posted I realized it was a dumb question & I started a city and plopped a bunch of stuff to see if the game complained about any of it. Your summary is very good though! Still wondering about foresting, is that only possible in God mode?

I looked through the manual and I didn't find anything on the subject of lots and whether they need street or road access. Is there a list of some kind or do all lots such as gardens and parks require road access? A lot of times I have tiles that I can't build on any more because there's no road access but a small park would go nicely. Also, is there a way to lay down a lot of trees without plopping them one at a time? Thanks!