brianc1327

I really don't think that either of us, either me or TheMurderousCricket were "complaining" about how the game was designed, just commenting on it. I can only speak for myself, but I think it is just fine that aspects of the game are different than they are IRL. In fact, a few years back, I made a post on some things that are different between the game and "real life," such as having no inflation, or an infinite water aquifer, etc. I suppose that one more, not having a realistic buffer space around shuttle launch stations or nuclear power plants (or any kind of power plant), can now be added to the list. Brian Christiansen

In the vague past (I don't remember if this thread was recent or several years ago), there was a thread about the space shuttle station, and one of the replies stated that the had to be played on medium or hard mode, in addition to having the university, research center, and enough HT industry. At first, I thought, "this is incorrect, I have gotten it on easy mode." However, I recently played a city on "easy" mode and did not get offered the shuttle station, so I think I just started my city that I got the shuttle station on medium/hard mode and just misremembered that I started it on easy mode. Either that, or I got it using the "you dont deserve it" cheat code. Well, I just had some comments/thoughts about it. First, in SC4, the farthest it can be from an inhabited area is about 3km (diagonal length of a large city), in fact, I usually put it next to an air force base that I got from the ST exchange right here, and I usually have commercial zoning right next to it. I real life. such a base would be at least twice as far from any inhabited area. Second, I almost always get it in either medium or large cities. However, I checked my plugins, and one of them is an industry quadrupler, which I think means that industry (D,M, and HT) offers 4 times as many jobs as it would without it. Without it, I would not even come close to having enough HT jobs to be offered the shuttle station when playing a medium sized grid. I think this was the way the game was originally designed, it is just not possible to get enough HT jobs, even if conditions are "perfect" for HT industry. In a small city, I don't think it would even get close to having enough HT jobs even if you had a industry quadrupler, I guess you would need and industry 16-upler. Brian Christiansen

The following is a picture of a quadrant zoned the same way I zone and lay out roads in one of my "starter cities." The buildings (power plant, garbage incinerator, etc, are on a "side road," and not part of the "zoned area" in my starter city. The following is a breakdown of the cost for zoning a region like this, and putting in the "minimal services buildings": trash incinerator 25,000 I have used other trash collection methods, such as such as making a small plot of land and zoning it as landfill, but making this comparitively large investment relative to a $300,000 budget, has proven to be the most cost effective. power 10,000 I have used other power plants, but the coal power plant is the one I most use water 2 small pumps 2800, pipes, 3161 zoning: R, high density:61950 , C, high density: 25050 , M, medium density: 15930 when I started developing this strategy, I would start with low density and uprade to medium density, then upgrade again to high density, but it proved more cost effective to just start out with high density. highgways: 80,000 the region I am currently developing uses the Maxis elevated highways as the "interstate system". The highway estimate includes the cost of the cloverleaf that connects the 2 highways. roads: 100,000 when I started, I used streets, then upgraded them to roads, but putting in roads to start with, as with all the other expenses, just proved to be most cost effective. The cost of the roads includes the cost of the onramps to get on the "Interstate system. Small fire station: 250 as I stated in my OP (or at least think I did), I put the fire station in because of "game mechanics" rather than becaue I consider fire protection to be a basic service. Generally, the "destroy all buildings around the burning building" strategy works, but there are fires quite frequently without it, but placing a fire station prevents most of them. Grand total: 300,000. That is the total of the above numbers rounded to the nearest 100,000. The reason I rounded it is because some of the numbers that I used were estimates, and the buildings I put down are on a "side road," and not an actual part of the zoned area. Brian Christiansen

3 things: first, I use a method that might be considered "cheating," an industry quadrupler, but I think my strategy would work, perhaps with slight tweaks, without it (perhaps I should temporarily remove it and build a "test city" to see what happens); second, I get my money down to 0 or almost 0, and even lose money for a very short time, currently I do not even get close to the losing condition of -$100,000 before my "starter" city starts making money, when I first started developing this strategy I would hit that losing condition quite frequently, and third, it will probably take a day or 2, but I am working on breakdown of what one of my "starter cities" costs. Brian Christiansen

For background of my question, I suppose I need to briefly describe the basic strategy I use. I have used various variations of this basic strategy, that I probably can't even remember them all. First, I make a "starter city" that is 1/4 of a medium grid or 1/16 of a large grid. The starter city gets just the basic utilities of water, power, and garbage collection (that is actually the most expensive because of the upfront cost of the incinerator or whatever I put in for garbage collection). I also put in a fire station, but that has more to do, I think, with "game mechanics" rather than "providing services" to the sims. This "starter city" costs about $300,000, so what I usually do, at least currently, is start the game on "medium" difficulty and take out a loan of ~$100,000. Since this takes me down to almost $0 in my treasury, I almost always get offered the "desperation awards," and I recommend taking the army base and the prison, but turning down the missile base and the toxic waste dump. In a previous message, I discussed why, so I won't here, but even without them the "starter city" usually starts making money before it gets to the losing condition of -50k or -100k (I can't remember which) and makes you run for senator. Once the loan is paid off, I then start putting in my parks, and since this attracts more people, and more R$$$ people, the more the city makes, then when I get to $1,000,000, I start putting in the city services such as the schools, hospitals, police stations, etc, using what I described in a previous post as "maximal/minimal funding." Even though I am now paying for the schools and hospitals, having the city services expands to city enough to be netting as much as before they were put in, well anyway, when I get back up to $1,000,000, I start developing the next quadrant in the same way, until my city is "finished." That is a very long-winded "brief" description of my basic strategy. Well, anyway, I decided to try a city on "easy mode" and max out the loan to $200,000, so that I started with 700,000 and develop 2 quadrants as my "starter city." This was plenty of money, I never got offered the "desperation awards," and don't think that I even dropped much below $100,000 before the city started making money, even though it had the very big expense of paying the loan (close to $2500, I think). I started making the parks when the city started making money. Since I had no schools yet, but the parks attracted enough R$$$ residents, I very quickly got offered the private school, and decided to place it immediately, then after I put down some more parks, I got offered the 2nd one, and again I plonked it down immediately, Very quickly I got offered the major university, even though I have schools that only about 10 percent of the residents and have not yet put in the city services(schools, hospitals, etc.) that raise the mayor rating. Well any way, right now I have a city that has basic services, 2 schools that service only about 10% of the population, and the major universty. The EQ right now is above 190, or it least appears to be from the data view. I plan to put hospitals into my city, but should I put in the "regular schools" as well. On one hand, putting them in would give the remaining 90%(the R$ and R$$) education services that they do not currently have. On the other, it would be spending an awful lot of simulated money to raise the EQ very little if any. So, I guess my ultimate question is whether I should put in the "regular" schools or not. Brian Christiansen

I am not certain if this is the right forum (of the many available here on simtropolis) to ask this on, but here goes. I got into the habit of "saving and exiting to region" before I exited the game entirely. I do not know how I developed that habit, whether I read on an online strategy guide, or perhaps even on this forum, that it was "better" to do that. Recently, however, I got to wondering why it is "better" to do that. I can see why it would be necessary to do that if you wished to change cities, change a "regionwide" parameter, or even just admire your region before closing the program entirely. I do not, however, see it point if you are just exiting the game. After, all, saving and exiting the game directly would involve calling the save_city() function, then the exit() function, where "saving then exiting the region" then exiting the game entirely would involve calling the save_city() function, then the display_region() function, then the exit() function. Unless you want to do 1 of the 3 things I highlighted above, what is exactly the point of calling the display_region() function. Does calling the exit() funtion somehow work better if called from the display_region() funtion than calling it directly? Is it some how a different exit() function (perhaps exit2()? Brian Christiansen

I suppose this post is a sort of "spiritual successor" to a post I made a few years ago called "education experiment." In the current region I am building, I put the major univerity in the medium and large cities, and only the city college in the small cities, with the support facilities: elementary schools, high schools, and libraries in them as well. For awhile, in the previous region, I would put both in the medium and large cities, but in the current region, I just put one or the other. I can afford to put the major university in a city before the city is "mature," (as many online strategy guides say to do) because I use what I call maximal/minimal funding (described in a previous post of mine as well), and let the funding/size of the universtiy grow with the city. In comparing the university to the college, the college gets the education level up to almost 200 just like the major university does. This may make it sound like the university is just a waste of space/money, and the college is just as "good." However, there are advantages and disadvantages to each one, and I will talk about them based on my observations from the current region and some observations from the region previous to that. City college. The advantages are that it takes up a lot less space, and costs less money both to plop and run. In fact, the space it takes up vs, how much space the university takes up is the main reason I only put only the college in the small cities. I had to make a choice as to what reward buildings to put in the small cities as there is simply not enough space for "all" of them, and the small cities only get the "small" reward buildings. The medium and large cities have plenty of room for the "all" the reward buildings, so they get all of them. At least I am pretty sure I earn all the reward buildings. The main disadvantage of the college is that although it takes the EQ to almost 200 like the university, it takes about 10 game years to do so. How long it takes to reach almost 200 is no big deal in itself, but the faster the EQ gets really high, the faster High-Tech industry develops. Also, when I put in a new neighborhood, the overall "average" education level drops sharply and takes quite a few years to recover. Major university. The advantage is that the overall EQ goes up to almost 200 very quickly, less than 1 game year, I think. It also has the advantage of unlocking the research center and the shuttle lauch place, both of which encourage high-tech development (or at least I think they do). The disavantage is, of curse the initial money it costs, and the amount of space it takes up. Brian Christiansem

I looked at the dl page for the city junkyard mod, and the idea I am preliminarily developing for it is to put it in the "middle" of one of my 20x20 areas (not 10x10 as originally posted), and then plant a bunch of trees around it to separate it from my the rest of my city. I am sort of curious now as to just how much trash it can handle. At least I assume it can handle trash,and is not just for "city uglification." Brian Christiansen

Just a bit of an update to my original post: the areas are 20x20 squares. I am pretty sure that the Major Univerity (are their sports teams called "The Major Universites"), the advanced research center, the medical research center, and the spaceport would not fit into a space as small as 10x10 squares. As for what corina said, yes, my recreational centers are part of my revised new neigborhood design, though 1 of them has been replaced by the soccer field, another by the softball field, and sometimes they contain a gazebo instead of a small park. I will take this as a yes vote for attempting to reproduce Central Park from NYC. I will have to look at what museums and other structures I have, both from the vanilla game, and mods I have downloaded and sort of lay them out in a good approximation. As for the trash facilities, I have 2 incinerators going in medium cities and probably more going in the large cities. Are you suggesting that I replace them with the garbage mods. I think in the larger cities I have room to build them, and surround them with areas that are filled with just trees or parks or whatever to reduce the "NIMBY" effects of the mod. Also, in the picture, there is a railway running by the dump, do I need to build a railroad to use it? Brian Christiansen

I am making a region that "embraces the grid," I suppose. I am using for my residential neighborhood an improved version of the neighborhood design I described in a post called "new neighborhood design a few years back. In a 2x2 city, I get 4 residential areas, and in a 4x4k city, I get 16 residential areas. The commercial areas surround the residential areas, and the industrial area follows a ring around the entire city. The reward buildings in a 2x2 city are interspersed in the commercial areas (except the churches and private schools which go into the residential areas). The reward buildings in the 4x4 cities are in the blank 10x10 areas, which I will describe more in the next paragraph. Between my neighborhoods, there are 10squarex10square areas between the residential areas. In a 2kx2k city, I get 1 of these, which I use as a "technology center" that has the advanced university, the advanced research center, the advanced medical research center, and the spaceport. In the 4kx4k areas, I get 9 such 10x10 areas, one of which is the "technology center," 3 have the reward buildings, and the remaining 5 currently are just blank. Here is a picture I made in a 2kx2k city which might help visualize what I did: As you can see, in a 2x2 city, there is a 10/10 area in the "middle" that has my "Technology center". I am not certain if you can make out the "civic centers" that I put in the middle of my residential areas. I can't, and I know exactly what I did when I built the city, but they are near the signs that indicate where my residential areas are. In 4x4 cities, there are 9 such areas, 4 of which are filled in as described above, and the remaining 5 are just empty right now. I do not want to zone any of them because even though I have a fairly powerful computer in relation to a 20-yr old game, it still has so much zoning as to slow it down a whole bunch and I just don't want to add any more. These are a few ideas I have for the empty areas: Make an "approximation" to central park. Some of the museums around central park are in the landmarks menu, and I think I found some others in the STEX, and I can put these around the edge of the park. I also found the "Paeng's Free Waters" lake making set and some other mods that I can at least approximate what is contained in the park. Also with the NAM I can put the trails in it, thought they would have to be straight and not meandering like in the real park. I downloaded the mod for making golf courses (PEG, I think) and the Marriot hotel/stadium and could use those to make a sort of sports center. I downloaded a mod (don't remember the name) that plonks down fancier trees than the vanilla game does, and I could just fill one of the areas with trees That would take care of 3 of the areas, and leave 2 remaining. I guess I am looking for some feedback on my ideas, and perhaps some suggestions on what I can do with the remaining 2. Brian Christiansen

It seems that these funding methods, my "maximal/minimal funding", Cori's "micromanaging the budeget," or TheMurderousCricket's 5S fundunding are all ways to keep the funding for schools, hospitals, and perhaps more from going out of control, and not "overfunding" those institutions,but allowing them to grow with the city being built. My purpose, at least, is to keep the "average" as either breaking even or making money,which is the only game requirement, but more important to me is to have more money for other services, such as fire, police, airport, reward buildings that cost money (such as the stadiums, etc,, which I assume have a "positive effect"). This got me to thinking, there are quite a bit of people on this forum that say that they cannot build successful cities, and I was wondering if it is at least partly because they do "overfund" the schools and hospitals, rather than managing the funding so that the schools/hospitals grow with the city rather than having a bunch of unused excess capacity? Brian Christiansen

Some years ago I made a post I called "new neighborhood design," and I have since improved it a great deal. I also fund my schools and hospitals using what I call "maximal/minimal funding." Basically, what I do is when I plop down a hospital (I use the Mattb Harbor Clinic, and not the medical center provided by the game) or school, I let the game run for 6-game-months to 1-game-year, then I pause the game and adjust the capacity of the hospitals, colleges, or high schools to between 30 and 50 percent above the current number of patients or students, and the capacity of the elementary schools to 50 to 100 percent above their current enrollment, or at least as I close as I can come with the sliders. Then when the hospital or school goes on strike, I readjust the funding as I just described. My point is not to describe my strategy in any detail, but I got to thinking about it, and in a game that has been around almost 20 years and has been played by millions, perhaps even 10's of millions of people, I cant possiby be the 1st person to come up with this strategy or one like it, but maybe I am the first to call it "maximal/minimal funding." I guess my question is whether anyone else uses this strategy, and if you gave it a "special name" like "maximal/minimal funding?" Brian Christiansen

It sounds like you want a way to play without worrying about money. This super cash park will partially solve that: I say partially because it gives you way more that enough money to not have to worry about how much money your city makes, but it does not change demand or whatever so that industrial regions or whatever develop any faster. Brian Christiansen

I thought I would just jump in on this thread. To my understanding, there already is a SimCity 5 and a SimCity6, they just are not called that. They are called "SC2013" (I think) and "Cities Skylines." Also, to my understanding, they are more than just "spiritual successors," they are actually made by Maxis or EA or whoever currently owns them. I have never played SC2013, but there appears to be an active discussion group for it here on Simtroppolis, and it by no means is a isn't a "bad game," (some people obviously enjoy it quite a bit) but I think I read that when it was released it had an online option and EA (or whoever) just had 1 server running that did not have the capacity to handle the demand, and has never really recovered. I have also never played "Cities Skylines," but it seems to be pretty popular as well. Since I have never played either game, I really do not know what changes/improvements were made over SC4. Brian Christiansen

I thought I might just jump in on this thread. I don't have any cool stories about SimCity, but a while back I had a computer that had DOS 5.0 or so, and it had a program in the autoexec.bat that gave a choice of 4 options, though I am pretty sure that other things could be added. The first was to start an office suite that was probably about the equivalent of whatever version of MS works that was out at the time. The second was to start SC2000, though if I recall correctly, the SC2000 disc had to be inserted. The third was to start windows 3.0. The last was to go to the DOS command line, though I am pretty sure that other options, such as perhaps starting Lotus 1-2-3 or any other game or productivity software that I installed could be added. More recently, I had a computer with SC3000 on it, but I lost the disc in a move, so I cannot put it on the computer I currently have, and unless I perhaps see it at the dollar store, I won't be installing it. I just took a look on ebay, and it appears the best price (CD+shipping) is about $10, and I took a quick look at GOG, and the price there is $10, both of which are $9 more than I would spend to replace that game. One time when I was bumbling around on the Ubuntu softare center, I came across a game called "Micropolis," which is apparently a port of the original SimCity for Linux. I think I played it once. I know there is a native Linux game called "Lincity" that is a city-building game that is at least similar to the SimCity series. I am not certain if I played that one. Brian Christiansen