ZorusX

I think the Wren is actually a pretty nice looking building... too bad we all have a deep seeded hatred for it since its been infesting our cities since ye olde days. My guess is this hatred is re-directed at its looks. (As it blankets your CBD) Anyways I think the reason wren grows so much is because of its occupancy size as well as the 2x3 or 3x3 tile size (2x4 as well?) allows it to infest itself basically anywhere. The moderate occupancy also helps because generally when your demand goes up, it is gradually, so they will choose as upgrade which satisfies a moderate growth... thus Wrens keep popping up. If you want to get rid of the Wren try running on cheetah and continously demolishing all of them. If you can make some nice 4x4 zones available for the big guys to move in. If you can pump your demand up enough by demolishing Wrens, the sims might decide to build one of the large t8 buildings. You might find you have to rezone your commercial zones where the Wren plagued... since it does not reset the zone size and sims seem to enjoy replacing buildings you just destroyed. Careful though, this could cause some damage to your city if you aren't careful! You can use this to deal with any type of repetition too. Obviously downloading a wren blocker or a lot of CO$$$ alternatives from stex will be very effective also.

Wow, very nice. Everything looks so realistic. Just the way you lay out the roads and objects and such. Especially the ponds and lakes. I very much enjoyed the sights

Greetings friends! I come to you with a mini-update of sorts. Not too much has happened overall in Buruu since the intro, but I did get 2 new mods: RHW and NWM. So far, I have not used NWM. However I did spend a good deal of time playing around with the RHW. I'll share the results a little further down. But first... Comments Coppertown2 - Thanks! Some areas are still very haphzardly complete, or more along the lines of my old style of play: zone only dense, 6x6 grid and pack 'em in. So far, I'm pleased with the results of the change in playstyle. JGellock - Thanks for reading. The layout will definitely keep in this style as I expand. I'm not too sure what you mean by urban renewal in this case, but certainly there are areas to improve. The region views look fairly nice, and though Duffton is quite established, some of the other cities have problem I've yet to fix... but thats for another update! Current Region View: As you can see, not too much has changed. I've expanded Northburg and improved the high tech sector in the northwest of Buruu City. In addition, the highway between Xenoxos and Duffton has undergone some... experimentation with RHW. Real Highway Mod Experimentation First I want to tip my hat to the creators of this thing because, the results you can produce with it are simply amazing. Thanks guys! For me though, I'm just unsure if I want to take on the time investment. Maxis interchanges take about 3 seconds to plop. It took me about 3 hours to figure out and on/off ramp from avenue and you don't even want to know how long the trumpet interchange took. That said, I'm fairly pleased with the results! And here they are. My first RHW interchanges! I already mentioned my first concern with RHW: time. But my second is: space. The on/off above is already pretty tight... and while it looks nice, I feel like it already takes up too much space. I prefer the look of highways really being tightly woven into the city, mostly because it preserves the look of density and doesn't break the city up into chunks. But on the other hand RHW looks great and realistic compares to the hideous maxis interchanges. But what really concerns me about space is THIS: How the devil I'm going to get RHW + interchanges through there I haven't the faintest, all the while preserving the CBD I worked so hard to build. I'm definitely curious what you guys think about this situation. Questions and comments are welcome!

I always thought this game was all about the CBD (central business district). You CAN zone everything high density and produce a functional city, but it ends up looking weird in the end. You get this sprawling grid of a midrises and highrises mixed up, scattered about. The best thing you can do is zone a lot of low density commercial and residential. This should be the bulk up your region. As your population increases, you can start zoning up to medium in your core, then to dense. I'd recommend keeping your amount of dense areas to a minimum and this is why: Sims work on demand. They build what they need. If you've got sims desperately at your city's doorstep clamoring for office space, they'll build the best. If you have only ONE (for example) dense commercial zone of say 4x4, and a high enough office demand, then this zone is likely the only place they can satisfy the demand, so they will build a nice tower there. You can use this to control where you get your towers to develop. Your town is built on industry. Don't neglect it. It gives jobs to the poor and satisfies demand so you can develop your core. High Tech industry is great! They work well in your premier city tiles since they are desirable and non-pollutant and attract the rich. They require low pollution, an educated workforce and water supply. Last, no maybe most important - transportation. NAM will immediately help with this since it will permit sims to not commute foolishly. Your sims will not commute far or live far away without public transit. You can use buses to get sims anywhere they want to go, since they are most flexible (i find these work best in industrial zones) For your downtown, a combination of buses and rail lines, and perhaps a subway network in the most dense areas is ideal. Your main transit links should connect a residential zone to where the sims work. Trying to funnel sims to your high capacity transit lines is a good way to build an efficient network.

Unsuitable area to build network. ... Unsuitable area to build network. ... Unsuitable grade for construction. Cannot place on reserved tiles. ... Unsuitable area to build network. Unsuitable area to build network. Unsuitable area to build network. Unsuitable area to build network. Unsuitable area to build network. Unsuitable area to build network. Unsuitable area to build network. Unsuitable area to build network. ... ASDFAKLJDKLADJKLKLK!!!!!!! RAWRRRR

As far as I know, not all sims want to take public transit. There is always a portion that will take their cars, specifically, the rich sims. I think you can manually change this within NAM to allow any wealth class to take whatever route is fastest. You might also try reconnecting your avenues and adding a bus system.

Greetings! Welcome to Buruu! Simcitizens have already begun to settle down in the region, which is currently home to 1,050,000 of them. Lets take a look at the map of the region, shall we? (Clicky for full res) ... And what about the transit? Buruu at a glance: cities and towns Hay guyz, what you got goin on in dat region dere... I'll show you! Duffton is currently the largest city and the commercial center in the region. It is home to over 500,000 sims. The city itself is located slightly inland from pirate bay along the Buruu River, and is criss-crossed by many smaller streams. Duffton's urban sprawl is affecting the neighboring regions greatly, and many sims commute into the city to work in offices, while others may need to commute out to all the industry that has been pushed out of the city limits. You can see here the highway weaves through downtown as it passes Duffton's Memorial Park. Kremkrok is an industrial town that grew up on the outskirts of Duffton. This area employs many of Duffton's citizen, especially the poor, working in the vast industrial sector. Heavy industry and pollution are serious problems in this city, and recently Duffton's mayor, Duff has grow concerned about pollution washing down the rivers into his city. However the promise of jobs, open lawns, and space make Kremkrok a fast growing area in the region. But as long as mayor King K. Rool (king of what? his own made up world?) continues to subsidize industry, Kremkrok will remain choked in pollution. Northburg has been almost entirely swallowed up by Duffton's urban sprawl. The monorail and highway between the cities is the busiest in the region. Mayor Sven Tyme is a good friend of mayor Duff and the two often work together to solve the cities' problems. Eggplant Crossing is a tiny town on the forks of Veggie creek. Mayor Mr. Potato Head (so loving named by his simcitizens) is out to preserve the rural areas of his town from Duffton's encroaching urban sprawl. Currently, he's got subdivisions and industry right on his doorstep. Buruu City is a large city located on Buruu Island. The city is up-and coming, and mayor Mike Fish makes lots of promises. Simcitizens are skeptical he can keep these promises, however, and many seem to think he is all smoke and mirrors. Xenoxos is a mid-size town at the mouth of the Black River that is currently thriving on trade outside of the region as well as between Buruu City and Duffton. Rogerville is a town northwest of Duffton led by egotistical mayor Donnie Swanson. (He thinks he's special) Donnie is always looking to expand his town and status, hoping to someday be mayor of Duffton, or the region. At what lengths he'll go to accomplish this remains to be seen. The town iself is very self-sufficient and surrounded by farmland. It has many parks and is linked by highway to Duffton. Though empty-headed Donnie put a grotesque oil power station right next to the highway as you approach the town. Greendale is a small town nestled in a valley, far north of Duffton. Sackville is a tiny farming town on the flats of the Azuro penninsula. The town is located on Shade Creek. Mayor Harry Ball is currently growing very concerned for his community; he's got expansionist industrial maniac King K. Rool right on his doorstep. It seems unlikely that this tiny town will stand in the way of K. Rool's industrial machine. Frequently Never Asked Questions: Q: Whats the point of this region/CJ? A: I figured once I had over a million sims and something more or less presentable, I'd make a CJ about it and how it goes. This CJ will mostly be about the mayors of each town dealing with problems they have with transit or jobs, as well as just expanding their cities. I hope to give each mayor a personality through some stories, but I haven't work out details yet. In addition, since I still haven't mastered this game, I hope that new players might be able to learn from this CJ as I grow my cities, make mistakes, and try to fix them. Q: Why so little custom content? A: Ah-hah. I feel like with the amount of custom content out there (most of which I don't even know about, because I'm new) I've got to carefully choose which mods to use. Also, I feel like a lot of the mods make the game not feel the same way that it was intended to. That said, I'm considering getting a bunch of the aesthetic mods, but I'm not too sure I want the CJ to deviate from the 'Maxis feel'. But... we'll see how it goes Q: Which mods DO you use? A: A list: Many custom BATs, mostly dense CO$$/$$$ and residential of all types. NAM Free Grass Park No Pedriana's Plants Mod Simfox Day n' Nite Mod I-HT R$$$ job fix Self-edited transit capacities: -Bus Stop: 17,000 -Subway: 24,000 -Monorail: 45,000 Q: Are the cities grown? Why? A: Yes, 100%. No plops with jobs or residents. Trying to get the sims to grow what I want where I want it is a challenge which makes this game fun for me. Q: Open to suggestions, praise, criticism, comments? A: Yes, 100%. Please comment, I want to know what you guys want to see!

The heart of my region, Buruu: downtown Duffton.

Build the zones they are demanding first, and if that doesn't work, try improving transit. If those fail you are probably still missing something. Fiddle with taxes only if you want certain tiles to provide certain types of jobs. You really shouldn't need to touch them at all if you are doing things right. But you can use them to saturate office demand in your downtown while keeping CS on your outskirts, or banning dirty industry from your I-HT zones. If you aren't careful with taxes you can have some really nasty things happen so be warned.

Basically you are oversaturated with demand and rich sims. Try a few things. Check neighboring tiles' demands to make sure you can't zone industry Manufacturing or Dirty there. You can try fiddling with taxes in neighboring tiles to encourage C-S growth and discourage C-O growth. If they don't develop C-O in neighboring zones and grow C-S, it will stimulate residential demand in those area, and all those residents to commute to your offices. I'd recommend playing with taxes as a last resort. Look at your demand. You have too many rich sims compared to poor. You need to find a way to attract more poor sims to your city, since you need them to support the rich. Also, zone for High Tech industry. This will provide jobs for richer sims (though you need a mod to fix the bug that was preventing high tech from offering R$$$ jobs). If you have trouble with growing I-HT, zone an area away from pollution, add a good amount of parks and some basic public transit. Also you MUST water the zones or HT will not grow. If you are getting a I-M and I-HT mix, i generally prune out I-M and zone for them elsewhere, though they can co-exist without too many negative effects. As was previously said make sure you've got good public transit linking residents to jobs. As for specifics, I'd recommend starting on the mayor 'Loeb' tile by zoning for some ghettos, and then add a i-HT zone. To make a ghetto, provide only water to your residential zones. I really think your problem is you don't have enough poor sims to support the rich ones at their jobs. Its also possible that you DO have enough poor sims, but they are unable to commute properly to the jobs you've provided.

Do you use the NAM? If you don't, ridership will probably increase significantly when you install it, since sims will now take the fastest route instead of the shortest one. In another thread it was also said that buses will add to the customers around your commercial areas, while monorail and subway will not. But in my experience sims definitely prefer the subway and especially the monorail over a bus. In my city right now I've got a bus stop which is seeing 14,000 usage connecting a subway. Since you can't blanket your city in monorails (which seems to be the sims' preferred public transit) I tend to build subways to cover the most populous areas, then use buses to connect the remaining areas where my subway doesn't go. This is usually suburbs or industrial sectors. But having ANY sort of public transit boost desirability and growth potential significantly, so even if your bus systems aren't running at max, they are still probably doing their job. The most effective thing you can do with bus stops, in my opinion is use them to link less dense areas with your main transit lines.

@StreetxROBLOX - Wow, thats a lot of airplanes OK, here's my WIP region, it has about 930,000 sims. A more complete region view: http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/5189/buruu1maxcropped.jpg

Wow, that is an interesting thought. I never really thought about it that way before. I tend to let my simulation run a lot too. One thing i was trying to do was zone ghetto type communities with lots of R$ sims. (Like a few blocks worth of projects for example). But its really hard to get the sims to grow what you want The only thing i noticed with age is younger sims tend to be poorer and less educated. Is there any way to attract the young to your city?

Well, i think I solved my problems, mostly by now. What I did: -upgrade transit system (added a bus system and monorails linking all core areas of work with residents) -demolish dilapidated buildings and some R$$$ so they will be replaced by new ones (This works well if you've solved transit/work issues. DO NOT do too many at once) -zone a LOT of high tech. Since this is the only job type my sims wanted anymore. This is a bit annoying though cause HT is not dense at all and uses up much space and strains transit. At this point my city is mostly recovered.

Well, this seems similar to my situaion. I have a neighboring tile which is an industrial wasteland with 65k jobs of ID and IM. My core city does have 26k IHT jobs though. the total residential population is about 400k residents now for the city and its surrounding tiles, with about 200k comm jobs and 120k ind jobs ish. Maybe i just have too many sims travelling between tiles.