Thad

My experience is that train use increases when taking the train results in a shorter distance than driving on roads.

In my earlier days of playing SC4 I would zone low density residential, 1x1 lot size. Low wealth sims build first, then the medium wealth sims build houses on the same size lots. This gives you fairly high density for a low density neighborhood. And it's realistic in your cities and older suburbs - large houses on small city lots. Now, as soon as the medium wealth sims move in, they build 1x2 houses (or larger) on the 1x1 lots. I cannot grow med wealth low density on 1x1 lots. The only thing I can think of is that BATs I've added over the years have somehow preempted the 1x1 houses originally in SC4. Any advice?

Doomy Just coincidentally 2 days before your post I accidentally installed SP3 on my game PC via windows upgrades. I ran SC4 on a big high developed city as a test and didn't see much difference. But to be safe I uninstalled it but did so using system restore, going back to a restore point date previous to installing SP3. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

There are 2 different mods to get snowy terrain - the one I use has a file name of: snow_capped_lower.dat Just find it on this site and put it in your plug-ins folder. The other one does the same thing but the snow level was too high for my liking. Or you could keep your computer set to Dec 25 and get seasonal snow levels.

I noticed the same thing yesterday, not on 1 way roads but on normal 2 way roads - only 2 ramps perpendicual ramps are prompted instead of the full set of 4. This was not an issue in the NAM I was using previously (2 versions ago I think) Easy workaround - don't build the ramps you are prompted for and build them manually using the ramp icon.

As a skier, I have often thought how cool it would be (pun intended) to have a skier/boarder add-on mod that would have chairlifts just as mvisser suggested. Of course some snow-sports related buildings to plop are also needed (lift shacks, ski patrol bldgs, rental and tickets, chalets, etc etc) Unfortunately I don't have the skills to do this but I agree with mvisser that it is needed. I second the challenge.

My current region is 10 x 16 large cities in size. So I have massize amounts of farmland, mountains, forest, ocean, islands, and wilderness, with villages, towns and cities sprinkled throughout since I am striving for reality. In my big cities, i don't bother with farmland if I know that I will develop the entire city, but in the suburban areas adjacent I will have farms as a transition between residentials suburbs and wilderness. If you think you want some farmland, do it early since once you get a certain population and then you decide you want some farms it will be too late.

Here is another use for god mode forests for agricultural areas: 1. Start a new city, then pause. 2. Plop power, roads, villages, etc, and zone farms but leave a one square wide blank strip between the zoned fields. 3. Go back to god mode and plant trees particularly in the agricultural areas between fields. Dont worry about the trees that land on the zoned farmland, they will disappear when the fields develop. 4. Start up the simulation and watch the farms begin to grow. The result will be farm areas with hedgerows that you would see in England.

I use elevated rail because not only can it connect to subways (see prev reply) but also to ground light rail. What works for me: Subways in the heart of the city center Elevated rail in the main part of the city Ground light rail in the outer city and suburbs. If you are familiar with Chicago, you will see this progression by going from downtown out to Skokie or from downtown out to Cicero. Also, have some connections with suburban rail line stations so that commuters from the far suburbs, where only regular suburban rail service is available, can connect to GLR or El without having to go all the way downtown to do so.

I haven't used landfills for years. Use either the Black Hole Waste Management (see prev reply) or the PEG Garbage Disposal Chute, which you plop at the edge of your city and its dumps the trash over the side. Both are available on STEX.

I'm disappointed. My hopes for SC5 were: 1. Use SC4 as the foundation, fix the bugs, provide more zoning choices, incorporate NAM, etc etc. 2. Then have add-on modules (optionally running based on user choice) so that if you wanted to, you could simulate socio-economic groups (like City Life), or operate transportation networks (remember Transport Tycoon or A-Train, or Sid Meier's Railroads). How about building a ski resort in the mountains (think Ski Resort Extreme). Well I'm probably unrealistic due to the computing power required to do this) What SCS sounds like to me is a totally new game which seems like a clone of City Life, which does have very good 3D graphics and I enjoy playing it but has some limitations such as no terrain modification, not much in the way of transportation networks, etc. I understand btw that City Life will come out with a new version.

I like to use elevated rail in the downtown and inner city then go to ground level using GLR (ground light rail) in the outer residential and suburban areas. But the GLR puzzle pieces do not seem to have the ability to make a connection to neighboring cities. Any ideas or workarounds?

David1314: I followed your advice and moved the file to the NAM directory and now it works. Thanks!!!

I'm using the new NAM (Jan 07) and I can't get this to work.

I don't know what the max is, but I created (with Landscape Designer) and am working on a region that has 160 (16x10) large cities (no small or medium). That's big enuf for me.