rob_mtl

For my second SimCity 4 Challenge, I will be seeing how quickly I can get a Large International Airport upgraded to the maximum stage in a new region. Map: TCC Maps - Osaka Japan https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33580-tcc-maps-osaka-japan-rotated/ Rules: Hard mode Vanilla-only transit networks and buildings No jobs/radius doubler mods NAM Ultra capacity Modlist: Network Addon Mod v. 39 SC4Fix 4GB Patch Industrial Revolution Mod BSC Functional Seaports SPAM (other minor bugfixes)

Further expansion of the tramway and elevated rail network in the Southeast of Honestville:

WARNING: Somewhat pedantic wall-of-text incoming! From my understanding, the most impactful developments in European agriculture occurred in the late medieval period. Innovations such as better horse harnesses and the shift from two field to three field crop rotation in the 14th and 15th centuries really transitioned Europe from a subsistence situation (with cyclical shortages and resultant famine) to a surplus and accumulation situation. This transition coincided with the major bubonic plague epidemics which both reduced the number of mouths to feed and created a labour shortage for agricultural workers. These factors became a driving force behind the need for more efficient techniques. Increasing surpluses lead to a larger leisure class, urbanization, and the Enlightenment (17th-18th century) - which is this context can be seen as a cultural shift towards valuing science and innovation over religious dogma and tradition. This video series has a great overview of these changes! Many scholars now resist the term "industrial revolution", because it implies that fundamental changes to society occurred in a short, concentrated period. A more realistic view is that late 18th and 19th century industrialization was the culmination of a process that started much earlier, and occurred over several centuries. If you're looking at the period from, say, 1770 to 1914, the first countries to industrialize were Great Britain, followed by Belgium because of an abundance of coal in those two countries (among other factors). Over the next half century this intense industrialization also occurred in France, the German states, the Austrian Empire, Scandinavia and the Netherlands. American industrialization comes a bit later, especially in the South because of the slave plantation economy. The Civil War also delayed larger scale industrialization, just as the French Revolution had done for Continental Europe in the late 18th century. In terms of cities, the impacts of this period are quite dramatic. For the entire 19th century, the growth and sheer size of London dwarfed any other city on the planet (and with time, any city in history). Beijing and Paris were a distant 2nd and 3rd. More interestingly though were the changes to the urban social fabric. Paris, which had been the largest European city of the 18th century, had, during that time period, a very mixed population in terms of social class. The bourgeoisie, lower aristocracy, urban peasantry and clergy all lived in close quarters in relative harmony--population growth was significant, but not explosive. Industrialization there and in London brought in masses of rural peasants, as well as pollution. The upper crust's response was to call for increasing segregation of urban spaces. The upper and middle classes moved to the formerly rural fringe of large cities and the elite pushed for standardized working class neighbourhoods. It likely would have been better to be poor in London in 1750 than in 1850. I had a feminist urban planning professor in my undergrad who suggested that 19th century industrialization was also a net negative for women, who, in agricultural society had actively participated in the labour force. The industrial city was segregated not just in terms of class, but also in terms of the increasingly separate domestic and public spheres. Factory work was a male space, with women somewhat more confined to the home. Longer distance transportation actually worsened this segregation, as tramways (and later subways and cars) allowed for a larger spatial segregation between these gendered and classed areas. I could go on and on but I probably shouldn't It's one of the topics that interests me the most in urban planning.

I only have BSC Seaports, so no worries there.

I have not had a crash in about 8 months (and I was missing SC4FIx IIRC)! I'd love to figure out how to CTD again like in the good old days but I just can't . No but in all seriousness, @Cyclone Boom's instructions are good.

@CorinaMarie thanks for testing that out! I have always found the agriculture thing to be a major impediment to natural growth. I generally like to build large cities and have always wanted to have, say, 40-60% of the land around them be dominated by farms, but the game engine makes that incredibly inconvenient to achieve. You end up having to build cities "in reverse", starting by zoning the entire region with agriculture and then expanding the central city afterwards. More importantly, once you start your industrial/commercial centres, you're stuck with whatever farms you got built beforehand, meaning that any dezoning of farmland will be permanent. Another issue I'm struggling with is the growth stages on the functional seaports. You have to artificially prevent freight from leaving a tile by road or rail to get the seaports to their maximum growth stage. I may look into some more "decorative" ploppable seaports in the near future. I guess my overall idea is I'd like to set things up so that I can zone and develop realistically without having to account for / fight with the artificial restrictions imposed by the engine. I'll run some tests soon!

Northeast Ward gets a highway expansion and construction starts on the city's first tramway!

Hey thought I'd pop into this thread for a bit. I recently reinstalled SPAM and have been doing experiments for eventually encircling Honestville with agricultural areas. In the spirit of natural growth, I had originally intended to cover each tile with farms and then have the city expand outwards, eating up the farmland. SC4's limited agriculture demand cap killed that idea so I shelved the farms at the time. Does anyone have a good mod solution to "force" agricultural demand in an already developed region? I'm not adverse to any kind of cheating or census manipulation type stuff at this point. I'm finding with SPAM I still can't get more than 13000 or so farm jobs in any given tile. Oh and by the way @Daeris, love the new city journal

I think it's reasonable to quickly remind viewers to like/subscribe occasionally at the end of the video. The only reason I say that is that I, as a viewer, forget to "like" videos that I enjoyed. Social media like YouTube does rely on likes on comments to push videos to more viewers. I personally never mention the bloody bell icon, because I don't like getting notifications every time every YouTuber I follow posts a video--I wouldn't ask that of my viewers either.

@countermoon this is something I have been considering doing for awhile! I'm working on doing a series based on categories or sets, with topics like NWM pieces, GLR/trams, FLUPs, etc. RHW is sort of its own topic and really difficult to demonstrate, considering how there's basically no fool-proof and consistent way to get the same result in two different situations. Let me know if there's a particular topic you think would make for a good 20 minute video! I am slowly preparing a list

Hey @Terring I noticed SPOT and wanted to see what the mod was like without it. Installing that now for today's episode. I'm quite happy with the plaza parks mod. Thanks for reaching out! It's always nice to see the modding community watching the video content!

The Broomfield Park neighbourhood is founded in a brownfield redevelopment of North Ward,

The suburb of Wheatridge develops in Northeast Ward.

This is a great idea! One idea that has occurred to me (and may have already been mentioned in this thread or elsewhere): I think in an ideal world, a community patch should address bugfixes, while "additional" custom content should be kept separate. I thinking new players can be intimidated by massive amounts of new content. It would be awesome, for example, if the NAM were split into a "lite" version, with only the traffic simulator and path-finding fixes and a "complete" version, with all the transit stations and additional networks. I realize this can be done in a custom install, but maybe the existing installer could include "basic install", "custom install" and "complete install" options. If possible, SC4Fix, the 4GB patch, Opera House fix and other essential bugfixes could all be packaged in a single installer along with the basic NAM fixes. My reasoning here is that the less tech-savvy may install the NAM without appropriate fixes, have a couple CTDs and then give up on the whole thing. Other players may be turned off or intimidated by the quantity of drop-down menus included in the NAM. A bugfix bundle that fixes game-breaking issues without cluttering the interface would be a great start to ease people into modding. On a side-note, the basic fix for the Maxis Seaport in BSC functional seaports requires no dependencies. If that could be included in a bugfix bundle, it would be great. I guess my idea is a "vanilla plus" bundle that focuses on fixing the Maxis assets without adding new content. A mod manager similar to Nexus Mod Manager or Mod Organizer 2 (used for Bethesda games, for example) could also be a great idea for custom content. Something that allows direct download from the STEX and LEX and would feature dependency checking, load order management and Cleanitol-type functionality.

Hey guys! Following up from this thread where I veered a bit off-topic, I've created a new thread to discuss compact expressway/collector systems (aka frontage road systems, service roads). This is a format of expressway that was quite common in early North American urban highway systems (1950s to 1970s), which has since been replaced in many cases by the closed access express/collector systems similar to Toronto's 401. The advantage of the older system is that they fit into tight urban street grids, where city streets can cross over/under highways without the need for elaborate ramps and fly-overs. The disadvantage is that that the collector off-ramps meet intersections with the street grid and that lane changes on these segments require more driver concentration--but they're cool systems that reflect an earlier, denser type of highway construction. Here are two 1960s examples from my hometown of Montreal, the elevated Metropolitan boulevard/expressway system and the trench Décarie expressway/boulevard system: I've been trying to reproduce this using RHW with the NAM 37. There are several limiting factors, but the result is half-decent: The outside collector lanes curve inward on either side of the onramps/offramps, meaning that this system alternates between 5-tiles wide and 6-tiles wide: Keeping the intersections one tile away from the central expressway would probably be more efficient, as more perpendicular intersection could run under the elevated portion, leading to greater connectivity with the street grid. In order to avoid a bottleneck at the onramp/offramp intersection, I transitioned the RHW-6S collector into 3-lane OWR. Ideally, it would be nice to be able to do the collector/perpendicular avenue intersection with a 4-lane OWR for higher capacity. This below image shows what happens when you try: Let me know what you guys think! (expect to see a version of this in my Honestville Let's Play series on YouTube soon!)

Hey @rsc204 I'll probably hold off on a tutorial for urban expressways for now in that case! I know you guys don't have specific timelines for NAM releases, but can we expect to see REW in the next version of the mod?

Great points @Haljackey! I think SimCity 4 is still an interesting (if modest) niche for content creators. I have tried to make tutorial videos that make it easier for completely new players to get into the game. One point I would make is that city builders are an appealing genre for non-hardcore/casual gamers. SimCity (2013) was obviously a failure and Cities:Skylines is not ideal for many because of the DLC situation. SimCity 4 is inexpensive and can run on virtually any system with a little bit of work. The easier we make it for non-computer savvy people to apply a basic mod/bugfix setup to modernize the game, the broader the audience will be going forward. Many of the people who make mods or who discuss the game here are quite adept at the more technical/development side of things. While their contribution to the community is inestimable, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that mods created for the game often feel like they're created for an audience of peers with a similar skill-set. Dependency lists, for example, are a total non-starter for casual players, and any work that can be done to merge dependencies into a single download will only be beneficial. The Network Addon Mod gets better and easier to work with with every update, but the endless menus, drag patterns, and maze of puzzle pieces are not what I would call a user-friendly experience for most. I know that several people are working on this stuff completely voluntarily--I don't mean to be ungrateful for their hard work at all! Just pointing out my view of the situation with regards to audience and players. Another aspect, something that has been discussed regularly on my Monday evening Twitch stream: it goes without saying that there will never be an official patch from Maxis/EA for this old game. One thing the community might want to consider is an open source engine re-implementation. This can likely be done without infringement by requiring a legal Steam/GOG copy of the game to run. OpenMW for Morrowind is a brilliant example of a community project designed to make that game more future proof and stable for a broad user base and I can easily imagine a similar piece of software being created for SC4. You would want to rebuild the entire engine from scratch, with a well-designed, user-friendly UI, supporting 64-bit, multi-core systems, higher resolution displays and removing vanilla bugs natively. Imagine Android tablet support, for example! Imagine programmable hotkeys, multiplayer or a built-in mod manager and region downloader! Obviously this would require a lot of volunteers, but as time goes on and new OS get released would likely be more fruitful than continuing to work with the original engine. Just my thoughts, of course.

Hey @Naomi57! What do -gp and -EH:off do in your command line?

Hey guys! This 1 million sim challenge live stream I did yesterday was an absolute blast! More importantly though, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to organize some kind of "speedrun" type competition for various aspects of the game. My settings for this 3-hour run were not necessarily particularly challenging and I was not particularly focussed, but I think there's an incredible potential for this type of format. It would be interesting to come up with comprehensive rules (accepted mods/bugfixes, traffic simulator settings ,etc.) The idea was as follows: -build a region of 1 million in 3 hours with a limited mod setup on Hard mode. Let me know what you think!

The city expands along the Northeast rail line.

Hey @Naomi57 cool! I'm going to be doing some more work on this soon--starting a more short-form NAM tutorial video series on specific topics ;).

Honestville's Central Park gets a landscaping makeover as the Pioneerhead Bridge is constructed.

Honestville Expands along the new Route 1K expressway.

The Honestville Airport gets an expressway spur!

Glad you enjoyed the video @SIM-ple Jack. High praise indeed! Side note: Background music is a constant struggle on YouTube because of copyright strikes. I would love to throw in a Martin Scorcese-style worth-buying-the-soundtrack-on-LP playlist in these videos, but I'd just get nailed for it. And the various librairies of royalty-free music are... hit and miss. I'll be looking into some good tunes to dump into the "Radio" folder of SC4 at some point though. I quite like the game's soundtrack, but at this point I've heard it more than Michael Jackson's Thriller.