Darkwings

If you have the NAM, then you shouldn't need anything else. I understand that your situation is like this: Industry city - Small R city - Big R city If the Big R citizens are not using the highway to reach the Industry City, most probably each job is already occupied by the Small R citizens. Try adding Commercial buildings in the Small R city and you should see a change. Also, if the highway from Big R to Small R ends there, there could be a commute time problem, so try to not interrupt the highway from Big R to Industry City.

Mmm. I don't know what your goal is, so I can't give a sure-kill advice. Anyway, you don't actually need to cover any single house. What you usually should care about is the Education Level. (over 150 = good) Bring out the Data View, activate Education and see if any zone is less then a shade of green. If you are not satisfied with the result, you can always rezone some houses. Same goes for Health and Crime. Anyway, the method stated above (filling only the inner square of the circles you see) should fix that for you with minimal overlapping.

I have that sort of highway-ring all around a city nearby (I mean in real life) and I'm using it in game, with good results. (with NAM of course) Sims will go for the faster route, they won't congest my R center and having 2-3 exits around the C center ensure the desired amount of congestion. The same goes for sims that want to go in/out of town, since the ring is connected to the border. Of course any 'foreigner' is forced to enter from the C district, for obvious reasons. For any traveler who want to just bolt through the city, a bypass (usually an underground one) is there to grant them a direct route (since they're not stopping in town, there's not much point in increasing congestion on both ends).

The following is valid using NAM. There's 2 options (without using mods) to improve freight trains usage: If you lay down a rail right through the I zones, no station is even necessary. They just pile up the containers on the trains. This work best if you zone 2 strips of 2xANY size on both sides of the rail. Of course you still need road accessibility for the commuters. Any lager than 2x zone present the risk of small 1x2 or 1x1 buildings being disconnected from the rail. I actually tested this and it's especially true for ID (those small shacks tend to grow on the wrong place all the time). That's not the best way to optimize space anyway. The other options is somewhat related to the commuters point: if there's a neighbor connection _closer_ than the rail one, then putting a freight station on the way will help, as long as the close by connection is not a highway. Or, if the way the commuters are using is really fast paced, then the trucks will also prefer that. Let's say you have rail connection at the east border. Then if there's also a highway connection on that border in a range of something like 30 tiles, no freight will use the rail cause the highway is faster, so the highway needs to be far enough from the rail connection. I usually zone like this: (each I is an 8x8 industry zone) I-I-I-I rail=>neighbor I-I-I-I roads ^commuters^ Commuters come from a direction, the rail goes to the border perpendicular to that direction, so it's fastest way out 90% of the time. Another way to limit trucks without special blockers is using monorail instead of highway since it's not freight-enabled. I don't know if crossing the rail cause congestion, but I just love using underpasses and overpasses anyway About the PEG ports, there's actually not much you need: the CDK3 stuff requires a generic peg super pack (dependencies), a specific ports super pack (other dependencies), a master file controller (tiny), and the actual ports you need. I would suggest the container port and the break bulk port. The row warehouses are also useful (and are included in the packs if I'm not mistaken).

Look: since older sims can have a lower EQ than younger sims, even if them all attended the same type (the only type, in the test above), that means that those old guys are lowering your average EQ. It's as clear as it could be, right? Libraries and Museums exist to cover that specific base. But they do cost money. Even if you get new sims, and their EQ is 40 from the start, you will still have those old guys with 25-30 around. Since they could take quite a bit of years before reaching the great beyond... Getting rid of them AND getting new ones (smarter ones) will instantly improve the EQ, without increasing the monthly cost (houses will grow instantly back) and without waiting half an hour on cheetah. Or 2 hours if your sims can live up to 100 years... Changing the school level costs money, changing the average age way less so, especially if you have a lot of R demand (instant regrowth). If you can prove this to be wrong please do, any better strategy is welcome, but this is what I'm seeing in the game.

Easy test: go into the game without any 'cheating', place ONLY an elementary school, wait a few years and see for yourself. The ranges 1-10 and 11-20 will have the highest EQ (a tiny bit more than 40) while older sims will have less, to the really elderly ones that will have something like 25. Bulldoze them, new sims will move in. They'll attend school immediately. Town EQ level will go up. If you are playing with a lot of money from the start, using cheats or other mods to change your gameplay it's one thing, but usually you can't afford to plop each type of school, let alone University, from the start.

Usually I build at least 2 different neighborhoods, one designed for wealthy R and one way less so. The bad one has houses next to the main avenue, no space between buildings, only the minimum services etc. That pretty much ensure that even if some R$$$ will end up living there, they won't be so many to be a worry on the monthly income. The good one has parks, trees, better police coverage, private schools, university, country club and statues. Then each time I need to increase a clinic capacity (that means the population reached a new stable higher number), I check schools, libraries and museums. If schools are too empty, I bulldoze 3-4 4x4 blocks of nearby old sims (medium density). If that's not enough and I want a higher EQ faster, I bulldoze more. After reaching 150 EQ the IHT demand should go up and school attendance is not a problem anymore because almost all ages have the same EQ.

That is a given, and to clarify a bit what I meant I should word it like this : how to avoid a lot of R$ demand. You could actually force most R$ out with 20% taxes ('importing' them from a neighbor to cover the jobs) but there's no advantage in that.

It's just like one of those games/tests where you need to draw a line connecting dots without touching the same dot more than once. The dots are your cities. It doesn't matter how long is the line and how many dots you touch. A good way to limit congestion on the connections is to have a dedicated route for freights. Having a rail (passing directly through I zones and/or a freight station) that connects just next to the I zone is a good and cheap solution. Just don't make any highway connection close to that, else they will go for the highway. Since freights don't actually go on the other side (they magically disappear after reaching the border), that traffic won't cause congestion in the other city/cities.

I'm not sure if this is still on topic, anyway: Each city has its own buildings. For any type of demand that is not satisfied locally, connected neighbors will try to cover for that city. If you build a lot of Industry but only a bit of R, a neighbor city will most probably send a flock of workers (if they are available, of course). The I city will see an R demand. The R city will satisfy that demand. And probably generate C demand. That C demand can be satisfied locally, or in any connected neighbor. Etc. This means that if you want a particular type of city, you can't focus on that alone, you need to also shape other connected cities in the region in order to avoid 'conflicts' of demand. Example: ID asks for R$. If you want to avoid R$ in a city, even if the ID is in another city, as long as they are both connected to SimNation, the R$ demand will be shared.

Going elevated can be useful, but if you actually need more space for buildings, going underground could be better. With the hole digger tools mod you could make a little tunnel, over which you can build (leaving free tiles all around the entrance). You can't build under an elevated thing, but you can build over any underground passage. I.E. : to avoid an avenue 4-ways intersection in the middle of your downtown you can have one stretch of avenue go underground, raising up again just before the commercial district and having the intersection right there. That solves congestion in the R area, improves traffic in the C area and leaves you more room to build. On the sides of the entrance of a tunnel, no road can be built, but buildings CAN. The same applies for overpasses. It's not realistic because cars will have to 'fly' into buildings, but it still works. You can also do a 4-decker way using underground, ground, elevated, and over-elevated way, in case of extreme traffic. Or if you just love roller coasters

As already stated, each building serves ONE purpose: elementary school is for little kids, high school is for teens, university/college is for young adults. After that, libraries avoid sims who attended any type of school from LOSING education level over time. That means that a sim that didn't have a decent EQ will have no use of a library. Museums are used by middle aged and older sims the most. So, a zone that is full blue (old sims) on your data view will have no advantage from an Elementary School. Also, each year sims population will renew a bit: school attendance is per-year. Collateral effect of this: if you bulldoze some buildings, when new buildings grow on that place new Sims will be 'born' and they will be all young. If you bulldoze a block of R every 30-35 years, you'll have a permanent 'youth block' in your city that will keep your city's EQ high (pushing IHT demand) Just avoid bulldozing them all at the same time because kids don't work, so you need them to grow to have workforce. Older sims are best useful if they're not poor: museum, major art museum and opera house all target the same range of age. So, if you have a lot of older poor $ Sims consider bulldozing their houses. They're not working, not spending much and not giving you a sensible advantage. Nothing personal, it's a game.

The general problem is exactly what you pointed out: even if I didn't notice, they're spreading out too much. I sorted that out simply by bulldozing the dilapidated R$$$ (lower wealth buildings took their place almost instantly) and the same goes for 'unwanted' C$$$ (popping up into weird locations). The other factor is that even if there's a place with all desirability factors maxed out and another with the worst conditions possibile (aside ID pollution) R/C $$$ stuff can still grow in the latter place. I can't counter that in any way :| Meanwhile I found out that those 3x2 R$$$ villas, being a 3x2 on a light density, become sort of permanent, preventing any same-density building from overtaking them (since most are smaller). The same goes when switching to mid density, since there's not much 3x2 buildings at all. When zoning 4x4 low density lots, the game automatically creates 2x1 plots. Re-zoning forcing 2x2 plots solved quite a bit of the problem, but it's really annoying.

There's also self-renewal. It's worth noting that, unlike real people who live just to go from home to work, buying stuff while passing though a commercial area, Sims do actually breed. Ha.