fayen

You're welcome, I'm happy I could help.

I'm a geogrpher and have been trying to create a realistic mid-sized french city in SC4. I have found a few major differences between sim-city 4 cities and real cities wich you can more or less modify to reach a high level of realism. These mainly apply to large cities : - the absence of diagonals : the NAM with its diagonal streets does help, but few diagonal building exist, and they have to be plopped for propper effect. - the small size of lots : most lots aren't larger than say 5 by 5 tiles at most.. Most cities in the world will have buildings larger or longer like soviet-style appartment buildings that would translate as 8 or 10 by 2 tiles, while hospitals and universities often have main buildings that could be 5 by 8 tiles and several secondary buildings. Not to mention car and plane factories (something like 10 by 25 tiles), malls and airports of course. You can give the illusion of a realistic city by using a bunch of monuments and putting lots of parks and parking space around mid-sized and large buildings. Sistematically use the add-ons for huge airports and port zones, golf courses, and don't forget to plop mall-buildings, large factories, and to build train depots. Put fences, control posts, no man's lands around any military bases. - the short commute distances : this is a system thing, which doesn't really affect your city's realism unless you're planning a metropolis of pretty huge proportions. Just know that sims commute the equivalent of 12-15 minutes of transport, while the AVERAGE commute in most large metropolises in the western world exceed 40 minutes, meaning a whole bunch of miles, the equivalent of two or three large maps or more, meaning somme people are willing to drive well above an hour to go to work ( People commute to Paris from Orleans or Rouen by train, more than 75 miles out, to New-York from south-eastern Pennsylvania ). So they have residential zones that can be either miles large with almost no economical activity, or miles out of the city itself, surrounded by fields and woods. These would not grow in SC4. The NAM does allow you to multiply the commute distance but not to that extent. - The absence of mixed-use buildings with commercial space on the bottom floors and residences above. Not much you can do about that. - The feeble capacity and range of utilities, police, and health buildings : large cities will have about one hospital for every 100 to 350 thousand people (instead of around 6 to 40 thousand in the game), some million-people cities will have around 8 police station including one large. A double oil electricity plant will feed a 250000 people city and its immediate region, and one water purifying plant would also sufice for such a city. Download nuclear plants and plop the most expensive model instead of plopping 5 gaz plants per map. Download the range and capacity doubler modd, it's a start. - The impossibility to end highways by turning them into avenues has ended thanks to the newst NAM. Hallelujah. - Finally, this affects the game little except when it comes to hospital and school capacity, but the population in SC4 buildings is waaaaay too high. (thousand inhabitant towers are bad, but small houses with seven inhabitants, cottages with 15-people famillies and small brick buildings with 250 people are so much worse for realism.) So if your region has, say, 4 million people, it os only the size of a 1 million people city, which is allready fairly large. This also applies to jobs : small shops in real life do not employ 17 people, local branches for banks and gas stations will not have 30 or 40 employees on their payrolls. This is less of a worry though because it might replace jobs which are not included in the game but inderectly created in real cities : plumbers, cable guys, courriers, etc... Anyway, the population halver modd is a definite must-have, but if I knew how to programm these, I would divide population by 2.5 or 3, commercial jobs by 1.5, and possibly industrial jobs by that much too. Yes this will create unemployement, but real cities usually have a reasonnable amount of it. There you go, good luck !

I loved your scuttlebutt and Sardina rowhomes !!! How hard would it be for you to make a ploppable version?? They would be very usefull to all UK-style adepts! more congrats on your great work!