Sgt_Strider

I'm building a city for growth and I'm wondering what is the best form of transportation to use as a city grows in size? I'm afraid of buildings being abandoned due to commute time. I'm avoiding avenues because of the space that it takes up and I'm not sure how efficient it is in terms of reducing traffic congestion. I just experiemented with roads and subways and it appears that it's still not enough to ease traffic congestion. Should I add monorail or rail into the equation? Can someone give me an ideal layout in terms of putting mass transit next to the C/R/I zones?

First, remember that the unit of measure in transport of any kind is the single Sim. You can think of it as each Sim gets a private transporter of any kind. No consolidation is done for transport containers. I think the subway is just as useful with or without the NAM in the separate environments. However, the NAM does let you tweak the transit system in most aspects, so it becomes up to you. You need to install the TSCT if you did not, and run it to get to the various parameters. As for money worries, get rid of them. Play on hard only to eliminate the crap advice from the advisors, and use the extra cheats .dll command moolah to load your treasury when you open a city. I generally load up 2,000,000 Simoleons to give the city a running chance. Then I take this amount out of the treasury once this grant is no longer needed. Consider it a development bank grant in aid of getting going. If you burn through that, you should decide if the city is worth continuing before you do it again. I don't often use monorail for local transport. I use it inter-city because it is fast. What do you use for intra-city travel then?

What kind of plaza will have the most effect? Small, medium, or large? I've already filled up my city with zones and now there's no more real space for development. The population is at 280,000 now and I want it to hit at least 500,000. What more do you think I should do? Should I get rid of some museums or any other particular landmarks to make room for more plazas to boost desirability and demand? I think I'm just going to get rid of my industrial zones and build more commercial since that's where the demand is. There is negative demand for industrial because I've set industrial taxes for all but high tech to be at 20%.

I recently got SC4 and I'm interested in learning how to play the game. I know that the NAM-addon is essential, but what else do I need to be able to create the same kind of cities that people on this forum are creating? Can the NAM-addon be installed after I have created a city? What is a good residential, commercial, and industrial layout to help me get started and understand the concept of the game? Also, is the NAM-addon usable with any of the trainers available? I've traditionally been a FPS player and these kind of simulation games are a bit of a challenge to get into. I need something to help me learn and get into it. Thx!

Thanks for the information. Are you telling me that I can't adjust the city size? Now that my population is over 270k, should I just bulldoze my industrial zones and go all out for commercial since the demand for it is really high? I think commercial zones also provides more jobs and helps my population growth.

Are you using the NAM or the NAM traffic simulator? If not, it may be necessary to use them to get acceptable congestion levels. If you are already using one of them, you may want to try using the next higher capacity traffic simulator. I just installed NAM, but I didn't do any configuring. Am I suppose to? If so, how do I configure it to produce the results that I want?

I realize that monorail looks attractive, but it is really for long hauls like intercity transport. It is more expensive than anything else unless you adjust the fares in the simulation control program. It, and every other transports system except ground heavy rail, has no built-in parking, so you have to provide parking garages and/or bus service. For myself, I use streets a lot, and sometimes decorate them with SAM textures to distinguish fancier sub-urbs. I tend not to have a really packed up city, but a scattering of sub-urbs with a downtown. I grow my downtown as indicated, and am not at all shy about demolishing (cherished) skyscrapers. If it is in the way, it is in the way. Upgrading a street to a road with updates of RTMT stations is natural and good. When the street becomes too congested, it is possible to add subway, but remember subway only absorbs pedestrian traffic and some of the bus traffic. RTMT stations have to be upgraded. Sometimes upgrading adjacent streets to OWRs works best. I upgrade overloaded roads to avenues and overloaded avenues to MAVE-6s as needed. A MAVE-6 occupies the same space as an AVE-4 (Maxis avenue), but currently has some drawbacks which will be fixed on the next release. Since the transition pieces for these are 3 x 2, you have to have good length and you must use them or your path finding goes awry. Urban heavy rail works well, can be anywhere, and stations are cheap, which means you can have a lot of stations. At the destination end you need bus service to get people to work from the station. For a downtown area, you might consider GLR, with Elevated Rail feeders and subway transitions as needed. All this light rail can be configured quite elegantly. If you drag elevated rail tracks down the middle of an AVE-4 while holding your mouth right, it turns into GLR tracks. You should download a tram image for this. If not, you will get the default Elevated Rail cars when you connect to it. GLR stations must also be downloaded from the STEX. There are many options, and you should try to use as many as you need. Do be careful to keep any intercity lines in a tree structure. If you create a loop back, even from three or four cities away, the Sims will ride round and round, inflating your stats, and driving you mad. This is the dreaded transport loop that is a real bug, and we can't fix it. If you get a loop, break it arbitrarily, then repair the damage. One of the nearest occasions of sin in his regard is car/pedestrian ferries. You may discover that stations get overloaded easily. If that happens to you, there are lots of higher capacity stations on the STEX. Keep at it, and have fun. Can you elaborate on what you mean by tree structure? What do you normally use? Just for fun, I decided to use roads, subways, and monorail to surround a small 3x3 grid of residential zones. Despite having those three options, I'm still getting traffic congestion.

I'm new to the game, but where do you get plazas? How do they help replace airports? You can find plazas in the parks and recreation menu (the same place where you find baseball diamonds and community gardens and other parks). Everything in that menu improves the desireability for the area within a radius around them. But they also provide cap relief. In the game, demand gets capped off according to how many parks you have. If you don't have enough parks then demand will stagnate. They're really generous though, if you have a normal amount of parks in your city you won't have to worry about caps, but if you're building a city like this and you don't include any you may hit the caps. Most of the game's rewards basically function like super parks. The airports are in the transportation menu but they're not actually a part of the transportation network, no sims will ever actually fly anywhere using the airport. The airport basically functions as a super park as well, except it takes up a lot of space (and it looks like an airport). The airport could be comparable to the spaceport, since sims don't actually use the spaceport either, it's basically a super park as well. Some rewards have more functionality though, like the diesease research facility is a hospital and the main library is a big library and the private schools are schools. What kind of demand are you referring to? So even a large plaza will improve the desirability of the area that it surrounds? So in other words, I should get rid of the airport right? Is a university needed or the city colleges will do and save me space for developing other zones?

Use the basic model given in the Getting Started Timbuktu tutorial and extrapolate from there. If the residential pod is on one side of the commercial pod and there is a single avenue leading through the commercial zone to the industrial zone, and not too far away, several things happen. Industrial presence causes residential development, which also causes commercial development. If the Sims can only get to work via the network that passes through the commercial pod, the commercial buildings get busy, which avoids abandonment. After things get going, you upgrade the commercial zoning from single to multiple occupancy, and expand the pod using larger lots, even if you have to bulldoze some on the main drag. You make larger lots by holding the control key and dragging. You are better off with high-density residential when there is heavy demand for R$, and give them bus lines. Poor R$ can't afford houses, only apartments, and many do not have cars. In the initial stages, subways are not viable because of cost. You should only lay down a subway when your roads go to a color temperature lower than green (red/yellow) on the traffic flow display (required the NAM). Since I lay down a lot of bus stations using RTMT, it is easy to replace them with bus/subway stations at no space cost. The basic model can be expanded in many different ways. For example, here is the south western quadrant of my largest city (Better Harbour) which has been developed now for about three months. It has a general population of about 540,000. The region pop is around 1.5 million. I like sparse cities with lots of room for development later. What you do, it what you do. Do you focus solely on your residential and commercial zones? I thought high tech industries have low pollution, but the graphs show it producing a lot of pollution. I have taxes on agriculture and manufacturing at 20% right now because I thought it might be best to have high tech industries, but now the RCI thing shows that industry is in negative demand with commercial in extremely high demand. The population of my city is at about 204,000 right now and most of the city tiles have been used. Right now I'm redeveloping parts of the city at a time to ease traffic congestion. How do I know if I'm using the biggest possible map? I just used the default and just flatten the land to build my city. I'm not sure if it's a small, medium, or even a large city. When you refer to a region, do you mean the entire regional map showing various cities?

Oh! I see, i will saving space by removing both of airports. Nice big plaza, recreation park, forest and fountain and also sport center in the middle. Switch to monorail...hmmm okay sure thing. I will re- plan my Clone City in next BETA test. This one is ALPHA test. TQ Here 2 million marks.... around 21 years. Many abandon building due to NO subway & bus station near by, but some part i put a few and less abandon building in that area.... no a major issue. Can you provide a basic layout for your residential neighbourhoods? Do you also have commercial zones inside your city?

I'm new to the game, but where do you get plazas? How do they help replace airports?

Thx for the tips guys, but how should I distribute my residential, commercial, and industrial zones to minimize commute time and provide the jobs necessary for population growth?

What's the advantage of monorail over elevated rail or even rail? Instead of using a combination of those options, would it be feasible to use only avenues and subways? Or that strategy will be doomed to failure once the population starts growing? Would it be feasible to just use a monorail system as a ring around the city instead of criss-crossing it? What about rail? Is rail a viable alternative to use with roads/avenues?

I planing to put 60% Residential zone, 30% Commercial zone and 10% -IHT. I afraid i not able to slot canal into it but maybe in the next project i will. Any residential lot over 20k in your knowledge? Maybe you can name one so i can Google out. I will produce my own map; shouldn't be a problem. As soon i filled up all area i will post full screen shoot. Mostly R & CS/CO zones are 4x4, I-HT = 8X8. You got better suggestion? What do you mean by CS/CO and I-HT?

Where do you get the maximum possible size map? Can you show a screenshot of how your rails/subway looks like with that 4x4 grid that you're using? Are you using 4x4 for not just your residential, but your commercial and industrial zones?

What do you mean by setting up a block that is 4 x 4 laid out in a grid of 2 x 2 high density lots? Can you show me an example of what you mean? Also, how should I approach the question of adding subways/rail? I know that if I use avenues, I'll eventually run into congestion issues. How should I plan a city that accommodate growing traffic with public transit? Ok, If you press the G key, you will see the grid. This is a toggle, so you can also use this to redraw your screen. I always give lot sizes in width x depth. Here is an example in my Sandbox. You can add regular ground rail at any time. If you have the NAM, there is a technique for dragging a GLR up the center of an avenue, replacing the median. For this to work, you will need to download some stations and at least one tram image from the STEX. You can only have one tram type at a time. GLR can also be connected to both subway or elevated rail, since all are the same light rail. Thanks for clarifying what you meant for me! I now understand. How do I force the zoning to be a 2x2 in a 4x4 grid? Do you have any tips and or secrets on how to build and sustain a high density environment? How should I distribute my commercial and industrial zones? Do you place the residential zones in a perimeter around the commercial and industrial zones in the center? Do you also go with a 2x2 in a 4x4 grid for commercial and industrial zones?

1. That can be done with a little tool called Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool, that conems with the new versions of the NAM. 2. Growth, only that, high density buildings (the mid & high-rises) start to appear at the high density zoning when the population of a specific type of either residential or commercial reaches more than 27,000, if I recall. But you will need, like I said, growth, a lot of it, at least 200,000 regional population to get a few of them to pop at your CBDs. But the recommended is 500,000 population. Hope to have helped you with this. Would it be easier to attain a high density environment if I used a combination of streets and subways? I feel that avenues use up too much space and that it only has so much capacity anyways. Avenues take up more tiles than streets. What do you think?

That sounds really complicated. How do I configure the NAM that I installed? I don't see any configuration menu. What's the best way to foster high density development?

What do you mean by setting up a block that is 4 x 4 laid out in a grid of 2 x 2 high density lots? Can you show me an example of what you mean? Also, how should I approach the question of adding subways/rail? I know that if I use avenues, I'll eventually run into congestion issues. How should I plan a city that accommodate growing traffic with public transit?

Thanks for the information guys. I decided for my first city, I'd go with a grid style, 6x6 for residential, commercial, and industrial. For some odd reason, when I create the 6x6 for residential, none of the zones would develop. Is there a reason why this is the case? Initially I didn't know that by holding down the "ctrl" key, the zoning would be done as one, but nothing is developing no matter what I do. What's wrong?

I'm a newbie to this game and I've done a lot of reading, but I still have a lot of questions to ask so I'm hoping someone will be able to help me. I heard a lot of ppl don't like the grid layout because it looks unrealistic, but I don't think that will distract me from using this method. I was wondering if this is a good start. I will start 3 cities, with each of them dedicated to one sector. The residential city will be facing the Commercial city to the right and to the right of the residential city, would be a industrial city. The problem is that I don't know what kind of blocking system to use like 4x4 or 3x3 or 4x6 or that kind of stuff. I heard that when someone refers to a 4x4, it means 4 blocks going horizontally and 4 blocks going vertically to create a total of 16 blocks, correct? If I have the money, is it wise to go all high density? Where should I place my schools and stuff? I guess I will probably use cheats in the beginning to get the hang of it so I will be able to afford all of these stuff. Thanks!

Guys, is there another explanation why it doesn't for me?

bump! I need some answers to my questions above. Thanks!

Originally posted by: frndofyaweh YannickMtl: Sorry no new CJ yet. Have one premade already though, with tons of images, but have never took the time to post it. It is an all canal city, spliced into my grid technique. Works quite well. Based on Venice, but I need to figure out how to get my BATs/LOTs to build over top water. Hello Sgt_Strider, Yes that is what some of us gridders like to use: 6x6 tiles of res surrouned by 2x6 stretches of avenues, will equal 8x8 used blocks out of a city grid totalling 256 tiles. divide 8 into 256 and get 32 residential blocks in both directions. My region is custom made and absolute flat start. The cities are strategically placed for maximum access and uses. 6x6 seems to work best. have tried many but always ran into more problems one way or the other. 4x4 makes for less buildings and more avenues and roads, too many stop lights and merging traffic. Bigger blocks at 8x8 and traffic is worse, many buildings have trouble with access. cost for transit is less but traffic is horrendous. I have used all roads and get stalls in growth. have combined roads and aves and highway; still stalls in growth and urban decay. Tried all aves and buses only and got best results ever! 6x6 block. Maybe 4x4 road blocks would work. Never tried it that way, but I think avenues would still turn out best when using busing exclusively. Buses are so effiecient that adding a subway is useless; the sims will barely use it or any other optional transits. quote> I think I know what you're talking about, but do you think you can give me an example of what you mean by typing it out with a layout? Also can you tell me within the example where to place the bus stop? thanks!

Originally posted by: Skyfire2275 Does your CTRL key work at all? Try copying and pasting in notepad with CTRL+C then CTRL+V. Does this work? In SC4, try both keys at different times, I do not know if the game is sensitive to this or not. CTRL is supposed to create one large zone... whatever size you drag it.quote> Yes, the "ctrl" key does work. However, it doesn't seem to work with the zones. I can copy and paste weaknesspays cheat in SC4. I can even activate the console menu with "ctrl" +"x".