Caelem

So I got sc4 3 days ago. I find it hard lol . I was looking up how to have a successful city and one of them said to place a waste thingy and a environmentally friendly energy thingy.. how do I do that? When I place industrial what's built is random. Also why do the people in hospitals always go on "walks", even with high pay? Thanks if anyone helps

Normally I zone low density for the most part, but it changes after a while. Does commercial buildings having low customers effect anything in any way?

I was wondering about the disasters. Do they ever happen randomly or does it only happen if I actually use the disasters myself? Also I've kinda given up on the whole "trying to make my city look nice/realistic" thing and just focusing on getting used to the game and how it works and what to do.

Thanks for the Help. I have mainly streets and some roads. And a small part of an avenue. Then just the bus stops and trains.

Oh ok. It also says my sims health is bad yet the pollution isn't near their homes, I have a hospital covering most with funding that has the capacity greater than the actual number of patients, so why is the the health so bad?

Oh yeah about the school things. I have 2 primary schools (elementary i think they're called) then a high school. They don't have much children/teens in them, the population is ageing faster than I'm placing more residential I think. I also have a train line and some bus stops.

I never changed the settings anyway so I'm guessing that part is fine. When I build a city I want it to have many areas with trees and many parks. Also if I want to build a countryside or suburbs then how do I stop the buildings from upgrading? Is it possible to have a city and then suburbs in the same map?

No I know that pollution doesn't affect them if it's not reaching their home. I just thought once there's more and more residential and there more and more industrial they'd meet eventually. I have many tree barriers. I've played for 5 hours and got my pop to 5k.. that's how slow and careful I'm going. I scrap my cities a lot because I just get annoyed and think maybe I can change this or change that to stop whatever caused me to scrap it. I also have 3 schools. One of them only has 9 pupils

HOw do I do that?

I decided to restart everything. I'm doing things a lot less rushed now, and paying closer attention to the RCI. there's a lot of small details in the game I never noticed before, I saw zombies (i think) at the graveyard, I saw wedding photos being taken outside a worship house, I saw schoolkids running about, it's makes everything seem much more real. I was wondering about the future of my new city (well town) and I thought about industry. After a while the population will demand way more jobs including industry, and eventually industry will take up a huge part of the map. Obviously this is bad cus of pollution and sims not liking it. Does something happen in the future?

I'll do that later, it's 2:40 am here. One thing I can say is there's a lot of residential and then some commercial scattered around.

I have nam, and the pointers are facing the road. I just don't know.

Ok so I have a problem. There's a huge demand for residential zones, yet there's loads of "no jobs due to commute time". The demand for industrial and commute is way below. Why more residential even if so many don't have jobs? My population would go from 15k to 13 k to 16 then 10 it's just weird. Idk how my other city got to 40 k it's almost impossible for me to do again.

Ah ok. Thanks. Once I get the hang of things I'll slowly download some mods.

I installed nam and extracted it and moved it into the plugin file. Nothing changed after game. No new road curves or anything. Did I do something wrong?

Ok so I had a town which reached to 40k last night. It got stuck in saving though, so after 10 mins just turned my laptop and went to bed. This morning though, I thought of a new way to stop pollution annoying the rest of the city. I worked out how electric, rubbish deals etc work. Also how you can connect different areas of the region with roads and all. So I chose a medium sized square with 3 small squares around it. The medium was mainly for residential. Then, I connected it with road to one of the smaller squares. Thats where I put all my dirty indistry. I then placed some coal and waste to energy plants and connected the power to the medium square. So now, the pollution from the industry doesn't affect my residential areas whatsoever because it's in a different square. The other 2 small squares of land are for agricultural, commercial. Or industry if I run outta space. I also mix in some commercial with residential to reduce commute time. But what does agricultural industry do? Does it do anything else apart from employ a tiny number of people?

Oh right. I seem to always end up building something that looks ugly in my eyes.. it's annoying. I've restarted maybe 10 times

But would you mind telling me how you place your buildings? What happens is well really, I mean to spread things out. But eventually it's just like one huge area of industrial then a huge area of residential. I don't like that but it ends up like that for me. Would a city work if spread out? I heard the distance they're willing to go to work is bad. Also I heard of this NAM mod or something like that, i'd like to download it, but I went to install the latest version and it said it was deleted.

Thanks a lot, this'll help with profit a lot. So if less people want dirty industry they'll want commercial? I aim envious of people who can make successful cities. I guess it's cus this game is so old, people have been playing for years.

It wasn't to do with trash at all. If I placed commerical many moved in and many out. Same with industry.

So I recently started sc4... and I'm having many problems. Once I get to a certain number of people everything goes wrong. Around 12,000. I need some tips on how to make a successful city. I'd usually have a river. One side industry and other residential and commercial. I would like to hear some of your tactics/techniques. Thanks.

My population reached 12,000 when things went outta hand. The population was dipping now from 12k to 9 or 8k. It it was weird. There were many abandoned buildings. I just reset the city, again. I'm honestly finding this so hard but I won't give up on trying to have a successful region

Well I started a new city. It has over 7000 people. I just got a school so there's still little commericial. There's a massive, and I mean MASSIVE demand for dirty industry. I'm making profit. I also thought that pollution came just from dirty industry, but I'm starting to see that even the busiest roads give pollution (from cars I suspect) I have trains and all that. Also a lot of electricity. I'm scared to get more schools because that means loads will loose jobs cus right now there's little commercial. There was a time where the energy to power and then my other power station went weird and I couldn't get electricity even when funding both.. everyone left my town and demands went bad but that's ok now. I would prefer to have commercial because it's less dirty and makes less sims complain. Also when it says "pavements don't breathe: we need trees" I place trees yet nothing happens.. so I have to place a lot? There's still plenty of car crashes especially on the avenues leading to and from the bridge. I'll probably make a bypass for that. I can definitely see the game getting harder because of how much people live in it. Many houses are turning into what I think are apartments. I would like to see skyscrapers soon

Thank you so much for taking your time to write that reply! How far do they have to be away from eachother? The dirty industry and commercial/residential? I had a city that had a river. One side for residential and commercial and other industrial. I destroyed it with the disasters after the RCI demand said too much residential and more industrial or less air pollution I guess? I know I sound stupid but it's just hard I guess. My city (well town) had over 8000 people in it. Also I was wondering if it's a good idea to build other transportation types (like railway) at the beginning like as you expand your roads and city also add on more tracks. Thanks again for your reply