Eusebio Ptolomeu

Some updates: I've been playing with the Mayor Rating approach for more riots in the game, and it looks to be more promissing than the Desirability one. Instead of angering Sims trough desirability, I'm doing it trough Mayor Rating. Recently, I've been messing with the Mayor Rating Effect exemplar present in some buildings, such as the Federal Prison reward. I particulary liked this cohort because it allows us to localize focus of mayor ratings better, instead of simply reducing it globally troughout all the city; now we can more easily have different neighborhoods in the same city tile with vastly different views about the governance of the city. I changed the parameters of such exemplar in some key buildings, like the aforementioned Federal Prison, to test its effects. I've noticed two things: 1- Most of the buildings have a huge radius of effect, meaning that if you plop a Federal Prison in one corner of the largest city, you can expect at least half of the tile to suffer the negative impact. Ok, maybe the radius isn't that big, but I did find it to be larger than I wanted. I reduced the radius for 32 tiles ( 0x00000020 in hex) because I think it fits the idea of a "neighborhood" better, specially once you consider the size of cities in number of cells. Now, "this radius size is good" is obviously a subjective statement, so let's not focus on it; what truly matters is that the radius parameter really works and play an effect in the game. 2- When it comes to the other parameter, the magnitude of the effect, I experimented with some numbers. It works fine as well, you will see a clear impact in the game if you input huge numbers here. What I need to know, now, is a sense of scale for these numbers; and for that, knowing the range of numbers the game use to store the Mayor Rating effect would be useful. For the federal prison, I tried using a magnitude of -50 first. It worked, but not neraly as much as I thought. I could see the difference, but it wasn't as big as I expected; so I cranked up the rating damage all the way to -200. Now we can see the red appearing in the Mayor Rating Visualization map; and yes, with it comes the riots! I'm not so sure about it, but it looks like the game stores the Mayor Rating data between -256 to +256? Or is it -100 to 100? I understand that the Federal Prison isn't the only thing affecting the Mayor Rating in that area, but still, if this number ranged from -100 to +100, a building impacting a -50 should have a larger effect than it showed up in my opinion. This is what I've discovered in the few tests I did. In my opinion, this could be a promissing way of inducing more riots in the game; but I will keep looking for better values for the Magnitude effect. PS. I understand that the focus of this thread kind of veered away from the "Less R$ Immigration" title; my focus was always trying to increase the odds of riots appearing more in the game in a more natural manner, I thought that preventing R$ emmigration was a good way to approach it, but then this Mayor Rating effect came into view. If desired, I could start a new thread more focused on this new approach.

I think this is indeed the way to approach this. I made some modifications to the Ordinance Mod, including this Youth Curfew Ordinance, making it even more extreme. I also made modifications in other areas, but I would like to know one thing: the demand modifications, they are additive or multiplicative? For example, suppose I have two ordinances, each one giving a -25% penalty to I-Ag demand. If I enact both of them, the final impact would be -50%, or -43% (1-(0.75*0.75))? I think the second case is the obvious answer, but I changed such demands in some of the ordinances and, when enacted, Ag demand in Big City Tutorial went from super-high (I'm using CAM) to complete exodus-like. Maybe is this mod interaction with CAM? Ordinance Mod - V2.0_Updated.dat I don't know, maybe I went waaay overbord with the impacts of the ordinances, even though that was kind of my idea (making the ordinances more impactfull). I will try different numbers to see what I get. But when the exemplar says "a -25% impact on the demand", I thought it meant "your demand for this developer will always be 3/4 or what it would normally be", is this how it works?

Actually, I was looking at some ordinance mods, and noticing how they can impact Mayor Rating directly, I thought of something: in the end, what really triggers the riots is the local Mayor Rating, right? What if there was a law that completely destroyed the city-wide mayor rating without affecting desirability? Perharps this way we can have a fertile ground for riots (thanks to the low popularity) without Sims just leaving the city (desirability is untouched, and I believe it is the main driver behind exodus). I was checking this Ordinance Mod, particulary its Youth Curfew Act modification, and this possibility came to me. But this idea depends on riots and exodus having different triggers (mayor rating and desirablity, respectivelly).

Normally, when the situation of your city isn't that optimal, Sims will just emmigrate, leave it behind. This makes a lot of sense, specially for wealthier Sims. But I think $ sims should have a lower chance of abandoning your city, forcing them to endure more hardships if you want to be a dystopian dictator. In part, the reasoning of this possible mod is to allow us to see more of the riot events in the game. In order for a riot to occur, mayor satisfaction has to reach real lows in an area, which is logical; but it seems that every Sim just opts to leave your city way before such real lows are allowed to be reached; resulting in very few riots in the game, if any. Is it possible to lower the threshold in which R$ Sims decide to leave your city, so that we can see them rioting if we opt to be not-so-good leaders? A look at some exemplars suggest the "Desirability Threshold Decline", maybe this is the threshold that the game uses to decide if a Sim stays or leave, and so this is the number I should lower? This exemplar uses a Sint32 data type. For R$, the default value is 0x00000032, which seems to mean 50 according to this converter. Should I lower this number to 0? Are negative numbers allowed? According to the converter, it is possible, but maybe the game places a hard positive-only limit?

Ok, here is a new file. This time, I decided to change only the base game files, no CAM, and got rid of the cap part of the mod. This means that only the proximity effect is being tested here, and because there is no CAM modification to the development, Big City Tutorial should work as a good testing ground to check the effectiveness of this mod. So far, the changes in the desirability goes: R$<->R$$$, I tripled the negative impact between them (eg. "0.000000,-5.000000" becomes "0.000000,-15.000000" instead). R$$<->R$ and R$$<->R$$$, I just made the impact neutral ("0.000000,-5.000000" becomes "0.000000,0.000000", etc.). That way, both rich and poor Sims wouldn't care about having a medium-wealth neighbor, allowing those to work as the gradient between poor houses and posh mansions. However, I think the impact isn't that noticieable yet... I think I will have increase the power of the negative impact between R$<->R$$$ to see the results. In any case, if anyone wants to test it, here is the file. Development Test.dat EDIT: Tried different values (by simply mutiplying the original defaults by the same number). Apparently, something between multiplying them by 10 and by 20 is where effects start to get noticiable (nothing to see with x10, completely desirability killer with x20). So, a good multiplicative value should be somewhere in between 10 and 20 ; but I shouldn't ignore editing the distance values as well, so far I just left them intact, focusing only on the disarability effect associated with them.

Ok, I admit that testing it could take a little more time. I use CAM, and as such, this inteferes with the dynamic of the Big City Tutorial, which would be the place I would use to quickly test the effects. I will se what I can do; but if anyone with a better knoweldge about the game is interesting in test the modifications, I'm attaching the dat file here (remember, this is a modification of the CAM mod, so keep its effects in mind). I actually tried 2 modifications, one being the Proximity Effect (in which I basically tripled the negative effects between R$ and R$$$; medium-wealth is neutral for everybody) and some modifications involving caps such as "Water Cap", "Fire Protection Cap" and "Park Cap". This second one is kind of simple, basically speaking, no R$$ excuses no water anymore, and R$$$ further demands to be protected from fire (to be inside the coverage of a fire station). For clarity, the only modifications I made here are in the "Proximity Effect", "Water Supply Cap", "Fire Coverage Cap" and "Park Cap" functions and for the Residentials only, everything else is untouched. CAM_2.1.0_PlayStyle_Extended_Modded.dat

It's possible, but I was just taking a look at other desirability effects, and I think values around 10s are on the right ballpark. For example, apparently the "School Effect" for R$$$ is only -25 when the school value is 0; and I would suggest that no schooling for R$$$ should be one of the main desirability killers in this game. Radiation effect seems to be a whopping -2000, but radiation was always a game over when it comes to these things, now I guess we know why. Values around the 10 to 20 range seems to be the norm for individual influences; I will just try to double the values for the original Proximity Effect and see if I notice any difference.

I will set up some experiments here, see how they go. In general, do we know what is the value range for desirabilty in this game? Knowing the max/min values, it could be easier to predict a good weight for this Proximity Functions. For example, what is the maximum value of desirability the game considers? 100, 255? Maybe on the 1000s? Also, just one more question: the distance values, do they represent number of tiles? For example, in the pair (255.000000, 0.000000), does it mean 255 city tiles, or is there some conversion? Considering the largest map has a lenght of 256 tiles, I think it could be as direct as representing game tiles indeed

When I analyze the game with iLive Reader, I notice some interesting varibales within the developmento of residential simulator, at General -> Developer -> Residential $/$$/$$$. There, we can find elements called "Proximity Effect", and they seem to dictate how the proximity to a certain type of development impacts the desirability for other developments. For example, it looks like being next to R$ sims is undesirable for R$$$ sims. But I would like to know a little more about how this effect work. 1- First, how should the sequence of numbers be read? Is it an alternation between a given distance X and the development impact for being X tiles aways from the building? 2- Also, I would like to have a sense of scale: I see that the development impact in being next to R$ for R$$$ sims are around values such as -5, -3, etc. How big is this -5 impact in the overall desirability calculation? Can it make a big difference? Or is it too low a number, compared with other impacts such as education and garbage, to matter in the game? If too low, I would like to increase it to see if we can have more gradual separation between different wealth levels (it's so easy for me to have wealthy mansions next to poor homes, I think we should have some R$$ gradient between these two).

Quick new update I decided to increase even more the power of the effect. Now I multiplied 20 times; funny enough, this makes the whole "Large City Tutorial" become entirely red in desirability... even for R$, which is weird, because I set them to ignore proximity to other R$ lots. I am attaching this update file here; I find it odd that the R$ desirability was so affected in this city, since there were no R$$$ to cause this downgrade, even if I increased the power of the effect so much. WealthAffinityTest.dat

I decided to attempt some tests. I used the "Large City Tutorial" in Maxisland as a testing ground, made sure to clean my plugin folder before, to be certain no other mod is interfering with it. I decided to multiply the power of said effect 10 times, so where R$$$ originally had an effect of -5, I changed to -50, etc. I only changed the cohorts in General->Developer towards each residential wealth level, and only the proximity effect stuff. I didn't see much of an impact in the desirability map, however... maybe I did something wrong on the creation of the plugin? I am attaching the dat file in this post in case anyone wants to have a closer look. WealthAffinityTest.dat

I'll play around with them and see what happens. In general, a building giving a desirability boost of 20 is too much or too little, in the game? I would like to increase the impact of desirability of this functions somewhat, but not to the point of nullifying every other desirability boosts a mayor could give; I'll check the boost value of small parks and take that into consideration. The reason I asked if this function has any effect whatsoever is that, personally, it wasn't hard at all for me to see diferent wealth-types so close to each others, almost as much as if this function plays no actual role in the simulation; but then again, it could be the simple fact of the effect being too negligible to be noticieable.

I've been poking around with iLiive Reader, and exploring the SimCity1.dat file, I came about some groups of "proximity effect" functions in elements at Cohort->General->Developer (use the navigator function for help). For example, in the Residential $ group, we have "R$ Proximity Effect", "R$$ Proximity Effect", etc. It defines how much proximity to a certain developer type affect desirability. When we analyze each function, it comes in pairs of numbers; I think each element in a pair represents the distance of said developer type and how much this distance affects desirability, respectively. I would like to play around with these numbers, but would like to have some ideas in mind, assuming my theory about the behaviour of the numbers is correct: 1- How exaclty does the distance number work? I see number such as 0, 120, all the way up to 255. Do these numbers represent single tiles, as in, 128 tiles of distance? Or they represent distance differently? 2- From what I see, it looks like the largest impact in desirability seems to be +/- 5. Is "5" a number big enough to have a noticeable effect in the desirability simulation? If desirability ranges from, say, 0 to 100, then "5" is quite negligible. What is the usual range for desirabilty in the game, so we can choose better values here? 3- Does these functions actually do anything in the game?Or is it more of a developer oversight, present but having no impact on the simulation?

I've been playing SimCity 4 for a long time, and at this point, I already know how to build a self-sustaining city. Not exactly perfect, but enough to have good services and good budget as well. Now, it is a game, obviously, so I don't expect nor want it to be as hard as manging a city in real life! I just think it got a little too easy, even if taking that into consideration. The problem, for me, is clear: I've developed what is pretty much a fool-proof way of building a city, which will guarantee you'll get a sustainable metropolis in time, even in difficulty settings. I would like to know tips to make the game more challenging for me; if possible, tips that somewhat simulate real-life challenges for managing cities. It could be tips from different natures: 1- Already Existing Mods: maybe there are mods which increase the cost of something, or make it harder for you to do a certain task. Last time, I asked if it was possible to create a mod where it gets waay costlier to bulldoze RCI buildings, forcing you to adapt more to this situation. It is impractical to make such a mod, but the motivation is the same: taking away some of the liberties you have as a mayor to force you to adapt. 2- Suggest Custom Modifications: I have ILives Reader, I could try to modify myself the game files in order to do this. Maybe I could increase the negative impact taxes have on the mayor's popularity? As a side note, is it possible to add conditional checks to buildings which doesn't orginally have? By conditional checks, I mean things like requiring a certain mayor rating for Solar Plants, for example; could I add custom checks such as these for buildings which doesn't have them originally, such as Wind Power Plants, subways, recycling centers... in a way that would make the city development more challenging and possibly more realistic? 3- Gameplay Challenges: This here involves no change to the game files, only on the way how I play the game. Maybe I could set rules such as "I will only build a highway when I achieve a certain population", or "I won't set taxes higher than this value". In the end, I'm really looking for suggestions here about how to make the game feels more challenging and somewhat realistic when it comes to manage a city. Any tip is welcomed P.S. This mod follows the idea I'm looking for here. Any other tips to make the game harder and more realistic in termos of administration?

Hmmm, this bulldozing specificity could be a little of a problem: not only is is tedious to go around each exemplar, I assume it would have to be redone for every mod which attempts to add exemplars as well, such as CAM? Is that a completely global level of bulldozing costs, changing everything, not only RCI bildings, but civic buildings and infrastructure as well? Or the only way is to really go after every specific component and changing it individually?