Alavaria

Ah, you've tried this? I've been wondering about how some of the (I guess NAM too) elevated networks go, does the game treat them as "higher"? Like Elevated Rail as opposed to normal rail. I've been meaning to experiment on how narrow you can usefully make these, I'm thinking along the lines of very narrow "canals" (so like 2 or 3 tiles wide) with maybe larger "ponds" if needed to accommodate the actual ferry terminals. I do know that subways can easily go under at least really shallow water, and even up crazy slopes. So that could make a short connection between two monorail(+subway) stations across the river, thus avoiding bridges if they're not practical or just look dumb. I tried NAM's "high monorail" but the connection piece looks like it belongs in a roller coaster and even so takes quite a lot of space...

You don't really need that balance, at least in CAM when people reach the top education bracket (150+) they will create 0 demand for both Dirty and Manufacturing. So you can have all commercial and high-tech industry. However, manufacturing can sit in the exclusion zone area near dirty power plants/incinerator/landfill which might otherwise be wasted, and manufacturers don't really pollute that much, so they won't be as much of a problem. Because employers generate the demand for residential, if anything, having ones (high-wealth commercial/high-tech industrial) it's nice as you can get the most high- and medium-wealth, and least low. Indeed, if you have them evolving (ie: not static because they're across a border) then low-wealth will not have jobs -but- the better employers will generate demand for medium/high wealth residential, which will be able to replace the low-wealth. The set of jobs created by an employer is equal to the set of residential demand it creates. If they're across a border, you get "extra" demand and can send over "extra" commuters (ie: more jobs) which is also pretty sweet. Because residential can "upgrade" in terms of wealth levels, generating a lot of medium/high wealth jobs (demand) is great provided you don't get greedy in zoning - if you leave no room, the newcomers will kick out those below them, removing your "problem". Think of it as your low-wealth people moving up the ladder if you wish (though the question of how 100 low wealth would turn into 30 high wealth is odd). Essentially you wind up with little additional medium/high-wealth demand, and a lot of "excess" low-wealth, so, like: These are my two cities, I'm about to start constructing my first "real" block (ie: not using the small elementary/high school). Of course, following my usual process I try to let everyone "settle down" so all the buildings have grow to the max stages, everyone can replace residents of lower wealth (no other room) before I expand my zoning. I have kicked out all the Dirty. Eventually I will also "transfer" over the commercial jobs, but not right now. Note how even with rather high taxes, there's still plenty of low/medium wealth demand. Perhaps if I spruced up my area a bit I could replace some low with medium. Oddly, the high-wealth people started making condos when I *reduced) their taxes from 20%. No mansions anywhere, which was unexpected... (When I loaded Silicon Abyss, the commercial all started upgrading as they had the demand, and I let it run for a bit, so that's why there's more jobs now.) Need to do UDI and then save up the cash for a university if I am to get more cap for additional high-tech industries. Now I return "home" and all of those new commercial employers are asking for a lot of wealthy workers. And thus (I had no money to start building - another project used all the cash) now we have more than 2 "CEOs" for each "janitor". Totally stable, though. The manufacturing that is left is dying because of no more demand. Most people are commuting rather than working in the few factories left (about 500 in two offices and some factories). But everyone has a job, most across the border. The project is gouging out massive areas of ground, (barely above the water level) for that first "real" housing block I mentioned.

My starting list is, uh let me see: Elementary school, High school, City College, Branch Library, Hospital (all these you can adjust slider). Of these, the smallest radius is the Elementary school, so cluster around that to get the most housing within all the radii - if you want max education. -The college covers the whole map, and the library has a very large radius, so those shouldn't take up valuable residential zoning space, the high school and hospital will though. You can do You-Drive it to get the Private School (apparently it stacks with everything else so go for it, but watch out for capacity!) and Disease Research Center fast. Also the University (better than, and replaces College) but that's expensive. After a while Water is nice, and then all the educational ordinances, definitely. And later on consider some police/fire (add a few parks too, since at some point people need a park "nearby" to continue developing). If you cluster your housing together (imagine three circles put in a triangle fashion) then a large fire/police in the middle should cover them all, same for library Even if you're starting with only 100,000 cash it's plenty. The above picture is just as education is leading to High-tech and the high-wealth commercial demand, so the "jobs" city is going to be started, and will be easy in comparison, as from the gate you have all the top tier stuff in demand. (It will soon need to do UDI for University (+100,000 high-tech cap)

Yeah though, ironically it seems a bit more forgiving as your people are less likely to abandon since their job destination is always the same source (border, the other city's demand for workers is "frozen") and in the same place (border). Though potentially congestion can mess you up. Then again, passenger rail has both a high speed and high capacity, and the stations can take in cars, so it's perfect. Also getting workers to employers is a problem you only deal deal with in the residential side, the other side doesn't seem to care much, and the game will happily send commuters even if they can't actually get to work (because that's another city, and it only simulates travel within the city you play, except "to/from the border) ============== I'm considering starting a new region, but with large tiles. Maybe something with a lot of little islands so I can continually "reclaim" land from each little city to expand outwards (obviously commuting via ferry will have to be carefully controlled though!) until the island nation becomes transformed into a single large mass with canal waterways (since city of venice or something) Oh, like right from this site:

The capacity and TSEC were not changed apparently, at least in the NAM .dat file which did so for other things like Maxis bus stops and subway stations. When I gave a subway station's capacity (24000) to the terminals, by just copying the entry for capacity over using the iReader, there was no issue, everyone ran to the one ferry and off they went. ===================== (For completeness) In the earlier case, all three were just close to one another, fed by the only monorail station out. You got off the station and walked to a ferry. People were taking the longer (all pedestrian) route ignoring the 20,000 one in favor of the 10,000 one at some point. There was no other option to get to work, only those ferries went to any employment (another city) and only one way there - it only depended on how far you walked from the one station to the ferry. Thus I suspected the nearer one had stopped letting people use it. Also because before I added the other ferries, people were abandoning because of commute time, which ended when I (reloaded and) added a second ferry terminal. After some reading... if the capacity was indeed untouched at 1000, then at 4000 the station would stop working, and so it's possible the game crammed in 20000 people in one updating cycle, and only later on, the next cycle was prevented from using it, thus 10000 in the next (total of 30000 people commuting). Since I already edited the buildings, it hasn't shown up again (until I get to 96000 people I guess)

Yes this is interesting though, if your statement about speed (ferry=infinite) is correct, the ferries will be a substantial improvement over really long distances (say corner-to-corner on Large city) over any other transportation network when the latter get congested. Essentially, it scales super well. As for the Transit Switch Entry Cost, it might be set not for the delay on getting on a boat, but because it must stand in for the *entire* journey. Infinite speed and no congestion. Thus, to avoid excessive use of ferries on short journeys, it's made to that sims will also use roads.... Unfortunately, this has the odd side effect of making ferries better for long distances (fixed cost) and for large volumes (fixed cost). It means rather than subways or monorails, if you must move ridiculous amounts of commuters great distances, everyone should use ferries. That's hilarious... and allows creating pointlessly high density all-residential Large cities with maximum commuting.

Good points, though I think you could pass subways underneath (assuming deliberately shallow water, anyway) and NAM includes the "high monorail" with appropriately high bridge, so that might work just fine (connects to normal level via puzzle piece). Depending on now narrow you can make these, it might be possible to have power "teleport" across given it bridges 4 tile gaps. Of course depending on border connections, you might connect things on the "outside" and try to avoid creating islands. Might look odd, but if the ferries are infinitely fast, making them take obscene paths might be amusing, yeah?

My suspicion about the ferry problem and eternal commuters (by looking at my pathways**) is that things like a lake at the corner act like a super intersection (eg: three regions meeting in a lake it will connect each to the other two). We're very careful when highways, for example, touch borders (the game asks you if you want a connection) but possibly less so with water, as the connection is just there if water touches border. My plan is to use waterways like canals (water-highways) which are very controlled in where they touch a border. Thus, if you imagine a non-eternal-commuter set of highways, but then they're now only waterways, there should also be no issue.

Hmm, what I did was have everything just running on one tile, which avoided needing the "Business Deals". While Dirty Industry and low wealth commercial are not easy to break even on, if you make the second city when your residents are already educated and want high-tech and high-wealth commercial, then it's easy to have the second city be quite profitable from the very start. Though it's much slower, as you basically grow to cover the cost of utilities and ordinances and then sit for like, two or three generations (so even the low-wealth are in the top education bracket). And then each time you do the jobs-residential cycle, you need to again wait two or so generations... though there's no pressure at all once you've gotten set up (I messed around constantly looking at commuters and chuckling as they lemminged into the black hole that is the border). I actually thought that some rail systems are used by both types of train... I'm actually wondering if standard rail is less of a hassle than monorail, if slower. But then I'm looking at ferries in order to allow, who knows, hundreds of thousands if not millions of commuters (CAM and a Large Tile with the highest density). ====================== Basically, the Jobs city ONLY sees demand coming from a population that is max educated and the wealthiest possible (+ extra from extrapolation). And the Homes city ONLY sees demand from employers who are the highest wealth possible (+extra from extrapolation). Super safe (minimal abandonment, incoming demand never changes** since it's from another city), easy to control (because everyone commutes out from home, and employers don't care so much about getting employees) and you can turbocharge each cycle thanks to the extrapolation mechanic. **instead of people getting educated, changing the makeup of your commercial/industrial, which changes the jobs... instead now it's a cycle that goes in discreet steps. And you have the "extrapolation" which adds some fudge factor if you need it. Really stable, if boring because each residential step means building the homes and then sitting as nothing changes but their educational level... and you moving sliders since aging means they will want more of different education as you go.

Has NAM changed the ferries? Since they don't use standard networks or so on, I'm mainly wondering about the Transit Switch Cost and especially capacity for the terminals (which NAM changed for even the Maxis stations of all other types). I've been experimenting, so I can tell they function. The terminals seem to lock up at ~20000 people. But unmodded should only have 1000 so max of 4000 or so. I've put down three and they sit at 20000, 10000 and 0 for some odd reason.

I find that as long as you get to a "stable" point (ie: not losing money, while running everything), I tend to sit around until I have educated up all my "starting" sims. So that means I want them to have their elementary school, high school, library, college and museum (adjust sliders on everything). Ideally also grow without the high-wealth until unlocking the large schools. This lets you grow your industry city with mostly high-tech and maybe some manufacturing. In fact, the odd benefits of separating homes from jobs also applies to commercial, especially if you set it up so that all the rails go past your commercial. (Though they can do decently even with low customers....) =================== As for running each city, the one with jobs only really needs you to let the buildings grow, this suffices for the game to allow residents in the other city to commute in. I spend most time in the residential city because education takes so long, and there's all these civic buildings they need which you can micromanage. You can also do some of the You-Drive-It missions to unlock things super easily, like university (better than the college, also gives you high-tech cap relief for your industry) and a bunch others,

Yeah, I've seen 50,000 people cram into a place that had max 40,000 jobs in it, and even when running the city with the jobs so the game should "know" that the commuters aren't getting to work, it still lets the people in the city with residential keep running through. Due to how rails get congested and slow down, I've been wondering if it's possible to use ferries to get around it (ie: replacing rail connections with "canals" and use ferries) as those don't get congested? Not sure how fast they are considered to be though.

The goal is basically skyscraper hell, but with abandoned roads and conversely overloaded monorails. Since NAM has set the congestion to speed such that at 2.5x capacity, you get down to only 30% speed (so 66 from 220 for monorail) this will be an interesting "issue" to consider. Sims will presumably walk less if their monorail ride takes longer. It seems that if you're moving as far to 100% commuting, then your main sections out will very easily get overloaded. This is NAM medium, so the rails have a capacity of 16000 The pollution is basically confined to the rail and one tile next to it depending on how the game splits up 2x2 groups. So careful selection can help, for example this road is polluted. The plan is basically to force people to walk a lot, both sides of the border, though some interesting things can happen with borders (that's nearly 11000 in the block). Notice the little stub of subway, it mostly functions to allow the "far" side of the block to reach the monorail station easily. So one station per block. I mean you could try one in the middle of 4 blocks, with subways feeding in, but I like the look of this system. Currently it's somewhere near the limit of what the other city should be able to take in, though the game might let you put even more than expected. Soon I'll have to put more employer space in Silicon Abyss. However, if my understanding is correct, an employer will always generate demand for residential exactly equal to the jobs they have for them, so I should be safe to endlessly zone until close to the demand (there's still continuing demand for residential) Block size is based on education, the Roads are largely decorative, and my idea was to link those up so you have super long Roads stretching across multiple blocks, being crossed by monorail "highways" etc. I might do so anyway though, if there's only a few civic jobs in the city the pathfinder can quickly "fill" them and then everyone else has to head to the border anyways. And yes, this means the monorails will basically be cutting into and through the residential, but each in-block station should not be inline, and not on sidings or anything/ Probably a ring around the edge of the tile, and sections cutting through the middle or something. As the population keeps growing, it'll be impossible to prevent large sections from becoming supercongested, part of the fun is seeing how to manage that. As all stations should be end-of line, at least that capacity should have no problems, unless superdense blocks somehow surpass 240,000 people (the monorail station has 60,000 capacity) ============ I've since managed to get 40,000 people commuting to that same Silicon Abyss city, which shouldn't have much more than 27,000 jobs.

So essentially in my set up, the vast majority of people all commute out, so there's only one "job" to get to, and only one "way" to get there, ie: walk to nearest monorail station, and ride it out (alternatively, walk to subway*, which feeds into the monorail). So it should save on the job finding parts (very few jobs in the city itself, being a school teacher etc) as well as the pathfinding. Though I assume the game still wants to check all the streets for every single possible route. Perhaps deliberately disconnecting housing blocks so even those are isolated... *To clarify, as subways are slower, my subway use is only as small subs. A single block (determined by the coverage of a Large Elementary School) basically is serviced by one monorail station right in "the middle", and a subway station, which only links to it (NAM station, it takes subway as well). This covers the whole block. It might not work (forcing sims to walk quite a ways to the stations) if the monorail slows down due to congestion, which means making smaller blocks so there's no buildings at a really long distance from one of the stations. Yeah, this is in CAM + NAM. And already the last section of monorail (just about to leave the city) is past 100% congestion... even if I only use medium density, the residents of a large tile will probably overrun the monorail (rail, not station) capacity, slowing it down from a speed of 220 to only 60... That said, as the game checks all the in-city jobs first, there's 25000 sims for whom there's exactly 1 available job, and that's the monorail out. Can't make it much more efficient, unless I move out my last sub of manufacturing industry across the border (another 2000 jobs max, it's small due to education lowering demand for manufacturing). It also helps that you can superstack commuters across the border, while you can't get more than 1 sim into a job within the same city.

Having homes and jobs on different sides of a border is also handy, not only as a clear bottleneck (eg: there's one monolink connection, and that's all so you HAVE to use it) but also because it seems to let you "stretch" your sims' commute on either side so they have a long walk from their house to the nearest station, but also from the station on the other side to their job. Which is hard to do if it's all on the same time. I wonder if it also eases the whole pathfinding issue, if there's only the usual civic jobs, and the majority of employment is just that one spot where it connects to the job area.