Psiman

Issues around the subject of mansions in this game have been brought up many times, including in my recent thread here. There are two main problems with them in the vanilla game, in my opinion: 1) The over-abundance of them. In the vanilla game, they spawn all over the place, including in areas where one doesn't want them. They appear so frequently, that they usually soon dilapidate and get inhabited by lower-wealth residents, or get abandoned altogether. The "Less Abandonment" mod largely fixes this issue, and another mod I am working on may be of some use. 2) The size of them. They are large and back-to-back lines of 1x2 housing can upgrade to them, whereupon the mansion will fill the space between the roads, which looks a bit odd, as seen in the screenshot below. This thread is about making a mod for the second of these issues, and is a continuation of a discussion in the thread I linked to above, starting here. In my experience of the game, the large majority of the mansions I've seen have been 3x4 or 3x3. The vanilla game actually has mansion lots of many sizes: 2x2, 2x3, 3x2, 3x3, 3x4, 4x3, 4x4, 4x5 and 4x6. Most of these I don't think I've ever seen before. The way that low-density high-wealth residential appears to have been designed, in theory, in the vanilla game is that the earliest stage mansion lots are the largest, and they get smaller in footprint size until Level 5, when bigger buildings start to appear. So the improvement with increasing level is that the footprint gets smaller and so more buildings can appear in the same physical area, meaning more total residents. In reality, I don't recall ever seeing low-density mansions ever upgrading this way and becoming smaller-footprint mansions. It doesn't make sense to follow the way Maxis did it for low-density high-wealth residential, that the larger the footprint size the less efficient the mansion, since there would be no reason to build anything but the smallest mansion size. So in this mod, bigger-footprint mansions will be better than smaller-footprint mansions, which makes sense. The change will be made by reducing the residential capacity of smaller-sized mansions. Basically, the aim will be that high-wealth residential zoning will be fairly uniform in overall efficiency, regardless of footprint size, although the larger sizes could have a marginal bonus, since the smaller sizes have the advantage of adaptability, being able to fit into more space requirement situations. I had been considering having larger mansions as a higher level upgrade of smaller ones, but I think it's better to keep them at the same level, since low-density mansions do not appear to upgrade in the vanilla game and also because they would still be using the same building models. So the mansions in this mod will all be Level 1 growth stage, and will replace the vanilla mansions of Levels 1-4, after which R$$$ development will return to vanilla for Growth Stages 5 and up. The following sizes of mansion will be included in the mod (width x depth): 3x2, 2x3, 3x3, 4x3. 2x2 mansions will not be included as they don't appear in vanilla until Growth Stage 5. 4x4 may be included if it can be proven that it cannot spawn from from back-to-back lines of 1x2 housing. I've tested, and it's possible to use Ctl/Ctl+Alt to zone specific residential sizes, and the mansions will grow into that size. If one just zones normally, then it will try and parcel the zoning into widths of one and two, so smaller 2x3 mansions are more likely to appear. Allowing no parcelling of the zoning also brought variable size. By zoning a 4x4 as a single property one can get a 4x4 mansion. Here's a screenshot showing some mansions growing to specified zone sizes of 3x3 and 4x3: For comparison, here's a screenshot I posted in the other thread of smaller 3x2 lots: So, going forward, I think there are two main areas of discussion: 1) The gameplay side of it. This, I think, centres around getting the balance right with the stats, such as residential capacity (Capacity Satisfied), Water Consumed and Worth. An archetype of the vanilla mansions will need to be decided on as something to base the other lots on. The first lots that come to mind are 3x4 and 3x3. Both have buildings that provide accommodation for 14 R$$$ residents. 3x4 appears at Growth Stage 2 and 3x3 appears at Growth Stage 3. If choosing 3x4 as the model, that provides 14 residents. So a 3x2/2x3 would be half that, so seven residents. There's a cost in Water and maybe electricity per house, so the smaller size would lose efficiency in that there would be the costs of two 2x3 houses vs one 4x3 house. The smaller house is more versatile, as explained earlier, so does that sound like a balanced trade-off? 2) Secondly, there's the implementation, and I will probably need some help along the way with the technical side of things in Reader. The first thing done, as CorinaMarie outlined here, has been to change the Growth Stages. I've changed the value for all the lots of sizes being used to Growth Stage 1, and all the mansion lots of sizes not being used to 255. I have a couple of questions about this: 1) Can lots in the game upgrade straight from Stage 1 to Stage 5, skipping Stages 2-4? 2) Even though I've set the Growth Stage of the unused tiles to 255, could a Level 8 Residential upgrade to Level 255, so a skyscraper might "upgrade" to a 3x4 mansion? Also, since larger footprint mansions will have a larger residential capacity than smaller ones, yet use the same buildings, I'm going to visually augment the 4x3 and larger lots slightly from with extra patios, observatories, garage and other props.

Latest news/plans for this mod... Since the game always appears to upgrade residential housing to the smallest footprint size that it is able to, this means that it's not possible to have a balanced selection of mansion sizes, which was my original intention. I had been hoping to be able to create a mixture of 4x3, 3x3, 2x3 and 3x2 mansions that would together average around 3x3 in size. Instead, one will just end up with loads of 3x2/2x3 mansions, as that's the smallest available size, and I feel that is too dense for low-density zoning. So I'm not going to do anything with the Stage 4 3x2/2x3 mansions, and they will appear in medium-density zoning, as in the original game. The mod will therefore: - remove all mansion Lots with a depth of greater than three squares - 4x5, 4x6, 3x4 and 4x4 - which will leave two sizes of mansion Lots that can appear in low-density zoning: 4x3 and 3x3. - 4x3 will all be Stage 2, which means moving the two 4x3 mansions at Stage 4 in the vanilla game to Stage 3, to join with the other four 4x3 mansions already at Stage 2. Therefore there'll be six 4x3 mansion Lots at Stage 2, and six 3x3 mansion Lots at Stage 3. - since the 4x3 and 3x3 mansion Lots produce the same tax revenues in the vanilla game, a duplicate set of mansion buildings will be created and modified in order that 4x3 mansions produce some extra tax revenue. Therefore, hopefully, 4x3 and 3x3 mansion Lots will be equally financially viable.

For my mansions mod, I think I will need to create an additional set or sets of the vanilla mansion lots and buildings, so there would be two or three types of mansions, graphically the same but differing in one or two Exemplar properties. A couple of questions: 1) There are several dozen each of Lots and Buildings. Do I have to right-click on every single one and then click "Add to Patch" or is there an easier way to make a .DAT copy of lots of files? 2) Once I have made a .DAT duplicating the relevant vanilla files, I will need to modify them in order that they have their own separate IDs. My belief is that to do this, the entries I will need to modify will be "Parent cohort" and "Exemplar Name" properties. "Parent cohort" entries have three parts: Type, Group, Instance. Parent cohort entries are found in various places, and the third "Instance" one appears to be the unique identifier. So I think I would need to change the third "Instance" entries to unique IDs. I would also need to create unique "Exemplar Names" for "Building Cohorts", such as "R$$$24x14_123_2000002c", and Buildings, such as "R$$$16x20_123EuroMansion11_01FA". Does this sound right?

I tested again a mod I made in which 4x4, 3x3, 3x3 and 3x2 mansions are all set to Stage 3, which leads to it building all mansions in the smallest size possible - 2x3/3x2. I noticed that the modified Wilford House was appearing in the small 3x2 size. So when the game was building all 3x3 vanilla mansions, it would also build 3x3 Wilford House, but not 3x2 Wilford House. When the game was building all 2x3/3x2 vanilla mansions, it would also build 2x3/3x2 Wilford House, but not 3x3 Wilford House. So there's a correlation there. I think the 2x3/3x2 mansions should appear in medium density zoning. That would make them equivalent to R$ Boxy Apartments, which are also at Stage 4, but appear only in medium-density. It would be nice to try and make it a smoother transition, though, between 3x3 mansions and luxury condo apartments, as its currently fairly abrupt.

Some more tantalizing, yet unsatisfying tests. I downloaded and added Wilford House, a Stage 4 mansion that can appear on 3x3 or 3x4 Lots. I changed its density from medium-high to low-medium-high. I let the game run, and, unlike the normal mono-selection of mansions, it spawned a pretty balanced proportion of vanilla sub-Stage 4 mansions and Stage 4 Wilford House mansions, as can be seen in the screenshot below. So that looked very promising. Then, however, I changed the Wilford House Lot size in the Lot Editor to 3x2, and they didn't appear in the game. Since the Wilford House Lot size when it was working was 3x3 and 3x4, it cannot be proved that it was trying to maintain proportions of Stage 4 mansions to other-Stage mansions. Instead, it could have just been building the lowest possible size of 3x3, like it normally does. It's still a mystery why it won't build 2x3/3x2 at Stage 4, since it will build them if they are set to appear at Stage 3.

Latest test results... All I did for this test was to create new Instance IDs for the mansions (not Group & Instance). Within a couple of minutes, my test area was filled with Stage 4 2x3/3x2 mansions. So that would suggest that whatever blocks Stage 4 mansions from growing normally is related to the Instance IDs of the mansions. This is the first time that Stage 4 Maxis mansions have been created under laboratory conditions. However, the game was only building Stage 4 2x3/3x2 mansions. This corresponds with the general mansion-spawning behaviour observed previously, whereby the game will build the smallest size mansion Lot that will fit in an available space (that being 3x3 under normal unmodified conditions). The same test results had previously been observed when 2x3/3x2 mansion Lots were changed to Growth Stage 3. So the objective of trying to get the game to produce mansions of various sizes remains unattained. The aim would be for the game to try and maintain a proportion of mansions of various sizes, so there'd be some large 4x3 mansions, medium 3x3 mansions, and smaller 2x3/3x2 mansions. Things just seem to operate differently when comparing Growth stages 1-4 and 5-8. Possible further avenues of experimentation: a) Change "Resource Key Type 1" value to match new Instance IDs. b) Change Group and Instance. c) Create new Building Cohorts.

Observations so far: - Vanilla Stage 4 mansion Lot and Building will not (or will rarely) appear in game. - User-created Stage 4 mansion Lot and Building will appear in game. - User-created Stage 4 mansion Lot with vanilla Building will not (or will rarely) appear in game. Which leaves us with the Building as the next thing to try and modify, and I'm trying to ascertain the process needed to do this. Looking in PIM, each building has a unique TGI Instance (underlined in red in the following screenshot). This value is repeated in the "Resource Key Type 1" property (also underlined in red). So this would suggest one would need to create a unique TGI Instance for each duplicate Building, and then change the relevant value in the "Resource Key Type 1" property to match it. Looking In Reader at the mansion Lot Builing Exemplars, they also have this Instance, so they should also be changed to match the new Instance. I'm assuming, at the moment, that new Building Cohorts will not need to be created. So if this doesn't work, new Building Cohorts will be the next step.

Has anyone seen a 2x3 or 3x2 mansion grow? I don't recall ever seeing one grow in the vanilla game, and was amazed to find out that mansion lots of this size existed in the files. I've been doing some testing to try and create them, but without success. Low-density zoning will get me mansions of a size no smaller than 3x3, which is Growth Stage 3. If I zone medium-density residential, then I can get 2x2 mansions, which are Growth Stage 5. The 2x3 and 3x2 mansions of Growth Stage 4 are not appearing. EDIT: I've found a couple of palazzo 2x3 mansion in my city, but they're Growth Stage 5.

Thanks, that could be useful. Does it duplicate and give unique IDs to the Buildings, though, or only the Lots? Worth testing out, anyway. EDIT: Tested it, and it didn't produce Stage 4 2x3/3x2. Looking at the files in Reader, it appears to be just providing new Lots, not Buildings. So a duplicate set of Buildings will be what's needed for the next stage of testing.

I downloaded and installed B.A.T. and GMax today. I've opened up a save I made a few days ago of plopped buildings and many of the Buildings are missing from the Lots, as seen in the screenshot. Any ideas?

I've only skimmed the CAM manuals so far, but it says it changes the amount of jobs for various buildings.

Removing Plugins folder had no effect. I can plop the same Lots that have missing buildings on the same map that they are missing from, and the Buildings appear on the newly-plopped Lots, so I think something must have happened to the save.

I did a bit of testing and didn't see any R$$$ Stage 4 mansions appearing when zoning medium density. As discussed in this thread, it would be interesting to create a duplicate copy of the vanilla Maxis mansions, give them unique IDs and link them to the Stage 4 mansion Lots. There appears to be some block on the vanilla mansions that makes them not grow in low density. R$ also seems to have this block as R$ Stage 4 are Boxy Apartments, and I've never seen them grow in low density zoning either*. Since a downloaded R$$$ Stage 4 mansion will grow, then surely vanilla mansion lots with new IDs would also be likely to. * EDIT: Just checked, and R$ Growth Stage 4 Lots are only set to grow in medium and high density - so, unlike mansions, there is at least a known reason for why they aren't growing.

I started a new city in the same region and the Lots were plopping with their Buildings as normal. That suggests it might be a game save issue.

There's some other stuff about missing buildings that might be useful in this thread. It might be "a serialization bug that could corrupt the savegame, particularly when mods are installed that modify existing exemplars (i.e. prop pox)".

Graphics Options all seem to be okay. It's entire skyscrapers that are missing, so I don't think it's anything to do with City Detail.

I've installed SC4 Data Node, but not used it yet, and don't know how to. I'll have to do that tomorrow.

Have you extracted them? .rar are compressed files. Use something like 7-Zip to extract them if you haven't.

As discussed in this thread, I want to move the Maxis Ingebretson Place building from the Chicago medium-density Luxury Condos bracket to the New York high-density Hi-rise Luxury Condos backet. For one, it is massively-oversized for the Luxury Condos group, and secondly its architectural style is New York c.1930s. It's pictured in the screenshot below with the other Luxury Condos buildings, divided by building set (Chicago, New York, Houston, Euro). Moving this building, however, would mean that there isn't a Chicago-style R$$$ Stage 6 building or lot. I've been looking through STEX to try and find a suitable replacement but haven't found anything. Does anyone know of any building that would be suitable? It would have to pass for Chicago-style and fit in size-wise with the other Luxury Condos.

I haven't been through the commercial buildings yet, but am intending to do so. Here's West & Co from the SimCity 4 Building Index and it does look very tall for medium-density. Another issue that needs fixing is the residential Walkup Tower, which is a 4x4 building that it is being used on a 4x2 lot and is therefore too big for its base. Here it is from the SimCity 4 Building Index and it can be seen that it is covering the road at the back. There are already 4x4 and 4x2 buildings in the Houston building set that it's from, so it would just be a matter of editing the Building Families, rather than needing to find a replacement building for it.

I'm interested in testing CAM, so here are some more questions about it: 1) Which version to use? There are several. I guess Extended (InvisiChem) and Standard look to be the main options - what's the difference between them? 2) What does CAM do to Lots/Buildings in Growth Stages 1-7? IT changes the Stage Limit threshold table, I presume, but does it move around any lots/buildings to other Growth Stage levels? 3) Is it easy to install and uninstall, i.e. like other mods that you can just move in or out of the Plugins folder?

Thanks. I've downloaded the 2.1 manual from here and the 1.0 manual from here, so I'll probably have some more questions when I've read them a bit more thoroughly.

I don't quite get this. 1) Why does this mean it will not build a Growth Stage 2 mansion, only Growth Stage 3? A 3x3 is a more efficient use of space than 4x3, which is probably why it chooses it, but where are the Growth Stage 2 R$$$, and Stage 1 R$$$, while we're on the subject? 2) Why does that mean it won't build a Stage 4 mansion?

Thanks. I'd not seen that. Do you know of any other buildings from the Chicago 1890 period that might be suitable? The Pullman Building was the only building I could find that was the right size and could pass for R$$$ residential - it was at least partly residential. All the other tall multi-story buildings in Chicago around that time that I've seen have been commercial office buildings, and more box-like in design. Here are a couple of smaller residential buildings from the time, but they perhaps don't look as R$$$ as the Pullman Building. The Yale Apartments: The Brewster Apartments (originally known as the Lincoln Park Palace) Here are some other buildings. Thalia Hall, stylistically similar to the Pullman Building, but different colour stone/brick: This picture looks as if it says "The Lake View Apartment....", and with lots of balconies, I guess it would have been residential: It's slightly reminiscent of the commercial Old Colony Building: And this picture shows a front view of The Pullman Building: I was surprised to only find one mention on the internet of Ingebretson Place being too large, as it literally sticks out like a sore thumb!

I still haven't found anything. I'm considering attempting to undertake making something myself, and have been looking at Chicago buildings from that time. If I make one, then I think I might use the Pullman Building (below) as a basis, but make it symmetrical with a turret at each of the front corners. It would also be less deep. The "Women's Temple" may also serve as extra inspiration. Here's another interesting lost Chicago building from that time, the "Masonic Temple".