Naomi57

Thoughtful reflections on Oompa-Loompas (aka Where are all the workers?) “Of course they're real people. They're Oompa-Loompas...Imported direct from Loompaland...And oh what a terrible country it is! Nothing but thick jungles infested by the most dangerous beasts in the world - hornswogglers and snozzwangers and those terrible wicked whangdoodles. A whangdoodle would eat ten Oompa-Loompas for breakfast and come galloping back for a second helping.” ― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Here's a screenshot from one of my old cities, Castle Island in Boston. It's from the vanilla SimCity 4 Rush Hour game, before I installed the NAM, and before I fully understood these economic drivers of the game: Commercial traffic. Neighbour connections. Taxes. Demand CAPs. Education (EQ). Land desirability: landmarks, yimby/nimby, pollution, crime, garbage. Commute accessibility. The /,click Query dialog shows 73/75 jobs, but the Alt+/,hover Route Query tool shows Workers (none). The whole strip of shops and nearby industry have the same problem. What's up with that? I call them "oompa-loopas", workers that keep the wheels of commerce and industry spinning, even when no sims are coming to their jobs. We should be grateful for them, because without these phantom workers, these businesses would never grow or develop. Even utilities and civic plops would fail to function! They take the jobs that local sims don't want, but that doesn't help our unemployment problems for our local sims. So the big question is this one, why don't the local sims want these jobs? The oompa-loompas are taking all our jobs! One reason is match of education level (EQ) to job type. A more pressing reason is commute time for those sims of the right education level, from their home to their workplace. You see it even more frequently for manufacturing (I-M) and dirty industry (I-D), simply because those districts tend to be further away from residential zones. I'm a longtime vanilla SimCity 4 Rush Hour player, with a thorough expertise in the economic drivers of growth in the game, but I'm new to the NAM, so I'll be running experiments to see how these commute time factors are changing. In the meantime, for my latest city, Breezy Point, New York, I'm taking precautions using carefully planned backroads from low-wealth residential (R$) to the manufacturing (I-M), dirty industry (I-D) and utility plant districts. The red arrow points to the one location of backroad access from low wealth residential (R$) to the manufacturing (I-M), dirty industry (I-D) and utility plant districts. I've heard that it's only the morning commute that affects employment levels, the sims being content to take a longer route home on the evening commute. I've already verified that power plant jobs are are still very sensitive to commute distance in the NAM. It's a difficult juggle to balance commute distance employability, versus funnelling sim traffic through commercial districts to encourage C$$ and C$$$ growth. I'll report back here in the comments with my NAM experiment results. NOTE: If you don't want to worry about economic aspects of growability in the game, just use small city tiles, which are far more forgiving economically ... but for me, I LOVE those big city tiles!

Show us your Underwater Pedmalls! ... and closeups of your other most quirky, quixotic, curious, cool, or captivating underwater creations, too. A recent discovery around coffee and beer has led to the creation of this brand new Show Us thread, and hey, why restrict it to pedmalls? I don't know how popular this thread will be, but it definitely fits my reputation for the quirky and curious. While most of my underwater decorating to date has involved draining the sea (my favourite use of for the Diagonal Bridge Enabler), just 18 hours ago came the news of a revolutionary discovery, that the NAM pedmalls can be plopped underwater, without even draining the sea ... well they can in all but one of my cities. To top it off, the NAM pedmalls are slope conforming, providing a very easy and fascinating glimpse of the underwater world inside our shallow saltwater creeks, rivers, and bays. If you're having trouble seeing underwater for your pedmall plopping, the Water Pollution view makes the water (almost) transparent. BTW, yes, I confirmed just this morning, that strategically placed underwater pedmalls do get the sims into the water. I've never been able coax them in for a swim before, but now I've got some sims swimming to work, so this truly does open up a whole new sub-branch of commuting! Any tips, techniques, tools or tutorials about underwater plopping would also be very, very welcome. I haven't got any snapshots of sim pedestrians in the water yet, but if any of you spot 'em, please do post and share.

I specifically resist gentrification in my SimCity 4 cities. Given the economic simulation in SC4 generally attempts to simulate real-life economic factors, the low wealth sims are not becoming wealthy, they are being pushed out by speculative property developers and a lack of affordable housing. I make sure to use a combination of NIMBY and air pollution to guarantee low wealth sims have affordable housing in some neighbourhoods, or else using other techniques to plan and preserve low wealth neighbourhoods. This is a type of "companion planting" that goes into my city-planning. Some types of zoning and buildings work well together, other combinations are very bad. My techniques don't solve all problems in creating an Ultrasanti, but it helps realise a vision of protopia, rather than a vision of utopia. Here's a table I compiled examining this "companion planting" of SC4 buildings and zones, with protopian objectives, and with vanilla+NAM economic prosperity in mind. This is in three sections: 1. causes of city neighbourhood problems, 2. the neutral buildings which serve well as a buffer zone, 3. the victims of regulatory failings in city planning. My "companion planting" table helps assess Peter Richie megacity recipe, and can be used for assessing and tweaking your city planning. Best border any dirty industry (I-D) with civics, water treatment plants, trees, and then manufacturing. Proximity of low wealth residential R$ and manufacturing (I-M) is a natural fit. Proximity of high wealth residential R$$$ and high tech (I-HT) is a natural fit. Casino doesn't fit well with much at all, and did you know that it's even radioactive! What is not mentioned in this "companion planting" table, is the critical factor of commute distance, and match of education status and wealth class to available jobs. Unemployment, underemployment, long commute, and job/skills mismatch are frequent deal breakers for sims. Good employment and ease of commute are generally the two most important factors for happy sims.

Ultrasanti makes for such an interesting conversation, @elfrjz. I've been long-term unwell, which is why my participation here has been limited lately, but this conversation very happily engaged my attention. Thank you for posting that YouTube account, @Terring. I've just watched all seven parts of Peter Richie's "How to Build a Mega City" YouTube series. Admittedly, I watched most of it with sound muted, only unmuting for parts that looked interesting and in the last two videos in the series, right-arrowing ahead through the videos to take in the boring bits quicker. Fascinating to see a gameplay style so at odds with my own, but still aiming for a prosperous High-Tech/High Commerce healthy and happy city in the end. Here's a 43x47 representative piece of his "How to Build a Mega City" map that I plotted out in Excel with yellow lines indicating subway and arrows indicating neighbour connections. I plotted out more of his city if you're interested to see. Truly excellent points with Peter Richie's city building recipe: Zero cheats and zero mods, none at all! 21x21 cell grid made up of nine 6x6 blocks is an excellent grid geometry, with 3 times 21 = 63 leaving 2 cells for a bordering Avenue (or Highway). Dirty industry (I-D) is the fastest way to make money without cheats. Distance is the simplest way to avoid the deleterious impacts of I-D pollution and Waste-to-Energy Plants. https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Waste_to_Energy_Plant Building out substantial residential/commercial/industrial sectors before de-zoning everything seems to have lingering effects that are useful and interesting. He very correctly builds for residential proximity to industrial and commercial jobs. 100% coverage of Fire Stations completely suppresses fire emergencies for Cheetah play speed (Ctrl+3). He does not mess with Transportation, Water, Police or Fire funding! He manages Health and Education funding using central budget sliders rather than building-by-building, an easier approach for a quick Mega City build. Switch to Zone data view for faster Cheetah play speed. Using Oil Power Plants for initial high capacity power, in preference to Gas or Coal. https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Oil_Power_Plant When Hydrogen Power Plants become available, use the Nuclear Free Zone ordinance to clear the Nuclear Power Plants from the map. Libraries are important! https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Local_Branch_Library Kudos for getting into the Guinness Book of World Records, but I do have some problems with Peter Richie's approach: Orthogonal (horizontal/vertical) subways ignores the extra commuting power of diagonal subways. Subway station usage benefits from pedestrian proximity to side streets. He leans heavily on the overpowered (OP) stats of the Avenue in vanilla SC4. That won't work with a NAM city which far more desperately needs Highway grade (MHW or RHW). He completely ignores traffic congestion problems. He completely ignores the dreaded SC4 Eternal Commuter bug in the planning of his neighbour connections, which I think he doesn't notice because he doesn't care about traffic congestion. See @CorinaMarie's legendary analysis in this post to thoroughly understand this issue, and https://www.google.com/search?q=Eternal+Commuter+bug+site%3Acommunity.simtropolis.com for more threads discussing it. He zones vast swathes of commercial, ignoring the fact that commercial prosperity depends upon vehicle traffic and light rail traffic in an 8x8 radius centred upon each building's 4x4 home tract. This probably works in his case because of the massive traffic snarls he tolerates. He completely ignores health and education strikes, which does have economic impacts. The Casino has the maximum police corruption effect of 50 with radius of 128 tiles. https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Casino I think he misattributes this effect to the Airport. This is a non-issue in his Dirty Industry phase, but really not a great "Reward" to include in the city in the fast commercial growth phase! The Legalize Gambling ordinance has a citywide 20% increase crime effect, which is particularly counter-productive to developing high density commercial. My key differences of play preference from Peter Richie. IMPORTANT: Population growth depends on actual employment, not just the existence of buildings. Actual employment depends on commute journey time, and while sims will travel further for cushie office jobs, I very seriously question the depth of that blue commercial zoning and commute distance from residential to the extreme centre of his city. I don't think he's checking Route Query to see if any sims really do commute all the way to the centre. I think he's using default School Bus funding. Zero School Bus and zero Ambulance funding is far more effective way of moderating city expenses, without the economic hazard of causing strikes. City Beautification is another budget you can plonk to zero and gradually increase. Preserving a bit of Manufacturing industry (I-M) is actually a good thing for R$ employment, and sector diversification improves economic growth and resilience, and I-M makes is a good buffer zone around Waste-to-Energy Plants. For that matter, low wealth R$ residential makes a great buffer zone around manufacturing (I-M). Water Pipes every 13 tiles works. In this case, pipes every 10-11 tiles would fit the 21 tile grid geometry. No need to turn on so many Ordinances! Some are invaluable, but most can be ignored. https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Ordinance Rewards like Movie Studio which don't improve your RCI CAPS are a waste of space. https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Movie_Studio I prefer planned plop of all civics, including schools, libraries, hospitals, police and fire, rather than his random plop to fill the coverage radius circles on the map. I'll happily use cheat Ctrl+X you don't deserve it to make my city planning easier. https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Cheat_codes I have noticed that Windows systems with lots of mods tend to bog down the SimCity 4 open/save/refresh performance. That's one reason I keep my mod list small and avoid the HD cosmetic mods, because I value speed. I'm pretty sure that too many mods impacts performance, responsiveness and playability of large cities (256x256), which could be a big issue in building an Ultrasanti region. The region size, on the other hand, is far less of an issue because that only affects performance in Region View. Once you've loaded a city, it's only that one city and its immediate neighbour connection properties that are in memory.

Ferry Traffic Data View Before I start, please note that I just created this mod for my personal enjoyment, and have no plans to release it anywhere. It has a number of downsides that make it look unfinished, and it modifies the Traffic Volume Data View which is very much the domain of the NAM TSCT. For me, even if it is rough around the edges, this little mod is now a permanent part of my SC4 gameplay. I think I might have reached the built-in limits of the SC4 Data View features, but if anyone knows further ways to improve it, I'll be delighted to hear more. I have a software development background, but I'm still an utter newb at SC4 modding. This Data View replaces the Ferry Traffic Volume Data View, which I always felt never really helped me enough with my waterways and in my Passenger Ferry and Car Ferry gameplay. I created this Data View for the specific purpose of making it easy to spot the Bus, Car, and Rail traffic resulting from Ferry passengers at Zoom 1 and Zoom 2, rather than the Ferry traffic itself. As such, it's actually far more similar to the Maxis default "DataView: Subway tool" (rather than the "DataView: Traffic Volume - Ferry". Click on the screenshots to zoom in and arrow around, comparing Route Query in the standard view to the same Route Query using my Ferry Traffic Data View. Advantages: Hides buildings, zonings, props and trees, for minimal distractions to the use of the Route Query at broad view Zoom 1 and Zoom 2 levels. Fades out the roads, again for minimal distraction to the Route Query colours across the map. Shows buildings for just the subway, ferry, marina and port plops, making it easy to scan the shorelines for relevant buildings. It shows the Watercraft Automata, which is a cute touch and doesn't distract from the Route Query colours. X-ray vision to see the sea floor to a depth of 55 metres, exposing much of the continental shelf for review of shipping and ferry routes, and for terraforming the sea floor. This is a distinct visual improvement on using the Water Pollution Data View to terraform underwater, and looks rather reminiscent of mud flats at low tide. Same as the Water Pollution Data View, you can use God-mode or Mayor-mode terraforming tools at the same time as seeing the glowing Grid on the sea floor, by repeatedly pressing (or holding down) the G key. Disadvantages: Only the base of the Maxis Port is visible. I haven't tested third party Port mods. While the Ferry Terminal plops are fully visible at Zoom 1 and Zoom 2, they almost completely disappear at closer zoom levels. Some plops, such as Airport and Water Treatment Plant, appear as dark rectangles. Some growable lots show up as dark rectangles, too. Although this replaces the Ferry Traffic Volume Data View, it doesn't actually show ferry traffic volumes on the main screen. Ferry Traffic Volume remains visible on the popup map panel, which is good enough. The mod requires amendment of the NAM's "NetworkAddonMod_Volume_Data_View_Z_Medium_Custom.dat", which is reset and customised by the TSCT. Some of the NAM subway stations, such as the 1x2 Elevated Road Bus Stop and Subway Station, don't show up as subway buildings, though the subway portal tile is visible if you look closely. While not really a disadvantage, it would be nice if it made all mass transit stations visible, while still hiding all the other buildings, lots, and plops. I'm guessing most, if not all, of these disadvantages, have no solution. Very happy to be wrong! If you want to have a play with your own "NetworkAddonMod_Volume_Data_View_Z_Medium_Custom.dat" (beware of the TSCT), here's the exemplar properties I changed: NetworkAddonMod_Volume_Data_View_Z_Medium_Custom (Naomi-1a).dat Exemplar Name DataView: Traffic Volume - Ferry DataView: Type filter 0x8A13918A,0xC772BF98,0x68FD0C69,0x2A183167,0x897F7EC2 DataView: Hide zones 0x01 (True) ; Hide the empty zones DataView: Custom view 0x4A19BDE3 ; Inherit the "Subway Tool" base functionality which ghosts the roads DataView: View level 0x00000002 ; Look underwater DataView: Network Visible Level 0x02 ; Expose the subway DataView: Highlight mode 0x00000009 ; Highlight subway stations Note that DataView: Invert filter property is not present, so the DataView: Type filter is specifying the occupant types to include, not exclude. Here's what I've observed about those occupant types: 0x8A13918A : Ingred.ini says this is a "Subway connection" 0xC772BF98 : Shows the subway lines ... cool! 0x68FD0C69 : Shows the Ferry plops at zoom 2, but only pieces of them at zoom 3. Also shows the base platform of the Maxis Port and Marina. Weirdly, it also shows dark holes for various landmark plops, and for lots adjacent to tunnels, and a few other lots, too. 0x2A183167 : Shows the Water Treatment spigot ... might as well include it. 0x897F7EC2 : Shows watercraft automata, speed boats, yachts, port ships. Yep, that looks good! I discovered that occupant type 0x278128A0 shows Ferry Terminals perfectly at zoom 3, and parts of most transport lots, but it also shows most growable and ploppable buildings, too, which is too much information for what I wanted on this Data View. For reference, here's an excerpt of occupant types from Ingred.ini. (I've also got properties.xml for my iLive Reader v0.9.3) In particular, 0x74758926 could be another good one to include, if wanting to use this view for underwater MMP decorating, but I prefer to leave out the flora. I left other properties of the NAM Ferry Traffic Volume exemplar unchanged: NetworkAddonMod_Volume_Data_View_Z_Medium_Custom.dat Exemplar Name DataView: Traffic Volume - Ferry DataView: Colour ramp 0x00000000,0x00FFFFFF,0x00000001,0x30E4E5FF,0x00000002,0x99D3D5FA, 0x00000003,0xBB999EF9,0x00000005,0xBB7B81F7,0x00000007,0xBB5D64F7, 0x0000003F,0x9900FF00,0x00000053,0x99FFFF00,0x00000069,0x99FFCC00, 0x00000080,0x99FF9900,0x00000097,0x99FF6600,0x000000AD,0x99FF3300, 0x000000C3,0x99FF0000 DataView: Maximum scale 0x00000FA0 DataView: Data source 0x0000004C DataView: Interpolate data 0x00 (False) DataView: Legends Colour 0x30E4E5FF,0xBB999EF9,0xBB5D64F7,0xBB06C6C1,0xBB03DC29, 0x9900FF00,0x99FFFF00,0x99FF8000,0x99FF0000 DataView: Legends Labels 0xFF0F6960,0xFF0F6961,0xFF0F6962,0xFF0F6963,0xFF0F6964, 0xFF0F6965,0xFF0F6966,0xFF0F6967,0xFF0F6968 DataView: Legends Header 0xCC22F6EC DataView: Travel Types 0x00000004 The DataView: Colour ramp , even though not visible in the main view, is still relevant and useful in the popup map panel. Thoughts or ideas, anyone? I'm very interested to know if there's some way to improve it further, or secret knowledge on the ways of DataView modding.

Yes, this one solution to the the Fermi Paradox is called The Great Filter. Kurzgesagt has a fun video which explains it well: “It needs to be something that's so obvious, that virtually everybody discovers it, and so dangerous, that its discovery leads almost universally to an existential disaster.” At this point, we don't know enough about The Great Filter to use it for predicting the future, but we may come to know more within this lifetime. Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter | Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

DW Planet A does not always present a balanced picture, but this particular video released today fits other facts I've collected, and is a representative sample of one corner of climate migration and disaster mitigation which is already in progress. Not covered by this video, is the impact of glacial retreat on water scarcity. Freshwater flooding mitigation and water harvesting are vitally important to maintaining both ecosystems and broader habitability. We increasingly need to care for the world like a garden, and to involve traditional people groups in that ecological care. In that sense, significant portions of a protopia future will be a curious mix of futuristic and traditional. It reminds me of the Kingdom of Bhutan, where most of the inhabitants of this very traditional country skipped landline telephones to go straight to 4G mobile phone networks. As at 2012, the Kingdom of Bhutan had reached 560,000 mobile phone users but just 27,900 installed landline phones. I see climate change adaptation in poorer countries heading in a similar direction, a pragmatic mix of technology and tradition. Why the Himalayas have so many ghost villages | DW Planet A

Yes, that's precisely why I think it takes a big enough set of crises to shift a society, otherwise self-interest rules. Some parts of the world are already becoming like Mad Max, and more are heading in that direction. Some other parts of the world will be relatively sheltered from dystopian outcomes. "Renewable" is a relative term, but when done right, it is a big step in the right direction for resource and environmental impact. For grid scale energy, it has less to do with energy density, and more to do with economics. e.g. Nuclear is the most energy dense fuel, but for various reasons it has neither time scale nor LCOE suitable to current needs for most countries. Nuclear has a safety record orders of magnitude better than coal, but politics prevents that safety benefit from being realised. Nuclear waste reprocessing and storage are essentially economic and political issues, too. On the subject of wind turbines, did you know that graphene is already being used to extend their life and reduce maintenance costs? Further scale on renewable energy inspires further innovation, and scarcity of one material inspires material science development of others. Carbon nanotubes here we come. Turns out that our environment is a finite resource, too, with food scarcity and water scarcity being one grim way to identify ecological bankruptcy. I believe there is reason for both pessimism and optimism. In terms of resource costs, city governments and state governments are starting to grapple with the immense cost of protection against rising seas, or relocation and rebuilding. The amount of construction, or reconstruction, implicit in rising sea level is immense, and might be one of the key motivators for some nations to take action on CO2 reduction. So both pessimism and optimism arise from the same cause ... crisis. Disaster mitigation is another immense cost governments are only just starting to realise. Among many climate tipping points, there is also an economic tipping point, where we discover that we're too overwhelmed coping with disaster to prepare for the future. Climate refugee nations have already reached that point. There is a real risk that only a few nations survive. I've heard some philosophers and futurists say that both utopia and dystopia are unstable states. They posit an idea they call protopia, which provides an achievable path that turns out to be a better fit for the human species than any ideal.

I think we might have wandered off-topic, from natural growth to crystal ball, but here's my take on a post-scarcity society. A post-scarcity society is radically different from the society we live in now, and that radical change implies a force that generates that change. While technology is a primary enabler, I don't think the transformation of society will come from technology. I think it will come from disaster. It doesn't require a cataclysm. Multiple combined disasters at sufficient scale and long time frame are quite sufficient to reshape societies.

This reminds me very much of a planned city, where city planners have the luxury of starting from scratch. In Australia, we had this exact situation, where Sydney and Melbourne politicians were arguing about which city should be the nation's capital. The compromise was to build a new city as the nation's capital partway between these two major cities, which is how Canberra was born, with a provisional parliament house (upper right) opened in May 1927, and the new parliament house (centre) opened in May 1988. Similar geopolitical compromises created planned capital cities in other nations, though the degree of artistry and design varies with each one. The provisional parliament house in Canberra is now a public museum. The city features other museums, war memorial, historic buildings, landmarks, and greenways. In this sense, a futuristic and beautiful transit network can arise "organically" out of geopolitics, even without a post-scarcity society. This city design approach is inspired by the garden city movement. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Canberra+ACT+2601/@-35.3082726,149.1202573,2394m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x6b164d69b05c9021:0x500ea6ea7695660!8m2!3d-35.2801903!4d149.1310038!5m1!1e4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra#Urban_structure

A very interesting question @Daeris, and I'm curious what resources people come up with. From my own observations of sub-rural development surrounding my home city of Sydney, Australia over the last 50 years, growing urbanisation and rapid growth in a city leads surrounding areas to shift from generalised communities to specialisation. e.g. Luxury crops in place of staple crops. Larger farms near the city rezoned into sub-rural smaller farms. Increased mining, refining (dirty industry), port development, and energy infrastructure clustered in strategic areas about 100km to 200km from the growing city. Quarries, sand mining, and plantation timber in close proximity to support construction projects with local materials. A major dam in a nearby pristine catchment area, with a protected catchment zone that is off-limits to the public but allows access for specialised personnel. Re-zoning of nearby ex-urban townships along highway and rail corridors, for low wealth commuters near the corridor, and high wealth estates where there are desirable landscape features. Expansion of pubs, roadhouses, and petrol stations (aka gas stations) at townships and/or isolated spots along the highways. Increasing specialisation of townships and rural areas, with some of them diversifying into farmstays, B&Bs, galleries, museums, and tourist spots. A few isolated towns well off the main highways being abandoned and becoming ruins or ghost towns, as residents move to locations with greater opportunities. Very curiously, just a few of those ruins ended up being close to the highway, and I'm not sure why.

I rather enjoyed the "gale" look of the water. It provides some interesting possibilities for weather effects!

Great job with rendering, @wheeeze. I have a software development background, with a specialisation in data architecture. It's quite awesome to see concrete progress on OpenSC4. While I know your work is coming from a different (and exciting) angle, I see some functional overlap between your work thus far and some map rendering mods, which might be a useful reference point for identifying what SC4 map data is already known: Region View mods: https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/11580-the-melbourne-transport-map-mod/ https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/14219-the-metropolitan-transport-mod-v1/ https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/17605-region-transport-legend/ https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/11402-edmonton-transportation-map-mod/ SC4 Terraformer (wouanagaine) https://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=731 SC4 Cartographer (wouanagaine) https://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=4019 https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33956-sc4cartographer/ In particular, wouanagaine's work is in Python, so his source code would likely be invaluable, if you haven't seen it yet. There's some other C# and Python tools that dig into the SC4 data, both in published tools and experimental projects.

Hi @Mikket, I well understand the temptation to just zone a massive grid. It's quick, and repeatable, but it doesn't yield results that I like long term. What I want from SimCity 4 + NAM, is a city with variety, where each neighbourhood is different. For me this requires: Some natural features that are retained, or created, with civilisation populating the spaces around and between those natural features. Major and minor highways that make sense from a regional perspective. Strategic placement of police stations, medical and educational buildings. Zoning commercial in proximity to police and traffic. Zoning manufacturing and dirty industry away from the high class commercial and residential zones. Building a broader transport network that makes for the fastest and easiest commutes. All sims LOVE a fast and easy commute. Playing SimCity 4, is kinda like an enormous game of Tetris for me, finding the best spot to fit each piece. By all means, build a megacity grid if that's what you enjoy most. SC4 is nothing if it's not enjoyable. You might also like to experiment with a "superblock" structure, if you like grids. Here's another approach, building a series of communities along a highway, with a hierarchy of road types from highway, to arterial, to avenue, to road, to street. https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/760074-how-to-diverge-traffic/?tab=comments#comment-1743535 Here's a sample of my own approach for creating variety, using the numbered steps 1 to 6 at the top of this post. https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/760404-can-cap-be-never-hit-by-appropiately-zoning-rci/?tab=comments#comment-1749252 The north-south highway is one part of my "Belt Parkway" which runs across six cities so far. Working around "natural" landscape limitations and a strategic regional transit architecture makes the game more fun for me. Let me know if you're interested to see zoning plans I tend to use at the local level. I have lots of "tetris" geometry playing out at every level in my game, deploying various patterns and variations on those patterns at each point, with a focus on land use efficiency, "vanilla" economic gameplay, and urban variety.

The mysterious powers of the SimCity 4 Bus Stop Most SimCity 4 players have no idea, that the humble vanilla Maxis Bus Stop (Ctrl+Shift+R) has super powers. A big part of the problem is the incongruous name, "Bus Stop", and it's unassuming appearance. Think of telephone booths and Harry Potter; this is not what it appears to be! When you hear the words "bus stop", something like this probably springs to mind. A Maxis vanilla bus stop sort of looks like that, cosmetically, but what it does in the game, is more like a small suburban bus interchange, NOT a bus stop. When you start thinking like that, you don't begrudge the 1x1 plop size quite as much! Think about it: Hundreds of commuters, or with the NAM, efficient handling of up to 17,000 commuters! Direct bus routes to literally every other bus interchange on the map, or even intercity! Constant traffic, with your bus arriving the minute that you do. Bus vehicle entry, and exit, on all four sides of the 1x1 transit-enabled lot. Magically accelerated bus loading and off-loading. Immediate transfer to a shuttle bus for bus lanes. In fact, in SimCity 4, all mass transit connections occur within moments, like something out of The Twilight Zone. No waiting. Oh, how I wish it were that way in real-life. Every bus you need arrives at the very moment you hop off the last bus! The humble Bus Stop is even a good source of city revenue, with well placed bus stop locations making much more money in fares, than they cost to maintain. Incidentally, it works that way in real-life, too. City bus services are often profitable businesses, while subways typically run at a loss. There is a myth going around that SimCity 4 Bus Stops are like taxi stands, and sorry, I'll have to squash that one. SimCity 4 Bus Stops will only take sims to another Bus Stop, or to a road Neighbour Connection, but certainly not to any destination on the map. That way, it's more like a Greyhound bus terminus, rather than a city bus stop. Do make sure that you place Bus Stops near both their home and their work, and anywhere else you need a mass transit interchange. They also don't allow pedestrian access to adjoining RCI zones, which is really counter-intuitive. They only allow pedestrian access to street, road, avenue or Pedmall, and from there pedestrians enter and exit the RCI zones, or other transit stations. Incidentally, the buses don't drive on board the car ferries, either! As it is, the humble Maxis vanilla Bus Stop is probably one of the most underrated, and overpowered, pieces in the game. It even has a high density YIMBY effect, encouraging development of high rise residential blocks, and commercial towers, of any wealth level. I have to admit, subway stations have an even bigger high density YIMBY effect, but those things are darned expensive! That's just the start. When you place a bus stop next to a Maxis Ground Level Highway (L0 MHW), it turns into one of these: ... a 1x1 ploppable highway bus access without even having a highway interchange anywhere in sight, and there's street bus access on the other side! Bus stops are literally a highway transition piece, converting highway bus users to pedestrians if there is pedestrian street access on the other side, or facilitating change of bus for other routes adjacent to the same bus stop. If you plop it next to an Elevated Highway (L2 MHW), you get stairs and lift access, too, along with a street level bus bay at the bottom! Here's one last magical transformation. If you plop the bus stop above or beside the entrance to a Maxis vanilla road tunnel, or highway tunnel, you get this, as a bonus, in addition to all the surface level infrastructure. Your sims will literally catch a surface level bus, get off at the bus stop, ride the escalator or take the stairs down to the tunnel, and catch another bus through the tunnel, or vice versa! The sims are not, however, under any circumstances, allowed to walk amongst the traffic along the road tunnel! So, I hope that I've transformed your view on the humble Maxis vanilla Bus Stop. It really is, oh so much more than it seems!

Absolutely, the property developers of SC4 will both subdivide and amalgamate lots, but there are a few conditions: The amalgamated lot must be square or rectangular, and deliver a lot size suitable to your installed growables, demand, and growth stage. e.g. A 4x3 might amalgamate at a slightly earlier growth stage than a 3x3, particularly for high density residential R$$ and R$$$. The lots being amalgamated must have the same density zoning. If you have Cori's No Kickout mod installed, the lots being amalgamated must have the same wealth level. I actually use zone density striping to control how amalgamation can occur. Set and forget. The zone striping helps ensure that later amalgamations occur more neatly, less chance of leaving an odd little row house amongst the residential high rises, or a lost little shop among the office blocks. Here's another approach I take to avoid subdivision, a 3x3 or 4x3 lot is readily subdivided, but a 3x4 lot cannot be subdivided in the vanilla game. On the downside, if your demand and growth stage doesn't allow for many 3x4 lots, they may just sit empty for a long time.

I just came across this great video, that I thought our good Mayors on this thread might appreciate. It covers village placement, agriculture, and dwelling placement with respect to hydrology, biomes, resources, and risk. 5 Best (and Worst) Places to Build a Home or Village | Andrew Millison (10½ minutes)

I enjoy doing faux eyecandy connections, too, for blending city borders, in places where I don't want the sims to crowd onto my back-roads. Here's a sample of that, on one of my favourite ST threads, this one was my first mosaic across city borders: https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/14932-show-us-your-mosaics/?page=10&tab=comments#comment-1725868

Thank you! I do enjoy making interesting networks, as well as the puzzles of solving tight spaces. Don't even know what that is or when to use it. If you haven't seen this MGB NAM video yet, this is perhaps the best video to see the explosive power of the Bulldozer, as well as the gentle snip of the Disconnector. The Bulldozer impacts adjacent network pieces, sometimes explosively, whereas the Disconnector doesn't.disturb the adjacent pieces of network at all. Working with trams (GLR) and dual networking, it's essential to learn the times to use the Bulldozer, and the times to use the Disconnector. The whole video is an eyeopener, though it's not actually about trams, but it demonstrates these features well. Cars, pedestrians, trucks and trams all intermingle happily. No accidents, though looking at the automata, I'm rather sure there should be accidents! Yes, some sims simply prefer to drive. With a tram line in place, more sims will catch the tram than would have caught the bus, and attractive mass transit is a BIG issue for R$ sims. By comparison to the real world, you can think of the trams having right of way on intersections, making them faster and smoother than buses, and will run fast even if the avenue is congested with car traffic.

@TheMurderousCricket, here's a snapshot of my latest Tram Avenue, in my Lindenwood small city tile, in East New York. Here's the features in order from top to bottom: Highway bus stop with subway. 2x3 Subway to Tram-Avenue transition, transit lot. Tram-Avenue with side streets primarily for pedestrian access and street-facing zoning. 2x2 Tram-Avenue station, transit lot, diagonally adjacent to Passenger Ferry. Tram-Avenue x Tram-in-Road intersection. Tram-Avenue x OWR-2 intersections to link up the highway. Tram-Avenue x Tram-in-Road intersection. Tram-Avenue diagonal Note that the Neighbour Connections connects the avenue, but not the tram. Passengers have to swap to bus to journey across the Neighbour Connection. Tram-Avenue x Tram-on-Street intersection, to collect commuters from high density R$ towers. Lastly, 2x2 Tram-Avenue station diagonally adjacent two 1x1 viaduct rail overhanging station plops. It's a tight layout, for which I needed the NAM Disconnector tool on several occasions. This stretch of Tram-Avenue provides customers for the commerial lots, as well as connectivity between highway bus, passenger ferry, and heavy rail. All tram stations have a built-in bus stop as well, which is rather convenient.

Sims of all wealth levels absolutely love catching a tram to work. I haven't got to the bottom of all the reasons why, given other types of mass transit have desirable properties, too. Yes, your diagnosis is right, and unemployed sims pay no taxes. Given your R$ sims' "no job" zot is flicking on and off, replacing bus with tram will probably do the trick. The other option is to rezone so that R$ is closer to the industrial zone. R$ sims actually seem to like living right next door to manufacturing, and will tolerate some proximity to dirty industry, too, provided you clean up the water pollution. Dual networking tram networks are outrageously OP, but they are also outrageously difficult to work with. You might want to spend some time playing with Tram-Avenue pieces in your sandbox, before building in your city. Be sure to post back if you get stuck with anything. They are finicky to work with, but there's nearly always a good solution. Warning: Tram Avenue diagonal pieces are much fatter than Maxis Avenue diagonals. Additional Warning: You can't zone directly onto any dual networking Tram pieces once they are plopped. To rezone, you have to destroy the Tram pieces, plonk OWR-2 (or AVE-4, or Pedmalls) in it's place, zone to face the OWR-2, then destroy the OWR-2, then put the Tram pieces back again. Final Warning: There's no fire hydrants on the dual network tram pieces. If you call a fire crew to a tram piece, they will throw a tantrum rather than put out the fire. Fortunately, the Fire Dispatch tool allows you to point directly at a nearby street or highway, so you get to choose where the fire crew parks the fire engine.

Ciao lucafedeli, you'll need to first turn on the "Legalize Gambling" in the green Monthly Income section of the Ordinances window.

@CorinaMarie is full of great insights about farming. Here's her farming inspiration thread. https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/758654-acocfpalbn-its-farm-stuff/?tab=comments#comment-1721562 .. and here's a couple of the sweetest farming mods Cori ever made. They're content blocker mods, I think. They block the ugly Maxis farms, so that you only get the peaceful, idyllic, beautiful farms. https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/31827-coris-friendly-pedrianas-plants-killer/?tab=comments No Dirt Farms: https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/759969-how-do-you-define-a-developed-agriculture/?do=findComment&comment=1741606

I did used to earn every requirement for every reward and business deal. https://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:How_to_get_Maxis_Rewards#NIMBY_Rewards The event that set me free was around the 10th time I deliberately brought my city to the brink of insolvency, just to get the Army Base and/or Federal Prison, then I saw the light. Ctrl+X you don't deserve it Of course I deserve it! I'd initially thought that cheat code was a cheat. It's not a cheat, it just opens up the real game. To be fair, sometimes I still like to earn my rewards, and only use Ctrl+X you don't deserve it to reserve tile real estate for them ahead of time.

There's some weird things about neighbour connections. Unlike other roads and highways, sims don't see neighbour connections as routes, they see neighbour connections as destinations. Given two cities, A for Atlanta, and B for Brookhaven, all neighbour connections between the two cities are considered equal. All neighbour connections between the two cities represents a destination for: The exact same number of jobs The exact same types of jobs Because all of the neighbour connections between Atlanta and Brookhaven are equivalent, sims who want those jobs will take the closest neighbour connection, not the best neighbour connection. This can easily result in sims heading down a highway toward a neighbour connection, then taking a highway exit before they get there, to snake through back roads to a very congested road that just happens to be their closest neighbour connection to Atlanta. Sims take the closest neighbour connection, not the fastest neighbour connection, and certainly not the best neighbour connection.