soldyne

I have been having trouble posting and logging in recently with Simtropolis. it seems that after every 10 minuets or so the site makes me log in again. This is particularly frustrating when it makes me log in when I am trying to submit a post (either a new topic or a reply). sometimes it will tell me that I dont have permissions to post (when I am logged in) and other times it will just erase my post, and everyonce in a while it will clear my text but post a blank message (making it look like I double posted). Until recently I have been logged into Simtropolis continuously (I have cable internet and it is always connected) but just in the last few days it keeps making me re-log in. it is very frustrating. I have not done anything to my internet or cookie settings (that I am aware of). Is anyone else having this problem or does anyone have any ideas about why this is happening?

very cool pics. I love your use of the canals. I had no idea that Troy had rail road technology. very informative! lol

<edit> sorry for the long post, I had a lot to say...</edit> These are very intelligent questions. lets see how do at answering them... it is not necessary to start every city with farmland. R$ and to a lesser degree R$$ with low education not only demand agriculture but also demand Dirty Industrial. most of the time when I start some random city I zone for low density res and High density Industrial. I have never bothered with other densities for industrial and I usually only use farm land for eye candy purposes. perhaps it would be better to think of demand as not what your sims are asking for but more like what your sims are willing to live with. just because demand is high for something does not make it needed. it is quite possible to build an entire region with no farms at all. You can even build entire cities that are nothing but commercial zones and dont need any industry or res at all, just so long as that city is connected to a res city you will be fine. as far as education is concerned every time a new building pops up the education is low. education can only be high within the limits of your educational buildings and only if that building has been there for a long time. for instance if you have an area with high EQ and then destroy all the res homes, the new homes that grow will all be low EQ. so yes your EQ rating will always be low to start. So the question then becomes do I always need to start with IA and ID when I make a new city? the answer (without getting too complex) is no. with the advent of region play your sims are capable of commuting to neighbor cities to find jobs. this means that the smart sims in one city will actually affect the demand for IM, IHT and Commercial jobs in neighboring cities. infact I have a region where one city has about 30k residence but has 40k comm jobs and 30k IHT jobs! the education in this city is fairly low (I am only using elementary schools and librarys) but the demand in this city is soaring due to the effect of the neighboring city (with has an average EQ of 200 and 500k residence all looking for high paying jobs). as far as knowing when to expand it really all depends on your play style. I can tell you that I play regionally right from the start. I always have my ID and IM in a neighboring city and keep my main city res and comm only, forcing the population to commute to the neighbor for the industrial work. When my biggest city reached about 300k, it began to stall in its growth, even with high demand. so I build a small suburb and the main city exploded with growth to about 500k. so I guess one point of advice is that when you city seems to have stalled and you cant seem to do anything in the city to fix it, make a neighbor! If you dont like building farms then dont. if you like it then keep it up. it is not a necessity. I would say that the first hurdle in building a large thriving city/region is education. It takes a while for the EQ rating to rise but once it does it is like a flood gate for CO$$, CO$$$, and IHT. after the EQ hurdle you have to worry about mass transit but that is a topic for another time. I also want to comment on your use of civic buildings. you can build and run your city as you see fit and no one will say that you are wrong (no one nice any way), but if you are concerned about balancing the budget there are some civic services which the sims can do without and it wont hurt things all that much. Schools obviously are the first to get put in due to the time it takes to make people smarter. Libraries are actually quite useful and if you change the funding locally you can get a lot of library coverage for a little amount (as little as 5 or 10 per library). Dont skimp on the libraries they help more than you might think. Museums are the same way; they can be funded localy for a small amount and each one affects the entire city so really you only need one (you need more if you want the major art museum award). The city college also affect the entire map, and for a city of 500k I only ever needed one college. I would do as you did and start with elementary and libraries. when the EQ graph seems to stabalize and you can afford it put in one museam, one city college, and some high schools and that should me enough. The next thing to go in is the hospital. health is important for many reasons which I wont go into right now. I use the large hospital as it has a larger radius and I think is more effective. The next thing I give my sims is water but only when my city has begun to expand out more. water is needed if you are going to attract R$$ and R$$$ citizens and if you want to have medium or high density. the next thing to add is fire coverage. Most people say to wait till you have your first fire then add the building. This is generally a good idea. I like to use the large fire station. the last thing to add is police. crime is very interesting in this game as it is directly affected by, guess what, education! the higher your average education the lower your crime rate will be. it is actually quite possible to get away with no police coverage at all in a city with high EQ. my city with 200 EQ and 500k res has an average of 5 crimes per year! The only time you really need to add police is when you have added everything else, your city is doing well and you need to raise land value to attract more sims. otherwise dont waste the money. most importantly though is local funding, keep your civic buildings under funded just enough to cover what is needed. no sense having a school which can handle 500 kids when there are only 100 attending. also note that ambulance and bus funding of 0 still gives a decent radius of coverage. experiment with 0 funding and see what you can work with. I hope all this made sense and if you need anything more let me know.

just to temper Bones reply with a little info, there are some BATers that do know and care about the files they upload on the STEX. pretty much anything from PEG, Simgoober, Dusktrooper, Gascooker, BSC, and to some extent NDEX (and few select others) are usually safe. as for the parking garage problem I hate to say it but you are going to have to start all over again with your downloads. clear out your plugins folder and start up the game. make a new quick city and make sure things are working ok. then, slowly, little by little re install all your plugins (you may have to redownload the .zips if you dont still have them) but this time try to keep your plugins folder organized by using subfolders. I like to organize by lot type and sub organize by creator. this way, if you have a problem with a particular lot or BAT you can find it really quick and delete it. trust me, 80 plugins is nothing. If you are like other people here on Simtropolis (myself included) you will end up with hundreds of plugins and organization is the only way to keep it all straight. I have over 1GB of plugins myself (I'm addicted to the STEX!) I know it sounds like a pain but you will thank us when it is done. good luck.

actually the number of jobs reported on the agriculture building is not the total number of jobs for the lot. farm jobs are determined per tile of farm zone! if you zone a large lot you will have more farm jobs than if you zone a small lot. instead of looking at the building query take a look at your jobs and population graph, that will tell you exactly (or nearly) how many farm jobs you have. Demand is actually determined by the number of low educated R$ and R$$ sims you have. if education rises or you get too many R$$$ you will have lower agricultural demand. If you want a farming community I would not put anything more than a single a elementary school in. I think what vidioman was trying to explain was farming desirability. farms want low traffic, streets, low pollution and very flat land. as far as taxes go and making a profit, dont expect really high numbers with a farm city. It is very possible to break even or make money with a farm city but you are better off trying it on a large or medium map. A small map might not have enough room to make enough farms or residence. I was able to just barely break even on a medium map with a large river in the middle of it. so it can be done. Why do people use farms? well like vidioman said, for realism. also there are some rewards like the farmers market and state fair which need farm population. it is also good to have farm communities if you are trying to make a really large region and want to have everything from skyscrappers to cattle ranches. since you say this is your first city and your goal is to balance the budget and get a large population I would say that a farm city would be more for a neighbor connection and not really for the main city. To get really large populations in SC4 you really need to learn and master the art of region play. in your main city you dont need farms at all just commercial, res and some industry. you can make a connecting city with all farms and one with all dirty industry to satisfy demand. I hope this was helpful and if you need any clarification just ask.

barnatom I really like how you used various tree types in your small forested areas. I always tend to fall back on PEGs seasonal trees (I'm addicted to them!). I also like all the little dirt trails inbetween the houses. very nice.

Yes, IrFanview is what I use. It is a great free tool and easy to download and learn. I highly recommend it. good start on the CJ though, a plan is usually a good sign of great things to come. I like how your plan nothing more than a simple drawing on a piece of paper. Some of the greatest ideas in history started as scribbles on a napkin! lol

you may not be strong with the blah-blah-blah but those pics sure are impressive. keep it up.

I like these kinds of CJ where you start with a fresh region and build a city from scratch. I like how you defined your building plan in the last post. should make for a fantastic region. keep posting.

nice pics. I especially like the region and transportation shots. nice night pic too. keep it up.

not a lot of replies??? I hope to have as many replies when I start my CJ. anyway... I like the rich neighborhoods, they are secluded, peaceful and pretty, just like rich areas should be. keep it going.

nice region shot. so this is a struggling city eh? sounds like it could have some interesting drama. slow updates are ok, it gives everyone else a change to make plenty of comments.

I vote E, these people need a place to shop you know!

I really like this. great start. it seems to be developing nicely. keep it up. It is also interesting to note that your first post to ST was to start a CJ; very ambitious!

yep gotta love them beaches. This city reminds me of when I lived in West Palm Beach, Florida. nice mix of low and high rise buildings too.

I hope you are not closing because of picture problems. I had some problems with people not liking my posted pictures and closed my CJ as well. I plan on restarting the CJ with a different pic approach very soon though. There are many ways to post pics on Simtropolis and you were doing fine. Your region looked fantastic and I enjoyed the pics of your capital. I would like to make a request for some zoomed out pics of the city so I (and others of course) can get a feel for how the whole city is shaping up. If you are closing the CJ due to city design problems then I wish you the best of luck in working those out and will wait for the rebirth of your new city!

sounds interesting, I'll keep my eye out for it. good luck with picture posting. Simtropolis has been having some troubles lately so make sure to copy your post before you submit or you may lose a lot of work.

well if a moderator is having problems then I dont feel so left out, although it is still annoying...

<edit> Nevermind then, just close this thread. sorry to have bothered you all....</edit>

thanks Cjah. actually all those city squares are full of trees. there are just so many and so tightly packed it looks likes plains. anyways, this thread already has so many off topic posts and a bad vibe I really dont want to continue my CJ in this thread. I would like to ask the moderators to kill this thread (close it) so it can die and maybe in a few days I'll try to start up a new one. I have been planning this CJ since September; downloading specific lots and mods, learning Ilives Reader to tweak lots the way I wanted them, hand terraforming my region, comming up with backstory, history and playing city after city to test new mass transit designs so I could have something new and interesting to show everyone. It actually took me a few weeks to build up enough courage to post my first CJ. seeing all these other CJs with such professional quality and amazing design I almost did not feel qualified to post here. I also wanted to make a good impression with the community as I have a good deal of respect for many of you guys and gals here on Simtropolis. then my first two replys were about how I screwed up the pic (which btw took me a few hours to figure out how to do in the first place cause mosaics are not easy). so that just shot my confidence all to heck. in fact, the very first post was purely negative. In all the CJs Ive read I have never seen anyone post a purely negative comment about a CJ. so of course that hurt. besides, I have seen mosaics in other threads (CJs and other forums) and I was so amazed and impressed. that is why I did it, because I thought it was cool, not because I was trying to break any rules... I would like to restart my CJ but I can't do it in this thread, and, I certainly can't do it feeling like this. I have to calm down for a few days before I can start again.

<edit> sorry about the double post, I have been having problems with simtropolis all night, it keeps logging me off when I try to submit posts </edit>

no its too late, this CJ is already off to a bad start. I'll have to wait for a week or two now and let this topic die. and maybe I can build my confidence back up in the meantime. when someone with a presence of over 1000 posts says you've done wrong it kinda hurts...

that is a mosaic of two 800x600 images. sorry you dont like it....

Rhino120, your burbs are fantastic. that is the kind of look I am trying to achieve in my cities, thanks for posting.

thanks for the kind words pickled_pig. I have thought about diagonals before. I even used em in an earlier city once but I found I had trouble building on them so I stopped using them. also, I can never really get a diagonal to look good in my cities, it could just be that I am too hard on my own designs though. I will try to add some in and see what happens. chocolatemax285 I love the mosaic! I believe that you are using the dirt roads mod from the STEX to get the brick roads? I used to use that mod but for some reason the roads always looked mottled to me, I never got a continuous set of brick. so i just got rid of the mod. how do you get your streets so continuous?