MrFingers

bwatterwud you are using it the wrong way. take the digging lot and drag a road all the way through it, this will give you one perfectly level square at the bottom. you can work from there. it sounds like you are trying to use the single road trick from a non-level start. but actually i was looking at the terrain around your ditch anyway.

bwatterud, you need to master the single road tool as a method of flattening ground.

thats completely subjective

ok so here's a brief illustrated start. This is the map, I have another already partially developed city to the south. I will ignore this when I conceptualise the city. normally that island would be an attractive place for my start, but it is too small for my tastes so i will start next to it on the river bank and use the island later for something like wealthy housing etc. here all i did was extend a rail line from the border up (to gain perspective) and set a center. im not going to lie, i counted how many squares are in that center (6x8) so i could ensure it would fit large buildings perfectly, but it's honestly not necessary to do that. i only did it because im still not comfortable with totally letting go. here i pulled the rail line across and put a station on the center. I find rail lines are very influential to development in the real world, and i put them down early so i can replicate that. rail is also by far the best transport (with buses). notice my road leads to nowhere, it is absolutely essential you do not let a minor road short cut a major one, that is a guaranteed problem in this game. and here i have continued in the same fashion. notice im not afraid of diagonal avenues. notice i am not letting my roads short cut my avenues. notice the plenty of gaps i have left, i will use them later for all manner of things (civics, parks, etc) also notice how my rail line as begun to play a role in forming my city. i hope some of that helps. remember all of this is very personal. it might be good to copy someone to start with, but you will quickly develop your own techniques.

actually cubsfan you can be alot more imaginative than that... try just a rail station, or an irregular shape, or a couple large parks/plazas, etc. don't be afraid of diagonal avenues, those zigzag edges are actually very useful for things like parks, police kiosks, bus stops, subways etc, and they are excellent for directing traffic because sim pathfinding uses the shortest path and that can be ambiguous with right angles, but a diagonal creates a definitive shortest route. i generally dont make roads or streets diagonal, but thats just me. sim city is very personal and very creative. i suggest just planning your center and then letting it flow from there. patience is essential also important to remember anything you build can be deleted, so what you do at the start is not going to bound you. but it should help you find direction. I will post a few pictures i think, just give me a bit.

I find i have to stop myself from planning and just start laying things down, otherwise i have a 10k pop city with the transport system for a 1 million one. start with the central place (there are many ways to have a town center, be creative) and then start building from there. most things in the game can be modelled from real life.

you honestly do not know how the government's involvement has slowed the entire process down? I suggest going to do some research on it, I'm not doing it for you. You are only 13 and an american so you could be excused for thinking that.

issue I have is that it doesn't take 1/10th of a century for a building to go up, and that's what reality is going to be. You can try to excuse it as many ways as you want, but ultimately it is the government's involvement which is screwing everything up. If you were ontop of the facts you would know that. clearly because I claim to be speaking for new yorkers I annoy you, but I am not making decisions for them, I read. a lot. I spend almost 90 minutes each day reading current events, and a good third of that is about new york. I like informing myself, and as a result I feel I can make good judgements about overall sentiments. im sorry that annoys you.

thats not five years. your final point is extremely debatable and new yorkers are known for battling through bad times. same with londoners actually.

Well yes, work has actually been done. But those 5 years can be overwhelming accounted for by arguments between silverstein, the PA, the city gov, the NJ state gov and the NY state gov. Any new yorker will tell you that every week there is the same story of indecision and interference.

apparently they are just beginning now and deadlines have been set. thats 5 years of quibbling.

That maybe, but technology and materials have also facilitated better building methods, tools, equipment and materials - without a doubt. That should more than make up for any complexity. The fact is, governments are monuments of waste.

that should not be a factor.

Maybe if America wasn't supplying 20% of the UN's budget or wasn't so powerful, then we wouldn't have as much influence. Those weren't the reasons NYC has been voted for most often. interesting to see you are thinking simple and superficially though.

Inappropriate remark - MM

dude are u kidding me, they've got the whole NJ and NY government involved plus the port authority. its a mess.

i was under the impression london's bed rock was clay and therefore not firm enough to support the foundations of a world ranking sized skyscraper.

tonkso it's really the difference between government involvement or not. everything they touch they ruin. everything.

yeah especially considering the empire state building was built in something like a year.... in 1930s!!!

I hate to dig, but seriously this guy should write prose for a living. arterial networks work if you do it properly. often they don't because plots of land are developed by a company which completely disregards any relation to the world around it.

you should really do the ingame tutorials

YES, there is a lot which does EL to GLR.

That is seriously hideous! haha Yale's art and architecture building; ironic or what?

1. Within 3 months. All you need to provide sims at the start is power and roads. just keep it like that and build more and more until your profit is high enough to start adding some services. 2. if you keep creating jobs and more residential, your population will increase. try to give them the jobs they want, look at the detailed RCI chart. 3. thats your choice. 4. vacant industrial buildings will tell you what went wrong if you query them. there are alot of mods etc that are good to download. I suggest exploring the game a bit more first and then taking a look at the massive amounts of great files there are on this site. There is one patch for you if you are a backward windows person.

Please stay on topic - MM