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Showing results for tags 'difficulty'.
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I've been playing SimCity 4 for a long time, and at this point, I already know how to build a self-sustaining city. Not exactly perfect, but enough to have good services and good budget as well. Now, it is a game, obviously, so I don't expect nor want it to be as hard as manging a city in real life! I just think it got a little too easy, even if taking that into consideration. The problem, for me, is clear: I've developed what is pretty much a fool-proof way of building a city, which will guarantee you'll get a sustainable metropolis in time, even in difficulty settings. I would like to know tips to make the game more challenging for me; if possible, tips that somewhat simulate real-life challenges for managing cities. It could be tips from different natures: 1- Already Existing Mods: maybe there are mods which increase the cost of something, or make it harder for you to do a certain task. Last time, I asked if it was possible to create a mod where it gets waay costlier to bulldoze RCI buildings, forcing you to adapt more to this situation. It is impractical to make such a mod, but the motivation is the same: taking away some of the liberties you have as a mayor to force you to adapt. 2- Suggest Custom Modifications: I have ILives Reader, I could try to modify myself the game files in order to do this. Maybe I could increase the negative impact taxes have on the mayor's popularity? As a side note, is it possible to add conditional checks to buildings which doesn't orginally have? By conditional checks, I mean things like requiring a certain mayor rating for Solar Plants, for example; could I add custom checks such as these for buildings which doesn't have them originally, such as Wind Power Plants, subways, recycling centers... in a way that would make the city development more challenging and possibly more realistic? 3- Gameplay Challenges: This here involves no change to the game files, only on the way how I play the game. Maybe I could set rules such as "I will only build a highway when I achieve a certain population", or "I won't set taxes higher than this value". In the end, I'm really looking for suggestions here about how to make the game feels more challenging and somewhat realistic when it comes to manage a city. Any tip is welcomed P.S. This mod follows the idea I'm looking for here. Any other tips to make the game harder and more realistic in termos of administration?
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Once you get to know SimCity 4, it gets easy to build a city. A little too easy sometimes, so I would like to add two little mechanics in order to increase the difficulty a little, and would like to know if they are possible to achieve with mods. CORRUPTION In Civilization, there's a little mechanic called "corruption" which basically ammount to take a portio of your proffit and throw it away. Could something like that work in SC4? The idea would basically be a constant extra rate of expenses in the budget, proportional to your current income rate. For example, suppose you should have an income of 500 simoleons this month; however, due to a corruption rate of 50%, an extra 250 simoleons would be added to your expense, in order to simulate this portion of your income being wasted away due to corruption (this being added, naturally, to the other usual expenses of services, maitenaince, etc.). In order to make this system a little more flexible, maybe we could control the rate of corruption by the plopping of certain buildings, in case you want to worldbuild your city passing trough different periods of corruption. A simpler way to view this idea? Imagine a bizarro money-tree mod, but instead of giving you a fixed amount of money, it gives you a proportional amount of expenses. Given the existence of the money tree mod, the basic principles of this idea seems doable, but my question is if this proportionality can be used; can I make the cost fluctuate with the fluctuations of your income, or does it need to be always a fixed amount and that's it? BULLDOZING COSTS Life as a SimCity mayor can be easy sometimes: you want to build a highway trough this poor neighborhood? Do it, you can bulldoze all of these people's homes for chickenfeed; hell, it doesn't seem that expensive even if you're bulldozing the wealthiest and talles of office towers! Is there a way to increase these costs generally? If I'm not mkstaken, I guess that each RCI building has an specific cost in its data, but is that the only way to tackle this? By going building by building and doing it manually? Or is there a more "global" way of telling the code to increase the costs for the whole catalogue of RCI buildings at once?
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I make my cities using "easy" mode, and I generally use 2 different "strategies." Sometimes I use money cheats such as the "moolah" cheat or the infinite money park, and in that instance I can budget my schools and other city services to 100% without any problem. I also usually set my taxes to 0% when using a money cheat as well, since I don't need taxes to make money. It also doesn't make much difference how "fast" I develop my cities either. I can also put in public transit without worrying about how much it costs either, and can thus experiment with various types of public transport, though so far the only type of public transportation I have experimented with is buses and subways. Subways seem to get used more, but buses seem to be the better money maker. Perhaps if I were a bit more "strategic" in where I place subway lines and stations, the subway would make money as well. When I don't use money cheats and have getting a city that is profitable as my goal, that is usually not all that difficult to do either. I use as a "neighborhood design" a design I described in a post called "New neighborhood design", though I have changed it a bit since that original post. The difference is that I cannot just set the city services, especially the schools and hospitals, to 100%, but what I do is build a "neighborhood unit," let it run for a short time, then fine tune the funding levels so that the student capacity (or patient capacity in the case of hospitals/clinics) is just barely above the number of students/patients served (or at least as close as I can get with the sliders), then increase it in the same manner when the school/hospital/clinic goes on strike. I generally make a "neighborhood unit," fine tune the funding, and at this point I usually am making money, and I just let it run until I have gotten back up to $500,000, then I make another neighborhood unit. If it is not making money, I get the deals such as the military base and the federal prison when I get down to $0 in the treasuury and put them up near the power plant, and the extra money from these two things usually get me over "the hump" to a money making city. I am considering trying either the hard or medium setting , but was wondering what the best strategy is. I think I would have to cut back on city services, especially education. Usually I put all the educational facilities, high school, elementary school, branch library, museum and community college (at least in the first neigborhood unit that I build). I think that if I used the hard or medium settings, I should leave out the library, the museum, and the community college, at least at first. Also I think when I build a "neighborhood unit" I should put in the industrial and commercial zoning first and let it run for a while before putting in the residential. I have done a little experimenting, and sometimes the city makes money with just this, and it seems to be somewhat correlated with whether it is the first "neighborhood unit" in a region or if several "neighborhood units" or even cities have been developed, and there is a "regionwide" demand that has been established. Also, I have done some experimenting, and the only city service that is needed for zones that are just commercial/industrial is fire protection (schools, hospitals, etc. are not needed). What I was wondering is if when I get around to putting in the residential, if I should first make the residential low or medium density so as to keep the cost of services to a minimum, then increase it to either medium or high density depending on what the RCI chart says. Brian Christiansen
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Version 1.0
495 Downloads
Extreme Difficulty Mod Version 1.0! You think SimCity 4 was hard enough before, well think again! This mod is guaranteed to make your SimCity 4 experience far more difficult than ever before! This mod makes nearly everything more expensive. Not only to plop but their monthly costs! However some buildings are more effective as well. Do you like a good challenge? Then this mod is for you! Features: - Schools, Hospitals, Police and Fire Stations are far more expensive to plop and maintain but their range and capacities have been increased (by about 1.5 times) and they are a bit more effective. - Airports, Seaports, and all transportation buildings are far more expensive than before - Bulldoze costs of schools and hospitals is much higher than their plop costs because paperwork and petitions now! - Parks are more expensive but are more effective too - Most landmarks are now 10x more expensive but more 1.5-2.0x more effective - Roads have had their capacities increased slightly and cost more per tile a month! - Power plants are much more expensive to build/maintain but also produce more power. Same with water towers/pumps - "Legalize Gambling" ordinance income has been increased to $1000 from $100 a month, but crime is now increased to 40% from 20%. - Most other ordinances are also more effective but also cost more now. - You will start at "0" simoleons on hard mode instead of $100,000. - Max loan has been increased $200,000 to $500,000 - Loans now cost 5% to pay back instead of 8.5% - Game over limit has been decreased from -$100,000 to -$500,000 Before you get told to "Run for Senator." - Fires spread faster and are more frequent! - May cause minor frustration I highly recommend creating a new plugins folder for this (moving your current folder or naming it "Plugins.old") and starting a new city/region. This mod does work with NAM, just move (but don't delete) the traffic simulator controller file in the Network Add-on Mod Folder. Tips: - Patience. Lots of it. You're gonna need it. - Get a fire station to cover your industrial area as soon as possible. Fires are quite annoying! - Take out a reasonably-sized loan at the beginning of a game on "Hard Mode" since you start with no simoleons! - Make sure you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN where you place your civic buildings, ESPECIALLY Schools and Hospitals! They are extremely expensive to demolish now and demolishing one could take you straight to game over. - Make use of neighboring cities. Trust me. - Try to build the biggest, most prosperous city you can, using only this mod (and NAM), and no cheats! I challenge everyone here! - You may use cosmetic mods for this challenge such as Terrain Mods, Tree Mods, etc. But no CAM, SPAM, JAM, LAM or Shazaam (NAM is allowed since it's essential.) - Good luck. You're gonna need it. -
Version 1.2
1,303 Downloads
La Gomera is one of Spain's Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. In area, it is the second-smallest of the seven main islands of this group. It belongs to the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Its capital is San Sebastián de La Gomera, where the headquarters of the Cabildo are located. This map is probably even more challenging than my Jan Mayen map. Aside from the railroad connection, which I have no idea how you'll use, this map's resources are extremely difficult to access. The different zones on this map are modeled semi-realistically, very similar to that of the real La Gomera. The rainforests are better left undisturbed for even more challenge, and me being the ultimate bastard of the universe, I placed oil and ore there, as-well as fertile land, which is available from the start. If you really want the oil, you have to butcher the rainforests. If you really want to be renewable, you have to butcher the rainforest too. If you want to be Greenpeace, you have a huge problem to overcome. The rolling hills and mountains are incredibly different to go by. If the Spanish colonized this place, you can too. NOTE: Los Organos is not present here. Sorry. NOTE2: be careful about where you build! I got flooded in a lot of places. -
UDI Missions v.s. Difficulty We all know that an 'Easy' difficulty city will not be offered some UDI missions. For example, when I used to play only 'easy' difficulty cities, I never saw an ice cream truck mission for placing 2 elementary schools, but I always do on medium difficulty cities. But will UDI missions reserved for Medium also be offered on Hard? And will the ones that work on Easy also work on Medium and Hard cities? Or are we always limited to exactly the UDI mission set per each difficulty city level? If we are limited in that way, then since I play UDI missions a lot, I may have to start choosing the city difficulty based upon which rewards I will want to unlock via UDI. It would be helpful to know that always starting a Hard city would for sure unlock all UDI missions, but I suppose thats the question here for the SC4 GURUs, isnt it? Thanks! (Hmmmm.... perhaps this could be my next Mod [or someone's] - A Mod that allows all missions to be offered when the requirements are met, regardless of which difficulty city you are building.)
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Version 1.0
991 Downloads
Great, another money mod, but this one is different. Instead of normally starting of with 100k on hard mode you start off with nothing, forcing you to take out a loan or spam the 'weaknesspays' cheat (but where's the fun that?). Just start a new city, pick hard, and you'll start off §0. Nothing else has been changed about hard mode other than the starting funds. Installation: -Just drop the .DAT file into the Plugins folder like you've always done before. Uninstallation: -Delete or move the .DAT file outside of the Plugins folder.- 30 Comments
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