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Showing results for tags 'planning'.
Found 31 results
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To plan my city in SimCity 4, I've always relied on the RCI demand chart and the in-game advisors. That's how I played years ago because that's what I had. Recently I started using the Census Repository Facility mod. It provides way more detailed information, actually too much for my current understanding of the game. So I've tried taking a screenshot of the reports, feeding it to ChatGPT and asking it to analyze them. The results have been very useful. For example, my RCI chart shows demand for commercial and residential, and the advisor keep telling me that Sims are looking for more office space. My first instinct would have been to zone more commercial and residential. But the census data shows there are actually no workers available, no vacant houses and a huge demand for more residents. Building more commercial would probably just lead to abandoned buildings because there isn't enough workforce to support them. ChatGPT has advised me to increase my population by about one third so the workforce catches up. Only then does it make sense to add more commercial or industrial zones. Also the existing C & I zones will develop further as my population grows, so I could easily increase the existing population by 50% without needing any additional commercial zones. I could probably figure this out myself, but the amount of information in the Census Repository is well beyond my current understanding of the game's internal mechanics. Having an AI interpret the data feels like having a much smarter city advisor than the built-in ones. After all, I'm the mayor. I'm too busy cutting ribbons and drawing avenues to crunch numbers. I need to delegate those mundane tasks to my consultants. Is anyone else using AI this way? Does anyone have other suggestions?
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In the past, I used to add water to my cities as soon as I received the popup prompting me to, usually around 15k residents. Because the game told me I should, I figured that doing so immediately was in my best interest. However, lately I've been playing differently. Instead of adding water early on in my city's development, I purposefully delay adding it until I build out my entire city at low density development, then I add water when I'm ready to add higher density. I've noticed that my cities seem to grow better when played this way. Once I add water and higher density, I have a harder time with growing my city outward to fill the entire city tile, as the game seems to hit a wall at a certain point. But with this purposeful delay, I feel that I can control their development better, making the city feel more realistic. So I'm curious, do you have a particular strategy to adding water to your city? Do you wait until you hit a particular milestone, or do you add it from the beginning? Have you noticed any particular benefits or drawbacks to your strategy?
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On reliably laying roads and infrastructure from an external image
Francis90b posted a topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
G'day, I've been thinkering with the idea of developing a whole region by laying down just the transportation infrastructure, without building an actual city, similar to how it's done in some "roadgeekery" CJs. For that purpose, I've been tracing every road I intend to lay inside the game on a region overview I have gotten from Terraformer - please see first image. There are non-orthogonal or winding stretches of road, and for those I took note of the footprint of the puzzle pieces I might need to recreate them, and checked that the combinations I need would be doable in game without modification. Many more roads will follow, inclusing some rather winding ones - the second image kind of gives an idea of some I would like to incorporate in the road grid. That's doable too, just by doing what I've been doing. I'm now concerned with finding a way to translate all of that planning into the game, individual city tile after individual city tile, following an efficient and reliable method. In Cities skylines that is definitely possible - an external image is overlaid on the terrain map, and roads can be efficiently and accurately plotted from there. Alas, this is not as straightforward in SimCity4. Common sense has it that I should take careful note of the position of every interection and every non-orthogonal segment, and work methodically from there - which is what I intend to do. However, I understand that this method alone might not necessarily be the most efficient, and might not grant sufficient reliability. Sure, in some cases erring 1-2 tiles might not represent an issue, but in general it would be far better if I can make the roads I plotted on the overwiew align as intended. I'm looking forward to more insight from someone who might have found themselves in a similar situation. Thanks in advance. PS: The map is an excerpt from Drunkapple's /Dobdriver's beautiful "Minneapolis" map, with further edits. I might attach it upon request, if it is possible.- 54 Replies
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Batman: I can't do it... I can't stop them... Alfred: No, you can't... not on your own. But it's high time you realize you're a man, not an island. And a man's strength comes not from just brawn and intelligence... but also from his allies. — Batman: Arkham Origins Brothers and sisters, my loyal friends and allies, I need to make an honest confess to you. I CAN'T DO IT BY MYSELF! As some of you might know, I've been working on a town for my Welcome to Fairview CJ since January I think. The aim is to build a very detailed solarpunk city, an green city of the future where bears coexist with robots and eagles share the same sky with ion-engine drones. The problem is that I have some gaps that I haven't filled yet because I don't know what to do with them. I want to fill them with something cool, something detailed, something ecofriendly and futuristic, as if they're parts of a professional architectural maquette. I've raised the bar and I've been trying to push my skills to a new level to build the town and fill those gaps, but no matter how much time I've been spending on thinking what to do, I just can't come up with something awesome. I can't do it, but I refuse to give up and just let it go or fill those gaps with rushed job and careless stuff. I've hit a wall and I need to drill it. So I'm coming to you, to my allies and honorable battle brothers and sisters, to ask you for your help. Here are the gaps I need to fill: To help you with your decisions, I marked the surrounding structures with the corresponding colors. Green for homes, blue for goods and services centers, yellow for factories and laboratories, and orange for mayor civic facilities. The gaps are right now filled with railroad tiles to mark them and flat the area into small terraces, and as you can see there is a strong demand for more homes. I want to connect some of those gaps with paths and walkways to encourage walking and bicycling and fill as many of them with grown-able homes to satisfy the demand as much as possible, but any idea will still be welcomed. It is time to make the call. The call for heroes!
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Hello, The Maxis way to embrace region play is to build a city then build another cities that connected to the first city using the neighbor connection. But, the experts here says to preplan the entire region with networks, zoning, and utilities. The answer is, is preplanning a region a good idea? Also, is there a better version of Regional Budget Mod? I mean, it should support regional reoccuring payment, better data saving (the previous one is using the city name as the storage so if there are 2 cities with the same name, it won't work well), etc.
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The Kingdom readies itself to go sky-high once again!
Lucario Boricua posted a City Journal entry in Kingdom of Rota
Queen Ilene: We are excited to announce seven proposals for the siting and configuration of our upcoming International Airport! These seek to optimize the airport's functionality with balancing both positive and negative side effects of its operation. As part of this process, we would like some input from citizens, local government and air transport professionals. Jenny Salisbury: We are very eager for your feedback! We are finally moving forward with this project due to the Kingdom's recent attainment of its first million inhabitants! Below are some considerations for this decision. The Royal Port Corporation summarizes them below: METEOROLOGY: Prevailing winds are of monsoon type, arriving from the south and southeast during the summer half of the year, and from the north and northwest during the winter half of the year. Winds occasionally shift to a more east-west alignment, but only rarely take a full east-west alignment Near the airport site we have Lake White, which routinely gets blanketed in fog in spring, autumn, and in the early mornings in general. URBAN AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT: The city of Zamacentia is located relatively far away from the main conurbation of the Kindom, which roughly spans from Zacien in the southwest, all the way to Obstragon and Soblun to the northeast. All of the conurbation is linked by high-speed rail, while Zamacentia does not have this benefit. The city of Brandt is the closest settlement for options A, C, D, E and F, residents might show worries of accelerated deterioration of its rich historic architecture, along with complaints about noise, air and water pollution. The city, at the same time, serves as the current western terminus of the Rota Shinkansen high speed rail line. SITE TOPOGRAPHY: Sites closer to the south (adjacent to Zacien and Brandt) are constrained east-west by Lake White, and there are dangerous cliffs belonging to the Alba River Canyon, which can complicate landing approaches arriving from the south. Sites to the north are more constrained by the mountains forming the northern boundary of the Kingdom, while the adjacent hills to the east are taller than towards the south. AIRPORT OPERATION: Parallel runways allow for maximum throughput, of up to 60 aircraft maneuvers per hour (30 take-offs, 30 landings, simultaneously), but have the least flexibility for wind variation. Crossed runways (T, L or X configurations) have a more limited throughput for aircraft, as they do not allow simultaneous maneuvers and have a more limited ability to handle alternating maneuvers. They, however, facilitate holding maneuvers in the sky areas while also keeping more flexibility to adapt to the wind direction. Orthogonal runways (parallel or L) facilitate the construction of airport facilities, giving more room for terminals, parking, cargo, emergency services and airport-side development. ֍ KINGDOM OF ROTA ֎ INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT SITING PROPOSALS Site 1--North of Zacien, northwest of Alba-Brandt, southwest of Balfour: Mew: Nyah nee niei nya ñnniaaauuu-niou mew? (Translation: Should we place the airport here?) Site 2--South of Lake Bronze, southwest of Zamacentia, northwest of Balfour: Mew: ...ñah neiniu-nee nimiu? Niu-ñie niu niou! (Translation: ...or maybe here instead? Make sure to vote!) Option A: Option B: Option C: Option D: Option E: Option F: Option G: Queen Ilene: Please communicate with us and give feedback on which airport layout to use, or which one could be further adapted for an even better solution to the growing air travel demands of Rota. Don't forget to vote on the poll accompanying this update!- 6 Comments
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Does anyone watch the youtube channel City Beautiful. Its a channel that covers issues related to city planning. Check it out. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGc8ZVCsrR3dAuhvUbkbToQ Its one of my favourite channels.
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Hello. New member & first-time poster... I haven't played a city-building game since the original SimCity was all the rage. Ya, the original. So ya... A Long Time Ago. I'd like to try one that can start in the 19th century or early 20th, and have some sort of evolutionary aspect to it. Like moving through the industrial revolutions, through the WW eras, into the 50's & 60's & beyond, and that has era-appropriate homes, businesses & other buildings, transportation, etc. If such a thing exists, I'd hope that I can make the settings easy and the funding plentiful so I can essentially ignore the political and budgetary aspects, and basically concentrate on zoning, placing transportation and key buildings, and high-level planning, having an effect & large influence on the evolution of the city, but not micro-managing it. (No interest in wildly futuristic stuff, major disasters, paranormal activity.) Presiding over the city layout and how it evolves over time is of primary importance. Graphics are important, but they don't have to be the absolute cutting edge, so a somewhat older game could be in play... This all may be asking too much, but I'm wondering what is out there that might come closest, as a starting point. Note that while I've done some searching & investigating both here on Simtropolis and elsewhere, it's difficult to find specific answers (for instance, a few games can start in the some of the eras I'm looking for, but I can't find info on how they evolve and for how long, or if they're essentially just stuck in that era). And determining what - that was posted years ago - is still relevant. So that's why I'm posting here now Thanks in advance.
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From video game to day job: How 'SimCity' inspired a generation of city planners
Bastet69008 posted a topic in Architecture & Urban Planning
So this is another article about how the SimCity Series influenced a new generation of urban planners, architects and so on. What was the impact of SimCity, especially SC4 on your personal/ professional life? https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-SimCity-inspired-urban-planners-20190305-story.html -
video City Tips: How to make an attractive city
terragaroa posted a topic in Cities: Skylines General Discussion
Hello guys i just have done some research before start a new city and thought about share with you the best of what i found first thing is this vídeo, explaining How to make an attractive city, by the School of Life. this video shows 6 topics about how a city can be prettier : not be so chaotic or so ordered must have visible life must be compact must have easy orientation and some mistery must have a ordered scale must have local places to go [Click to see the video] take a look and post your opinion maybe i make some posts like this one, what do you think about it?- 1 Reply
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starting point 1. State of the Art
matias93 posted a City Journal entry in Ciudad del Lago in the making
This is the Ciudad del Lago metropolitan region. A legally sanctioned 24 kilometres side square, built on the estuaries of the rivers Calfú and Huillinco, and just north of the Loberías Sound, a medium-sized ocean inlet that marks the point where the continental rift meets the sea. Ciudad del Lago is the capital of the Republic of Santa Clara, a small island country just away from the coasts of South America; with a size comparable to Hainan and an overall geography that reminds the one of Mauritius, this nation of about 4 million people inhabits the only emerged part of the rift that divides the Santa Clara and Nazca plates, giving their land important natural riches but also an unparalleled exposition to the effects of natural disasters and climate change. As with other small countries in Latin America, Ciudad del Lago concentrates an important part of the country population: with about 2.5 million people on its metropolitan area, about 60% of the santaclareños it's also a laguino. As a consequence of this, and of its privilegied location as a safe port along the maritime routes of the Pacific Ocean, Ciudad del Lago is the main centre of the industry and finance on the country. Some extractive industries are also located on the city sorroundings, more noticeably the Piedra Roja copper mine, which compensates its poor concentrations of the metal on its rocks with an unsurpassable emplacement, just a few kilometres away from the nearest seaport. This port, located on the basin of an old endorheic lagoon, has served the city since colonial times and is now adapted to recieve up to panamax-sized ships; nevertheless, its most glorious days, when the Panama strait wasn't built yet and it controlled almost half the Pacific sea trade, are gone for good. And while there are offerings from the Chinese government to finance the expansion of the port to be able to manage post-panamax ships, the santaclareños aren't really convinced that their country future lies on the maritime traffic. As you can see from the maps, most of what is defined in-story hasn't been completed in practice: the current population is around 350.000 sims, the seaport is only terraformed, the mine just has its railway but no buildings at all, and important parts of the urban planning are lacking. As the idea is to simulate the look and feel of a typical latin american capital, many adaptations from the typical gameplay have to be done: careful zoning to avoid losing the rhythm of a dense and diverse city centre that extends to wealthy neighbourhoods, while even denser suburban slums sorround the port and the railways; a delicate balance on the building selection, incorporating foreign elements on an authentic way, while keeping local, rural and even native references active, and to develop on a geography that is different to all latin american capitals: a deep and complex sound, internally navigable, with lots of brigdes, at once dividing neighbourhoods and connecting them. * * * For now, this is all. I've begun to make more detailed and interesting maps about the planned sectorisation of the city, and its respective roadmap design, both situations that requiere a lot of participation to decide where and how to urbanise and build. Then will come some open-ended conversation about storybuilding and alternative history. I hope you got interest on this dev CJ, be it to take the time to criticise it or to promote something. I'm open to your opinions! P.S.: when writing here, a serif font is something written from the in-story perspective, as it will look on the final CJ, and a sans-serif text is a dev-oriented one, written as a player.- 7 Comments
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Euro-Style Regional Transport Plan: Best Backbone / Eternal Commuters?
adventurerneil posted a topic in SimCity 4 General Discussion
Greetings from snowy Colorado, everyone! I'm designing my first region-wide Transportation Master Plan™, so that I later have something to kick myself for / regret every step of the way! I have NAM 35 and my TSCT is set to European (high) usage of transit, so my sims will actually, you know, walk a mile (unlike certain *cough* California-centric vanilla lazybones sims). I'm on Eaton region (I'll post a pic further down), and I'm anticipating very high density near the water, slowly petering out to medium and low density as you move West, maybe akin to a Chicago type region in terms of density / land value. My goals are to: push myself to learn more about NAM, develop something that is functional and cost-efficient, and to develop something that is aesthetically pleasing / not OVERLY grid-y (without pouring TOO many extra hours down the drain for looks). I'm wondering: 1) Is it a good idea to do transportation top-down like this, or should I let the cities and transit evolve more organically as I develop each city? (in theory that sounds most realistic, but in practice I'd rather hammer down a skeleton that at least serves each area minimally and then later build onto it, rather than have to go back and demolish and re-envision a lot with existing infrastructure. Don't want any eminent domain riots!) 2) What types of transit would you plan most centrally for a region of 10-50 million sims? I'm thinking heavy rail and RHW will form the bulk of my inter-regional connections, with some monorail connecting posh areas, and subways in the CBD's. 3) Do eternal commuters only apply to one type of transit at a time? For example, if I plan a RHW system that follows the tree structure, but have another type of transit that completes a loop (with the RHW), it wouldn't matter because they'd have to be transferring / parking to complete said loop, right? So far I have a rough sketch of what a possible RHW / rail / monorail network could look like. Let me know if I have set it up correctly to prevent eternal commuters (the squares are outlining the tiles I believe will be the most dense, but don't cross any regional borders): Cheers and thanks in advance for any input! -
Are there any city building game where i can build an dystopian/totalitarian looking City? I want to build an City that could be an capital of an totalitarian fascist oder communist dictatorship. Does such an city building game exist? Most cities in city building games look very colorfull and not really dystopian, can you build in simcity 4 such an city?
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:::News Flash::: Citizens are welcoming CityCorp Inc. (SNSE: CTYC §789.99) to Ariosa. This is in response to the failed city of Newtchester. Ariosa is east of Newtchester, and currently the Capital of Arios. Much more to follow in the next few months as this development takes place. Dear Editor of Ariosa News Line, We hope that our citizens are as excited as we are at the town meeting spot. We barely have a government and this opportunity is coming to us. For now i wanted to address the Newtchester rumor. Yes they failed CityCorp. However, it was not due to radioactive waves nor was it because of a citizen called Vu. It was because the people revolted, and the held strikes. We have been told that this will improve our lives. And our children's lives. We don't even have a school, how can you expect us not to grab this opportunity? Mr. Speaker; Ariosa Town ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ CityCorp Instuctions to the People of Ariosa: The next step is to plan out the backbones of your town, and to make a larger amount of land around you dedicated to farmland. SimNation gives federal funding to farmers and it will boost your Treasury. Please register your home with CityCorp at www.citycorp.com/register_sm.snajax by the end of the week. Below is the basic layout of the city network. This will take time, and we will grow your city over a period of underestimated time. Please read our online material, from the login page ater registering your home. As you can see Norta Upon Ariosa is the next planned phase, currently this is your main business district: The homes here will be moved to Norta, and for your convenience a train will transport you between the two areas. All other homes will be allowed to upgrade to MRS(§-§§) with options for §§§. Thank you, and do not forget to register your homes soon! CityCorp Inc. Property, do not share or transmit to non-related parties.
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Hello, I just dug out SimCity 4 from my basement and haven't played in years. I just wanted to try the NAM mod. It's funny, I was addicted to this game as a kid, and I became addicted to it again. Anyways I'll get to the point now, so the only part of the game that I don't like are the disasters, and the ways you respond emergency personnel to an active disaster firstly, The disasters are a little fun, but I find it hard to rebuild after them. Are there any red cross or FEMA mods out there? And I always find myself only needing to respond fire engines and never the police. Are there any emergency mods?
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E06 - 2 districts, 1 terminal
RandomNerd Loz posted a City Journal entry in Lets Play: Cities Skylines - Canal City
Back again with episode 6 - this time around I made sure I got some districts done, along with a custom cargo train terminal. Hopefully you all enjoy -
---------------------------------------------------- AUTHOR'S COMMENTS ---------------------------------------------------- First entry guys. I hope you like the style of CJ that I'm proposing. Feel free to express your thoughts wether positive or negative!
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Hello Simtropolis! It has been awhile since I posted anything to this site. I have been busy with real life and attempting countless times to perfect my region. But here it is! Finally. With this City Journal I am interested in updates from the role of a planner who works for the city, but that will come later after a few introductory updates. Welcome to Algonquin City! - thanks, canadiansim -
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Algonquin City [Update 1]
canadiansim posted a City Journal entry in (SC4) Algonquin City Planning Department
Hello Simtropolis! It has been awhile since I posted anything to this site. I have been busy with real life and attempting countless times to perfect my region. But here it is! Finally. With this City Journal I am interested in updates from the role of a planner who works for the city, but that will come later after a few introductory updates. Welcome to Algonquin City! - thanks, canadiansim -- 5 Comments
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Ever since I've been playing this game, since last summer, I've dealt almost exclusively in medium-tiles, with some small-tile farming towns. My biggest city is a medium-tile city with a population of 260,000. Recently I started a big-tile city and I find it to be a bit overwhelming. How big is too big for a big-tile city? At what point does the game really start to slow down (for you--obviously I know everyone's computers are different)? Do you plan things ahead or just kinda make it up as you go along? What's the biggest big-tile city you've ever created? You can include a picture of it if it helps
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I'm curious of how people go about their playing, or rather planning. All unlocked, unlimited money etc. No unlocks hardmode? Also do you build as you go or try to plan ahead? I've noticed that I'm getting trouble with my cities when they reach 40k pop. I tend to play without unlocks and I'm fairly proud of my neighbourhood and how my cities looks when <20k. But this leads to where I need massive population boosts to get more land which leads to me just cranking out housing projects and usually it goes downhill from there, uglier, less services and worse road networks. On the flipside I've also tried to playing god mode style to not having to bother with those constraints but find it much harder to either get a nice start or stick to my planned design.
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Here's a layout that allows you to control land value by placing parks at the center of a district. Let me know what you think. Read about it on the EA Official Forums.
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While browsing my data base today, I came across this quote: Experience has shown this to be as true today as in 1513. Anyone else seen the truth in this old philosopher's words?
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Hello and welcome to the beautiful city of Phoenix, Arizona! You are reading the first entry of a journal that is likely to be my demise. I plan to construct the entire metropolitan area as faithfully as possible. And that is a very large metropolitan area, as you'll soon realize. To start off, here are some fun facts about the city: Phoenix is the most populous US state capitol and the 6th most populous US city, containing over 1.5 million people. That number increases to 3.6 million with the addition of the surrounding urban areas. There are a total of 4.3 million people in the Phoenix-Mesa-Glendale Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is defined as Maricopa and Pinal counties (the two counties in which Phoenix resides). The city itself makes up 518 sq mi (1,338 sq km), with a density of 2,798 people/sq mi (1,080/sq km). Phoenix was settled in 1867, and has since grown rapidly. For the last 40 years, the growth rate has been nearly 4% per year. At this rate, the city is predicted to rank 4th in population by 2020. Well, that was boring. Don't worry, you can all wake up now; It's fun stuff from here on out. Today's update is focused on one thing only: Planning. After looking for a suitable region map for me to use, I settled on drunkapple's Phoenix Scale Map (thanks mate), which consists of 396 large tiles. In order to take on the challenge that a region this size presents me with, I knew that I would need to make up a very large plan of my whole network and layout. So, I found a top-down view of the region and used GIMP to place it on top of a Google map of Phoenix, and then redrew all of the city boundaries. I also started to give names to each city tile, for use in-game later on. In the end, this is the fruit of my labor: Note that every red square is a large city tile. Also, see that red rectangle at the top of the picture? This file has 282 layers (most of them are just text), and contains 12724x7891 pixels (My computer definitely had a good time with that). You should also notice that the region doesn't cover a few areas of city (Like Apache Junction, downtown Buckeye, New River, Morristown, San Tan Valley, and some of eastern Queen Creek/Mesa). However, that isn't too big of a deal, considering how much I have on my plate already (Besides, you could argue that since Apache Junction is in a different county, it isn't really part of the metro area). Besides the minor flaw mentioned above, there is one bigger and much more annoying problem: The gridlines. Since the game's city boundaries aren't designed around its cities, there are a few places where some unfortunate placement of boundaries will cause me many problems in this project. Here are two examples (both are interchanges): Yep, each of those interchanges will be located in at least 3 city tiles. Not to mention that on the bottom picture, Interstate 10 is cut straight down the middle by the border. Looks like I'll have to move some roads around a bit, or else face some serious headaches. Oh well... Well, that's about all there is to show for planning. Now it's time to get into the game itself and start working. Obviously, I'll need to start with the road networks. But we'll save that for the next update. For now, stay tuned. See you soon!! -Samness
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I'll upload maybe even two new entries the next weekend, I currently just struggle with some lots, so I'm not sure about the second, "surprise"-entry:D We'll see.... Don't be scared, I didn't already fully developed this map, there's going to be more zoned area and suburbs at the left of the highway^^. I'll reply the comments of this and the last entry at the actual CJ update next weekend, like everytime. Bye, have a nice evening!
