sim city 4

If you've spent that much money, I'd check that you have done the money making tutorial on how to make sure that you arent overspending on individual schools and clinics etc... And it depends how long you've had it on cheeta for lol...

I always start my cities in the centre with roads going out 4 ways... Plop res on one corner and commercial on the other, then go from there.

The past two cities I have done had negative cash flow for a while (and was down to about $3k), having positive city ordinances and low taxes good education etc... After a while I balance the books picking out what I can afford to lose. Now they're both in positive and my 550k city has about $3m with a 100% mayor rating for a very long time.

Anyone got any tips on increasing population on my 550k medium tile? Or am I about maxed out? I'm not sure what else I can do, mayor rating is 100%, education is around 200 accross the board, health is excellent and every single zone in the city is now high density commercial/residential, all industry erradicated. Currently have a large airstrip and a large cummuter airport that are about max, I tried plopping an international airport but the passenger number didnt rise much, i'm guessing an international airport will be better for when I tackle my large tile.

I'm not sure I like this land mark thing... Might do a city with no landmarks it seems like it makes it too easy to build a big city centre with them.
 
elkdanger said:
Well, I certainly got on a bit better last night. I think the main point I took away from playing last night is if you want a big city, you have to approach it like so (that seems so obvious to say now).

For example, previously when starting a city I would choose a corner of the map and start developing some low density residential. I'd also create a few farms, some low density ind. and some low density commercial. I'd connect them with roads and then let that run for a while. Once it became somewhat populated, I'd add a school and a clinic in there and let that run some more. I'd basically keep building up like that, and if I played for long enough I might get 11-12,000 people living there. However, the traffic system would be a mess and there'd be too much traffic noise for people to be there.

Last night, however, I planned ahead how I wanted my city laid out. Straight off, I placed a couple of stretches of avenues which crossed over each other, the idea being that the center of the cross would be the center of that 'district'. I'd place a high density ind. zone out of the way towards the edge of the map and stretch an avenue out to it. I zoned high density residential and commercial in the centre, placed bus stops everywhere, connected up water and power, and also placed police/fire/school/clinic in the middle. Finally, I lowered medium wealth residential tax to 5%, and did the same for high wealth comm and high wealth ind. I also raised dirty ind. taxes to 13%.

After letting that run, it immediately developed quite quickly. After playing for about an hour last night, I ended up with a population of 36,000. During that time, more schools (of different sizes), a hospital and a landing strip were added. High-tech industry is developing well, and there's quite a demand for commercial.

My finances aren't in great shape though - I've got practically nothing and my outgoings aren't much less than my incomings. I spent about $520,000 getting the city in this state, so my strategy obviously needs tuning. On top of that, I've got some traffic problems (people taking funny routes to get to work, etc).

All of this was on a quater of a medium region tile, so plenty still left to develop.
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Install, the NAM mode and they will then take the fastest route.

I never build any industy in my citys anymore, theres no need really. Just build loads of Commercial and they seam to love you.
 
YorkshirePadd26 said:
Install, the NAM mode and they will then take the fastest route.

I never build any industy in my citys anymore, theres no need really. Just build loads of Commercial and they seam to love you.
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NAM mod is installed, I just think my roads weren't laid out properly.
 
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Skyfall said:
If you've spent that much money, I'd check that you have done the money making tutorial on how to make sure that you arent overspending on individual schools and clinics etc... And it depends how long you've had it on cheeta for lol...
Click to expand...

Aye I'm well aware of that, I think I just gave them too many services to begin with or grew too fast.
 
elkdanger said:
NAM mod is installed, I just think my roads were laid out properly.
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Don't bother with farms at all they just take up space an pollute the place, in fact as i said don't bother with industry.

I try to have like a large commerical zone say in the middle of the map then have ringroads leading out to residental areas. create subway form day one too.
I try to have a subway station in every bloc. That will free up your roads.
I think the NAM lets you make aroundabouts too use it as it'll stop your traffic backing up at lights. Also you could create a ringroad using the highway, but make sure its got good access.

Try and also leave space for rail in your commerical zone, don't build stations.
When you get further into the game destroy the rail and replace it with mono rails. Railways don't really cost much at all so i'll doubt they'll effect your spend at all. When your city develops build monorails and that'll help commute times and you wont have to destroy nice building and make your sims angry.
 
apart from simtropolis is there anywhere else i can get NAM from ?

everytime from them it says its completed but has downloaded around 2mb only :(
 
Kheldar said:
apart from simtropolis is there anywhere else i can get NAM from ?

everytime from them it says its completed but has downloaded around 2mb only :(
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I've had problems with simtropolis and downloading files, a lot of them come down corrupt :( Had to retry some of them many times to get them to dl properly. If you havent found anywhere by the time I get home (8:30pm :rolleyes: ) I can upload it somewhere for you to get :)

Think i'm going to start another new city tonight, my first few have all been leaning experiences, now I know what I want right from the get-go and I think i'm going to develop it in zones with ringed avenues and further out some highways... Havent had good experience with highways replacing avenues, going to try planning ahead this time as I did not know how bad highways were in SC4.

In other people's opinion is it worth having highways or just increase subways? Subways and busses seem better than any other type of transport to me, my raised rail doesnt seem to get used too much even though it links to my massive subway network.
 
Does anyone have any links to sites where you can download region maps (not cities) as im sick of the default ones and i am no good at designing my own region layouts. I know about Maxis Region off the main site but it seems that not many places offer loads of maps to download.
 
ok, so i had a 5000 population city, and i wanted flats or the like, so i replaced a large section of small houses with large houses, but the sims never built them??? what do i need to do to get them to do it, is there a beating stick or something???
 
Bigger and better buildings aren't built until certain criteria are met. Obviously, the land value, water, power etc.. are obvious ones to have. But also, there are population/job milestones that allow the next 'stage' buildings to be built.

For example, you need over 45'000 population, 45'000 commercial jobs before the maximum 'Stage 8' buildings are built (stage 1 is shacks, stage 8 is the best of the best skyscrapers). It's the same with housing. Expand your population base first before trying to build up into bigger and better structures. You'll need a higher population count before the target that allows the next 'stage' building to be built on a tile. That next stage building will be of a better quality than the last, eventually you'll hit a point where the large buildings will slowly start to appear.

5'000 is a very small population. Try and aim for around 20-30'000 people before expecting the large buildings to be constructed.

EDIT - That doesn't mean you can't zone medium and dense Residential areas. All that will happen is that they will have really poor buildings built on them until the targets are reached.

Heres a quote from another site about STage Caps

Many people are getting frustrated with Simcity 4 when attempting to build large residential, commercial service, and commercial office buildings. Its obvious in the many forums I visit...

But here's a pointer: Stage Caps, a new concept in SC4 that attempts to make the simulator more realistic, will not allow medium and high density buildings of a certain zone and wealth type to be built until a certain population of that zone is reached. Phew! Thats a mouthful!

In other words, until your residential or commercial office population (of a certain wealth class) reaches 1,114; you will see no medium density developments. Likewise, you will need to achieve a population of 25,952 before any high density buildings are constructed.

Commercial service developers will first build medium density buildings at a commercial service population (of, once again, a certain wealth level)of 1,114 jobs, and high density buildings will be constructed at a commercial service job population of 15,356.

Industry (of a certain developer type) will build high density buildings at a job population of 2,447. All of these figures are out of the official strategy guide, and the entire regional population (for the specific developer type) applies to these stage caps.

Also, one bit of clarification, if you want to see high-density high-wealth residential developments, you will need a high-wealth residential population (not a global residential population) of 25,952 sims. Hope this helps!
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If you meet the stage caps for the bigger buildings, but they still aren't appearing, work on your education/healthcare/police and fire coverage etc..
 
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low RES
med ind
a few low com tiles.
coal plant
1 school reduce funding to meet demands
1 small healthcare and reduce funding to meet demands
small police near res
small fire near ind

for a fully grown city you need 50% res, 25% com, 25% ind, but when you first start its ok to have 40% ind and 10% com (your sims are thick and dont need com jobs


you can also use region play, using multiple cities to reduce costs, ie have 1 city as res, connect it with a avenue and possibly a train line to another city which is all industry/landfill/power. this way the pollution is limited to that 1 city, keeping res city healthy and clean.
 
^ What he says is right, forget police stations at all though until later in the game and forget about fire stations untill your first fire, both are a waste money imo in the early stages.
 
two times now in a ROW SC4 has crashed after around 1hour of play.... a lot of work. gone down drain :(

i give up, i really do. :(
 
Sc4 is also unstable for me, frequent saving fixes it though, when I don't save its bye bye sc4 after like 15 mins, when I save every 10 mins I can play for hours and hours without crashes.
 
stability issues fixed (i think). Gone back to using runfirst

1. Put runfirst in windows\system32 folder

change the short cut for simcity to have runfirst before it, ie i change my link from

"C:\Games\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe"

to

RunFirst "C:\Games\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe"

after first run, the shortcut changes to

C:\WINDOWS\system32\RunFirst.exe "C:\Games\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe\Apps\SimCity 4.exe"



this program forces the app to run on 1 core.

anyway, a few from the nicer bits of a city i been building on and off for 2 years (restarted last week)

Arsenal_1.jpg

Arsenal_2.jpg

Arsenal_3.jpg

Arsenal_4.jpg
 
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