SimCity 4

[RogueIce]

Well, I guess this is for comments and questions about SimCity 4. Since I have it (well, the Deluxe Edition which includes the Rush Hour expansion).

Basically, it's nice, and the graphics are snazzy. But man, it's gonna be a bitch to deal with the learning curve yet again. Le sigh...

Anyhow, one of the bigger things I want to know is, how possible is it to make one of your regions into one gigantic megacity? Like you have an area that you almost exclusivly dedicate to High Density Commercial, with another area concentrated on Industrial, with yet more areas being Residential. With all of them connected, of course.

Yes, I'm thinking of the New York region supplied with the game when I do this.

So, is it possible, or am I basically going to need self reliant cities for them to do anything?

[Shinova]

Anyhow, one of the bigger things I want to know is, how possible is it to make one of your regions into one gigantic megacity? Like you have an area that you almost exclusivly dedicate to High Density Commercial, with another area concentrated on Industrial, with yet more areas being Residential. With all of them connected, of course.

Yes, I'm thinking of the New York region supplied with the game when I do this.

So, is it possible, or am I basically going to need self reliant cities for them to do anything?

I'm not sure if you can make one city a dedicated commercial or residential or whatever, but what's often done is to put all the power or water generation in one city and have the rest buy off of it and such.


Anyhow, SC4 is awesome. I've been slowly building up a region. It's about 620,000 population and growing slowly.

[McNum]

It's possible. The sims living in a region can commute from city to city for work and such. However, you better be really good at rapid, large capacity transportation or you'll get some angry sims.

Although I've had some sims work on a far off island city in one game. That was kind of odd...

[Alferd Packer]

Yes, it's quite possible.

I found it best to concentrate my garbage, industry, and power in Super Industryville. The ten or so cities around it are chiefly residential and commercial, and the trains and buses to SIville are overflowing.

[Ace Pace]

Isn't the transportation around cities only on the neighboring one's?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Nope, in SC4, a Sim can commuite to a job up to 3 cities away.

[THEHOOLIGANJEDI]

I have a small question. Can you make underwater tunnels? (i.e. The Lincoln and Holland Tunnels)

I'm looking forward to buying SC4 when I have some money to spare.

[R.O.A]

You can make an underwater subway tunnel yes if that's what you mean. Ive had this game for a while and play it a lot

[Crossroads Inc.]

Yea, but you can't actually make Tunnels for cars or trains. Only bridges, of course SC4 has a whole heck of a lot of Nifty bridge designs you can make.

All around the game is amazing, You have to be a nutcase to enjoy the amount of Micromanaging it requires, but usually someone doesn't buy a game like SC4 unless they enjoy that kind of thing

[Tiger Ace]

SC4 is nice for me, but I allways reach the 'stuck' status, where I'm holding steady at 60K. Preformance and growth take a nosedive.

[Crossroads Inc.]

The trick is to expand to other cities. Build around your city and link them together, thats what the region aspect is so important for. It is really hard to get any one city much beyond 100,000 by itself. But when you link it to others. Putting huge amounts of Industry jobs in one town, massive farming in another, etc. People come in and grow.

Remember, you can build a pure Industry city with NO residental. As long as its next to a big population, it will be used.

[Tiger Ace]

Problems with that, my current big city is stagnant, the city nearby is slowly growing.
Another problem is highways, I can't figure out how to get them to use it.
I lay it out across my main town, connecting to the new town, ramps, the deal.
Traffic? Game reports LOW levels.
While my main roads and buses are flooded.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Getting sims to use Mass Transit has been hard since SC2
It’s hard to help you out too much just talking over the net. Looking at how your city is laid out is the best thing to do. Also you have to build a freeway to someplace that is already huge. If you have just built a huge Suburbia or Industrial complex, Sims will always come first by Bus or Car.

But if you build a HighWay between two already full downtown regions, sims will begin to use it then. My suggestion is use trains and Subways. They are expensive, but I have found Sims always use them much more.

[Tiger Ace]

Okey, when I get home I'll try and set up a rail network, right now the rail between the cities is freight only.
Subways, while I have the money, I feel its too early for such a solution.

[Shinova]

Make sure you've got plenty of parks and stuff to keep the sims happy. That and traffic are probably the biggest limiters to big cities.

[RedImperator]

The default pathfinding in SC4 is poor. There are patches available on Simtropolis that improve it so it's possible to build a more realistic city with large residential, commercial, and industrial neighborhoods. It'll solve the problem of Sims ignoring highways in favor of surface roads.

There are also patches that simply increase road capacity to the point you'll never have congestion no matter how many people are using your network or how badly it's designed. But those are cheating.

[Mr. T]

Reading this thread, I can't wait to get it now!

[Crossroads Inc.]

Reading this thread, I can't wait to get it now!

Go into the 'Arts' section and check out some screenshots I have there of a crafted island. I have other pics, but there REALLY big.

[Captain tycho]

Considering I fucking loved the original SimCity, maybe it's time to get this one. Please tell me you can build walls of nuclear reactors.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Considering I fucking loved the original SimCity, maybe it's time to get this one. Please tell me you can build walls of nuclear reactors.

My friend, anything is possible with enough Money cheats... But why?

[Shinova]

Yes, you can build walls of nuclear reactors. I dunno what you wanna accomplish, other than run their plant condition down and try to have them all simultaneously go meltdown or something (never seen it actually happen yet. Probably won't; my biggest city ditched its nuclears and went fusion/hydrogen) .

[PainRack]

Just two questions that I never mastered.

how do you make it such that cities will make deals with each other? Especially after one city has defaulted on a deal due to low cash?

The other is, how on earth does one make sims use railways?

[phongn]

The Rush Hour expansion greatly helps since it added a bunch of tools to find out where your sims are going and how they are getting there. Plus there are the pathfinding patches which will help.

[THEHOOLIGANJEDI]

You can make an underwater subway tunnel yes if that's what you mean. Ive had this game for a while and play it a lot

No, I mean Tunnels for Cars. Like The Lincoln Tunnel. I remember I was able to do so in SC 2000.

[McNum]

I don't think underwater car tunnels are possible. Tunnels are created automatically when you try to make roads against a too steep incline, but you can't make a pit lower than water level and keep it dry.