Sim City 4: No-Nonsense Metropolis

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Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

Absolutely awesome OP, major kudos to Punch. As an on-again off-again SC4 fan since its release, I find this game still the king of city-builders. Somewhat tragically so, given the steaming pile that is... well, best leave that to the bad thread.

Dapper Dan posted:

Due to the Sim City 5 debacle I'm pretty interested in SC 4 again. Just a couple of things: I love making each city in a region pretty unique, so can I combine all the goon-made mod packs successfully while deleting the duplicates? And has anyone ran across any good slum tile-sets? I've always wanted to make a jam-packed, crime ridden slum metropolis before.

Combining the gigapacks is probably not doable without serious tinkering. They all have untold hundreds if not thousands of lots, plus varying versions of the essentials, all organized differently. Putting it all together without extensive pruning will cause the game to function poorly, if at all. Better to start off with just one.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 14:29

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 03:46

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

suddenlyissoon posted:

This thread makes me wish I was better at SimCity 4. All I end up doing when I play is getting a medium sized city going and then it fails miserably.

The modpacks in the OP contain things that should alleviate some of the stupid things that cause failure in the base game. Otherwise, the key is to remember that services--police, fire, water, and schools--are to be added after you've got a modicum of financial stability. Low-wealth and dirty industry will make you a fortune you can use to experiment with.

# ¿ Mar 8, 2013 17:36

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

Tip for Sanzuo:

PUNCH posted:

It sounds like you've hit a demand cap. I'll write something coherent about these for the OP because they're a pretty annoying game mechanic, but in the meantime:

Every city has a certain base capacity for growth. Go beyond these and you'll start hitting these caps, which are entirely artificial. Try placing some reward buildings; the minor and major stadiums are particularly good cap busters. Other things you can do are neighbor connections, like previously mentioned. All of these things help increase the capacity for industry on a given tile, or to look at things the other way around, the bust the cap.

For the record, OldFashioned has a LOT of reward buildings so you've got a little more choice in how you want to bust through these caps.

edit: http://strategywiki.org/wiki/SimCity_4/Zoning_and_Demand This guide will tell you a bit more. Apparently the deal with industrial demand is allowing your freight to leave the city; if you do this, demand should be self-sustaining. The more you know!

If you're just starting and only have the one city, building another and linking it up is probably the best thing to do.

As for Adelaide, what on Earth is going with that city? At first I thought Breetai inexplicably left out a big section, but seeing the real thing raises a lot of questions.

Tony Montana posted:

SimCity inquiry.

I've been wary of the game from the get-go and have spent the week since release wallowing in delicious Schadenfreude, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. When Maxis announced they were rebooting the franchise, they weren't kidding. Where previous games had trended toward broadening the experience--it is SimCity, after all--the new game has confined players to 2km x 2km and focused on making a social experience. Don't get me wrong, if SC4 had easy multiplayer, I'd love to play with friends, but the new game beats you over the head with it. It's not exactly CityVille, but it's more social game than city simulation.

The game's proponents would argue that it is actually a much "deeper" simulation: it keeps track of individual Sims on their daily commutes. I fear that this was done at the expense of creating a real city, and there's countless examples of this supposedly deeper simulation being game-breakingly bugged and just plain superficial. Some people apparently have fun with it, so it can't be all bad, but as a long-time fan of SC4, SimCity seems a dreadfully flawed and downright wrong-headed reboot of the franchise.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2013 15:09

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

James The 1st posted:

Wait, people still do I and R exclusive cities?

Ha, I used to do that back in the early days, grid optimizations and all. Totally a legitimate way to play if that's your thing, but I think I only really started loving SC4 when I learned to throw efficiency to the wind and aim for something more organic. GrandFromage's LP offers a fantastic look at this kind of gameplay.

People new to the game should just remember to: 1) avoid providing expensive services until their coffers are bursting, and 2) match sliders to demand (power, schools, etc.). If you do that, you can go pretty wild with things.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2013 00:59

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

Went back to my cities after taking a break and realized that I'm definitely still having a problem with dirty industry in the OldFashioned pack. High demand, but very little seems to grow. Any ideas what's up?

Now that the initial Schadenfreude has worn off over the new SimCity, I feel a bit depressed that they've probably killed the future of the franchise. Or at least so much as I would want to play. If I cared enough I'd try to shoot off an email to Gabe Newell citing the SC4 community as a great example of the user-enhanced future of games he's been talking about. Minus the batshit dependency-mongering.

Edit: Oh man, the RHW has some is a source of infinite frustration, but I do believe they've improved a bit in the latest versions (not the still-buggy new one). If the Maxis highways weren't so hideous, I wouldn't bother, but RHW can look pretty awesome when done right. There are a number of tutorial videos on Youtube, as well as walkthroughs on their forums.

Cugel the Clever fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Mar 16, 2013

# ¿ Mar 16, 2013 03:46

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

With a sufficiently large region, this could get pretty interesting. Differing modpacks shouldn't really be a problem, as I assume people wouldn't actually be playing/saving others' cities? Some buildings wouldn't show up, but the it should function. Even differing versions of NAM shouldn't be a huge problem as I don't believe the neighbor connectors have changed drastically between releases.

Does the multiplayer system you're working on automatically overwrite cities or do players need to manually download/upload it? The former is simpler, but the latter offers a lot more control.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 01:29

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

Ha, it's amazing to me the range of instabilities people have with this game. Things that work fine for one person is inexplicably a disaster for another. I guess I've gotten lucky, it's always just worked with a minimum of finagling across the five or six computers I've installed on in the years since release. Old Fashioned gives me crashes when I god mode trees over the edge, but otherwise is pretty stable. Hardware mode works swimmingly for me :shrug:

One sentiment I've been surprised to see expressed again and again in different locations is peoples' odd belief that their computer isn't "beefy" enough for SC4. I'm currently stuck on an Acer netbook with an AMD C60, and runs just fine, if a little slowly. Also ran alright on an Eee PC with similar specs.

Might have to head over to PGS and grab a plot, if there are any left. A bigger region than the default could open up a lot of options. Instead of one square, one player, people could select a metro area of a few adjacent plots. Would give some room for some nice farmland. Making a region of large tiles separated by small or medium could lend itself well toward this:

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# ¿ Mar 20, 2013 14:03

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 03:46

Cugel the Clever: Apr 5, 2009; I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

nielsm posted:

You can also connect two disconnected street networks with a bus stop, touching one street from each. That will allow pedestrians and buses to pass, but not other road traffic.

This is a great idea that deserves some love. It's especially useful if you have 1x2 bus stops that have park effect (present in the gigapack but unfortunately missing from OldFashioned).

My one complaint about buses is that sims will walk a mile to reach a job, but too often refuse to walk twenty feet to actually get on a bus.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2013 16:02