Sim City

[spanky]

[Hank Venture]

Yeah, it's a shame. SimCity seems like such a cool game if they could've just not gone with the terrible EA way of doing things. Good news is I now will be trying SimCity 4 for the first time in my life.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Doubt it. Mods and addons are shut out of the game.

read my post again

[RickyGerbail]

the release day score was 90 on metacritic, now it's down to 76. :)

[Hank Venture]

read my post again

Ah, missed the 4. Not much use anyway, can't access SomethingAwful without shelling out 10 buckaroos.

[Big Jack McBastard]

So on top of a crack a naughty person will need something that emulates a server in order to get this going?..

It's a fuck about but still circumventable I'm sure, or it will be.

[MojoJojo]

Pretty sure BBC was reporting "Sims 4 release OK in UK despite problems in US" or something similar yesterday - can't find it now.
Combined with this commentary, which I read before the release http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/why-you-shouldnt-trust-our-simcity-review makes me think EA knew this was likely to go to shit.

I was going to mention the their justification about needing offline processing power to do all the complicated modelling... then I remembered this was a game.

EAs take on OnLive, I guess, but made all EA cynical.

[mikeyg27]

So it turns out the problems are occurring because the players are having too much fun!

[Big Jack McBastard]

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/8/4079894/ea-suspends-simcity-marketing-campaigns-asks-affiliates-to-stop

Given the number of versions, mod packs and add-ons they released for Sims³ anyone actually purchasing the whole package[nb]mental[/nb] must have parted with a few hundred quid easy.

There's what? 9 add-ons and at least another 2 in the pipe. Grasping bastards.

I mean I was never going to pay for this anyway, I know EAs form by now, release something crippled and then expect to be paid to uncripple it bit by bit, but if they're shutting out modding and essentially renting this game to people entirely MMO style then they can piss off.

I'll wait for the leaks and cracks, in every sense.

[Slaaaaabs]

Whoops.

[Replies From View]

Whoops.

That's hilarious.

[Hank Venture]

A glorious crash and burn from EA, this. Can't say I have too much sympathy.

[Big Jack McBastard]

edit: Just marveling at the amazon reviews.

[Dusty Gozongas]

So on top of a crack a naughty person will need something that emulates a server in order to get this going?..

It's a fuck about but still circumventable I'm sure, or it will be.

If I were a gambling man I'd say that one will be fixed by Monday. Probably with the added bonus of not even having to pay for the game in the first place.

Pretty stupid on EA's part. This has been shown to be a bad idea so many times before. Idiots.

[Big Jack McBastard]

The thing is it'll only be worth the bother once they've released[nb]and some industrious people have broken open[/nb] some of the DLC packages they're no doubt sitting on.

Actually come to think of it they probably won't even sell physical copies of DLC will they? They'll just vend it though the servers and no doubt the buyer will just get a code that lets them access that bit of kit.

Probably more hassle than it's worth to even bother with really. Though I'm sure folks will do their darnedest in any case.

You know when I said 'Ooh quite possibly' or whatever it was earlier? I must have forgotten to put my EA filter on, that's how they get ya.

I'll give it a year and see how it looks then.

[Hank Venture]

Given the number of versions, mod packs and add-ons they released for Sims³ anyone actually purchasing the whole package[nb]mental[/nb] must have parted with a few hundred quid easy.

"Right now, if you look at The Sims 3, the game costs $30. But if also you buy all the DLC for it, it's *four hundred and seventy dollars*. This is what they are doing with SimCity 5; locking you into their server infrastructure, and then exploiting the heck out of your wallet."

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

They fucked up real bad though by making Sim City 2000 in the 1990s which essentially means there is a free superior and excellent city builder available to all.

Whammyyy

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Ah, missed the 4. Not much use anyway, can't access SomethingAwful without shelling out 10 buckaroos.

Here you go brother, I tried to fix all the links, let me know if there's anything I missed. I made the images clickable so they don't slow this thread down.

Welcome to the Sim City 4 thread! Sim City 4 is a City-building simulator published by Maxis in 2003. The fourth in the series, it expands on its predecessors quite a bit both in its scale and complexity: Sim City 4 is capable of simulating not only large cities but entire regions that can span many miles and house millions. It is a deep, powerful and complex sandbox game with a sense of realism unparalleled in its genre. These qualities have earned an enduring following with both goons and non-goons alike.

EA's release of a new Sim City title has sparked renewed interest in this game; in addition, a great deal of new modded content has required a new OP. Sim City 4 is relatively easy to learn but quite difficult to master (depending greatly on your definition of mastery.) Hopefully this OP will cover the basics; for the rest, well, that's what this thread is for.

But first, check out these pictures:
These images show a lot of what you can do in this game, both modded and unmodded. They've been pulled mostly off the web and this thread. There are also a few sprinked throughout the OP to break up this massive wall of text. They are in no particular order.

http://i.imgur.com/WZgVDKK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/z0OuDaDh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/M9rfL12h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/M9rfL12h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/sVZE8NAh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/IbPTa1O.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KTuUMiCh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Yu55Hk1.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/sZSrXYIh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/D16MDMo.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/k8QlQPd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0opMliBh.jpg

Running the game

Firstly, you'll want either Sim City 4 Deluxe or the base game plus the Rush Hour expansion (included in Deluxe.) It's fairly difficult to buy just the base game these days, so this shouldn't be too much of a concern. But for the sake of information: Sim City 4 shipped before a lot of very basic bugs were really worked out; many of these have been fixed with Rush Hour. Still more have been fixed through mods, but we'll get to that later.

Sim City 4 is also a very old game, and newer hardware and software hasn't treated the game well. Still, for most people a little tweaking can make the game quite playable.

Here are a few basic things you can do to help Sim City 4 run better. Depending on your operating system, many of them can be essential.

Patches
Firstly, make sure you're running the latest version. The steam version is up to date, so those of you running it through steam shouldn't have a problem. For others, the original Maxis website is unfortunately no longer available. You can get patches and fixes here: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?page=7 or here: http://screwpile.wordpress.com/screw-pile-exchange-spex/maxis-files

Multicore
This game is unstable on more than CPU: the game will actually run slower on more than one core, and it will crash often. In your launch options, add the following to prevent this: -CPUcount:1 In addition, -CPUpriority:high can help optimize, but only in addition to the first string.

Custom Resolutions
Running a large or uncommon resolution? Well tough shit! Just kidding. Add a variation of this to your launch options:
-CustomResolution:enabled -r1366x768x32 -f
( -f is for fullscreen.)

Tired of seeing that same old splash video?
Gets a little old, doesn't it. Add this to the launch options: -intro:off

I hate sound and I hate music! Please let me roleplay a deaf mayor.
The sound in this game can be a little lackluster. Modders also put sounds into their building queries which are often completely unnecessary and terrible (and override the in-game sound settings.) Add this string to your launch options to completely remove it: -audio:off

If you're still experiencing technical difficulties, there are also a few in-game options you can use to get things running smoother. By default the game is set to render in Hardware mode, but some graphics cards seem to have trouble with this; switching to Software rendering may alleviate some CTD's and stuttering. Shadows (like in many games) can be especially taxing as well, even on modern settings; switching them off can help as well.

Please keep in mind that this was an extremely resource-intensive game, and a lot of computers couldn't run it at the time of its release. Even today, you might experience some stuttering when running the sim on higher speeds, and downtime when playing (and especially saving) large cities. Your mileage may vary.

http://i.imgur.com/0GN9dn6h.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/8vCJoqwh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ylz8spyh.jpg

Modding and the Goon Packs

The modding scene for Sim City 4 is both rewarding and exasperating in equal measure. Over the years modders have not only created impeccable individual buildings but also whole system overhauls that dramatically change how the game plays. However, Because Sim City 4 is such an old game, its early modders worked under the assumption that people would use 56k internet connections and small hard drives. Mods in general are optimized for space at the expense of usability.

For example, take these sweet-lookin' buildings:

http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/27457-contemporary-condominiums

You may notice a list at the bottom of additional files: parking lot textures, props like awnings or additional cars. These are called dependencies. In order for the mod (in this case, the building) to work, you'll need all of these. Though documentation is generally pretty good, many mods have been shuffled around over the years and finding the right dependencies can be a nightmare.

Fortunately, you don't have to! Over the years goons have worked very hard to thwart this idiocy in the form of large modpacks.

The Modpacks

Here's what the SA community has cobbled together. These modpacks were all made at different times and with a different focus. Some are more comprehensive and deviate from the base game more extensively than others. All of these packs include NAM and the other basic fixes detailed later in this post: if you want to play and not mess with mods, simply take your pick, unpack it, drop it in your plugins folder and enjoy.

We'll get into piecemeal modding a little later, but know that these modpacks all include the common dependency packs, so they are fairly addition-friendly. They all come in .torrent form.

The Original Goon Gigapack

http://alluvion.org/download.php?info_hash=3a532f813691034ada26afd43c6f1de9912e2449

(Original Alluvion image has been lost to time.)

This is the oldest pack we've got, dating back to sometime in 2008. It includes all the normal fixes plus CAM with most of its content. This pack can create giant cities, and includes most of the common dependency packs, so adding to it shouldn't be terribly hard. The individual buildings and mods in this pack have been compressed into several large .dat files, which means it's hard to take buildings out of this pack that annoy you. That said it is a very good pack.

The Old-Fashioned Pack

Download torrent81 (1 file; 1.78 GB)
http://alluvion.org/download.php?info_hash=71a083b0a2a16ca08274ba8aa6a404facaeef1f1
View torrent stats


This is my total conversion pack, designed to replicate the dense urban cores and rural communities in the Northeastern United States and parts of Europe. Its focus is a bit narrower than the other packs: it offers very little in the way of suburban stripmalls and the like, and has a particular focus in the beautiful older buildings that modders seem to enjoy making lately. It includes CAM but does not include its stock content (frankly, the buildings people are making these days are far better than what's in the CAM starter packs.) This pack also includes most common dependencies so adding to it should be fairly easy; in addition, it has not been DATpacked, so you can remove/change its contents as you see fit. Use it if you would like your cities to look like this:

http://i.imgur.com/FSLVW9Bh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/HeHnuimh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3864Uj4h.jpg

One thing you should know about this pack: the very beautiful HD terrain mods unfortunately require the game to be run in hardware mode; if hardware mode gives you trouble, delete the folder "terrainmods" and it should run in software with little trouble.

Killhour's Spergin' Gigapack

Download torrent81 (1818 files; 760.01 MB)
http://alluvion.org/download.php?info_hash=71a083b0a2a16ca08274ba8aa6a404facaeef1f1
View torrent stats


A pack for the inner obsessive lurking within, well, not a whole lot of us, really. This pack is very light on custom buildings, but very heavy on scenic options: highway buffers, retaining walls, rocks, trees, and other goodies. It's meant for people who like the original style of the game but enjoy sprucing up their neighborhoods with natural (and man-made) goodies. It includes NAM, and is the smallest pack we have available.

Grand Fromage's Pack (with help from GodlessCommie

Download torrent81 (2 files; 2.13 GB)
http://alluvion.org/download.php?info_hash=e2538911e3a5f83cbea42ef824f0dfe205c507ca
View torrent stats


A pack of plugins built by GrandFromage over some months, packaged with NAM and a few other goodies by GodlessCommie. I'll be honest, I don't know a whole lot about what's in here. But, looking at GrandFromage's long-running LP (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3410697) I assume that this pack is a work of love and art. It's GrandFromage. Read the LP and I think you'll find he doesn't fuck around when it comes to cities.

http://i.imgur.com/yPUS4GM.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/FxvHlaOh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/1fwP6mOh.jpg

DIY: Sliding deeper and deeper into dependency hell

Don't want to take our word for it? Want to download mods individually? Think of yourself as one of them advanced users? Go on then. Take my hand, friend, and let's step into the nightmare zone. Don't fear the reaper. Together we ride.

There are a handful of mods that are absolutely essential to playing the game. Sim City 4 was rush-released with a number of bugs. Most were fixed in Rush Hour, but not all. Fortunately the community has filled in the gaps with a few basic mods. They are as follows:

- The Operahouse fix prevents the operahouse (a late-game reward) from capping growth on your city: http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/21342-opera-house-fix/

- The Netword Addon Mod (NAM) completely otherhauls Sims' pathing (getting to and from work) and adds some other useful tiles and interchanges. It is quite essential. If you don't want your city to be a Mad Max gridlock of autocarnage and abandoned neighborhoods, you'll need this: http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/26793-network-addon-mod-for-windows-installer

NOTE: As of this OP, the NAM version 31 is reportedly buggy. It's recommended to stick to version 30 until the bugs get smoothed out. Also, if you've bought Sim City 4 in the UK or elsewhere outside the US, you may have a left-hand drive copy of the game. In this case, it's best to delete the NAM that comes with our modpacks and reinstall it; NAM can configure left or right-handed driving during the installation. Location probably does not affect the steam version.

The space port fix prevents the spaceport from doing the same thing the operahouse does: http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/27340-space-port-fix-mod/

- Hole Digging Lots: these can help you make tunnels for some underpasses. http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/3599-hole-digging-lots/

Once again, gentle and kind-hearted goonkind has come to the rescue. The following pack is a collection of many common dependencies, and should cover your needs for most lots and mods you'll find. This list is, well, extensive; a full documentation is included with the download, which can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?n66339svskduc6k

Beyond these, the sky is the limit. There are gigabytes upon gigabytes of content out there waiting for you. Here are some of the major community sites where you can find more buildings, textures and mods for the game:

Simtropolis – http://www.simtropolis.com - Simtropolis is the largest community site and probably receives the most modded content. It also has some utter dreck; fortunately content on this site is user-rated, so you can generally avoid the really bad stuff. The search function on this site is a little less than useful, but you can find almost anything on here.

The LEX – http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/Default.htm - This site is moderated by BSC, a prominent modding conglomerate. The content on this site is vetted (with varying levels of success) before it is released to the public, which means there's almost nothing on here that will break your game. The LEX and STEX (Simtropolis' mod database) overlap quite a bit. Overall, despite its dated design the LEX is a little easier to use and a little more comprehensive. It houses most of the dependency packs you'll need, and has some high-quality exclusive content as well. Please note that you will have to register and login for download links to show up.

The PLEX – http://www.simpeg.com/forum/?action=downloads - This houses all the mods and content created by Pegasus, a prolific modder who is a little less active these days. Most of the content on this site is mirrored on either the STEX or LEX, but there are a handful of exclusives here as well.

These are the three big sites; beyond this are individual modders' sites and various smaller international sites (most of which are defunct and mirrored on the LEX or other places.) Using these sites you'll quickly find yourself submerged in an acronym soup. Here's a quick guide of the more common acronyms you'll find:

BAT - Building Addon Tool (I think), program used to make models for new buildings
BSC – The modding team which runs the LEX.
CAM - Colossus Addon Mod. This mod adds several growth stages for all buildings, including farms. It allows much larger cities and buildings, and also rebalances demand to accomate them. It is a fairly intensive mod and can be a little difficult to set up; fortunately most (if not all) of the goon packs include it. CAM content can be found on the LEX, with a scattering on the STEX. One thing CAM can cause is the double-demand bug, which can be fixed using this guide: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=8269.msg303353#msg303353

DAMN - don't remember what it stands for, but it improves the menus
LE - Lot Editor
LEX (or BSC LEX) - Lot Exchange
NAM - Network Addon Mod, as already covered. All our mod packs should include this.
NDEX - a modding team
PEG - Pegasus (a modder)
PLEX - Pegasus Lot Exchange
RAM - Rail Addon Mod
RHW - Rural Highways (this comes with the NAM.) An extensive alternate highway system which allows a great deal of freedom in designing interchanges and on/offramps. You will spend hours sperging over a single exit. But the results are marvelous.
RTMT - Road Top Mass Transit. This mod features subway and bus stations that are integrated into the road. Useful if you don't feel like plopping those stations and disrupting your beautiful grid, though it takes some of the challenge out of your transit networks.
SC4D - SC4 Devotion forums
SC4M - SimCity 4 Mapper
SC4PIM – this is a tool used by lot creators to generate stats for buildings, like how many people/jobs they hold and how much power they require. I believe it calculates based off volume. You really shouldn't have to use this, but it can be useful if some modder screwed up and a tall building is popping up in a low-density zone.
SFBT - a modding team
SG - SimGoober (another modder)
SPAM - SimPeg Agricultural Mod
ST - Simtropolis
STEX - Simtropolis Exchange
TE - transit enabled (lots that can have traffic go through them like toll booths or NAM puzzle pieces)

Now for some tools and utilities you'll probably need:

SC4 DatPacker
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=26
Use this to compress your thousand plugins into one gigantic file. This will speed up your loading screens and your game in general, and is especially useful if you're running the game on a lower-end computer. It is a bit finicky.

BSC Cleanitol
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=97
Use this to clean up old files when you're replacing them with newer versions. It is also quite finicky, and relies on lists of files that modders publish with their updated versions. Modders on the LEX are particularly good about this; others are not.

SC4 Terraformer
http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=731
For all your mapping needs. This one is especially tempermental, but also absolutely essential if you want to play on high-quality custom maps. Most maps that modders release are essentially image-based heightmaps with a bit more info. This tool converts those into a playable map. You can modify those maps (including the city sizes – if, like me, you like to play on large tiles) through this program as well.

If you don't feel like wrestling with the mapmaker, a generous goon has created rendered and hosted this map. It is compatible with the Old-Fashioned pack due to the trees; your mileage may vary with other packs. It is around 10x10 large tiles, and is very pretty:

http://i.imgur.com/IbGkucxh.jpg

http://www.dieanothertry.de/files/Fhuzo.zip

A little more on Regions and City Tiles
The stock regions that ship with the game come with small, medium, and large tiles. Often the smaller tiles can seem quite limiting (a critique shared with Sim City 5.) However, unlike SC5, these tiles are readily modifiable. Here's a little more information to help you get the most out of your map.

They are 3 sizes of cities:
Small =64 cells x 64 cells = 1 km x 1km = .63 miles x .63 miles
Medium = 128 cells x 128 cells = 2 km x 2 km= 1.27 miles x 1.27 miles
Large city tile =256 cells x 256 cells = 4 km x 4 km= 2.54 miles x 2.54 miles

In your SimCity folder on your My Documents there is a file called config.
Tip: Don't do that while that region is in play, just change to another region while you change the config or exit the game.

Config it's a .png file that you can modify in MS Paint, each pixel is a square km.
You'll see that it has different color:
Red: It's one one square and it represents a small city.
Green: 2 x 2 squares, and each one is a medium city.
Blue: 4 x 4 squares, and it represents a big city.

Tip: If you use MS Paint you can turn on the gridlines, that help a lot.

In this example I want to make a 3 x 3 medium city, so it will be a square of 6 pixels.

http://i.imgur.com/6j6df.png

After loading the region this is our result:

http://i.imgur.com/iyRtt.png


You can see the change in tiles and size of the region.

If you want to read more go to : http://www.simcitycentral.net/knowledge/simcity4/regional-customization-part-1-city-plot-layout/

http://i.imgur.com/64WQElC.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0opMliBh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WEYm1pxh.jpg


Playing the Game

Finally. Here's where the fun begins. Sim City 4 is a relatively simple game to play: quirky, a counter-intuitive at times, but straightforward once you understand what's going on. Here are a few basic tips for creating a successful city and region:

- Start small. It may seem tempting with the amount of money you start with, but there's little sense in zoning huge swathes of land for one purpose or another. Doing this results in boring cities, but moreover mirrors a lot of the problems that come with uncontrolled growth in real life: traffic jams, forgotten blocks, long commutes, a lack of essential infastructure and eventual urban blight. I'm showing a little personal bias here – I like to build cities more like New York and Boston than Los Angeles and Houston – but there is good reason to back this assertion up. Try it and you'll see.

- Don't build things until you need to build them. If you're building a simple farming town, there's probably little need for a full water grid or school system. When you're plopping down government services, keep a keen eye on how much they cost and if you need to expand more before you can build them. The services your government provides should grow with your city, not the other way around.

- On this note, building services is important, but that doesn't mean you need to fund them fully all the time. Almost all services have a slider that sets how much money they spend and how much of the population they can serve. Adjust these to what you need. In addition, many of the modpacks (especially OldFashioned) have service buildings which are smaller but have a wider coverage radius; don't hesitate to use these if you're building a rural area.

- Play as a region. If you're trying to build a city filled with shiny skyscrapers and upscale coffee shops, you can put all the dirty heavy industry in a neighboring suburb and not have the pollution bleed into your downtown. Sims will commute from one city to another for work, if they need to. There are even neighbor deals, so if you build a massive power plant in one city you can sell the surplus power to another. Don't feel you have to squeeze everything into one tile; there's an entire region out there to explore!

- High-wealth zones, like Hi-tech industrial or commercial office spaces, often have a pretty high population and education requirement before they start to grow. You might have to build a factory town or two before a region will support this kind of development.

- There is a particularly nasty bug called the infinite transit loop. If you're running into a lot of abandoned neighborhoods and sims complaining of impossible commutes, check that you haven't created a highway system that loops around "four corners" - rapidly making four right (or left) turns through four different cities. Sims will get on the highway to look for a job, not find one, go to the next city for work, not find it, go to the next city, and, well, you get the point. This is a pretty easy problem to solve: just make sure to break up this circle somehow by rerouting or closing part of the highway. Avoiding this bug can lead to some more interesting transit systems, anyway; perhaps it's a blessing in disguise.

- As the last thread title said, the diagonal is a lie. You may notice that a diagonal road doesn't simply take up one diagonal line of tiles like a bishop in chess – it takes up two. When sims appear to travel along diagonal lines, they actually zigzag neatly along that illusory diagonal: up and across, up and across, like a staircase. This means taxicab math is in full effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab_geometry. This shouldn't discourage you from creating diagonal transit options; they are a great way to spice up your city and break out of that boring orthogonal grid. Just be aware that the diagonal "shortcut" you just made might not be such a shortcut after all.

- The two most boring systems in the game are water and garbage. For water: once your city gets to the size when you can afford it, just zone out the whole water grid at once and build pumps as needed; this way you'll never have to deal with it again. I recommend picking up a few "cheater" mods to deal with garbage: landfills are buggy and if you're not careful they can be really expensive. Here are a couple mods so you never have to deal with garbage again:
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/3143-geoignic-ingestor
http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/4569-peg-garbage-chute

Charts and Graphs

General advice is one thing, but if you're a spreadsheet fiend these will hopefully prove quite informative:

- Staging: Building density is divided into various stages, which are unlocked with greater population in your city and region. Here's a brief guide for all the thresholds in the base game. CAM, which you'll find in the modpacks, adds several stages to each zoning type (15 stages for residential/commercial, 10 for industral, 6 for farming;) these add on to the original stages and have higher requirements.

http://i.imgur.com/gTBvZPQ.png

(This section will be expanded later.)

http://i.imgur.com/N58QPR2.jpg


For Advanced Players

Hopefully with these tips you'll be able to avoid the various pitfalls this game can offer and get some healthy cities on their feet. Once you've done this the fun really begins. Sim City 4 is a neat game because of its potential for realism and its ability to simulate a lot of the same successes and problems cities have in real life. It can give you a great appreciation for urban planning and the challenges modern cities face. Grand Fromage's LP is masterful at this, and is a great example to follow; there are also many "city journals" on the various fan sites which help illuminate as well. Here are a few tips for more advanced players. Hopefully they'll inspire you to build better and, after you've figured that out, to build in new and interesting ways.

- It's often helpful to plan out where the major urban centers and larger transportation networks (like highways and rail) will be in advance. Think of the land and how people use it: where mining towns and farming communities might be most successful; where different transportation networks merge and spawn an interstate town; or where rivers meet the sea and make room for a bustling port city. Older European and Eastern US cities often rest on the banks of major navigable rivers because the easiest way to transport goods and people before the railroad was by boat. Some cities in the Western US sprang up because of valuable mining prospects or fertile land (Telluride, Boise, Fresno;) others for leisure or due to the growth of a specific industry (Aspen, Palo Alto.) Still other cities have been fabricated entirely from scratch for a specific need (Washington DC, Canberra – some extreme examples include California City and China's unused metropolises.) Figure out the story of how and why your city came to be, and build it!

- There are a lot of really great mods for dressing up semi-rural and rural areas. The various mod packs include a bunch of these, but there are plenty out there for you to find. It's remarkable how a stand of trees in a farmfield or a few boulders on a cliff can really spruce things up and bring your little area to life. Get your Bob Ross on!

- Google Earth is your friend. Look at the way various cities have solved problems of space and traffic flow in the bast – be they the massive highway systems of Dallas and Houston or Boston's eternal big dig. A lot of cities started with a fairly basic grid which has slowly been morphed to accommodate new services and more people. For instance, there are a few European cities which consist of a tangle of confusing roads surrounding a small gridded inner core. That grid is the remnant of a Roman fort built two millenia ago that slowly expanded outward. Other cities have been limited by external forces: Boston's back bay is built on fill, which makes it unstable ground for the massive skyscrapers you'll find downtown. Again, the fun here is in making the story of how a great metropolis came to be.

- Urban Planning is an academic field in its own right. If you find yourself really interested in how cities work and the thought that goes into them, there's a great deal of literature out there for you. Here are some links to get you started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/11/evolution-urban-planning-10-diagrams/3851
http://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/067974195X
http://www.ted.com/talks/tags/urban%20planning
http://www.sfgov3.org/ftp/uploadedfiles/shapeupsf/research_data/built_env_perception_safety.pdf
http://www.asla.org/ContentDetail.aspx?id=23720
http://books.google.com/books?id=9HQrahmGeYoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false


(It's worth noting that urban planning is intrisically tied to politics both local and national; it's an interesting lens through which to view current affairs. By its very nature, Sim City 4 is also in a way political: Will Wright, the original creator, is apparently a libertarian. The infinite growth, flat taxes, and instant social mobility the sims experience reflect this. These qualities also make it a fun game. Don't take it too seriously. That said, urban planning threads seem to pop up over in D&D on a semi-regular basis; check them out if you're interested. The real world, as you might guess, works far differently.)

Feel free to post urban planning-related stuff throughout the thread; it's all inspiration to build more interesting cities. Ultimately, play the game however you want, and make what stimulates you. Sim City 4 can be very educational, but more importantly it's very relaxing and a lot of fun. Remember to enjoy yourself!

Also, people seem to periodically make great effortposts in this thread. I'm going to reserve a space below this post for those; if you see something really informative and extraordinary, PM me and I'll add it in.

Credits

As far as the modpacks go, we owe an enormous debt to the SC4 community, which represent both the best and the worst that the internet has to offer. I haven't actually created any content for this game; as far as I know none of the other pack creators have either. They aren't huge fans of modpacks on other sites (drama and tears have blown up in the past – though fortunately not with us) so please don't share them elsewhere on the internet. You can thank them for the individual buildings though – they've earned it despite themselves.

Bits and pieces of this OP have been taken from posts throughout past threads. Furthermore, almost all the knowledge I have about this game comes from goons and this forum. Thanks so much to the SA community: you've made this game playable not only for me but many others!

This OP is a work in progress. I'm going to spruce it up and add more content over the next few days; with a game as old as this, there's a lot to cover. Please let me know about any particularly glaring oversights.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Ok no problems getting in this morning, built my first city and loving it so far.

Looks amazing of course, the city sizes are far too small, but taken in isolation it's the best sim city game since SC4.

Can an Android tablet do this????

[Replies From View]

So does this Sim City let you make a Godzilla happen?

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

I think so

But crucially, you can't save, unleash Godzilla, and then open your pre-Godzilla save when you've finished pissing about

[The Region Legion]

City size is basically a dealbreaker for me, even without the ridiculous always-online requirement. What's the point if I can't make a sprawling metropolis with surrounding suburbia?

[VegaLA]

Too little too late?

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/08/ea-maxis-cops-to-dumb-simcity-launch-offers-early-adopters-a/

[Puffin Chunks]

I'd say so. The underlying issue doesn't change. "Always on" DRM for games is pissing in the face of paying customers, anyone in their right mind should boycott any game released in such away.

Once it's cracked (which it will be) anyone pirating the game will have a game that won't be reliant on their connection being up. Won't be reliant on EAs servers running and it will still works in 10 years time. I doubt the same could be said for legit purchases of Sim City.

It's like unskippable ads at the beginning of DVDs... no pirated film has this... I will never understand why corporations seem so fucking imbecilic as to make their product inferior to something you can pick up for free. They just seem to be happy to rinse as much cash out of their more naive consumers.... and it pisses me off, to be honest!

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

City size is basically a dealbreaker for me, even without the ridiculous always-online requirement. What's the point if I can't make a sprawling metropolis with surrounding suburbia?

It's fucking criminal to be honest, I've lost hours and hours today to this game, is brilliant.

But the size limit means I'm ready to ditch my first city as I've literally filled every square inch and it looks shit.

Such a shame, the team that put it together are undoubtedly enormously talented.

I'm wondering if the city size restriction has a lot to do with their always online DRM model as they may want/need to keep everyone at the lowest common denominator size-wise so that everyone can play at acceptable performance levels, but at the same city size.

My PC hasn't flinched and could almost certainly handle a city 4 times the size, so giving people the ability to define a size LIKE THEY MANAGED TO DO 10 YEARS AGO would transform the game.

[Rev]

Allegedly, larger city sizes were tested and implemented before the thing launched, and you'll be able to buy DLC to get the option at some point.

This whole thing is just flat out hilarious at this point.

[mcbpete]

Allegedly, larger city sizes were tested and implemented before the thing launched, and you'll be able to buy DLC to get the option at some point.

Oh. Boy.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Want more space?! FEELING RESTRICTED???!! EH ARE YOU? HMMMM???

THEN YOU SHOULD SPEND MORE MONEY ON THIS SHIT WE COULD HAVE EASILY PUT IN AT THE START!!!1!

Bigger Town (still rubbishly small) - 7 quid a month
Massive Town (meh) - 12 quid a month
Biggest Town (only one worth bothering with) - 18 fucking quid a month.

(Or some bullshit, prices subject to wild fluctuations depending where the decapitated chicken falls dead)

Go on get it down your throat you slaaaaaags.

Kisses
EA

[Hank Venture]

Allegedly, larger city sizes were tested and implemented before the thing launched, and you'll be able to buy DLC to get the option at some point.

This whole thing is just flat out hilarious at this point.

And everyone who has already bought the game will buy that. Rinse, repeat. EA aren't stupid, they'll do what makes them the most money, this is how. Even though they're pissing every paying customer in the face.

[Jamie Oliver is fat]

Allegedly, larger city sizes were tested and implemented before the thing launched, and you'll be able to buy DLC to get the option at some point.

This whole thing is just flat out hilarious at this point.

Well let's wait and see I guess, there's plenty to be pissed off about at this point without getting into rumours and conjecture as well.