Man it has been a long while since I played this. I got super frustrated with my last city because of the mass die off mechanic. Did they ever address that?
Man it has been a long while since I played this. I got super frustrated with my last city because of the mass die off mechanic. Did they ever address that?
Well for one you can divert tram traffic away from your roads so they don't take up space. A well designed tram system (keep away from 2 lanes roads, use dedicated lines for long distance traffic rather than in road lines, merge at existing intersections) should have little to no impact on street traffic where buses are going to be in the road no matter what unless you give them dedicated lines. The biggest drawback is that you can't use trees for noise reduction or 6 lane for extra traffic capacity but dedicated bus lanes have a lot of the same issues.
Man it has been a long while since I played this. I got super frustrated with my last city because of the mass die off mechanic. Did they ever address that?
Yes. Oh my god yes. It's totally fixed now.
Oh thank god. How does it work now? Do they have more randomized lifespans?
I have a lot of fun with this game, but I feel like I'm still grappling with some of the mechanics. I think my problem is I try too hard to build perfectly from the beginning, while planning for the future, rather than constantly adapting, renovating, and replacing. Despite my best laid plans I always get to a point where I see flaws in my original layout and the system starts buckling (last time it was that sectors like Industry were too large rather than spread out, I think?).
It's also always problematic that so many options are unlocked later. So last game I finally got trains and wanted to run a commuter through town, but everything was too developed and I had to skirt around the existing perimeter, making it a useless ghost train. By mid-game, every damn block has something important on it, be it a subway stop, a bus stop, a hospital, a school. It becomes increasingly hard to plow through areas without a lot of effort.
I've started a new city and am trying to go with the flow a bit more, but I realized I don't fully understand Industry yet. In Sim City 4, if you could level up the area with parks and high education workers until you moved away from Dirty Industry and had only Manufacturing and High Tech, which were free of pollution. I've been trying to do the same here, but I'm not sure if it's possible. First off, leveling industry seems to require things that residential needs (schools, hospitals, parks, leisure, etc) so I have to do silly things like add an elementary school near the factories. Even with all their needs met, they level pretty slowly and I haven't seen much of a reduction in pollution. Do they ever get entirely pollution free? Is it viable to switch to an entirely Agriculture/Office industry economy, and just import goods for retail stores? Or should I just accept there will be some shitty polluted spots in town and work around that?
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited March 2016
I've gone away from using 2 way streets as town roads.
What sucks is my terraformer mod allowed me to do perfect 1 square layouts, with a tram line in a sunken position between the two 1 way roads... but due to the latest update it is broken.
Sunken roads open up so, so many possibilities in this game. Plus they look pretty cool. I started doing bypasses and tunnel systems every other block in the heavy traffic areas to reduce the number of traffic lights and it was working without taking up too much room. Now I can't continue until the author fixes the mod, which won't be until the weekend at the earliest.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
With my most recent city, all blocks had an extra 2-3 grid squares separating them. Made squeezing in later infrastructure a lot easier. Don't build new services until your Cims really start having problems. Factories will always produce a lot of pollution, even at their highest level. Your local infrastructure determines whether you industry levels up. If there are plenty of public transit lines and all the basic services are covered they should slowly level up over the course of an hour or so. Office buildings shouldn't produce pollution. Once you get enough yellow to cover your commercial buildings, you want to use the light blue office to fill in the remaining demand.
They do not pollute that far, usually if you leave 8 or 10 spaces between them and residential you are fine. An agriculture/office economy is fine, though, just make sure you have adequate highway access to your commercial.
Cargo transport is the biggest industry growth builder, you will want either rail or ship access nearby asap.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
With my most recent city, all blocks had an extra 2-3 grid squares separating them. Made squeezing in later infrastructure a lot easier. Don't build new services until your Cims really start having problems. Factories will always produce a lot of pollution, even at their highest level. Your local infrastructure determines whether you industry levels up. If there are plenty of public transit lines and all the basic services are covered they should slowly level up over the course of an hour or so. Office buildings shouldn't produce pollution. Once you get enough yellow to cover your commercial buildings, you want to use the light blue office to fill in the remaining demand.
Also you can get most of the unlocks without building much of anything dense. I think my last city I hit 60k people without much of a dense downtown, just a lot of sprawl and small separate communities. At that point I either pick an un-used area as a new "downtown" or save up a few hundred thousand dollars and flatten an existing area and re-do it.
I'm really proud of this one. Traffic is humming along like a dream. There are some rush hour backups but most of the day roads are clear. No doubt some of my mods help. I might start another city on the other side of a river here. Even though my framerate is terrible with cities this size, I can't stop building. This game manages to hook me in just the same way Sim City 4 did.
So, what mods are people using now? Whatever I had before weren't loading up properly after the Snow update so I just removed everything so was wondering what the good stuff is now.
The precision engineering mod makes life 1000% easier. Other than that I tend to run a bunch of custom growable building assets because I don't like clone buildings and theres not much variety in vanilla.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited March 2016
City just started, using the Polynesian theme and a nice island map I found. Will make a small but nice downtown with sprawling suburbs outside of the city center.
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I like the no stop lights mod, and the unlock all squares mod. then it is just a bunch of buildings. Like I got some awesome recycling centers, neat parks and stuff, plus TONs of buildings.
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited March 2016
The ditch tool is insanely useful for making man-made type terrain. It flattens well, it does sharp corners, and you can smooth out the edges of embankments, cliffs, or ledges to fit near perfect with roadways. It's how I cut that huge chunk out of the side of that mountain and make the neighborhood in it perfectly flat.
I can't play this game without it.
This pic lets you see where I carved out the hillside.
I don't get the obsession with public transport on offices in the game. Like they will only seem to grow to level 3 if I connect subway and have a bus or tram stop on every single possible area in the surrounding block even though there is no traffic and that seems a horribly innefficient way to design bus routes.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Apparently the next content patch will include new in-game tools.
Terraformer expansion?
Also, Colossal Order has a suggestions and Q&A thread going in their forums, and Mariina is the one doing the communication. I really like this company. Yeah, their last two expansions were mostly cosmetic or immersive (night time and dynamic weather are nice to have), but it looks like they've been listening to the complaints and it seems like their next step is going to be expanding the core gameplay.
I love how they've basically made what people hoped Sim City 5 would be and it's paid off for them.
Am I the only one that constantly wants to restart after reaching dense zones to implement lessons learned?
Things learned after last city:
1. Tram needs to either go all in as a total bus replacement system or not interact with the road network at all. Having tram weave in and out of the road system doesn't work well. Tram stops can be placed on freestanding track and connected with roads by pedestrian pathing just fine.
2. Industry and commercial need to be near each other, not spread across the city. Cargo and highway access for industry and commercial is also a must.
3. Offices on the other hand need to be near residential or mixed in with residential blocks so you don't have to build a hospital cemetary and high school out in the middle of nowhere. Also they love bus and tram connections like heroin, and need either dedicated in road tram or bus lanes so the stops don't clog your traffic.
4. With proper spacing, conventional industry really doesn't hurt much of anything, especially at tier 3.
5. Subway is awesome and worth working into the city asap. Also benefits a ton from bus or tram stops in front of the station.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
After so many failed cities, I realized I had been making the rookiest of rookie mistakes. I have unlimited money mode on, why am I not drawing my city center to start?
I'll be posting some pics of my island vacation land in a few. It's turning out really well, except for the inordinate amount of industrial demand.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
edited March 2016
So much for island vacation. Here's my northern european metropolis. Aside from a few spots and a still expanding commercial city center, this is it for the high density. The rest of the map will be an interconnected series of small suburbs. Just cuz.
I wish they would add ferries, steamships, or waterbusses now to go in the canals. And an above ground metro/medium rail that you could intermix with subway like sc4 so I can make some tokyo style rail systems. Great update, though.
A wierd thing I noticed, I had a roundabout made of highway tiles that was getting congested, and to fix it I ended up splitting the incoming four lane road into two one way two laners right beside each other. This worked, but I really don't understand why as the two should be largely identical mechanically.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I've found out making an entire industrial "district" like I used to with SimCity just does not work in this game. You need to make patches of industry here and there otherwise your streets get clogged like crazy.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
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Yes. Oh my god yes. It's totally fixed now.
>_>
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
Oh thank god. How does it work now? Do they have more randomized lifespans?
Oh...my god...
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
It's also always problematic that so many options are unlocked later. So last game I finally got trains and wanted to run a commuter through town, but everything was too developed and I had to skirt around the existing perimeter, making it a useless ghost train. By mid-game, every damn block has something important on it, be it a subway stop, a bus stop, a hospital, a school. It becomes increasingly hard to plow through areas without a lot of effort.
I've started a new city and am trying to go with the flow a bit more, but I realized I don't fully understand Industry yet. In Sim City 4, if you could level up the area with parks and high education workers until you moved away from Dirty Industry and had only Manufacturing and High Tech, which were free of pollution. I've been trying to do the same here, but I'm not sure if it's possible. First off, leveling industry seems to require things that residential needs (schools, hospitals, parks, leisure, etc) so I have to do silly things like add an elementary school near the factories. Even with all their needs met, they level pretty slowly and I haven't seen much of a reduction in pollution. Do they ever get entirely pollution free? Is it viable to switch to an entirely Agriculture/Office industry economy, and just import goods for retail stores? Or should I just accept there will be some shitty polluted spots in town and work around that?
What sucks is my terraformer mod allowed me to do perfect 1 square layouts, with a tram line in a sunken position between the two 1 way roads... but due to the latest update it is broken.
Sunken roads open up so, so many possibilities in this game. Plus they look pretty cool. I started doing bypasses and tunnel systems every other block in the heavy traffic areas to reduce the number of traffic lights and it was working without taking up too much room. Now I can't continue until the author fixes the mod, which won't be until the weekend at the earliest.
Cargo transport is the biggest industry growth builder, you will want either rail or ship access nearby asap.
Also you can get most of the unlocks without building much of anything dense. I think my last city I hit 60k people without much of a dense downtown, just a lot of sprawl and small separate communities. At that point I either pick an un-used area as a new "downtown" or save up a few hundred thousand dollars and flatten an existing area and re-do it.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
https://goo.gl/photos/pXSRdkFcFgva6Ms4A
I'm really proud of this one. Traffic is humming along like a dream. There are some rush hour backups but most of the day roads are clear. No doubt some of my mods help. I might start another city on the other side of a river here. Even though my framerate is terrible with cities this size, I can't stop building. This game manages to hook me in just the same way Sim City 4 did.
City just started, using the Polynesian theme and a nice island map I found. Will make a small but nice downtown with sprawling suburbs outside of the city center.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Im switching to this one.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=487175904
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
So, this is where I am now.
https://goo.gl/photos/41mUBuREG5gHb75q9
I think this one may be my favorite screenshot:
3DS: 0447-9966-6178
@Molybdenum
I can't play this game without it.
This pic lets you see where I carved out the hillside.
Terraformer expansion?
Also, Colossal Order has a suggestions and Q&A thread going in their forums, and Mariina is the one doing the communication. I really like this company. Yeah, their last two expansions were mostly cosmetic or immersive (night time and dynamic weather are nice to have), but it looks like they've been listening to the complaints and it seems like their next step is going to be expanding the core gameplay.
I love how they've basically made what people hoped Sim City 5 would be and it's paid off for them.
Things learned after last city:
1. Tram needs to either go all in as a total bus replacement system or not interact with the road network at all. Having tram weave in and out of the road system doesn't work well. Tram stops can be placed on freestanding track and connected with roads by pedestrian pathing just fine.
2. Industry and commercial need to be near each other, not spread across the city. Cargo and highway access for industry and commercial is also a must.
3. Offices on the other hand need to be near residential or mixed in with residential blocks so you don't have to build a hospital cemetary and high school out in the middle of nowhere. Also they love bus and tram connections like heroin, and need either dedicated in road tram or bus lanes so the stops don't clog your traffic.
4. With proper spacing, conventional industry really doesn't hurt much of anything, especially at tier 3.
5. Subway is awesome and worth working into the city asap. Also benefits a ton from bus or tram stops in front of the station.
I'll be posting some pics of my island vacation land in a few. It's turning out really well, except for the inordinate amount of industrial demand.
A wierd thing I noticed, I had a roundabout made of highway tiles that was getting congested, and to fix it I ended up splitting the incoming four lane road into two one way two laners right beside each other. This worked, but I really don't understand why as the two should be largely identical mechanically.
The ports already function like this, but only if it's the most efficient/only way for it to function.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981