Also, I wish Garbage Facilities would keep intaking garbage as they offload it to incinerators. I'm not sure why I can't just set the Garbage Facility on fire because the incinerators can't keep up with 1 to 1 Facilities.
Also... can't wait to get water treatment plants. I look into the bay and there is this poop streak about 4miles long before it dissipates into the ocean. I'd be impressed if I wasn't planning on using it as ocean side high value land...
Also, I wish Garbage Facilities would keep intaking garbage as they offload it to incinerators. I'm not sure why I can't just set the Garbage Facility on fire because the incinerators can't keep up with 1 to 1 Facilities.
Also... can't wait to get water treatment plants. I look into the bay and there is this poop streak about 4miles long before it dissipates into the ocean. I'd be impressed if I wasn't planning on using it as ocean side high value land...
So, I broke down and bought the game. Given that I spent twice as much on Simcity 2013, I suppose I can't complain too much, since in the hour I've spent on it so far, it has demonstrated its," What SimCity should have been" several times over. One of the nice things about my starting city is that I'm nowhere near the 'ocean' yet, which means my water is provided by a river which automatically takes my poop streak far, far down stream to be Somebody Else's Problem.
One thing I noticed to be wary of if you're trying to go with dams: Be careful of your water pumps.
They reduce the water level in the river slightly so if you group them you can end up with them creating troublesome waves in the river due to how the water is modeled. This results in a dam that goes from producing 200MW to nothing to getting hit by a giant wave that causes flooding before the damn starts producing again.
Spacing out your pumps and placing them only in wider sections of the river seems to cut down on this almost completely.
Currently I'm in the process of relocating them all downriver from the dam to remove the problem entirely but that also means relocating all of my sewage treatment and at around 120k people it turns out that's not going to be cheap :P
Welp, I did it. I finally managed to fix my shortage of goods throughout the city. For now at least. God only knows how awful it will get the farther I get from the coast. But, 200,000 Cims, no traffic issues, and a 94% overall happiness.
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
I started a new city and trying a oneway grid design that seems to have no stoplights. It's scaling quite well so far. I am going to reserve that area for the "downtown" corridor once I have the funds built up to really start branching out.
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mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
For any of those who are interested. I made a Manhattan island map that's gameplay optimized for the default tiles you're given. Feel free to play with it and leave feedback so that I can make changes and fixes. Still playtesting it myself but the basics seem to be working fine.
So, my biggest problem at the moment is staring at a blank map right at that two highway connection into the great world and trying to decide how on earth am I going to tap that for peoples without the join looking like a drunken idiot trying to stitch his pants to his underwear...
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
It's been said before in this thread, but build something that works, use what you learn to expand efficiently, then fix the ugly stuff when you're swimming in money. I've got 45k+ people in my city right now and in excess of 2 million monies without even realizing all that money was building up, so I can afford a pretty huge overhaul of the city in general, particularly the unpleasant areas I started out building at.
i want something to slave my highways together so I don't have one perfectly aligned beautifully curved highway and its twin going the opposite direction flipping out all over the shop
Or at least something so I can adjust where the pillars are or something
i want something to slave my highways together so I don't have one perfectly aligned beautifully curved highway and its twin going the opposite direction flipping out all over the shop
Or at least something so I can adjust where the pillars are or something
Build the first land of the highway. At each "breakpoint" where you stop the curve, build a 2 lane road perpendicular out a few spaces. Then connect the second highway to each section of that road to ensure they match up.
well, i fixed bob the friendly traffic jam. it only took a giant overpass through the middle of my city and changing a few 6 lanes to highways because 6 lanes are dumb if you don't care about sound pollution. 95% of the time they'll only use 3 lanes anyway, and highways don't have lights.
that said, my city looks like total ass now, and my forest industrial is like 95% abandoned because ain't nobody wanna work there. think i might just start a new city.
You can have regular two lane one way streets connect onto and off a highway with no traffic lights and very little slow down from vehicles entering and exiting. Why have one or two on ramps/offramps when you can pepper your highways with tons of entry and exit points seamlessly?
i want something to slave my highways together so I don't have one perfectly aligned beautifully curved highway and its twin going the opposite direction flipping out all over the shop
Or at least something so I can adjust where the pillars are or something
Build the first land of the highway. At each "breakpoint" where you stop the curve, build a 2 lane road perpendicular out a few spaces. Then connect the second highway to each section of that road to ensure they match up.
Most of that guide is just common sense and stuff I learned by trial and error. Like here is the current city I am working on:
Sandbox mode city with 30k population. Bus lines, no subways (yet).
High density zones (right side of map) with flowing traffic. Despite the orange/red areas, traffic moves smoothly. Main road has long stretches between stoplights. The side streets are all alternating two-lane, one-way.
The area where my city started, aka the clusterfuck. Despite numerous attempts with strategic offramps, traffic still overwhelms the system. Always be ready and willing to bulldoze entire sections of your city.
The part I don't understand is how a civil engineer can build this traffic utopia, but every city I've lived in IRL (all of which employ civil engineers) are traffic messes.
Can someone clarify how incinerators work? Do they actually pick up trash from homes and bring it back to burn it? Or do they only pull from landfills? Or can I only fill an incinerator with landfill garbage by setting the landfill to "empty"?
What about crematoria vs. cemeteries?
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mastertheheroProfessional Video Editor & Book AuthorRegistered Userregular
I definitely don't like unlocking the water treatment plant until I hit a certain population cap. I hate seeing all that water pollution creep up my river but at least it's giving me a goal to strive for.
Can someone clarify how incinerators work? Do they actually pick up trash from homes and bring it back to burn it? Or do they only pull from landfills? Or can I only fill an incinerator with landfill garbage by setting the landfill to "empty"?
What about crematoria vs. cemeteries?
Incinerators have their own garbage trucks that pick up straight from homes/businesses. Landfills continue to operate as normal unless you shut them off or delete them. When you empty out a landfill the trucks try to take the loads to nearest incinerator. Cemeteries/crematoriams work the same way.
The part I don't understand is how a civil engineer can build this traffic utopia, but every city I've lived in IRL (all of which employ civil engineers) are traffic messes.
Stop playing games and get to work!
In between city planners and engineers is a whole host of politicians, business people and homeowners screaming "not in my back yard".
The part I don't understand is how a civil engineer can build this traffic utopia, but every city I've lived in IRL (all of which employ civil engineers) are traffic messes.
Stop playing games and get to work!
Most major cities are quite old and have limited budgets, so civil engineers have to make do with what they can and rarely get option to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. Just go onto Google Maps and zoom in to major cities and you can usually see newer construction areas where they've tried to fuse new onto old. Portland is good example as a city with old infrastructure that they are trying to shoehorn in modern streets and interchanges along with light rail.
I definitely don't like unlocking the water treatment plant until I hit a certain population cap. I hate seeing all that water pollution creep up my river but at least it's giving me a goal to strive for.
eh, once you get it and get rid of the waste pipes it doesn't take very long for the pollution to clear.
In between city planners and engineers is a whole host of politicians, business people and homeowners screaming "not in my back yard".
In Portland, Oregon Health Sciences University decided to build an aerial tram from their hilltop facility down to a campus by river (in reality, it was built so doctors had a direct route to their high end condos). In their infinite wisdom they decided to run it right over the top of a neighborhood. One guy who lives under it put this sign up (was originally on roof but city made him take it down).
The part I don't understand is how a civil engineer can build this traffic utopia, but every city I've lived in IRL (all of which employ civil engineers) are traffic messes.
Stop playing games and get to work!
The result of idealised situations versus real life where you have budgets, ass hole politicians more interested in pork barrelling or getting themselves re-elected and the inability to go 'You know what? I want to demolish this entire block, rip up these roads and shut down the metro rail network to redo things properly'
Oh and ass hole drivers who zoom up a lane before going across 3 lanes at the last moment fucking up the rest of the road.
After studying a bunch of YouTube videos on traffic guides, I went back and redid a ton of my cities bottlenecks. Basically, the 4-lane streets are worthless. By sticking to 2 lanes (and 6-lanes where absolutely necessary) you minimize lights.
I've fixed my traffic flows, but I feel like only half of the changes are actual design improvements. The other half are hacks to get around the fact that I can't control where to place a light, where to stick a "No left turn" sign, etc. That could get really convoluted to design and implement into the pathfinding for the agents, but coming from a designer whose prior claim to fame was all transportation stuff, I'm disappointed that C:S doesn't let me use some of the basic traffic manipulation tools that civil engineers have been using for decades.
After studying a bunch of YouTube videos on traffic guides, I went back and redid a ton of my cities bottlenecks. Basically, the 4-lane streets are worthless. By sticking to 2 lanes (and 6-lanes where absolutely necessary) you minimize lights.
I've fixed my traffic flows, but I feel like only half of the changes are actual design improvements. The other half are hacks to get around the fact that I can't control where to place a light, where to stick a "No left turn" sign, etc. That could get really convoluted to design and implement into the pathfinding for the agents, but coming from a designer whose prior claim to fame was all transportation stuff, I'm disappointed that C:S doesn't let me use some of the basic traffic manipulation tools that civil engineers have been using for decades.
Cities in Motion was never really great at roads though. It was mostly about public transit and trains and whatnot. CiM2 had the ability to change roads around, but the problems here are the same problems in that.
Which is why i'm disappointed there is no streetcars or a better rail system.
One of the common refrains from city planners/traffic planners is that you cannot fix congestion problems by building more and larger roads. It just makes the problem worse. It seems this game may be modeling this aspect fairly well.
Traffic problems will be fixed when driverless cars are the norm. Then roadways basically become dynamic trains where your 'carriage' will jump between trains as your route dictates.
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
One of the common refrains from city planners/traffic planners is that you cannot fix congestion problems by building more and larger roads. It just makes the problem worse. It seems this game may be modeling this aspect fairly well.
Sorta. I interpret that mantra to mean that more != better; it's better to design smart than design big.
Some of the frustrations I (and others) have definitely comes from trying to build big instead of build smart...other frustrations come from the fact that I can't always build smart the way I'd want to.
Fixing congestion by building larger roads just makes larger parking lots.
You have to fix the bottlenecks, everything behind that is just a queue for that bottleneck.
Everyone seems intent on saying that more lanes isn't the solution, when nobody's contending that it is. We're frustrated that we can't link two roads without creating lights where any reasonable CivE would simply put a "no turn" sign.
In other news, I recently learned the importance of pedestrian walkways. There's really no way to tell pedestrians not to cross an enormous street, so they'll dick with your lights or on small roads, just walk into traffic and slow everything down. I got so fed up with a roundabout that I decided to basically build a pedestrian roundabout on top of it:
Now cargo trucks come in from the South to deliver goods to farms in the North or Cargo Station to the East via one-way roads. The only thing coming in from the West is residential traffic...and just past the train terminal to the right is a huge one-way ramp to get out of dodge.
Speaking of which, ramps can be used pretty handily over proper one-way streets if you don't care about zoning. The increase in speed is pretty nifty.
Multiple lanes give you advantages if people weren't stacking up in the wrong place. If I could make lanes turn only lanes, then huge lines of cars wouldn't stack up because they're trying to turn at the next intersection as well and are just camped out in the right lane because of the way pathfinding works. There are workarounds, but they're ugly and make little sense from a real world perspective.
And yes, the fact we can't make 4/6 lane roads have no left turns or something similar really breaks how I want to design a city. Everything doesn't need to create a full width intersection with stoplights.
CO seems to be aware of these things and they say they're looking into how traffic works, which is nice. Also talk about merging lanes which I want more than anything, standard highway overpass to surface road connection shouldn't need to have a 4 square gap between them.
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Shogun Streams Vidya
How do you make one of those?
Game of the Year.
Also, I wish Garbage Facilities would keep intaking garbage as they offload it to incinerators. I'm not sure why I can't just set the Garbage Facility on fire because the incinerators can't keep up with 1 to 1 Facilities.
Also... can't wait to get water treatment plants. I look into the bay and there is this poop streak about 4miles long before it dissipates into the ocean. I'd be impressed if I wasn't planning on using it as ocean side high value land...
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
So, I broke down and bought the game. Given that I spent twice as much on Simcity 2013, I suppose I can't complain too much, since in the hour I've spent on it so far, it has demonstrated its," What SimCity should have been" several times over. One of the nice things about my starting city is that I'm nowhere near the 'ocean' yet, which means my water is provided by a river which automatically takes my poop streak far, far down stream to be Somebody Else's Problem.
They reduce the water level in the river slightly so if you group them you can end up with them creating troublesome waves in the river due to how the water is modeled. This results in a dam that goes from producing 200MW to nothing to getting hit by a giant wave that causes flooding before the damn starts producing again.
Spacing out your pumps and placing them only in wider sections of the river seems to cut down on this almost completely.
Currently I'm in the process of relocating them all downriver from the dam to remove the problem entirely but that also means relocating all of my sewage treatment and at around 120k people it turns out that's not going to be cheap :P
I really wish they'd add larger-scale traffic awareness to the drivers, though. Because sometimes the longer route is the fastest.
NYC Manhattan gameplay optimized
Or at least something so I can adjust where the pillars are or something
@Jintor
Build the first land of the highway. At each "breakpoint" where you stop the curve, build a 2 lane road perpendicular out a few spaces. Then connect the second highway to each section of that road to ensure they match up.
that said, my city looks like total ass now, and my forest industrial is like 95% abandoned because ain't nobody wanna work there. think i might just start a new city.
You can have regular two lane one way streets connect onto and off a highway with no traffic lights and very little slow down from vehicles entering and exiting. Why have one or two on ramps/offramps when you can pepper your highways with tons of entry and exit points seamlessly?
Oh!
Thanks!
The engineer that made that amazing island city wrote a guide for roads and transit
High density zones (right side of map) with flowing traffic. Despite the orange/red areas, traffic moves smoothly. Main road has long stretches between stoplights. The side streets are all alternating two-lane, one-way.
The area where my city started, aka the clusterfuck. Despite numerous attempts with strategic offramps, traffic still overwhelms the system. Always be ready and willing to bulldoze entire sections of your city.
Stop playing games and get to work!
What about crematoria vs. cemeteries?
In between city planners and engineers is a whole host of politicians, business people and homeowners screaming "not in my back yard".
eh, once you get it and get rid of the waste pipes it doesn't take very long for the pollution to clear.
The result of idealised situations versus real life where you have budgets, ass hole politicians more interested in pork barrelling or getting themselves re-elected and the inability to go 'You know what? I want to demolish this entire block, rip up these roads and shut down the metro rail network to redo things properly'
Oh and ass hole drivers who zoom up a lane before going across 3 lanes at the last moment fucking up the rest of the road.
I've fixed my traffic flows, but I feel like only half of the changes are actual design improvements. The other half are hacks to get around the fact that I can't control where to place a light, where to stick a "No left turn" sign, etc. That could get really convoluted to design and implement into the pathfinding for the agents, but coming from a designer whose prior claim to fame was all transportation stuff, I'm disappointed that C:S doesn't let me use some of the basic traffic manipulation tools that civil engineers have been using for decades.
Cities in Motion was never really great at roads though. It was mostly about public transit and trains and whatnot. CiM2 had the ability to change roads around, but the problems here are the same problems in that.
Which is why i'm disappointed there is no streetcars or a better rail system.
Sorta. I interpret that mantra to mean that more != better; it's better to design smart than design big.
Some of the frustrations I (and others) have definitely comes from trying to build big instead of build smart...other frustrations come from the fact that I can't always build smart the way I'd want to.
You have to fix the bottlenecks, everything behind that is just a queue for that bottleneck.
In other news, I recently learned the importance of pedestrian walkways. There's really no way to tell pedestrians not to cross an enormous street, so they'll dick with your lights or on small roads, just walk into traffic and slow everything down. I got so fed up with a roundabout that I decided to basically build a pedestrian roundabout on top of it:
Now cargo trucks come in from the South to deliver goods to farms in the North or Cargo Station to the East via one-way roads. The only thing coming in from the West is residential traffic...and just past the train terminal to the right is a huge one-way ramp to get out of dodge.
Speaking of which, ramps can be used pretty handily over proper one-way streets if you don't care about zoning. The increase in speed is pretty nifty.
And yes, the fact we can't make 4/6 lane roads have no left turns or something similar really breaks how I want to design a city. Everything doesn't need to create a full width intersection with stoplights.
CO seems to be aware of these things and they say they're looking into how traffic works, which is nice. Also talk about merging lanes which I want more than anything, standard highway overpass to surface road connection shouldn't need to have a 4 square gap between them.