simcity questions

[roberte]

Having no knowledge of sim city I noticed that in videos on the simcity site there are sims present as part of the game, but I cannot find info as to if they are playable similarly to sims in the sims 2 or only act as active background figures.

Also, if one creates a neighborhood in simcity populated with buildings, streets etc. and imports it into the sims do any houses, etc import as well or is the result an empty neighborhood that then needs to be populated?

Thank you for any information re. these issues.

[Zazazu]

The sims in SC4 function as local reporters. They'll complain of not having a job if there isn't demand, etc. As such, they are completely useless. They are not real sims. They are glorified signs. You do better to go off the data section of the UI.

SC4 fanbase is semi-dead. Maybe mostly dead. But mostly dead is slightly alive. I find most good info at the SC4 Knowledge Tree and hacks at Simtropolis.

[Mootilda]

Also, if one creates a neighborhood in simcity populated with buildings, streets etc. and imports it into the sims do any houses, etc import as well or is the result an empty neighborhood that then needs to be populated?

Some streets and bridges will be converted, but no houses.  If you import an SC4 file into TS2, you will have a neighborhood with the default townies, but no playable sims.

[Zazazu]

Specifically, only the "flat road" type bridge will translate. Diagonal roads will not translate. Features such as tunnels through mountains will result in a road that just dead ends where the tunnel would be (unfortunately). If you have mods like I do that make interesting cul-de-sacs of 1x1 loops, those will result in dead space in the game.

Beach lots need 1 1/2 to 2 squares of land in SC4 to be playable in TS2. They also cannot be too terribly steep. I have one hood with beach lots that I love...I accidentally got them so that they have a severe, nearly vertical drop-off from about 20 tiles in from the road. To get flat beach lots, it's best to build your terrain from the .png up. Read the tutorials on the Knowledge Tree I linked to earlier. You want a value of 83 in grayscale for the flattest lots possible.

[roberte]

Thank you for the advice- it will be a good addition to my sims2 tool set.

[SaraMK]

What confuses me is that there isn't really a good replacement for SC4 out there. Where did all those people who like city building go? We had the god-awful Sim City Societies, which we know failed very hard, and we had the god-awful City Life, which I haven't bothered to check on lately but assume also failed very hard... so what did the rats abandon the SC4 ship for? It may have been derelict, but there was nothing else in the water to cling to.

[illusionofjoy]

Since SimCity: Societies was a glaring disappointment, a lot of SimCity 4 players have been hanging their hopes on Cities XL, a game currently in development by Monte Cristo, the same company who produced City Life.

[SaraMK]

hanging their hopes on Cities XL, a game currently in development by Monte Cristo, the same company who produced City Life.

Oh, yes. I can see how this makes sense. Pin all your hopes on Monte Cristo, in case their third stab at the genre is miraculously less fail than their previous attempts. Come to think of it, has Monte Cristo produced any game that wasn't wtf and stupid and lose and utter fail, EVER? Their list of games reads like a bad joke.

[Zazazu]

Civilization, perhaps? Though that series is getting pretty aged, I thought a lot of SC4 fans were into it. Not sure. I only got SC4 because I saw it for cheap and I knew my laptop would run it. I didn't realize it would take the laptop three minutes to go through a day on double-speed in a large city, though. I got back into it for a month or so when FT came out and I was having issues with a particularly sneaky hack problem.

[SaraMK]

I have SC4 installed, but I suck so much at it that every time I have attempted to play the result has been me rolling around on the floor in a fit while the city burns under an acrid cloud of pollution, the screen turns red with traffic jams, and my advisers have heart attacks. Even more amusingly, every few weeks it will suddenly hit me what the solution is, and I will go back into the game to start a new city with a most sincere expectation that this time all will work out. Rinse and repeat.

[Zazazu]

I do more of a regional play than a city play. Start up with some agriculture, low density industrial, commercial buffer, and residential. Add residential when it fills. When they start poo-pooing about jobs, add a low density industrial sister city. So on and so forth. Eventually you pull the industrial out of the residential city completely and start adding buses and subways for additional transportation options. I'm not so big on highways. I'll have one connection to each sister city by highway, but that's it.

[MrMugg]

I had bought Civilization Chronciles not too long ago, because I never played any of the Civ games.  So, I started with the original Civ, and got hooked instantly.  Great fun.  Civ 2 is a lot of fun also, and I love the "council" that you get advice from.  I haven't played Civ 3 or 4 yet, but I have them and the expansions.  Eventually, I'll get to it.  I'm having fun with Civ 2 right now.

[Mizz Rose Bud]

Having no knowledge of sim city I noticed that in videos on the simcity site there are sims present as part of the game, but I cannot find info as to if they are playable similarly to sims in the sims 2 or only act as active background figures.

According to the booklet that comes with SC4 you can import your TS1 sims to your SC4 hood. I have never tested it, but your sims should then report back to you about how their lives is going .....

[J. M. Pescado]

I do more of a regional play than a city play. Start up with some agriculture, low density industrial, commercial buffer, and residential. Add residential when it fills. When they start poo-pooing about jobs, add a low density industrial sister city. So on and so forth. Eventually you pull the industrial out of the residential city completely and start adding buses and subways for additional transportation options. I'm not so big on highways. I'll have one connection to each sister city by highway, but that's it.

Regional play is a little glitchy. I discovered the amusing effect that if you have 3 regions that form a "ring", the sims will be perfectly happy to commute endlessly in a circle, paying mass transit fares to each city in an exponentially multiplying mass of duplicated ghosts in their attempt to go to work.

What happens:
City A has some 50000 residents leaving to city B, which advertises some jobs, so they go there. Upon loading city B, there are 50000 sims incoming from city A, looking for jobs. However, these jobs that city B was advertising are ACTUALLY being advertised by city C, and merely being passed mostly along by city B, which only actually has about 10000 domestic jobs. So those sims continue to ride the rails to city C, which also happens to border city A....which brings us to city C, where there might be some 10000 actual jobs, but the passed-along advertisement for jobs in city A...so now there are some 30000 sims travelling from city C to city A...where they came from in the first place!

On return to city A, you discover there are 30000 sims coming from city C. These sims essentially continue to ghost-multiply until there are hundreds of thousands of sims, until at some point this all collapses and resets itself, and the cycle begins anew. The Professional Commuter effect is also a massive cash generator for your city. Mass Transit profits easily compose some 60-80% of my income.

[Zazazu]

Yup. Subways before avenues, every time. I hadn't gotten into the why, but had definitely noticed the effect. Also, some of the 'hood policies are completely useless. Carpooling incentive doesn't do enough to be worth the money, I recall.

I usually do a medium sized residential/commercial city with small cities forming a ring around it. Every other small city has a small residential district, low density, poor education/health to keep the business/industrial cities hopping. One or two of the cities in the ring is a power plant. I'll do one highway going around the ring, with a spoke into the residential. My design is very much like a wagon wheel.

What is your opinion of airports and seaports? I never have a good spot for an airport. Seaports seem like they create more pollution than they are worth.

[J. M. Pescado]

Yup. Subways before avenues, every time. I hadn't gotten into the why, but had definitely noticed the effect. Also, some of the 'hood policies are completely useless. Carpooling incentive doesn't do enough to be worth the money, I recall.

Subways don't really go "before" avenues, because one must plan for the use of avenues from the beginning: Since avenues consume TWO groundtiles, you cannot easily retrofit them into an existing grid once the grid has already been laid, you must plan your grid to incorporate them in advance.

What is your opinion of airports and seaports? I never have a good spot for an airport. Seaports seem like they create more pollution than they are worth.

Airports are necessary to unlock commercial caps in a commercial city. Seaports improve industry in industrial cities, serving as valid "Exit" for industrial produce. As for pollution...it's an industrial city! The pollution is surely already horrendous. Why do you even care?

[Zazazu]

I have put seaports by the high-tech industrials before. I usually allow those in a residential city, just no ID or IM. I've not really used the airports before, but then I typically just have the one major residential with one small, one medium bordering commercial and commercial smattered in the residential. The rest are industrial/power with one large agricultural.

I started up a new region last night and have a population of only 604, but I'm making over $5k a month in the residential and I don't know what in the others.

[Sairsadel]

For those of you still playing Sim City 4, are you using Service Pack 3?

Thanks

[witch]

Yes.

[Zazazu]

XP SP3? Yes. Why, are you having issues? For the month or so I was SecuROM infected, it was blocking SC4 from running. Even from a noCD crack. I run SC4 with Rush Hour and the community Network Addon Module.

[Sairsadel]

Thanks for the replies.  Zazazu, that's really interesting, it didn't occur to me at the time to see if securom was the problem - I probably had the version that came with Seasons.  I last tried to install SC4 shortly after SP3 was released, maybe 9 months to a year ago.  I was trying to install from the original CD and the computer wouldn't run the disk, though the CD drive was fine.

A friend of ours still had service pack 2 but was about to install SP3, so I tried installing SC4 onto his computer before and after.  It worked fine before SP3 was installed, but afterward the result on his computer was the same as on mine - no recognition of the disk at all.

I drew the conclusion that SC4 was too old for SP3, but obviously I was wrong.  Good to know.