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How do you play?

Started by huzman, June 26, 2018, 01:08:00 PM

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huzman

It's an idea that just pop up in my mind...
I want to know how do you develop a new region, first city that grows. How?
Do you go first with streets/roads/avenues?
Do you start with RCI first?
What about transportation?

Here is way that I'm trying to implement, with mixed results.
First, I lay roads/streets to go as far as the next tile.
Second, I create small "cities" near the borders, within the same tile.
Third, I worry about Railroad/Avenues/Highways connections.
Next, but not least, I build education/health/crime/fire.
and let's not forget Power and Water.
Of course I build bus stops and subways where needed.

Oh yeah, First thing I do is giving myself a hefty 1000000§ to cover those first investments with zero habitants.

Now, how do you go about it?

I hope to receive many opinions... ;D
« Essayez d'apprendre quelque chose sur tout et tout sur quelque chose. »
             « Try to learn something about everything and everything about something »
                          « Trata de aprender algo sobre todo y todo sobre algo »
                                                                                                    — Thomas Henry Huxley

0715463494

Hi,i usually plant a money tree for starters.Long past the time to make money in this game, :D.Then i always lay out my transport networks for about a quarter of the map,depending on my plan for the city,only play big maps anyway $%Grinno$%.from there it usually takes on its own life.I love building mega cities,as you can see from the lotting i do for myself,these small lots is boring,lol,lol.

owlsinger

I'm a big city girl  ;D

I use maps of all big tiles, and start in the left top corner. I usually have an idea of my transit network in my head (keeping in mind avoiding the endless commuters thing). I have a money mod and use CAM + NAM + Project Symphony. On occasion, I'll sprinkle in an agricultural city with only a freight rail connection.

In the first tile, in the order that I do them (on pause): highway, bullet train, airport, rail, tla7/ave6, ave2, roads, interchanges, trees&walls on the highway, power/water (pipes), trash, transit stops/stations, school/university/fire/police/hospital, parks/plazas, zone some hi density res, zone some hi density industry, plop a couple of commercial buildings with jobs, zone some hi density commercial, turning lanes, taxes, ordinances. I've probably forgotten something!

Start on turtle, watch a while and let residential build, step up the speed one notch. I almost never use cheetah. Then I start adding, subtracting, fixing and let the city grow for a while. Once I'm happy I've gotten a decent start I'll do the connecting city and work on both. In spite of the fact that the way I do it sounds regimented, my cities have different flavors. I use different mixes of trees, parks and residentials.

And somehow, it never gets old.

'Luminous beings are we..'  - Yoda

'Hints of Gold'
by Jasmine Becket-Griffith

huzman

0715463494: Yeah the money thing is a stoper. I figured that if Trump was to build a new golf course, he wouldn't start with a measly half a million. Simoleans (§) may be more valuable than $ or € since with a single million I get away building a basic structure with 0 Sims.

owlsinger: We seem to be doing the same thing but obviously you are more organized and precise. But I'm more into Rural. I prefer smaller towns connected with farms. Anyway, thanks for detailing your MO.  :)
« Essayez d'apprendre quelque chose sur tout et tout sur quelque chose. »
             « Try to learn something about everything and everything about something »
                          « Trata de aprender algo sobre todo y todo sobre algo »
                                                                                                    — Thomas Henry Huxley

Andreas

#4
I start a new region with designing the landscape (usually downloading some map that looks interesting), filling it with trees and such, and sometimes, I go into Mayor Mode in a few cities, building some regional transportation , such as a highway, or a railway line that is using the landscape for scenic features, such as a bridge across a valley etc. My first steps in a city are pretty basic, I don't really want to cheat a lot, so I'm using the money that I have left for laying out some (pretty simple) RCI zones with basic city services, such as a power plant, fire station, elementary school and the occasional bus stop.

While making sure that the cashflow is always positive, I'm starting to lay out the city by expanding it one city quarter after another, which means I lay out the major arteries (such as avenues, railway line etc.) first, and then fill in roads and streets, creating neighborhoods for residentials, commercials etc., slowly adding more city services, depending on how much I can afford. In most cases, I'm building with the time paused, and then let it run on "cheetah" for a while to get enough cash for the next step.

Once the city is large enough to generate enough funds, I'm starting with some beautification, refining the road layout, adding more types of transportation and such. I also like to keep the existing development and find ways for improving traffic by squeezing in bypass routes, tunnels, and other challenges that RL city planners are facing. Naturally, the bulldozer is used sometimes to remove some ugly stuff, and for clearing the land when demand is changing (such as removing residential zones in the city center in favour of commercial highrises).

Generally speaking, my development is often very dense, and I cover virtually any tile with something, but I'll try to keep the city green by adding large parks, and keep forest intact in places where the topography isn't really suitable for city building. For the most part, the cities are self-sustaining, sometimes, I make power and garbage deals with neighboring cities, maybe when using small city tiles for dirty industrial zones (it's not very realistic that pollution stops at the city border, but hey, why not use that "feature"?), but I do like the regional playing by interconnection the cities with highways, waterways etc.
Andreas

huzman

Andreas: Now that's a different approach. with the slow start, I imagine the initial §500000 should be enough.
As for the God Mod and trees plus some terraforming, I think most people do that. Me included.
Interesting comments, tho. Thanks for the input.  :)
« Essayez d'apprendre quelque chose sur tout et tout sur quelque chose. »
             « Try to learn something about everything and everything about something »
                          « Trata de aprender algo sobre todo y todo sobre algo »
                                                                                                    — Thomas Henry Huxley

Seaman

#6
I start somewhat similar to Andreas, but I really like building my cities with the time running. It helps me to see the city develop and therefore I have an immediate response to my actions. Also, it helps me to plan my transportation more organic since I can see where the need is. Sometimes I have an avenue as a placeholder and replace it with a highway if the additional capacity is really needed...

In order to develop some bigger sections of the city, I use the BSC funding mod. It doesn't feel that much like cheating and does not solve your financial balancing so I still get the joy of "playing" the game (including the financial part) and I am able to to design big setups and think big without the need to build up tons of money, if needed.

Odainsaker

Along with obsessing on the initial design of the geography of the landscape as others do, I like to early on plan the overall region, but not so much in terms of developed cities.  Instead, I like put historic roads or trails, water systems, ancient strategic fortifications, or lost ruins.  These will inform where I might have later settlements or post towns, how they connect to each other, or even how they might relate to each other politically.  While my cities are not necessarily Japanese, Spanish colonial, or Roman cities, I use the road systems of the Gokishichidō, the Gokaidō, El Camino Real, or the viae Romanae to place my region in the greater nation, with their locus being my main city, and any crossing determining the future commercial center.  Completion of the great regional trunk roads or grand canals into the distant hinterlands and controlling the passes is one of the key efforts of my young cities.  I might also begin the regional rail system at the same time.  While I imagine how highways may one day work throughout the region, I admit to never specifically planning the highways, as they are generally not even allowed into my city centers.

I get obsessed with water in my cities, and spend a lot of time planning the creek and river systems in my cities.  Because the city I live in, San Antonio, is famed for its Riverwalk, I expect to eventually transform the rivers in my SimCity into something similar.  I also use the canals of Suzhou, the chinampas of Xochimilco, and the acequia systems Spanish America as models to irrigate my croplands and develop my historic areas.  It's a sign of modern planning and landscaping ideas, but every creek and river in my simcities will eventually become linear parks, and a self-made rule as I play is that while I can reroute water channels, I am not allowed to eliminate them.  Like my own real-life city, the street layout must primarily work around and adapt to the irrigation and watercourse layout, and, hence, all the rivers in the region and creeks in the tile have to have been defined beforehand.

Sometimes my initial cities are linear following the great roads, but more often they are gridded, and typically planned in the grand fashion of Kyōto, Chang'an, Washington, D.C., Savannah, or even Austin.  Amusingly, I often have the ceremonial areas and axes laid out before the real city.  I admit that traffic never concerns me...as long as the palaces, temples, and plazas are laid out appropriately, everything else can adapt, and I will spend much time lining up axes and sightlines for future civic landmarks.  I might even use imaginary versions of feng shui geomancy or Spanish colonial Laws of the Indies to lay out the public areas.  Building the Genbu Temple of the Black Turtle of the North to protect the city from the northern winter winds can be just as important to me as building the first fire station.  I can't imagine building a city hall without first already having a Plaza de Armas to site it on.

I play with self-made planning rules, and among them is that axes, sightlines, and symbolic alignments may not be improperly broken:  ie, no elevated highways or rail viaducts may cross over a ceremonial boulevard or cut an allée.  As my cities are dense with landmarks and alignments, it's hard to even allow highways to penetrate the city core.  Another self-made planning rule is that hills and ridges are important landscape points, and only landmarks and civic buildings go atop hills.  I'll invent new SimCult temples if necessary to claim and preserve the hilltops.  These also help create the sightlines and axes, and an ideal city design to me is one where a polygonal web of sightlines, view corridors, tree-lined avenues, and hierarchical alignments can be made among all the prominent landmarks.  Renaissance Rome and Haussmann's Paris are the models, and often I must resolve radiating and directional avenues to the grid, creating complications as well as opportunities.  It also means that building heights have to be controlled between two landmarks in symbolic line-of-sight.  RCI zoning can fill between the landmarks as convenient, as long as the type of zone and building is appropriate when in proximity to the landmark.

If I've done it right, I end up with city tiles already criss-crossed with alignments, sightlines, landmarks, major roads, watercourses, civic reserves, or some other tangle of features that will inform and modulate development.  Everything else, I confess, becomes filler, and my cities may be inefficient, automotive traffic nightmares, but their layouts are in celestial, cosmological, Beaux Arts and New Urbanist harmony.  However, most of the grand scheme is too broad to implement at the outset, and it is usually first laid out with plopped rocks, markers, milestones, tree lines, and some initial roads to form the design framework into which the city must slowly, organically grow.

SD40-2

Now that I've started another city (Brokespike), I think it's time to describe how I play.

I usually tend to start with large city tiles, but on medium difficulty.

I tend to build somewhat organically, based on the needs of my citizens, occasionally changing the distribution of my services. While they're not the first things I build, I try to plan out mass transit early on, because after a little while, I'm somewhat inclined to install a ground light rail system.

In the case of Brokespike, the primary intention was to justify a rail system in my biggest city in the region, Sonava. In a change from my usual methodology, I installed a heavy rail system and connected it to Sonava. So far, it seems to be working very well, with freight and passengers being exchanged between the cities, even though Brokespike is very small at the moment. (It's intended to be a rail-based city in the end. )

And on that note, I think it's time to tune Brokespike up a bit.

huzman

Odainsaker: Your heavy use Landmarks, Monuments and such surprised me a lot. I can't imagine your budget!  $%Grinno$% Of course, with a few million § it makes it easier. All this as a side note.
What I'm hoping to see is the desire factor: does it attracks people? Rich or poor?
Would love to see some pix...

SD40-2: Regarding your transport network, it seems that that's the general trend. I do what you do, with one little difference: I develop first interconnections with roads, an occasional avenue, and rail. At the begining, interconnections are within the same tile, fitting a half dozen towns in one medium tile. Then I expand into other tiles. And go on from there.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your comments.
« Essayez d'apprendre quelque chose sur tout et tout sur quelque chose. »
             « Try to learn something about everything and everything about something »
                          « Trata de aprender algo sobre todo y todo sobre algo »
                                                                                                    — Thomas Henry Huxley

Seaman

Quote from: SD40-2 on July 13, 2018, 07:37:55 AM
While they're not the first things I build, I try to plan out mass transit early on, because after a little while, I'm somewhat inclined to install a ground light rail system.

Same here! I hesitate to build huge infastructures for just a couple of houses but it's equally nudging me to insert mass transit afterwards. So for me, one of the biggest challenges for building in SC4 is leaving enough space and fillers inbetween to build the infrastructure afterwards, while keeping the empty spaces or fillers looking good and natural.

Here's a real-life example from my used-to-be neighborhood. The fathers of the city where wise enough to leave some space next to the main street to prolongue the tramline coming from the city center to the satellite village in the southwest. So, the name of the game for the last 50 years was to protect this space from beeing sold out and clustered with buildings in order to keep an easy solution for the tramline extension. Since the city has grown in recent times, they are currently scratching their pockets to fund the construction work.

Shark7

One thing to bear in mind, is that I prefer maps that are all large city tiles, my current map is in fact 10x10 large city tiles.  I find that with all that real estate, if I want to build rural, I can make my villages very rural.

When I load in a new tile, I may do a little terraforming (if the map is too flat I add hills, etc).  Once I am happy with the terrain, I decide if this is to be a rural or city setting, then I start by laying out my highways, rail network and Monorail network from map edge to map edge.  Then I take another look at the map with the main lines in place and I start to picture the city tile as I want it to look. 

If I am building rural, I will make a note of areas where I want the villages to be, as many as 5 on a large city tile.

Then I just start building.  I just go where ever my imagination takes me.  The only thing I do consistently is make sure every village is connected to the main transport lines some how.

If I decide the tile is to be an actual city, then I have a more methodical layout I follow.  Mostly because getting the transportation networks right is a must with large cities.  Unfortunately trying to keep the transport networks efficient tends to lead me to build grid-like (something my rural villages simply do not suffer from) and I have to make myself break the grid from time to time.

I personally prefer to build rural since I feel more freedom when doing so.

Ralfger

That´s an interesting question and a nice read to learn about all your different styles! Personally, I recently changed my game strategy quite drastically.

I used to develop single city tiles in an isolated manner on the pre-installed maps of SC4 with the time running and within the limits of a balanced budget. Challenging - but not very pleasing aesthetically. As soon as I started downloading all the great content on file exchange, I get lost - ran out of money wishing to use more and more of it in my cities. 

Encouraged by a lot of breathtaking realistic MDs and motivated by the tutorial-like MD Realistic Cities For Dummies, I now go for a far more complex approach adressing both, a kind of "realism" as well as aesthetics and a well financed city in the long term.

Key points for the development of my new region and my recently started MD "Evolution of Windwatt" are:

       
  • creating a massive map from stratch (49x49) and imagine the overall appearance of the developed region based on a fictional history
  • interconnect the different towns, cities, and shared infrastructure and work cross-borders
  • built the main ateria of the regional transportation netwok
  • interdependent development of the city tiles
  • use lot editor to create pleasing sceneries an MMPing for a natural landscape
  • natural "in game growth" of RCI
  • reach a self-sustaining balanced budget.
May you have fun playing!

huzman

Ralfger
That's an interesting approach!
The use of the Lot editor while in-game is something new to me.
Thanks for your comments.
« Essayez d'apprendre quelque chose sur tout et tout sur quelque chose. »
             « Try to learn something about everything and everything about something »
                          « Trata de aprender algo sobre todo y todo sobre algo »
                                                                                                    — Thomas Henry Huxley

Galeb_G2

It depends on my mood. Sometimes I'll embark on a journey to make a grand city with lots of industry, 2 airports and all of that jazz, while sometimes I just want to play a quick game and build a smaller town around a specific theme : a mountain town that grows around agriculture and tourism, a riverside town serving as an industrial hub for a bigger city with an oversized fluvial/channel port and train station, a coastal fisherman's village turned tourism hotspot...