How to build a well-built up city with a million people.

[Denon333]

Hello everyone!Do you know how to build a city of one million?I do.Prepare to play an hour everyday making this city.You will need these mods first,all from Simtropolis:Super Demand Mod,Transit Top Set,Downtown Hole Eliminator,but just the office stages cap,the Super Green Grass from Youtube(Find the video aboutthe grass and you will find the website),Simeloen RH,the Functional Landmarks and the NAM(optional)

First,find a relatively flat large square and incoreparate it.Then,enact the Super Demand Ordinance(Its an ordinance)Then,build a 6*6 road grid.Now build the transit on the right and left side of the block(On the top right and left!)Now,Build two(Yep,two!)International Airports.It's gonna be needed.Now,place four full blocks of industry around the airports.Build a hydrogen plant next(Use the you don't deserve it cheat)Then,build the super green grass to get rid of industrial air and water pollution.Then,build all the services from Fire Stations to High Schools.Tip:use Large Fire Staions,Deluxe police stations,Hospitals and almost every large education building.Funding:Elementary School:Max for local,zero for local bus funding,High School:Same thing for local but $400 for bus funding.Same for hospital as it is for elementary.Make sure the coverage overlaps with each other so that the least extra hospitals needs to be built.You will notice that later in the game,as you approach 800 000,your residential demand goes down but only high wealth demand is there.The secret is not to build another town and connect it:it's getting the right taxes for residential and commercial.Now,continue to expand and soon,you will hit 1 000 000!There is also alot of space left to build.

Now,I just wanna say this:"Thank you for seeing my tutorial."If there is anything wrong,just post or post like this: or  .

[ForeverShafer]

There is two things I don't like about it:
1. No pictures: Let your readers see what to do, not just saying "do this" or "do that"
2. Scrunched together: Put spaces!

Other that that, good job!

[fivexthethird]

Another two things:
1. The you don't deserve it cheat and the super demand mod are considered cheats, and people don'trealy like using cheats.
2. the Downtown hole eliminator mod is in compatible with the CAM.

[aaaling]

I like to use cheats.



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RHW VERSION 3.0
                                 HERE!
The highway revolution is coming

[mike3775]

I use cheats all the time.

The first thing I do when I start any city, is to plop a few of the super cash parks and run the game simulator until 2/1 comes up and then pause the game and develop the city

[deecee]

I use cheats all the time.

The first thing I do when I start any city, is to plop a few of the super cash parks and run the game simulator until 2/1 comes up and then pause the game and develop the city

hey - what's a super cash park and how do i get one?!

[wouanagaine]

try this http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=2412

[mike3775]

I use this one

http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?page=1&keyword=Super%20Cash%20Park&type=all   


Another thing I do to cheat, is ue the "you don't deserve it" cheat to plop the rewards that I need to build a strong commercial and industrial city(I build 3 cities at a time- 1 Res, 1 Com, 1 Ind)

[cogeo]

I never had problems with cash flow, and as I wanted to make the game more challenging I made a simple mod that sets the startup cash for the "hard" difficulty level  to 0, so that I can only start with a loan. I used to take loans but the interest paid was always less than the Income-Expenses difference so I have never faced a bankruptcy.

As for making a big city, the key point here is high-density zones. Make your city as dense as your infrastructure can handle. Carefull zoning is also essential. For R, you have to get as tall buildings as possible (and I'm mostly talking about the ingame ones). Tall, stage-8 buildings have 4-tile wide lots, ie their are mostly 4x4 and 4x3. As you already know lots may be aggregated or subdivided, according the demand and the lots available for the current growth stage. It is crucial to control this yourself. Your goal is to zone your city in a way that 4-tile wide lots are formed. There are no 4-tile deep (1x4) lots available during the early stages of the game, so what you can do is try to zone for 4x3, not 4x4 (there are 3-tile deep lots available early on). So provide for 4x3 lots: Zone the two leftmost 1x3 lots, and the rightmost 1x3 one (ie leave the 3rd lot unzoned). Run the game for afew gamemonths, and then stop it and the 2nd lot from the left has developed, make it historical and zone the 3rd one. This won't allow the medium lots to aggregate, actually what can be aggregated are the two rightmost lots. After some gameyears the growth stage will advance, and the two rightmost lots willaggregate, making a 2x3 lot - for low wealth these accomodate more than 200 sims. Stop the game, make this new (bigger) building historical, and remove the historical status from the 2nd 1x3 lot. Wait until the two leftmost lots aggregate. Finally, if you still have demand the game may start to aggregare the two 2x3 lots. Again, you have to do this in a controlled manner, eg leave pairs of 2x3 lots without making them historical, but make historical the lots around them. Finally you can get rows of 4x3 lots - later you can also try 4x4. That is, all this technique is about, is keeping the game from forming 3x3 lots (leaving an odd 1x3 one) and having 2x3 "holes" later.

For such areas to develop smoothly, you need good transportation - after some point you will rather have to utilise subways. Also, even for R$ to develop that tall buildings, land value must not be too low. Have primary school (but not high school) coverage, hospital, and some, but not many, parks or trees. Mass-transit stations also help advance grow stage (locally) by 1 or 2 stages.

For commercial things are quite easier, as there is a 2x4 lot available early on: the flea market (also available in 2x3 form). So you can zone 2x4 lots early on, these will soon develop, and later aggregate to form 4x4 ones (in the medium growth stages you will get CO$$ buildings with 250-450 jobs). Later on these will upgrade to tall skyscrappers.

Hope this helps

[memph]

I'm currently working on a big city and trying to make it as large as possible.

I used a large city tile and surrounded it by suburbs which held CS jobs, industries and a large residential population. However, I taxed CO$$ and CO$$$ so that they would only be built in the large city. This is so that you can have high density work areas that will provide lots of jobs near the residential blocks. For me this also meant taxing CS$$$ out of the city because they didn't provide enough jobs and didn't allow CO$$ to be built over them. The large suburban residential population was needed because I wanted to generate a huge CO demand so that the big city would have a larger CO population than its own residents could generate. This way there should be no way the buildings will get abandoned due to lack of jobs.

Download the CAM if you haven't already. It increases density a lot, greatly increases the capacity of rails and roads (but not transit stations or subways) which should help with commute times, I think it also reduces the amounts of students you have, which can help the budget. Although roads on the CAM have the same capacity as avenues without the CAM, you'll still need avenues due to the increased density.

Keeping commute times is important to prevent abandonment and keep your population growing. On top of the avenues, use mass transit to keep people from overcrowding them. I like to use subways and buses at every street corner. You may need to build several alternate subway lines or multiple lines adjacent to each other to prevent overcrowding. My bus/sub stops are all overcrowded too, but that hasn't been too much of an issue for now.

Be careful with your zoning too. I zoned with alternating CO and Res blocks (all high density) checkerboard style. The blocks were quite large, 10 squares wide and 15-20 squares long. If they get too long the bus stops at the street corners will get too far, but you don't want them too short or you'll be wasting land on avenues. Zone lots 4 squares deep* (hold down Ctrl) to get the biggest buildings. Since the lots are 10 squares wide, you'll have a 2 square wide strip of unzoned land in the middle. Use this to increase desirability by buildings parks for residential and plazas for commercial. Sometimes (at least for me), the game seems to "forget" I built them, so if you bulldoze these greenspaces and rebuild them, you'll often get a few new bigger buildings built.

As for civic buildings, your entire city should be within the coverage radius of large high schools*, large elementary schools*, museums, libraries, hospitals, police stations and fire stations. I downloaded the Sarah H. Bingham Hospital since I would have otherwise needed 5+ vanilla hospitals in an area that could have been covered by a single hospital's ambulances. The Sarah H. Bingham one is 3x4 squares and I believe a capacity of 13500. You can use other hospitals, but they should have a capacity of at least 10,000 patients.

Utilities:
-Water: The bigger facilities are more efficient, so try to use those. Your pipes should be built at every 13 squares since they carry water 6 squares away. You'll need multiple water treatment plants to keep water pollution down.
-Power: You can export from dirty cities with cheap polluting plants or build some of your own cheap polluting ones in a corner where it won't affect development when you start out. As your city grows, your budget should allow you to build more expensive less polluting ones like the nuclear, solar and hydrogen power plants. Don't worry about meltdowns, I was only able to get one when I let its condition drop to 0 or 1 percent.
-Garbage: If you don't export, I would rather build waste to energy plants since they can be destroyed while garbage can't be removed. Just make sure to build a road to them.

Ordinances: Use them as they seem necessary. Some reduce power/water consumption or garbage, some reduce air pollution from cars or increase use of mass transit (therefore also reduce air pollution at avenues and traffic jams), some help with crime, education, health, etc. In my city, they're about 1/4 of my expenses. 

Gifts: I usually try to spread them out across the city.

Airports: Build them as big as you need too. Before too long you'll have an international airport. Once it's been upgraded to a large int'l airport, you may need to build a second or even third. I just downloaded an airport pack, so I'll try that, I haven't tried designing any, so I can't comment on that.

*When starting out, the rules are slightly different. You should zone your 1st and maybe 2nd residential blocks only 8 wide with lots 3 squares deep because the ones 4 square deep might be too big for the first buildings to develop. Large schools also won't be immediately available, you might be able to get away without building any until you reach the pop threshold needed to unlock them, if not, just build small schools and bulldoze them when the big ones are unlocked.