How to control buildings to grow?

[RippleJet]

If you're not used to using a hex editor, you'd probably find SC4Tool easier to use!

[Andreas]

Well, as already mentioned, both the Reader and SC4Tool should work fine for this task. Since it's quite a huge task after all, maybe you could make it even more thoroughly - create a proper mod. What I suggest is that you use exactly the steps that Xiziz described, but not in the original files, but in a copy of the relevant exemplar files. Open the SC4Desc files (or the SC4Lot files, if there isn't an SC4Desc file), find the building exemplar file (the one that carries the occupant group properties), and copy them into an empty DAT file.

The best way to do this is to open a second instace of the Reader, and paste the exemplar files into the "blank.dat" that is opened by default. So go to the original file, right-click the building exemplar file and select "Copy file(s)", then go to your second Reader instance, right-click again and select "Paste file(s)". Do this with all of Haarlemmergold's (for instance) buildings, then edit them as described above. Finally, save the exemplar file collection as a new DAT file. You can now put this in a subfolder that starts with a "z_", so it will be loaded last, overriding the original values. I'm sure there are quite a few people who like to have such a mod as well.