I have been playing simcity 4 for about 14 years intermittently and there's been a LOT of info in these videos that has helped me. I really don't know of many games that can provide that kind of longevity.
14:00 yes they will travel across multiple tiles by ferry. You just need to make sure you created a "city" in the tile connecting the two, so it shows up and registers in the regional transport overlay. I've got 800 sims commuting between two sides of a lake, seperated by a huge tile i got nothing built on, apart from "activating" that city.
I can't thank you enough. As top comment said, masterpiece in tuturial. I do watch in x1.25 to save time, and this has saved me hours and hours of troubleshooting. It's nice to find things by ourselves, but alot of space to be creative and problem-solve in this game without having to re-invent the wheel. Thanks to you mate. Godbless.
Thank you so much for these videos! Just bought this game from steam because i lost my old copy, and although i play sc4 for years, there are some tips you mention in these videos that i didn't know about, like the desirability cap. Thank you, your videos are very well explanatory!
FYI, you can also edit/create you own regions by editing the config.bmp in the region folder so if you want all large maps, it's possible. You can also duplicate cities (ex. a generic industrial layout that you want all around your main city to segregate pollution or a service region to buy power and water from and sell garbage to that you might want in a few places) by creating an empty region, importing your template in the new region, backing up the new region folder, re-importing the city to your main region, loading and renaming the newly imported city with ctrl-x/whererufrom, over-writing the files of the backup region, rinse and repeat the import process until you have all the copies that you need.
I download it yesterday... and forgot how to play it... then now iam here hahaha... watching your video...i wanna go back to my old games... haha just kidding... love it
Such a fantastic video series! Thank you for sharing all these tips with us. It's a joy to hear you speak and explain things at just the right level. Beginner friendly, but not too beginner if that makes sense :) I just discovered this game and I am having a blast applying some of the strategies you mentioned.
Hey kids! If you have any questions on topics you feel I didn't answer in these 4 tutorial videos, ask them here! If I get enough questions, I'll make a separate video to answer them!
(Recommented) Great series so far, really wish I was introduced to this back then. Quick question, if you were to place a water supply for the industrial sector separate from the residential and commercial zones, would that prevent cross contamination of pollutants from entering the water supply of the rest of the city? Or did you combine the waterlines together to represent scenario of dealing with water pollution?
Is there a reason you don’t talk about or use agriculture industry throughout this series? It’s not dense, sure, but it’s clean, aesthetically pleasing, and in demand early on.
Thanks a bunch for the tutorial series. I've been playing this game for years, and the transportation episode in particular showed me the *why* behind some of my cities suddenly and disastrously going wrong. Do you think you'd do a similar series on say, SimCity 3000, or is that just too limited compared to 4 to warrant a separate set of videos? Additionally, I think I might echo the sentiment of a fair few others when I say that a sort of 'favourite mods'-type vid would be pretty cool to see. Maybe even some unusual approaches to city planning (like how you could have a city only connected by rail and no roads in SC3000).
I have very fond memories of SC3000! It was the first in the SimCity game I ever owned and I played it for many years before I got my hands on SC4. I can still remember how the box it came in felt when I got it for Christmas! I'll put it on the (admittedly growing) list of videos for this channel for sure- maybe a mini-series, since 3000 takes a lot less time to build than SC4.
If only I could have known this stuff when I played this so many years ago! I'm excited to start playing it again now I have a better understanding of the basics (and hopefully don't go bankrupt as I did as a child lol)!
This is a wonderful video! I feel like I finally understand the major concepts that I was missing. I'm looking forward to playing through these ideas. Thank you so much for your hard work!
I personally try to mix residential and commercial in a more "european way", so as to reduce how much they have to travel. Of course with industrial is different unless it is clean industry.
I remember when I was a kid I was scared as fuck of the obliterate city button. That screming when you delete a city is like a mass homicide of your poor sims. It scared me like shit
Another challenge I made was the high tech only city. Well not only cities (small tiles) that are compromised of nothing but high tech. But also not having any other industry in the region at some point. Than powering everything with solar power plants etc.. So it is totally possible to built a green city in this game. I just wonder where they get their steel from?
How does farm industry as far as vanilla game is concerned? I'll often start my first city in a region on a medium tile and make a little quaint country town, fill it with farmland and wind power, then gradually expand the residential, add a train line and start with dirty industry on the second tile.
Thank you so much for all 4 lessons and tips, I watched them completely! Now I will put more effort into the development of public transport because I mostly use bus stops lmao. I've been playing this game for a while so I have noticed a pattern on my cities: It's really hard to get offices skyscrapers. It's kind of weird because by looking at the graphs the most people living are high wealth sims, and eventually residential skyscrapers pop up (I put a lot of parks, schools, utilities, and the commute time is medium/sometimes short), However even though high/medium wealth commercial offices appear, they do not develop in height (They kind of do but not in way of "big skyscrapers"), and It's kind of weird because most of the time only the commercial office demand is below 0, so I guess there must be a demand cap that I believe is because I don't usually make proper neighborhood connections...?. So my question is, even though there is a really high demand on R$,$$,$$ and Cs$/$$/$$ but low or negative demand on Co$$/$$, and medium I-M and HT demand, what should the neighborhood cities have/need for the demand for Commercial offices to increase? Also by seeing at your city development I noticed you don't use a lot of avenues, why is that? :o haha
Often I build roads with the intention of upgrading to avenues then forget lol! If you want big offices, tax them in the neighbouring tiles so that they all build in the same tile!
Great Video, I wish we had more information on Neighbor deals. I try to stick to wind power in my residential areas, but I find getting neighbor deals for buying power difficult to come by. I wish you could get neighbor deals earlier in city development, or, more information on "Forcing" neighbor deals
Have watched all 4 tutorial videos, they are extremely helpful for me as a beginner! Was wondering, if NAM makes city grow & profit easier/faster than vanilla? I haven't installed any mod and feel like it takes a bit longer to grow the city, and the profits are basically just enough for a service upgrade every time. The loop is like - build more zones -> more income -> need more service -> build service so no more profit -> build a few more zones -> more income -> need more service... I don't hate playing through this loop but was just wondering the difference, as it seems like you grow the city quickly. By the way, the resident tile/city you are showing in the end, you said you built the small town in the center at the beginning with transportation connecting to the neighboring big city. I was just wondering if you can afford the building and the maintaining cost for the transportation system as there are not many residents in that small town. Is it working because of NAM or it should also work in the vanilla? I will go watching your other videos about mods. Feel like mods are necessary for having better gaming experience :)
The NAM probably makes it "easier" in some senses if you increase the traffic capacities, since you'll be spending less on roads. The pathfinding fixes in the mod will probably also make it so that they actually get to their jobs. But the vanilla game's traffic simulator is so broken that any additional challenge from playing without the NAM is due to things not working as they should ;). Glad you're enjoying the series!
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting. SC4 is an application open to multiple objectives. For example, I prefer the aesthetic result rather than the population density. I work a lot on the conformation of the land keeping geomorphological elements in mind when creating my maps. I also like to create cities that develop according to a story like almost all European cities that originate from a historic center and develop an articulated growth according to the limitations or opportunities of the landscape. Cities developed along trade routes, valleys and passes between mountain ranges, along inlets and natural harbours. My roads follow the natural altimetric curves and small inhabited hamlets are formed at the crossroads. I also use agriculture a lot, which blends well with the landscape and offers the advantage of contiguity for electricity in remote areas.
Could you make a strictly residential square and achieve a max population setup and tap into electric and water from neighboring commercial and industrial “towns?”Probably using rail to move sims in and out of the city in mass.
You can have specialized tiles for the different zones as long as enough zones are provided in other tiles with neighbour connections. The only challenge with that approach is that you have to balance amenity costs (schools, healthcare, police, fire, power, water) with tax revenue. It's usually easier to have a certain tiles with poor residential, poor commercial, dirty industry and other tiles with rich commercial/offices, cleaner industry and richer residential.
Thanks Rob--great video series! I played SC4 when it came out and have played it on and off over the last 17 years without any proper planning. I had some large cities but I never got to that next level because I wasn't properly utilizing transit and regional play. I'm starting a new region now and can already see a huge improvement in how I play the game. Do you think regional play where you have larger districts like you've shown is best, or can you get away with mostly all-inclusive cities that maybe have a specialty toward one kind of zone? Usually I like to work on (and finish) one city then move onto the next, rather than jumping back and forth, but I don't want to limit my city growth if this is wrong.
In terms of regional play, either one works. The only potential constraint are demand caps. Make sure you have lots of parks and neighbour connections, build the reward buildings and amenities and it shouldn't be a problem. One advantage to regional play is that the traffic simulator seems to prefer sending Sims to work next door. Many joblessness issues can be solved by building an employment area in an adjacent tile. Just keep that in mind and you should be totally fine.
I've stumbled upon these tutorials recently and I want to thank you. I've toying with SimCity for years but my cities were always simple and boring. I was wondering if you might do a video about airports...? Thanks
Im not sure if you ever mentioned this or not but would it be a good idea to put industry right beside residential, seperated only by a map edge? Short commute to work, dodging pollution penalties, only problem is traffic may be bad but..
Brilliant! I love this! One of my dreams is to have a really good model of New York City with all the major buroughs to play around with. I have yet to see anyone offer a regional download of this, so I would have to work on my own. This concept of working on several tiles at a time is key. Hey, I don't suppose you have ever built a model of New York City, eh? In a perfect world, I'd love to be able to download other people's regions of major cities like this, and particularily New York City, because it would be really fun to be able to play with these. If you have never made a New York City model, would you ever consider going back to an old game for one more series? If so, I'd watch religiously. Just an idea anyways. Mean-time, thanks so much for this short video series. It will add a whole new level of fun for the game, which I've actually just bought for the first time, for me. Thanks again, and keep up the great work!
Hope I didn't bomb the comments too much here, just wanted to contribute a bit at the end of the series: About accidentally deleting maps and other things: Someone else mentioned Windows previous versions (from right clicking folder>properties) has a nice file restore, but it was deprecated for Windows 8/10 for an IMO inferior "File History" you have to setup a custom backup for where you choose the files and time of backup. However, the old way still exists to snapshot changes thruout to volume, it is just dormant. Check this out: pureinfotech.com/enable-previous-versions-recover-files-windows-10/ Essentially what this is: automatic time-based file/folder backups when data changes. in backup software you'd call it an incremental backup. It uses a Windows service called Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Over time these cycle and delete. Why was it disabled? From what I heard people got used to relying on it as a proper backup, which it is not. The new backup forces files to another storage drive. The previous versions will put the backups on the same storage drive. This means if the disk dies your backup dies, so be aware of that. This is more for short-term blunders.
In my mods, tools and bugfixes video I talk about Karen's Replicator, a great lightweight app for scheduled backups of your SimCity 4 regions. Your suggestion is interesting though!
About making very needed seaports work as mentioned in video: BSC Functional Seaports is the most insane install I've ever seen, ever. Just go here and click "supports the LEX dependency tracker" button to see what I mean: sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1663 Each one of those dependencies has an installer and a cleaner list that you need to run thru the cleanitol tool to delete older dependencies (in packs now) and check dependencies are installed correctly. You will find that some dependencies cannot be sourced or googled. Not to mention, all of those dependencies need to be checked for dependencies. I will tell you that a handful do have them as well. Read this man's sad story if you need more proof: community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/759784-bsc-functional-seaports-cleanitol-questions/ TLDR if you want something simple, upto 3 port types and 3 dependencies total, this is what you want to read, carefully: community.simtropolis.com/files/file/19594-peg-cdk3-sp-container-seaport/ You also probably want the auto-leveler so it isn't painful to place seaports: community.simtropolis.com/files/file/4527-peg-cdk-leveler-v205/ That said, if you are hardcore, BSC Functional Seaports gives a ton of Seaport building options. It's too bad nobody just makes wraps everything up in an installer with 1 cleanitol file. It feels like they did 98% of the work and tripped at the finish line.
Can you have both manufacturing and dirty industry in the same tile...by giving water and fire coverage/police to one part of industry to get manufacturing...and deny services to the other to get dirty
Manufacturing industry doesn't require much more than dirty industry in terms of desirability factors so it would be hard to force one type over the other in that way. I think you'll find that education is the determining factor in terms of which type of industry develops. Consult the education graph regularly. Education is divided into 4 tiers in increments of 50 IQ (0-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-200) and each tier has a weighted preference for different jobs for each wealth level.This post has a useful chart that goes into detail on education, wealth and jobs demand: sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=963.msg26318#msg26318
Hey, if you’re still responding to comments how do agricultural zones work and why are they complicated? You said you’d do a video on it later but I didn’t see anything on it. Otherwise, thanks for the tutorials it’s helped a bunch 🙂
Hey! I've been out of the loop for a while because of work! I'm just looking through old comments now. IIRC ag zones will simply cease to develop after you have certain other zones in your city. They're hard coded to be "early game only" rather than a permanent feature of a region. Hence the need for mods.
So when you educate your whole population, won't you get the problem that after a while all of your dirty industry will be obsolete? Since everyone is somewhat educated they all would want to work in manufacturing, hightech or offices? Would this become a problem? Or do you just remove all the dirty industry after a while?
Removing dirty industry can be problematic as any leftover poor sims can end up without jobs. I highly recommend downloading the Industrial Revolution mod, which makes medium density industry only build dirty/manufacturing and high density industry zones only build manufacturing`high tech.
omg thank you for this, like so much lol I had started to get really confused as to how any of this worked. I tried fiddling around with it a bit - but only found myself more onfused than when i had started lol. This is great though. Your tutorials ha e really helped me dig back into Sim City right where i had left off after being obsessed with SC 2000 & 3000. I'm playing this now because my laptop wont run Cities Skylines, and im sick of trying to play a city builder on my girlfirends fucking xbox lmao
Glad you're getting back into the game and enjoying it! I would also hate to play a city builder (or anything really) on an XBOX--but I'm not a console player.
When you turn on the timeclock, doesn't it run for all cities? So, if you have 6-8 cities and you are busy working on one and another one starts abandoning or a power plant wears out or not enough schools, how can you know about those problems in other cities and deal with them?
The clock only runs for the tile that you're currently in. You need to alternate between tiles to update the demand and commutes in each tile (one of the disadvantages of SC4). If you want to see all of your region at once, you should try Klyte's Region Exporter as Webpage (KREW).
If you are using the NAM and Maxis highways, there is no reason they shouldn't be used. If you are using RHW, make sure you do the neighbour connection pieces. Otherwise, make sure your highways have on-ramps at good locations. Another tip: Look at the volume data view for traffic, rather than congestion.
In the first video you just set the ambulance and school bus service radius to the minimum yet in this video you adjust it to your residential district. So what's the deal with that?
It is because on the other video he was just starting the city, so he had to optimize the initial budget, once you grant some profitability you may set the max capacity if your fund allow it as well
There is a bug, calls the infanate loop. The great mongoose on simtropolis talks about how to fix it. But sims will dive in circles between 2 cities, forever. Ypu will end up with traffic jams of more people then Live in the region!! So the trick is you can't connect more the 3 cities together. Make ur cites like a tree, and it won't happen. There is no fix :(
1:47 Ugh, that happened to me, lol. I accidentally deleted it and screwed up by flattening. I found out, you can go into Program files and just restore the original.
Thank you for taking your time to make these guides. But your mouse movements. My god. Do you've Parkinson or so? I can see your mouse pointer, don't fret it. Take it easy before you get CTS.
(finally) Understanding the mechanics makes me appreciate SimCity 4 even more. This series is just great, many thanks for making these.
The whole series. Masterpiece work sir!
Thanks!
@@RobsRedHotSpot
Little did i know...
The best citty planing education available is some dude on youtube...
@@JohnDoe-zu2cm Agreed
I have been playing simcity 4 for about 14 years intermittently and there's been a LOT of info in these videos that has helped me. I really don't know of many games that can provide that kind of longevity.
Glad the videos have been of use!
14:00 yes they will travel across multiple tiles by ferry.
You just need to make sure you created a "city" in the tile connecting the two, so it shows up and registers in the regional transport overlay. I've got 800 sims commuting between two sides of a lake, seperated by a huge tile i got nothing built on, apart from "activating" that city.
See my comment on the transportation video. You're right and I was wrong! 😅 Travel is limited by commute time and not distance.
I can't thank you enough.
As top comment said, masterpiece in tuturial.
I do watch in x1.25 to save time, and this has saved me hours and hours of troubleshooting. It's nice to find things by ourselves, but alot of space to be creative and problem-solve in this game without having to re-invent the wheel.
Thanks to you mate. Godbless.
Glad to see people are still enjoying this!
@@RobsRedHotSpot add a plus 1 to that mate, cheers for the vids, looking forward to sinking my teeth into 5-8
Thank you so much for these videos!
Just bought this game from steam because i lost my old copy, and although i play sc4 for years, there are some tips you mention in these videos that i didn't know about, like the desirability cap. Thank you, your videos are very well explanatory!
Glad I could help!
FYI, you can also edit/create you own regions by editing the config.bmp in the region folder so if you want all large maps, it's possible. You can also duplicate cities (ex. a generic industrial layout that you want all around your main city to segregate pollution or a service region to buy power and water from and sell garbage to that you might want in a few places) by creating an empty region, importing your template in the new region, backing up the new region folder, re-importing the city to your main region, loading and renaming the newly imported city with ctrl-x/whererufrom, over-writing the files of the backup region, rinse and repeat the import process until you have all the copies that you need.
These four episodes have been very helpful for this returning player. Thank you.
Glad to hear it!
I download it yesterday... and forgot how to play it... then now iam here hahaha... watching your video...i wanna go back to my old games... haha just kidding... love it
Thx Rob! Picked up this game recently and finished all 4 lessons today, helps a lot!
Such a fantastic video series! Thank you for sharing all these tips with us. It's a joy to hear you speak and explain things at just the right level. Beginner friendly, but not too beginner if that makes sense :) I just discovered this game and I am having a blast applying some of the strategies you mentioned.
Wow great work ! I have an old region built out from over 10 years ago. NAM is hard to figure out, but you've made it possible. Thanks Again.
Hey kids! If you have any questions on topics you feel I didn't answer in these 4 tutorial videos, ask them here! If I get enough questions, I'll make a separate video to answer them!
(Recommented) Great series so far, really wish I was introduced to this back then.
Quick question, if you were to place a water supply for the industrial sector separate from the residential and commercial zones, would that prevent cross contamination of pollutants from entering the water supply of the rest of the city? Or did you combine the waterlines together to represent scenario of dealing with water pollution?
Is there a reason you don’t talk about or use agriculture industry throughout this series? It’s not dense, sure, but it’s clean, aesthetically pleasing, and in demand early on.
Thanks a bunch for the tutorial series. I've been playing this game for years, and the transportation episode in particular showed me the *why* behind some of my cities suddenly and disastrously going wrong. Do you think you'd do a similar series on say, SimCity 3000, or is that just too limited compared to 4 to warrant a separate set of videos? Additionally, I think I might echo the sentiment of a fair few others when I say that a sort of 'favourite mods'-type vid would be pretty cool to see. Maybe even some unusual approaches to city planning (like how you could have a city only connected by rail and no roads in SC3000).
I have very fond memories of SC3000! It was the first in the SimCity game I ever owned and I played it for many years before I got my hands on SC4. I can still remember how the box it came in felt when I got it for Christmas! I'll put it on the (admittedly growing) list of videos for this channel for sure- maybe a mini-series, since 3000 takes a lot less time to build than SC4.
If only I could have known this stuff when I played this so many years ago! I'm excited to start playing it again now I have a better understanding of the basics (and hopefully don't go bankrupt as I did as a child lol)!
This is a wonderful video! I feel like I finally understand the major concepts that I was missing. I'm looking forward to playing through these ideas. Thank you so much for your hard work!
Glad it was helpful!
Fantastic series. I have never played Simcity but these videos has inspired me to try!
Nice series hope to see more
Glad you like it! I'll be an episode on mods and another on the NAM at some point. There's also my ongoing Let's Play if you're into that :)
I'm totally addicted to SC4 and these videos are awesome! Plus my 6 year old loves playing God and destroying cities! 🤣
Glad you're enjoying them!
I personally try to mix residential and commercial in a more "european way", so as to reduce how much they have to travel.
Of course with industrial is different unless it is clean industry.
Thanks for taking your time to do this lesson series man!
My pleasure!
Excellent, great video!!
I remember when I was a kid I was scared as fuck of the obliterate city button. That screming when you delete a city is like a mass homicide of your poor sims. It scared me like shit
Another challenge I made was the high tech only city. Well not only cities (small tiles) that are compromised of nothing but high tech. But also not having any other industry in the region at some point. Than powering everything with solar power plants etc.. So it is totally possible to built a green city in this game. I just wonder where they get their steel from?
Steel imports?🙈
Good explanation but why don't u add agriculture zoning as the begining
How does farm industry as far as vanilla game is concerned?
I'll often start my first city in a region on a medium tile and make a little quaint country town, fill it with farmland and wind power, then gradually expand the residential, add a train line and start with dirty industry on the second tile.
Thank you so much for all 4 lessons and tips, I watched them completely! Now I will put more effort into the development of public transport because I mostly use bus stops lmao. I've been playing this game for a while so I have noticed a pattern on my cities: It's really hard to get offices skyscrapers. It's kind of weird because by looking at the graphs the most people living are high wealth sims, and eventually residential skyscrapers pop up (I put a lot of parks, schools, utilities, and the commute time is medium/sometimes short), However even though high/medium wealth commercial offices appear, they do not develop in height (They kind of do but not in way of "big skyscrapers"), and It's kind of weird because most of the time only the commercial office demand is below 0, so I guess there must be a demand cap that I believe is because I don't usually make proper neighborhood connections...?. So my question is, even though there is a really high demand on R$,$$,$$ and Cs$/$$/$$ but low or negative demand on Co$$/$$, and medium I-M and HT demand, what should the neighborhood cities have/need for the demand for Commercial offices to increase?
Also by seeing at your city development I noticed you don't use a lot of avenues, why is that? :o haha
Often I build roads with the intention of upgrading to avenues then forget lol! If you want big offices, tax them in the neighbouring tiles so that they all build in the same tile!
Great Video, I wish we had more information on Neighbor deals. I try to stick to wind power in my residential areas, but I find getting neighbor deals for buying power difficult to come by. I wish you could get neighbor deals earlier in city development, or, more information on "Forcing" neighbor deals
Have watched all 4 tutorial videos, they are extremely helpful for me as a beginner!
Was wondering, if NAM makes city grow & profit easier/faster than vanilla? I haven't installed any mod and feel like it takes a bit longer to grow the city, and the profits are basically just enough for a service upgrade every time. The loop is like - build more zones -> more income -> need more service -> build service so no more profit -> build a few more zones -> more income -> need more service... I don't hate playing through this loop but was just wondering the difference, as it seems like you grow the city quickly.
By the way, the resident tile/city you are showing in the end, you said you built the small town in the center at the beginning with transportation connecting to the neighboring big city. I was just wondering if you can afford the building and the maintaining cost for the transportation system as there are not many residents in that small town. Is it working because of NAM or it should also work in the vanilla?
I will go watching your other videos about mods. Feel like mods are necessary for having better gaming experience :)
The NAM probably makes it "easier" in some senses if you increase the traffic capacities, since you'll be spending less on roads. The pathfinding fixes in the mod will probably also make it so that they actually get to their jobs. But the vanilla game's traffic simulator is so broken that any additional challenge from playing without the NAM is due to things not working as they should ;). Glad you're enjoying the series!
@@RobsRedHotSpot thank you very much for the reply!
Thanks for sharing. Very interesting. SC4 is an application open to multiple objectives. For example, I prefer the aesthetic result rather than the population density. I work a lot on the conformation of the land keeping geomorphological elements in mind when creating my maps. I also like to create cities that develop according to a story like almost all European cities that originate from a historic center and develop an articulated growth according to the limitations or opportunities of the landscape. Cities developed along trade routes, valleys and passes between mountain ranges, along inlets and natural harbours. My roads follow the natural altimetric curves and small inhabited hamlets are formed at the crossroads. I also use agriculture a lot, which blends well with the landscape and offers the advantage of contiguity for electricity in remote areas.
Could you make a strictly residential square and achieve a max population setup and tap into electric and water from neighboring commercial and industrial “towns?”Probably using rail to move sims in and out of the city in mass.
You can have specialized tiles for the different zones as long as enough zones are provided in other tiles with neighbour connections. The only challenge with that approach is that you have to balance amenity costs (schools, healthcare, police, fire, power, water) with tax revenue. It's usually easier to have a certain tiles with poor residential, poor commercial, dirty industry and other tiles with rich commercial/offices, cleaner industry and richer residential.
Thanks Rob--great video series! I played SC4 when it came out and have played it on and off over the last 17 years without any proper planning. I had some large cities but I never got to that next level because I wasn't properly utilizing transit and regional play. I'm starting a new region now and can already see a huge improvement in how I play the game. Do you think regional play where you have larger districts like you've shown is best, or can you get away with mostly all-inclusive cities that maybe have a specialty toward one kind of zone? Usually I like to work on (and finish) one city then move onto the next, rather than jumping back and forth, but I don't want to limit my city growth if this is wrong.
In terms of regional play, either one works. The only potential constraint are demand caps. Make sure you have lots of parks and neighbour connections, build the reward buildings and amenities and it shouldn't be a problem. One advantage to regional play is that the traffic simulator seems to prefer sending Sims to work next door. Many joblessness issues can be solved by building an employment area in an adjacent tile. Just keep that in mind and you should be totally fine.
Something you should have gone over in this video is the infamous "Eternal/infinite Commuter" bug that can occur when linking cities.
Is there an optimal way to build an agricultural zone?
I've stumbled upon these tutorials recently and I want to thank you. I've toying with SimCity for years but my cities were always simple and boring. I was wondering if you might do a video about airports...? Thanks
MAN I wish I found this account earlier this series is AWESOME!! Thank you so much Rob you the man!!! 🙏🙏
Im not sure if you ever mentioned this or not but would it be a good idea to put industry right beside residential, seperated only by a map edge? Short commute to work, dodging pollution penalties, only problem is traffic may be bad but..
Pollution gets bad over time. High tech not issue so much
@@wildhorsestudios1209 but isn't it true that pollution doesn't go past the map edge like people do?
Correct. It's a minor exploit!
Brilliant! I love this! One of my dreams is to have a really good model of New York City with all the major buroughs to play around with. I have yet to see anyone offer a regional download of this, so I would have to work on my own. This concept of working on several tiles at a time is key. Hey, I don't suppose you have ever built a model of New York City, eh? In a perfect world, I'd love to be able to download other people's regions of major cities like this, and particularily New York City, because it would be really fun to be able to play with these. If you have never made a New York City model, would you ever consider going back to an old game for one more series? If so, I'd watch religiously. Just an idea anyways. Mean-time, thanks so much for this short video series. It will add a whole new level of fun for the game, which I've actually just bought for the first time, for me. Thanks again, and keep up the great work!
Hope I didn't bomb the comments too much here, just wanted to contribute a bit at the end of the series:
About accidentally deleting maps and other things:
Someone else mentioned Windows previous versions (from right clicking folder>properties) has a nice file restore, but it was deprecated for Windows 8/10 for an IMO inferior "File History" you have to setup a custom backup for where you choose the files and time of backup. However, the old way still exists to snapshot changes thruout to volume, it is just dormant. Check this out: pureinfotech.com/enable-previous-versions-recover-files-windows-10/
Essentially what this is: automatic time-based file/folder backups when data changes. in backup software you'd call it an incremental backup. It uses a Windows service called Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Over time these cycle and delete. Why was it disabled? From what I heard people got used to relying on it as a proper backup, which it is not. The new backup forces files to another storage drive. The previous versions will put the backups on the same storage drive. This means if the disk dies your backup dies, so be aware of that. This is more for short-term blunders.
In my mods, tools and bugfixes video I talk about Karen's Replicator, a great lightweight app for scheduled backups of your SimCity 4 regions. Your suggestion is interesting though!
your tutorial should be included with the original game!
Very helpful. Thank you
About making very needed seaports work as mentioned in video:
BSC Functional Seaports is the most insane install I've ever seen, ever. Just go here and click "supports the LEX dependency tracker" button to see what I mean:
sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1663
Each one of those dependencies has an installer and a cleaner list that you need to run thru the cleanitol tool to delete older dependencies (in packs now) and check dependencies are installed correctly. You will find that some dependencies cannot be sourced or googled. Not to mention, all of those dependencies need to be checked for dependencies. I will tell you that a handful do have them as well. Read this man's sad story if you need more proof: community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/759784-bsc-functional-seaports-cleanitol-questions/
TLDR if you want something simple, upto 3 port types and 3 dependencies total, this is what you want to read, carefully:
community.simtropolis.com/files/file/19594-peg-cdk3-sp-container-seaport/
You also probably want the auto-leveler so it isn't painful to place seaports:
community.simtropolis.com/files/file/4527-peg-cdk-leveler-v205/
That said, if you are hardcore, BSC Functional Seaports gives a ton of Seaport building options. It's too bad nobody just makes wraps everything up in an installer with 1 cleanitol file. It feels like they did 98% of the work and tripped at the finish line.
Can you have both manufacturing and dirty industry in the same tile...by giving water and fire coverage/police to one part of industry to get manufacturing...and deny services to the other to get dirty
Manufacturing industry doesn't require much more than dirty industry in terms of desirability factors so it would be hard to force one type over the other in that way. I think you'll find that education is the determining factor in terms of which type of industry develops. Consult the education graph regularly. Education is divided into 4 tiers in increments of 50 IQ (0-50, 50-100, 100-150, 150-200) and each tier has a weighted preference for different jobs for each wealth level.This post has a useful chart that goes into detail on education, wealth and jobs demand: sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=963.msg26318#msg26318
Hey, if you’re still responding to comments how do agricultural zones work and why are they complicated? You said you’d do a video on it later but I didn’t see anything on it. Otherwise, thanks for the tutorials it’s helped a bunch 🙂
Hey! I've been out of the loop for a while because of work! I'm just looking through old comments now. IIRC ag zones will simply cease to develop after you have certain other zones in your city. They're hard coded to be "early game only" rather than a permanent feature of a region. Hence the need for mods.
@@RobsRedHotSpot gotcha, thanks! Surprised you’re still responding.
If you obliterate your city, do you keep the funds? I have a city with over $1mil and wanted to start over with a new design.
You will lose your money.
Good tutorials!
Glad you like them!
So when you educate your whole population, won't you get the problem that after a while all of your dirty industry will be obsolete? Since everyone is somewhat educated they all would want to work in manufacturing, hightech or offices? Would this become a problem? Or do you just remove all the dirty industry after a while?
Removing dirty industry can be problematic as any leftover poor sims can end up without jobs. I highly recommend downloading the Industrial Revolution mod, which makes medium density industry only build dirty/manufacturing and high density industry zones only build manufacturing`high tech.
@@RobsRedHotSpot Thanks mate, great content.
omg thank you for this, like so much lol
I had started to get really confused as to how any of this worked. I tried fiddling around with it a bit - but only found myself more onfused than when i had started lol. This is great though. Your tutorials ha e really helped me dig back into Sim City right where i had left off after being obsessed with SC 2000 & 3000. I'm playing this now because my laptop wont run Cities Skylines, and im sick of trying to play a city builder on my girlfirends fucking xbox lmao
Glad you're getting back into the game and enjoying it! I would also hate to play a city builder (or anything really) on an XBOX--but I'm not a console player.
Good information. Thanks.
How can I play this on an older pc that is not mine originally? I assume i need IT help for an admin "workaround"
When you turn on the timeclock, doesn't it run for all cities? So, if you have 6-8 cities and you are busy working on one and another one starts abandoning or a power plant wears out or not enough schools, how can you know about those problems in other cities and deal with them?
The clock only runs for the tile that you're currently in. You need to alternate between tiles to update the demand and commutes in each tile (one of the disadvantages of SC4). If you want to see all of your region at once, you should try Klyte's Region Exporter as Webpage (KREW).
@@RobsRedHotSpot OK. Thanks a lot. I was wrong.
How do I prevent the "reconcile edges" that pops up when I return to a city? It wipes out my edges I built!
I think you can turn that pop-up off with a tick-box somewhere!
Thanks a lot!
What's the deal with the Highways? I build a Highway between three well populated cities and nobody uses it. Seems like a waste of space.
If you are using the NAM and Maxis highways, there is no reason they shouldn't be used. If you are using RHW, make sure you do the neighbour connection pieces. Otherwise, make sure your highways have on-ramps at good locations. Another tip: Look at the volume data view for traffic, rather than congestion.
In the first video you just set the ambulance and school bus service radius to the minimum yet in this video you adjust it to your residential district. So what's the deal with that?
It is because on the other video he was just starting the city, so he had to optimize the initial budget, once you grant some profitability you may set the max capacity if your fund allow it as well
The moral is to keep life on the edge?
There is a bug, calls the infanate loop. The great mongoose on simtropolis talks about how to fix it. But sims will dive in circles between 2 cities, forever. Ypu will end up with traffic jams of more people then Live in the region!!
So the trick is you can't connect more the 3 cities together. Make ur cites like a tree, and it won't happen. There is no fix :(
I am aware of that bug, yes.
1:47 Ugh, that happened to me, lol. I accidentally deleted it and screwed up by flattening. I found out, you can go into Program files and just restore the original.
If you have a copy of the original region, yes. Otherwise you would have to download it again from the STEX!
A primordial dream player, what have you done?
thanks
I always made cities with one mega landfill and sold every trash there. Some cities bought trash just to sell it.
A bomb that destroyed all un natural human objects
“And nature returns…” ~Civ CTP
Silly animation? It's called the apocalypse bro..
How did you manage to delete the city without goofing about with disasters for 20 minutes????!??
Thank you for taking your time to make these guides. But your mouse movements. My god. Do you've Parkinson or so? I can see your mouse pointer, don't fret it. Take it easy before you get CTS.