SPAM vs CAM for Farming Communities?

[Booger]

How do y'all farm in SC4? Using SimPeg Agriculture Mod or the Colossus Addon Mod?

I've read great things about both; however, I believe CAM adds a few more levels to all the growable lots. Also, CAM has an effect on all industries while SPAM doesn't touch residential or commercial.

What are some thoughts from this group?

[Ilja]

I would strongly recommend playing with both separately, before trying to use them together. I am one of the rare peoples playing with both mods, but I do not recommend doing so, unless you are well aware of what they change.

SPAM forums has been lost to us, due to SimPeg4 breaking down and getting closed. We had plenty of information there, about how to play with SPAM and even how to use both mods together. It will be a long time, until we can recover what we lost and I am unsure if it is even possible.

The main difference is that SPAM is a demand mod, like CAM. If you start to play with SPAM+CAM combination, then you will have to keep on playing with SPAM and give it adequate amount of attention, compared to what you do with your cities. Othetwise you will face problems, starting from abandoned houses and unemployment. That combination is very hard to play, unless you indeed know what these mods change and how to manage the demand.

They are not entirely compatible with each other, but using them together does not fry your game either. It is a balancing act.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

SPAM = Ease of use, just put the mod in your plugins folder, start a new fresh new region and watch the magic unfold :)

CAM = A bit finicky to use and requires a whole ton of new custom growables before you can enjoy it in its full potential.

[Jimmy McGill]

It works fine. If you have it so that SPAM loads last, it overrides only agriculture, so that that uses SPAM. Contratry to what Ilja said, you won't have any problems with your city exploding if you don't handle both correctly; I've had both for ages and my cities are doing fine even though I'm an incompetent ♥♥♥♥.
EDIT: Jesus, the censoring thingy is sensitive.

[Booger]

If you use SPAM, aren't you limited to level 3 agriculture? If so, does CAM's levels 4 - 7 provide that much extra?

[Jimmy McGill]

Originally posted by Booger Mac OS:

If you use SPAM, aren't you limited to level 3 agriculture? If so, does CAM's levels 4 - 7 provide that much extra?

3 is vanilla, 5 is SPAM, 7 with CAM I think, though the last two stages of CAM Agriculture are really odd anyway, like I think Stage 7 farms are actually landmarks or something because the land is being used for tourism and it's kinda really odd especially if you'd zone farms in a way that would make sense for farms not world heritage sites or such stuff.

[Booger]

Thanks for all the good info guys.

So is it possible to use SPAM for agriculture and CAM for residential, commercial, and other industrial? If so, is it worth the hassle?

[Jimmy McGill]

Yes, it is possible. I'm doing it, and it works fine, though CAM Farms don't appear(CAM farms are meh anyway; SPAM is obviously totally better in that regard because CAM changes everything while SPAM focuses on only agriculture, so it's better there).
It isn't really a hassle, I think what I had to do was make sure that SPAM was loaded after CAM by renaming the SPAM folder with more "z" in front to be after it(Not sure I even ahd to rename it or it was already loading after it).

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Aside from SPAM and CAM, you should also take a look at the BSC, BMD and CSX Farm lots as those are also CAM-patible and have really nice looking farms in them.

[Ilja]

Originally posted by Sinnaj63:

Yes, it is possible. I'm doing it, and it works fine, though CAM Farms don't appear(CAM farms are meh anyway; SPAM is obviously totally better in that regard because CAM changes everything while SPAM focuses on only agriculture, so it's better there).
It isn't really a hassle, I think what I had to do was make sure that SPAM was loaded after CAM by renaming the SPAM folder with more "z" in front to be after it(Not sure I even ahd to rename it or it was already loading after it).

CAM should be merged with SimCity_1.dat anyway, to prevent the double workforce bug. That file runs before plugins.

[Axiom]

Sorry to resurrect a long-dead thread, but I am wanting to use both of these mods together. If any of you users above are out there and recall using them together, can you chime in? I've heard that it's not too terribly difficult to manage both mods together, but that your farms may require some extra attention, otherwise unemployment might be more likely to hit them while running SPAM with CAM.

[Booger]

SPAM provides way too many jobs in my opinion, so I've moved to CAM with SimGoober's agricultural lots: https://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1146

As far as I'm aware, CAM is not compatible with SPAM at all. However, there is a version of CAM that is compatible with the Industrial Revolution Mod. The same cannot be said for SPAM.

[Ilja]

As noted above, they can be played together, but only if player is familiar enough with both of them. Otherwise it is going to be a mess, when demands work in unexpected ways.

I used to have dedicated CAM games, dedicated SPAM games and combined games. The last type of regions became most interesting, when SPAM indeed kept the A-I demand existing, instead of attempting to kill it off.

Problems exist, because A-I really was the weakest link in SC4 design. I believe Maxis underestimated how much people would use regional gameplay, to create whole living maps. That actually became quite obvious, when they talked about the lack of rural and forest areas during SC-13 release.

[»Matrim Cauthon«]

SPAM can be used with CAM, but both change how demand works which can cause significant additional challenges.

I use SPAM myself, I find CAM troublesome with too many incompatibilities for my tastes.

Originally posted by Boog:

SPAM provides way too many jobs in my opinion

Interesting. I find SPAM lots to provide barely enough jobs even while running an industry doubler.

A 12x12 I-A zoning will get you between 120 to 180 jobs depending on the building.

My ~12x12 I-D sector has over 600 jobs, a 3 to 5 fold increase in labor for the same space.