Possible to just have one effiecient city?

[UberNyuber]

Is it somehow possible to have just one city with a high population in the region? I´ve read trough different guides now, which told me, to build 3-4 cities. Each city specialized in population, industry or commercial.

I´m kinda new to this game and only get 2.000-3.000 people to life in my city. The city doesn´t want to grow anymore at some point. Any tips for a "beginner"?

[Ilja]

There is no need to build specialized cities in SC4. That is also a bad idea, because each job at the other side of your current tile is considered being a long way from workers point of view. This can - and will - create abandonment issues, due to time of travel. It is much better to treat a part of the map - or full map, depending on it's size - as one city: your wealthiest 1 % living near the CBD and workers near the docs. You need to build some amount of §-jobs in for §§§-tiles as well, because you can't build pure §, §§ or §§§ tiles.

You do not describe how your city has been built, so there is only little amount of help we can give. It would be best to take some screenshots and visit one of community sites: Simpeg, Simtropolis or sc4devotion, where people have more space, means and resources to discuss about these matters. (I am personally hanging around Simpeg forums, but lurking around other sites as well.)

In short, each tile has caps and demands. They guide the amount of CO, R and I that can grow in your tile. Note that CS do not have any caps assigned to it. When your populations hits the cap, development ends.

Wile the idea of caps existing in the game may feel like annoying at first, they actually serve an important part of building small towns and rural areas. For larger cities caps can be lifted with different means. Neighbour connections are the most important part of this. Each connection lifts assigned amount of caps, depending of the type of connections. This is why guides tell you to build other tiles around your central tile, or CBD.

Rember that demand is regional, affecting to all connected tiles in your map.

Residential caps can be raised by building parks. CO and CS like plazas around them. In fact, largest skyscrapers only grow within 20 squares from the nearest plaza.

This is as much can be said, without actually seeing your city. I hope it helps a bit. If not, upload your screenshots to your favorite hosting service and visit one of the sites I mentioned. Someone is certain to give you a hand.

[UberNyuber]

Oh that already helped a lot. Thanks very much.

I didn´t know there was a cap and that the cap increases with neighbouring tiles. I wanted to focus only on one tile, maybe thats the problem. But now I know that connections with neighbour tiles are important.

I don´t have screenies yet. Well i started a new city/region anyway, because I ran out of money. ^.^"

Maybe the next small city will be a bit more succesful.

One more question. Which mods would you recommend? I downloaded NAM yesterday. But I´ve read about a mod which does autosave. The game already crashed 2 times and I lost my progress.

[Ilja]

Hih. Everyone asks about mods. NAM is a good start.

Paeng collects useful mods in his thread Little Big Plugins[www.simpeg.com] over at SimPeg4. That list would be a good place to start. IH missing $$$ jobs fix, Opera House Fix, Private School Fix, Space Port Fix and City Hall Fix can be found trough that thread, or simply searching them from Simtropolis.

If you are interested of farming, then I would recommend SimPeg Agricultural Mod (SPAM). You can get it from SimPeg4 or Simtropolis.

Game may crash for several reasons. One of the main reasons is it's incompatibility with dual core machines. You can limit your CPU use to count 1 for this game by entering -CPUCount:1 to games command line.

Autosave solutions have been filled with bugs that limit their use. I have never used one and - after 10 years - don't feel like ever loosing my progress. Saving the game becomes sort of a reflex after a while and the knowledge about things that might crash your game increases fast. To that note, do be careful while hovering NAM (and RTMT, if you have it) puzzle pieces around transit networks. Letting them to touch usually causes a CTD.

About money running dry, your sims don't really need much at first. They need electricity. That's it. I would recommend giving them fire coverage, but that is all they need. Your first tile will always be the hardest to make profitable. This is why so many start with farms, while keeping the zoning light and small. Next you would be adding the water and education, once your budget gets more balanced. And - I know it is sometimes pain - always manage budget from individual civic and power buildings, instead of main budget sliders. You will have plenty more money to use for development.

Remember that your first tile does not need to be the main tile of your region. For example, I am currently working with my new City Journal and the place that I started my region is the "old area" of that region. Right now it is creating demand for further development and I am planning of keeping it as historical area, while the city itself grows a bit further to west. I am just waiting for krashspeed and Simcoug to finish and publish their new waterfront project to get started.