How far will cims travel?

[donotdisturb86]

I picked up the game this week, and so far I love it. A lot of trial and error cities as I learned some of the basics (haven't played a city sim in about 15 years), but overall a very enjoyable time. My last city was up to about 35k before I decided to start over. It was a generic grid system and even traffic worked perfectly which made it kind of boring (especially since the entirety of my road network were two lane roads, but even after I reached 35k there was only one two-block area that had any congestion at all).

I've decided this time I want my city to be more fluid and... well, pretty.

One question that's keeping me from venturing out too much is knowing how far cims will travel for work/shopping etc..

All the cities so far that I've started have been real condensed, overly careful to make sure that everyone could reach work easily, and if one edge of my residential seems too far from the edge of my industrial, I always rezone a safe distance on the OTHER side of my residential so nobody ever has to go more than a few blocks to get to work. All my cities so far expand with that basic idea, but it just ends up this square, boring city that's functional, but not even fun to look at.

The reasoning behind this is all because I have no idea how far I can place zones from one another and still have my cims able to get to places.

Now, I don't want to put zones on opposite sides of a fully unlocked map or anything, but it would be extremely helpful to me to know what I'm working with here so I can plan things out better without worrying that someone may not get a job because it was too far.

So... Does anyone have any solid info on how far is too far for a cim to travel?

Thanks in advance, and I really hope this makes sense.

[BonPadre]

By travel... you mean walking distance or overall, including cars and public transports ?

Walking distance I know there is a limit (a bit more than 1000 squares or so, but don't trust me on that, I have just seen it mentionned in forums) while not really caring about it, as I just witness they walk quite far away...

Then if you think generally, they will travel over all the tiles should they have a reason... but still, for keeping traffic to minimum, you still need to think *local* and not drop your main commercial zone 3 tiles away from your main general industry, and 3 tiles away from your main residential.

I personally more grow my cities with the starting tile, then when adding a tile I tend to design a new small city, and on a 3rd tile a 3rd city, and then growing them, I tend to end up with one overall main area... then ofc, I also tend to have around each of the *small cities* working areas, such as industries, specialized industries located on the ground rich related... then ofc I also tend to add commercials in each of those, as offices all along...

So my cims will most likely find something close by, but if not, they will travel 3 or 4 tiles to go working... so you don't really need to care much about a max distance, but more as how to provide the area with roads and public transport.

[donotdisturb86]

That helps a lot, thank you! I was worried that they wouldn't commute from one side of a single tile to the other side of the same tile, so I was keeping everything so centralized it made it hard to expand in a more aesthetically pleasing way.

My plan for my next city (probably starting tonight after work) was to do a bunch of smaller towns and grow each of them until they end up interlocking with one another, etc., so it's good to hear that idea working as well.

My only qualm with the game thus far is the lack of feedback it offers you.Granted, after a bunch of reading today, you can get a lot of that feedback, just not through clear and efficient means. Either way, I've been having a blast and now I'm super excited to get back to start another city!

(Also really excited about the coming DLC!)

Thanks again!

[Dr Jebus]

Just a note, with public transport, as long as you have a decent system, sims will happily commute a pretty much unlimited distance. In my current city, I have a good integrated bus/metro/train system. I have areas that are completely residential, with sims commuting through many tiles away via the subway to work. It does depend on the number of changes they need to make, however. My sims can get most places with 3 or 4 public transport options all in all (mostly bus->circle-metro->local-metro->bus).

[Lonesome 77]

I was going to say, public trans should make it pretty much unlimited if they can hop on the metro and pop up right by their work for instance.

Personally I like to have bus stops right by a metro station (since I don't have tons of metro stations, they mainly form a square type thing around the city) so that commuters can get out at the closest metro to their work, and hop on a bus which will take them to their job/closest to it.

The walking distance is surprising. I was watching a group of dock workers and incineration plant workers get out of the metro at the airport (a good ways north of the docks/plants), and walk all the way down! However now I put a bus line from that metro station to the incinteration plants and back, so that the plant workers can get off right at work, and the dockworkers get closer faster; as a bonus I also put a paved footpath cutting a bend in the curvy road from the docks, to make it easier for them lol.

I'm thinking that a good method might be to have a ring metro line (the Moscow Metro has one of these I think) or general perimeter metro, with lines cutting across it and buses in between. I believe that's what Jebus was referring to above?

[donotdisturb86]

Thank you guys for the replies!