Need Advanced Tips: Upgrade Elevator / Multi-level stores

[Skirlasvoud]

I'm not that far into the game yet, maybe a 10 star rating... but since this is a tower construction game I'm already messing with the foundations and planning everything in advance.

Before I find out I shot myself in the foot 2 hours in:

Advanced / Exclusive Elevators... what use are they? I know they don't have to start on the ground floor, but how is that usefull? I can't think of anything they can do that ordinary elevators can't or am I missing something? You still can't break them in the middle, everyone can use them and I'm not sure what use there is to having a route that's harder to take since restricting floors to specific tenents already makes sections of your tower exclusive enough by giving everyone else no reason to go there. It's not like with Simtower to relieve traffic.


Also, how do people handle creating multi-tier floors dedicated to just stores and food outlets? I love plopping them down in high traffic areas, or in other words, the ground floor, but I've already figured out that the standard and tall map setting - the ones that allow you to build a nice tower - don't have a ground floor big enough to stuff all my shops/restaurants in. For my next tower, I could dedicate the first three floors to just shopping and food, but I'm concerned that the two floor above ground level won't be enjoying any high traffic throughput.


I suppose I could use aforementioned Advanced elevators to snake people through the first three floors on their way to the proper elevators that leave further upwards... but for the sake of the proper architecture and infrastructure that the game keeps espousing, that seems horribly counter intuitive. I'd be miffed as a tenant if the architect extends the trip I make to get home in a building by forcing me on an hour long detour through the commercial district. It would be like a frickin' airport.


Any hints to do it in an intuitive way?

[NekoMode]

I use exclusive elevators when I need to change the composition of my tower.

Early game I usually start with a centerally located elevators and small/medium offices to get some easy early population and star levels. Mid way through when I unlock Large Offices I usually cap my tower of Medium Offices with a "Sky Lobby" of sorts.

This sky lobby usually is composed primarily of shops and the advanced elevator lets me re-locate my elevator to the far side of the structure to accomidate for the 2BR Luxury Apartments that HATE being too close to the elevator.

By relocating my elevator it generates traffic for my mid-tower shopping center AND lets me fit more 2BR Luxury Apartments than I otherwise could have.

[Meredius]

I think it would also depend on how wide your tower is. For example; I was messing around with the first scenario and had pretty much built up office and to the right I had about 20 tiles with stores and different services. I did a couple large restaurants in between my officess so that the smell wouldn't upset the stores.... and it worked really well!

Then for appartments, I pushed an elevator to the far right( so a new shaft), build up 5-6 floors and layed out different suites and 2BR / Appartment configurations to fit. I had the whole floor length that way.

Of course the only downside is appartment tennants complain about noise.... about them and other tennants walking to their appartment even though the noise is none-existant. :) But that's known and being worked on.

Interestingly, I added the art gallry on the floor above (16 or 17th floor) and added luxury stores. I spaced the stores out to about one store-length size:
STORE, STORE, STORE, SPACE, ART GALLERY.

And the specialty stores were profitable first day.

I also tried doing and "underground mall" but I was playing on a huge map and unless I fill the top floors TO THE BRIM with offices and tennants.... I'm not sure the whole 20 floors below ground could be used for some services, stores and periferals like storage and garbage collection. Would be interesting to get there.

There's also the fact you can evict old tennants and upgrade the space with bigger offices / appartments to get more people + revennu but offices demand X of earlier ones so not sure about that.

Last thing, I also sometimes used cheap level 1 offices to buffer ground floor restaurants vis-à-vis appartments when making "multiple towers". >That'S the thing with appartments; if you put restaurants, stores, services; they complain about noise, traffic and smells. :)

Sorry if this is long. Got a cold so i'm rambbling. :P

Cheers!

[Skirlasvoud]

No, not rambly at all Meredius. :D

Thanks to the both of you for your information. Really helped me visualize how I'm supposed to solve and combine these two issues. Recreating the SimTower skylobbies hadn't occured to me yet.