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More
to come...
Land:
You give em what they want, they ask for more!
You give em that they ask for more!! What's with these people?!? After time of
fulfilling their needs you wont have any land left, you could demolish the
'light' zones and replace them with high rise buildings or you could start a
community!
The great new 'regions' in SC4
enable you to control your neighbouring cities, unlike before when you would
have to connect to your neighbours and wait for a deal, now you just lay a road
or pipe, connect it up the other end and you've got yourself a deal!!! This is
great, it means that your connected cities also share RCI demand levels! What
does that mean? Well, if you have a great city with no more land left just open
up the city next to it, connect them up and continue your city. Great!
If you want to take this trick a
little further, you could build a city of just industry, another of commerce and
a third of residential and a final city of utilities. The utilities city would
supply all your other cities needs and receive funding for maintenance in the
form of the neighbour deal, this would also contain all your pollution to one
city!
More to
come...
The
Environment:
That pesky environmental advisor
has new powers! She may look sweet and innocent but she does nothing but close
my facilities! Grrr! There is no way to stop her, your only tactic is to avoid
polluted area when building water facilities or try to keep pollution to a
minimum. A good way to do this is to raise the taxes on high polluting
industries or through ordinances.
My Sims:
Striking sims, moaning
sims...dieing sims, there's nothing these strange little people can't do without
you! Guess who also have new powers! Yep, you guessed it, your sims now have the
power to strike (whose idea was that?!?). Well, no matter, life goes on. The
best way to deal with striking sims is to boost funding for their sector,
building more facilities (which they suggest) is the expensive way out... or you
could use my way out... IGNORE THEM! Harsh as it may seem, after time they will
return to work...until the next union meeting! Still its always fun to rain a
few meteors down on those protestors, that'll give them something to moan about!
Transport:
Transport, possibly the easiest
thing to get right ( except those pesky trains). You will find it mighty hard to
go wrong in this area, just expand mass transit from Buses - Trains - Subways.
You may want to skip the trains...Grrr! Under no circumstances build the sub way
first!
POP-UP tunnels to avoid intersections
SAVE YOUR CITY BEFORE ATTEMPTING THE
FOLLOWING - JUST IN CASE!! I even suggest practicing on an empty city first till
you get the hang of doing this in tight spaces of an already developed city.
I have uncovered a method of creating tunnels in flat terrain that I call pop-up
tunnels. They are called pop-up because the tunnel entrance is just below ground
level, but the exit rises up and pops through the surface at ground level. This
method will allow you to go under a crossroad instead of creating an
intersection, and we all know the fewer intersections the FASTER a road is.
Plan on using all level land 3 squares wide and as long as you want the tunnel
to run. Later you will be able to zone over this, but for now it is better it is
empty of structures (see warnings below).
First, use SHIFT-2 to reduce the radius of the raise/lower land tool-you only
want to effect one grid corner at a time.
Now use SHIFT-F2 to reduce the rate the tool operates, making it easier to avoid
big mistakes. (you have to do these two steps every time you select either the
raise or lower tool)
Use G to turn on the gridlines, this will help you aim your precision digging
work.
Placing the center of the circle for the raise/lower tool directly on the four
corners of a grid square will yield unpredictable results. Instead, place the
center of the green circle just inside a grid and note which corner is affected.
If you move anywhere within that grid square the same corner should move, even
when you rotate your view. Now you know how to select a specific corner.
For this example lets assume the following is a map of the grids you want to
affect, each number represents a corner in a group of grid squares, 3 wide by 3
tall:
00 00 00
00 22 00
00 00 00
00 11 00
00 33 00
00 00 00
You wont be modifying the corners represented by zeros.
Raise the number 1 corners by approximately $100.
Raise the number 2 corners by about $50.
LOWER the number 3 corners by about $200.
This creates a steep surface into which you will drag the ROAD tool (not
streets, they wont work. Highways will, but you need to make the grid wider by
one square-4 wide by 3 tall).
Use R to select the road drawing tool and drag a road up from below the number 3
corners up through the 1 and 2 corners. If you start a square or two away from
the 3 corners, you will see the road dip into the small valley you made, and a
tunnel will go into the steep wall, and then pop up approximately three or four
squares away, just beyond the number 2 points.
If you want the tunnel to be longer, raise a few more corners in the direction
your tunnel is running in the same way you did the number 2 corners. It seems
that when the land above is even moderately rough, the tunnel will not surface
as quickly.
Congratulations, you now can zone whole city sections or run roads over the
tunnel you just made!
WARNING! Your tunnel will implode if you use land shaping tools nearby,
especially the leveling tool. So shape the nearby land first, then run your
tunnel. If it implodes, you simply have to make it again by dragging the road
again. Usually you wont have to redig unless you really changed the shape of the
nearby land.
WARNING! Be careful with the bulldozer directly above a tunnel or near the
entrances.
WARNING! If you build a tunnel under existing buildings, they WILL BE DESTROYED!
WARNING! If your city is on land that is too low in elevation, lowering a point
by $200 will most likely strike water. If this happens, you will NOT be given
the opportunity to create a tunnel, as they cannot go below sea level. Instead
your road tool will turn RED and a bridge will be built. I still have not found
a way to run road or rail under a bridge.
WARNING! Occasionally when doing this I have had random squares of my
transportation network be destroyed. So check your city when done tunneling and
repair any roads/highways/rail that might have been destroyed while your
infrastructure crew was tunneling. you know, like in Boston's big dig project.
Enjoy Pop-up Tunnels!
Buck Rapid
Follow these
hints and you too should be able to get a monster region! A buzzing metropolis
displaying SC4 in all its glory.
Got a tip?
Email me. |
