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Building growing too much & Theory on growing frequency

Started by gn_leugim, December 09, 2020, 02:57:39 PM

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gn_leugim

Hello folks

I have been, for the last couple of weeks, re-creating my plugins, and taking special attention to lot layouts, stages, and progressions.

I am trying to archive as much variation as possible in each stage of growth by having one particular lot layout shared by many different buildings. Two in particular now are giving me some problems.

The R$4_1x2 and R$4_1x1 both have a load of different buildings, some dled, some own creation,. and I was getting a good random variety so far. however, now I have got this new two, and I PMIxed them, as I do with all of them. and now they grow dominant in 1x2 and 1x1 when the city hits stage 4.

I have read this topic that discusses how the developer works, and subsequent posts and I only got more confused.

let me share some data on the case:
Building one has 27 cap, building two has 31 cap. other buildings in the same lot/stage range have 35, 31, 30, 28 and 22.

So cap wise, the building (a family actually) should have priority. 

Regarding worth/bulldoze cost, again, the problematic buildings are in the middle of the range.
As Building value sake, they are not the highest as well.

So, what is what I am missing here? what makes this building pop so much when, according to the aforementioned topic, they shouldn't. Any light on the subject?

jeffryfisher

Is there anything going on with your styles (Chicago, Houston etc)? Did your repetition all grow in less time than it takes for your city to rotate between styles?
Modding PC games since 1993 (back when we needed hex-editors)

mattb325

To expand on what jeffryfisher mentions are all of the buildings within the same building style? Limiting the ones that grow too frequently to just one style (say New York) will greatly reduce the chances that they grow. That is by far the easiest option.

Alternatively, in the entire building family of buildings with occupancy numbers 22, 27, 28, 30, 31(x2) and 35, you could just take the average/median and change all values to that which will mean that each building in the family has an equal chance of growing

gn_leugim

Hello guys,

All of the refered buildings are only in the Euro tileset, and only the Euro tile set is being used in my cities, since I only grow my cities with Euro style, not with others.

Quote from: mattb325 on December 10, 2020, 10:51:03 AM

Alternatively, in the entire building family of buildings with occupancy numbers 22, 27, 28, 30, 31(x2) and 35, you could just take the average/median and change all values to that which will mean that each building in the family has an equal chance of growing

Do'nt think that might help, since I have tried to reduce the problematic building(s) capacity to way lower values that the others, and they still manage to be a pest.  &ops furthermore, most of the other buldings are in a building family already, because they have a similar footprint. but the pest ones do not share the same footprint, and I fear that doing so would make buildings overhand and cause its related issues.

I am trying to look into other variables to see if they may change anything at all... i'll post if I find something

mattb325

Interesting that everything is on the Euro Tileset.

Reducing the problematic buildings occupancy levels can often cause these buildings to grow more frequently (I know the prima guide says otherwise, but as Ripplejet noted, it is often not worth the paper it is written on).
So if all of the R$ buildings are growing in a family, and then while playing the game, you have lower demand for R$ in your city/region, the simulator will often pick the buildings with fewer occupants to fill the tract; particularly if other things like taxes/health/commute/education are promoting R$ growth. In short, none of the variables across your city works in isolation.

While you say that you only grow Euro style cities, it would be worth investigating a Maxis blocker that moves all maxis RCI content to one tileset (Dusktrooper made one such mod that moves them all to the Chicago tileset, you could adjust that to leave the real Euro Maxis buildings out of the blocker) and then take advantage of the other two tilesets for your cities.
It's still a Euro style city based on your plugins without limiting everything to the same tileset which takes away much of your element of control and will cause certain buildings to be weedy at certain times during gameplay

gn_leugim

I donno if using the blockers would help figure out the issue, since the entire family in question (and the problematic buildings) are non-maxis.

However, in the meantime, I took the risk of adding the problematic buildings into de building family with which it was competing (and fortunately, no overhanging occurs, like by a tenth of a meter), and now they are less problematic, growing proportionate to their Cap.

This makes me wonder, how building families are compared to individual buildings by the developer. Does it look at the average capacity of all buildings in the family? or it assumes the lowest cap? comparing to the highest cap is unlikely, it seems. On the other hand we also have the hypothesis of loading order, which would also make some sense, since the first  building being loaded is one with lower capacity (and it is that one that PIMx, for example, displays first when you call for a lot of this family, and I guess it is the value it uses to calculate lot stage and so on...)

This is a hypothesis worth pursuing I think. I think I can get the perfect setup for it. Create a new plug-in folder, empty, add a maxis blocker, create some simple ordinary buildings (i.e coloured cubes), add some to a family, leave some alone and test how things behave...

Got something to do this weekend :)