CAM - General Discussions

[z]

And something that might cause you some concern, cities don't grow that fast with CAM installed, it actually makes the game a little (quite) harder to play. Growth has to go through more stages, population won't grow as fast (at least initially), and you will need more zones to get the same population and jobs. But I think it's worth the fuss.

I'll strongly second that.  And though it may make the game harder, it does so by making it more challenging and more realistic.  And isn't that what most people are looking for in a good city simulator?

Personally, I think that CAM is one of the best mods ever developed for the game.

[tamorr]

   Personally to me from what I've seen in my own cities, it rather makes things a bit more easier than playing with the default maxis. Plus extends the time it takes to build a city like the others stated. Well to me it made things easier or about the same actually in diffficulty, but made it more bearable to watch the city to grow.

  I personally don't look for the challenge in a city simulator, as I just like watching things grow in it along side minimal city management. To extend to higher skies is to extend the time enjoying the view of development.

[GhostBuster]

Sorry for the late reply, I was out of town, but thank you

On the point of the less abandonment mod in CAM and its standalone version. Does this address the commute time abandonment problems? I have a growing city going at the moment of 600,000+ sims, running Z Simulator on LOW, the city hosts several highways intersecting it as well as avenues and a well used subway system (Which as soon as i installed it made a massive impact to help, but it still happens), It has two connecting towns, One on the south side which is a strictly residential only city, a a dirty industry town to the north, (My city is aimed mostly at commercial and high tech/non population industry) And I still get them leaving the buildings due to commute times, I find they choose absolutely STUPID places to work but that's a different matter.

Also so I don't make another posts somewhere else, how the customers value with commercial lots work?
I have a problem with my larger office buildings in particular being abandoned due to lack of customers, I only really noticed it once i started using need traffic sims, but how do they effect the number of customers? I am really not sure as to how to combat this?

[z]

Some abandonment problems have been fixed in the latest version of Simulator Z, which is coming out with the next NAM.  However, you can get it here now.  Just replace your version of the simulator with the one from the download whose name matches yours exactly.

The number of customers is driven by the amount of traffic around the commercial buildings.  The more traffic, the more customers.  Adjustments have also been made to the new version of Simulator Z to make this feature work better as well.

[xxdita]

And something that might cause you some concern, cities don't grow that fast with CAM installed, it actually makes the game a little (quite) harder to play. Growth has to go through more stages, population won't grow as fast (at least initially), and you will need more zones to get the same population and jobs. But I think it's worth the fuss.

Surely there's something we can do about that...

[GhostBuster]

Some abandonment problems have been fixed in the latest version of Simulator Z, which is coming out with the next NAM.  However, you can get it here now.  Just replace your version of the simulator with the one from the download whose name matches yours exactly.

The number of customers is driven by the amount of traffic around the commercial buildings.  The more traffic, the more customers.  Adjustments have also been made to the new version of Simulator Z to make this feature work better as well.

So would the subway system be choking my shops and offices now? As its taking them off the street and underground away from them? As its my second highest form of transportation... Second only to walking, (Yes, walking Where's the Fries? (next time we'll wash your mouth out with soap))

[xxdita]

So would the subway system be choking my shops and offices now? As its taking them off the street and underground away from them?

Check the Commercial buildings to see for yourself, but my guess is 'Yes'. Try adding more subway stations in the commercial districts, especially in areas close to industrial jobs.

[End_of_Eternity]

I was wondering if there is any new info about the new CAM release? Maybe a changelog or something like that? I am just interested in the new things in the new version of CAM.

Thanks,

Vlad

[RippleJet]

Version	Date	Change Log
1.0.1	2007/11/08	I-HT Demand Range raised from 12,000 to 24,000
		Max simultaneous capacity at contrusction raised from 20,480 to 24,576
		Neutral tax vs. Population reduced in order to make the game more difficult
		Maximum slope per tile in zoning increased from 16 to 20 for medium and 24 for high density
1.0.2	2007/12/27	Private version for verifying that the tax parameters can be changed
1.0.3	2007/12/28	Tax modifier vs. Rate Variance changed
		Difficulty vs. Tax Multiplier changed to make the hard difficulty even harder
1.0.4	2008/01/12	Workforce drives removed in order to get rid of the doubled regional workforce
		The tax reduction reduced... (more income compared to the previous version)
1.0.5	2008/03/08	CAM split up into two parts...
		- 1. All RCI exemplars, which have to be patched with SimCity_1.dat
		- 2. All other exemplars, which in the future will be split up into three main versions
		Workforce drives added back into the file to be patched with SimCity_1.dat
		AFTER THIS FOLLOWED A LONG TESTING PERIOD WITHIN BSC
1.0.6	2009/03/08	Corrected the building developer exemplar, which was buggy
1.1.1	2009/11/07	Rural CAM Stage # vs. Size properties finished
		The slope effect on desirability taken into use for almost all RCI types
		The IHT demand bug fix included in the patched files
		TESTING OF RURAL CAM STARTED ON SC4D
1.1.2	2009/11/21	Maximum I-R demand increased from 6,000 to 12,000
1.1.3	2009/11/23	All workforce drives have been revised and changed
		Negative traffic effect on I-R desirability reduced

[HappyDays]

How interesting. If you're willing to divulge the information, what do you have planned next for changes? Or do you consider the release feature complete and are now just tracking down bugs?

If it's the latter, I'd gladly offer up my region of 10 million (6 in one city, at that!) for the testing. I do recall you weren't entirely sure CAM 2.0 would be compatible with CAM 1.0 regions, so such a massive city would be a perfect test bed for that particular aspect. If, of course, you don't already have a couple of those floating around.

I apologize if my offer is presumptuous.

I noticed you changed the maximum simultaneous capacity at construction number. I had figured such a number existed, as even after I changed the High Tech demand range the super huge Somy's still had some issue growing (Along with several other 20k+ capacity buildings). This leads me to another question...are capacities already used included in the math to figure needs for the next stage's capacity? For example, the Sears Tower and the Pan Pacific Building. The Sears Tower has 16k(ish) capacity, the Pan Pacific 21k(ish).  When the simulator decides to bump a Sears Tower up to a Pan Pacific, does the game look for a spare 6k capacity to build the Pan Pacific, or does the game require the full 21k(ish) capacity (As if the Sears Tower never existed)? In fact, how does demand work in that regard? Does it just look for the demand required to go from 16k(ish) to 21k(ish), or does it require the full amount of demand for a Sears Tower to grow into a Pan Pacific?

If the latter, this leads to some...issues, with very large cities. As the number of a given type increases (CO$$, I-HT, etc), demand caps increase and thus demand drops due to the cap. For the very large buildings, it doesn't take long before the drop in demand via cap makes it nigh impossible to get them to grow outright (Which is the case with any of the Stage 10 20k+ Somy's). The issue with I-HT is especially noticeable, given the ludicrous demand one has for I-HT after getting a large region and the fact, most of the time, Somy's High Rise Farms grow instead of the 20k+ ones. If I may suggest, would it be possible to add another stage or two, or re-balance the stages you already have, to allow the super huge Somy buildings the highest stages and the High Rise Farms (And their ilks) a stage lower? This would allow the High Rise Farms to grow into the 20k+ buildings, because as now, once it hits a High Rise Farm, that's it.

While we're on the subject, I have yet another question about stages. I have a region, as before, with 10 million sims. I can get the final stages of anything, but I do have this small city tile composed entirely of the rich. Desirability and demand are maxed, yet the building stages won't grow past stage 12 (Yes, everything required to break stage 12 has been added). Does this mean only a certain percentage of allowed stages leech off from neighbor cities (Which can obtain stage 15 buildings), or is there a hard cap that always requires a certain number of sims >in< the city to get higher stages regardless of what the region is capable of? Or a combination thereof?

Finally, might I make another suggestion? Increase the maximum demands for Dirty Industry and Manufacturing to 24k, as well. The reason I suggest this is because the Jamison Steel Mill has 21k jobs...meaning it will never normally grow in a city. Super huge lots like these don't show up often, in any form, but you'd certainly take care of all possible future scenarios with this.

(Further apologies if any of these questions are already answered, but I do not recall them being touched upon)

Thank you for your time and effort. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving to the Americans.

[xxdita]

How interesting. If you're willing to divulge the information, what do you have planned next for changes? Or do you consider the release feature complete and are now just tracking down bugs?

RippleJet is mostly just doing some fine-tuning on the Rural CAM, as it's in a more open beta now.

I noticed you changed the maximum simultaneous capacity at construction number. I had figured such a number existed, as even after I changed the High Tech demand range the super huge Somy's still had some issue growing (Along with several other 20k+ capacity buildings). This leads me to another question...are capacities already used included in the math to figure needs for the next stage's capacity? For example, the Sears Tower and the Pan Pacific Building. The Sears Tower has 16k(ish) capacity, the Pan Pacific 21k(ish).  When the simulator decides to bump a Sears Tower up to a Pan Pacific, does the game look for a spare 6k capacity to build the Pan Pacific, or does the game require the full 21k(ish) capacity (As if the Sears Tower never existed)? In fact, how does demand work in that regard? Does it just look for the demand required to go from 16k(ish) to 21k(ish), or does it require the full amount of demand for a Sears Tower to grow into a Pan Pacific?

As far as I can tell, and RippleJet may know otherwise, the game only allows for building if the new building is within the total growth capacity limits, without taking any upgrade into the calculation.

If the latter, this leads to some...issues, with very large cities. As the number of a given type increases (CO$$, I-HT, etc), demand caps increase and thus demand drops due to the cap. For the very large buildings, it doesn't take long before the drop in demand via cap makes it nigh impossible to get them to grow outright (Which is the case with any of the Stage 10 20k+ Somy's). The issue with I-HT is especially noticeable, given the ludicrous demand one has for I-HT after getting a large region and the fact, most of the time, Somy's High Rise Farms grow instead of the 20k+ ones. If I may suggest, would it be possible to add another stage or two, or re-balance the stages you already have, to allow the super huge Somy buildings the highest stages and the High Rise Farms (And their ilks) a stage lower? This would allow the High Rise Farms to grow into the 20k+ buildings, because as now, once it hits a High Rise Farm, that's it.

A Stage 10 can't upgrade to another Stage 10. The only way to get the Somys to grow was to demolish the Integriculture buildings. While I believe it is possible for more stages in the industrial area, we're not quite ready for that just yet. And t's almost guaranteed that as soon as all of the stages possible are maxed out, someone will still create even larger buildings. (Two words - Coruscant Mod)

While we're on the subject, I have yet another question about stages. I have a region, as before, with 10 million sims. I can get the final stages of anything, but I do have this small city tile composed entirely of the rich. Desirability and demand are maxed, yet the building stages won't grow past stage 12 (Yes, everything required to break stage 12 has been added). Does this mean only a certain percentage of allowed stages leech off from neighbor cities (Which can obtain stage 15 buildings), or is there a hard cap that always requires a certain number of sims >in< the city to get higher stages regardless of what the region is capable of? Or a combination thereof?

My best guess would be that there's some kind of a desirability issue, even if the map is showing green. I have had plenty of small cities, mostly residential, with maybe 10% Commercial mixed in, so that at least some jobs were provided in town. And I've never had an issue getting to Stage 15, and a lot of them. Check your commute times, you may need to switch to a traffic sim with higher capacities, or merely upgrade a few roads.

Finally, might I make another suggestion? Increase the maximum demands for Dirty Industry and Manufacturing to 24k, as well. The reason I suggest this is because the Jamison Steel Mill has 21k jobs...meaning it will never normally grow in a city. Super huge lots like these don't show up often, in any form, but you'd certainly take care of all possible future scenarios with this.

I originally made the growable lot at the request of Andreas. Not sure if he's ever been able to get it to actually grow or not.    But I have.

So far for the Rural CAM, the max growth for IR, ID, and IM are all set for 12,000. I would agree that more should be included, so that people can actually grow the Jamison Steel Mill, if for no other reason. 

But when adjusting the maximum simultaneous growth rate, you also adjust the speed at which the game progresses. I would have to advise against this change for Rural CAM, at least in the early stages of a region. Really, I'd advise against the change to IHT as well, considering that the people who would be more geared to use the rural version are unlikely to need IHT with capacities so large. But for the Normal and Skyscraper CAMs, I would definately recommend the changes.

[RippleJet]

If it's the latter, I'd gladly offer up my region of 10 million (6 in one city, at that!) for the testing. I do recall you weren't entirely sure CAM 2.0 would be compatible with CAM 1.0 regions, so such a massive city would be a perfect test bed for that particular aspect. If, of course, you don't already have a couple of those floating around.

You should be able to see another subboard in the CAM board now...

This leads me to another question...are capacities already used included in the math to figure needs for the next stage's capacity? For example, the Sears Tower and the Pan Pacific Building. The Sears Tower has 16k(ish) capacity, the Pan Pacific 21k(ish).  When the simulator decides to bump a Sears Tower up to a Pan Pacific, does the game look for a spare 6k capacity to build the Pan Pacific, or does the game require the full 21k(ish) capacity (As if the Sears Tower never existed)? In fact, how does demand work in that regard? Does it just look for the demand required to go from 16k(ish) to 21k(ish), or does it require the full amount of demand for a Sears Tower to grow into a Pan Pacific?

That's a question I would love someone from Maxis to tell me the answer to as well...
So far I have also, like Nate, always thought that the game needs the full demand for the bigger building to grow from scratch before it would grow...

However, maybe, just maybe, the reason people were sometimes able to grow NDEX towers with up to 9,000 jobs in Rush Hour,
was indeed due to the reason that only the difference in capacity was required in the demand...
We may never get a complete answer to that, but it's good to consider that might be the case.

In any case, as soon as the old building (which is being upgraded) disappeared, the demand would once again increase by that amount.
Say the demand was +24, then dropped to +3 when the Pan Pacific was set to grow, but rose back to +19 when the Sears Tower disappeared.

[HappyDays]

"You should be able to see another subboard in the CAM board now..."

Oh snap!

[Korot]

"You should be able to see another subboard in the CAM board now..."

Ah, that's why the CAM-sub-forum shows up in big lettering once in a while, without there being a topic with a recent post, there was a sub-forum that I couldn't see. Though I think that in that case, it shouldn't show up in bold anyway, ergo there is a forum bug. Anyway, I'd also love to participate in the CAM 2.0 beta testing. I don't have any really big cities/regions, though I am working on a new region, one that could be used to test the rural version, as it won't become very big for a while.

Regards,
Korot

[RippleJet]

there was a sub-forum that I couldn't see.

At least now you can...

[gabrielbyrnei]

Hello, is there any way of getting the latest 1.1.3 CAM addon??


And another thing, if i were to install SC4 under linux, would CAM work in it ?

[RippleJet]

If you're prepared to beta test the latest CAM, including writing reports, then just ask!

Btw, 1.1.3 isn't the latest beta version anymore...

Version	Date	Change Log
1.0.1	2007/11/08	I-HT Demand Range raised from 12,000 to 24,000
		Max simultaneous capacity at contrusction raised from 20,480 to 24,576
		Neutral tax vs. Population reduced in order to make the game more difficult
		Maximum slope per tile in zoning increased from 16 to 20 for medium and 24 for high density
1.0.2	2007/12/27	Private version for verifying that the tax parameters can be changed
1.0.3	2007/12/28	Tax modifier vs. Rate Variance changed
		Difficulty vs. Tax Multiplier changed to make the hard difficulty even harder
1.0.4	2008/01/12	Workforce drives removed in order to get rid of the doubled regional workforce
		The tax reduction reduced... (more income compared to the previous version)
1.0.5	2008/03/08	CAM split up into two parts...
		- 1. All RCI exemplars, which have to be patched with SimCity_1.dat
		- 2. All other exemplars, which in the future will be split up into three main versions
		Workforce drives added back into the file to be patched with SimCity_1.dat
		AFTER THIS FOLLOWED A LONG TESTING PERIOD WITHIN BSC
1.0.6	2009/03/08	Corrected the building developer exemplar, which was buggy since version 1.0.3
1.1.1	2009/11/07	Rural CAM Stage # vs. Size properties finished
		The slope effect on desirability taken into use for almost all RCI types
		The IHT demand bug fix included in the patched files
		TESTING OF RURAL CAM STARTED ON SC4D
1.1.2	2009/11/21	Maximum I-R demand increased from 6,000 to 12,000
1.1.3	2009/11/23	All workforce drives have been revised and changed
		Negative traffic effect on I-R desirability reduced
1.1.4	2009/12/01	Growth thresholds changed in order to speed up the stages a bit
		Max IR threshold extended from 250,000 to 2,395,427
		The chance of growing stage 6 and 7 farms increased with the higher thresholds
1.2.0	2009/11/30	Standard CAM Stage # vs. Size properties finished
		The slope effects copied over from Rural CAM
		TESTING OF STANDARD CAM STARTED ON SC4D
		Skyscraper CAM Stage # vs. Size properties are being developed...

[SC4BOY]

And something that might cause you some concern, cities don't grow that fast with CAM installed, it actually makes the game a little (quite) harder to play. Growth has to go through more stages, population won't grow as fast (at least initially), and you will need more zones to get the same population and jobs. But I think it's worth the fuss.

Am I the only person who dissagrees with this? I've used both SC4 (generally unmod'ed other than the NAM and a few custom lots) and CAM. I don't find CAM to be any harder at all.

[gabrielbyrnei]

Well, that indeed would be great, also, ill be testing through Linux, so that might be of more help to the project


Thanks

[RippleJet]

Gabriel, you're hired!