SC4 Devotion Forum Archives

As development is winding down toward release, there is a few things about the farming system that need to be addressed. This thread is for ideas about the development and update of the current Agriculture system in place from CAM 1.0.

Here is what is currently changed

• Farm stages in CAM 1.0 were expanded to 7 stages. 6-7 were types of heritage lots. CAM 2 is expanding the stages to 10 so it is treated more like normal industry.
• Farms are not as sensitive to traffic or air pollution.
• Farms are counted in industry numbers. CAP relief is provided by connections. CAP is not consumed by other buildings

Most of the questions raised are these:

• Heritage lots are a strange lot. How popular are they really?
• Stage 8-10 farms leave a lot of ideas available. Mine started with Integriculture lots. What ideas do you have?

My personal ideas are in the CAM 2 manual. The farming section is attached to this post. The only thing I would probably change is to remove the heritage lots and continue the farming chain. All ideas are welcome. Agree or disagree with my ideas, please. Just be respectful and lets make this a productive discussion.

This is awesome! Thanks!

I have finally downloaded the relevant files and will fire them up in the game asap!

On the subject of agriculture / primary industry, I have always been irked by how easily farms are affected by traffic and air pollution. It makes no sense and I detest seeing massive swathes of black fields because they can't handle a little nearby traffic! That, alone, is a massive improvement! :thumbsup:

Quote from: InvisiChem on January 20, 2016, 04:27:23 PM
Most of the questions raised are these:

• Heritage lots are a strange lot. How popular are they really?
• Stage 8-10 farms leave a lot of ideas available. Mine started with Integriculture lots. What ideas do you have?

Heritage lots are a strange lot indeed. I generally dislike them and rarely keep any that pop up. I suppose the alternative is to not download them, but they often came bundled with other packages and I just dumped them unthinkingly in my plugins folder. I suppose they could be kept in their own reserved growth stage, that way you can control how / whether they grow (simply by not downloading them).

I also like the idea, as in the extract of the manual, of massive farming industry at stage 8 and futuristic farming concepts at the last growth stages. Again, it allows for easier control.

Anyway, let me try this in-game.

This is certainly awesome! So much work done by one person.  &apls
Your development ideas open up a new horizon for rural development.

It would be good to have 10 staged of I-R like I-HT. Especially with the futuristic stages 9 and 10 we will see that I-R and I-HT will look a bit the same.
This is also an answer to the irritating presumption that farmers are not educated. Nowadays here in The Netherlands farming has become quite a I-HT business already.

So I have been thinking about I-R Stages.
Stages 1 up to 3 are quite common farms with a house, some barns and sheds, with crops growing around them.
Like this:
Stage 1
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi277.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk63%2FFrankU_bucket%2FDutch%2520Farm%2520Lots%2520-%2520growables%2FFarmsoverviews-0000a.jpg%7Eoriginal&hash=f82db7dd1a27f2f6e17121c1b1249350e3f406b3)

Stage 2
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi277.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk63%2FFrankU_bucket%2FDutch%2520Farm%2520Lots%2520-%2520growables%2FFarmsoverviews-0001a.jpg%7Eoriginal&hash=f30859b8abddc0e5b3a43f8d56a97d59cc183992)

Stage 3
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi277.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk63%2FFrankU_bucket%2FDutch%2520Farm%2520Lots%2520-%2520growables%2FFarmsoverviews-0002a.jpg%7Eoriginal&hash=e6badfbda1f9226d5f92fa0aba17c088281df6da)

In my opinion stage 4 already shows quite large barns.
Like these:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi277.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk63%2FFrankU_bucket%2FDutch%2520Farm%2520Lots%2520-%2520growables%2FFarmsoverviews-0003a.jpg%7Eoriginal&hash=6712c560fc04a1be29cb4f41c022990042b9a71b)

Stage 5 is almost industrial: large complexes of pig barns, chicken barns or cattle barns.
Like these:
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi277.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk63%2FFrankU_bucket%2FDutch%2520Farm%2520Lots%2520-%2520growables%2FFarmsoverviews-0004a.jpg%7Eoriginal&hash=1147398c8ce2b3500af18884c83327473da69893)

The above are my concept farm lots. I am waiting for Fred/mrbisonm to finish his farm props set, so I can make them final and upload them to the community.

So then we have stages 6 and 7. A fun idea by the BSC team, but not really logical if you think about it. In fact these heritage lots are a very different kind of lots and would not really fit into any R, I or C category. So, well... putting them on the end of the farming chain was an OK idea.
But if you extend the chain with extra stages above 7, until more or less high tech farms (your stages 8, 9 and 10) I think it is getting a bit weird.

If you keep these heritage lots on stage 6 and 7 we will have a weird chain of farms growing: we begin with traditional small ones, then they get bigger, then we have some heritage here and there and then suddenly we get industrial high tech stuff..... I don't know. It could work, but is it logical?
Would it be possible to do this differently? Maybe we just throw the whole heritage lots stuff out and make these lots Landmarks with or without jobs? What do you all think?

But of course; what to do with the existing Stage 6 and 7 farms.... A problem indeed. Although modding them into Landmarks or something different would not be too hard. I could do that.

For the higher stages we could think of lots with these Integriculture (http://www.yuhisa.com/simboard-archives/simboard-85/?cmd=one%3bno=85%3bid=) buildings. Or with these (http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/18466-peg-sf-sky-farm-resource-file/): The Pegasus utopia sky farms.

Invisichem, you are going to make new properties and implement them for SC4-Pim? So that I can make CAM 2 balanced stats with SC4-Pim? Without this utility I will get lost!

Not a simple job...! Good luck.

Quote from: FrankU on January 21, 2016, 04:34:42 AM
Would it be possible to do this differently? Maybe we just throw the whole heritage lots stuff out and make these lots Landmarks with or without jobs? What do you all think?

I was thinking along the same lines, especially considering that a number of these 'heritage farms' have been made into / are 'functional' LMs already (CSX comes to mind).

ETA: Do I still need / can I still use this mod? Link (http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2691)

I am developing some heritage lots myself. Some of them could be landmarks, some of them could be museums, an educational facility, a conference center, a park... I could spread them all over the game menus, except maybe water traffic or utility  ;D

I like what I read here so far. Of course, it's the same things I agree with, so liking it is easy.  ;) 

The old heritage lots, we could develop a list of them currently and add them to a cleanitol file. Not too difficult. A thread about deprecated lots will end up having to be made for future plugin releases, so it would suffice to add one for this release of CAM, after I release it of course.

They were a great idea, and once I learn about the developer types interact with the zoning classes in the EXE file, perhaps I can find a way to develop new zone types, one specifically for Heritage Lots. This is of course currently fantasy and brainstorming, but one never knows. With persistence comes results.

I'm really liking what you are doing here :thumbsup:

I had a few thoughts for stage 6/7/8 - how about some abattoirs/processing facilities, aquaculture farms (algae/fish farming in tanks), biofuel farms, wind/solar farms or maybe large scale forestry lots.

As for the heritage lots I'm not too fussed by what happens to them.
If one ever grows for me it usually disappears almost as quick as it grows. (The Great Pyramid growing on a hillside  $%Grinno$%  )

So I started a new region with CAM 2.0.

I don't know if I'm entirely happy with the new demand drivers for agriculture, they seem to be 'bad' for "pioneer" regions, starting with mainly large swathes of farmland. I could only grow one massive farm with a population of 1 500 and then they were all complaining about a lack of jobs!

QuoteETA: Do I still need / can I still use this mod? Link

Unfortunately no, this mod would be inCAMpatible. I used this mod to implement certain changes, though not as extreme. Traffic will still have an effect for instance, just not as severe. It takes quite a bit more traffic to be an issue.

I can definitely up the demand a bit for farms. I was able to grow much larger population, around 10,000 before I started this problem, but I was also zoning a balancing amount of light density commercial with it. I do grow farms a little differently as well. I stick to the about 12x14 swaths. Irregular in shape, but smaller. This makes a lot more farm houses in ratio of farm fields. Doing this, you will notice an increase in R$$ and R$$$ drive as well. Not a lot more, but farms do need some middle wealth to work and the owners become very wealthy with good farms.

Let me increase the drive some more. For this version, I increased the initial drive to 1500. I thought this would help the initial growth, but I can increase the major demand as well. Hesitant to go too high, since all wealth and education except R$$$EQ4 adds to IR drive.

Let me up that and I'll get you the new set.

So, here is a quick test city, updated. Had to use the snapshot tool from in game, so some things are not available. Here is a basic stat. City population was just over 11,000. The grids on the farms are 8x8 with the Ave, where the Ave gives way to road, they are 8x9. Almost no unemployment, very little commercial and fields were not really dilapidating. All good stuff. Thank you Vortext and M4346. Not much of a farmer myself. Vortext's observations originally had me raise the initial drive to 1500. Between Vortext and M4346, I increased the overall drive for IR. This seems to working well.

Farming Area
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F640x480q90%2F633%2FQSNbKz.jpg&hash=fd289412089d03a666ca6dc0f34846988cf2446b)

Residential Area
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F640x480q90%2F911%2FuxCs5Q.jpg&hash=9641202aa40a1a3de4660aaa4c39b6be0a913295)

Residential East Side
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F640x480q90%2F911%2Flg9aed.jpg&hash=4bd10dbb5ad5c3b196d85e67d7b6e7854ffbc5ce)

Residential West Side
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F640x480q90%2F905%2FIGp7bf.jpg&hash=9199ce06a562287a00aa6183639e98bdadb2d623)


Let me get the changes implemented to all PlayStyle files and I'll get them out for testing.

Awesome! Thanks! I look forward to trying the revised version! :)

To give you an idea of the kind of rural areas I work on / with:


With little towns / villages like this one in between:

@M4346, you build farming tiles in much the same way I do. I always have fairly small towns surrounded by farms. The only place where I have farms in a more populated tile is when they're right at the edge of the suburbs, where you have a transition from suburban to rural.

To adjust for a more rural playing style, I think I'll adjust Rural CAM drives to account for large amounts of farms, little population. My current settings still don't do a good job of supporting that, although even at low populations, the amount of jobs is almost the amount of population. Remember, these are just test cities, no fancy stuff. Editable variables.

Simple farms.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F640x480q90%2F907%2F7Pdixf.jpg&hash=99261d611221f5192729ab61c20c0862b9f82c35)

Residential Section (Still, no major unemployment)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F640x480q90%2F903%2Fty4uRM.jpg&hash=ca1ece3851bb807210f5d3435c02789aedd3e299)

CRF Report
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F640x480q90%2F910%2FRQzTyG.jpg&hash=ad3555d1979a8f227af7bc047fff9d9d85ff2c83)

Demand (Finally killed demand with the population)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2F640x480q90%2F907%2FhOMzDL.jpg&hash=24c050d427b272f6ab04e636692aa071e2c2a969)

This would cause some great growth, but I don't like the balance for that. Drives are too high for my liking, but I think moving these values to Rural CAM but similar to CAM 1.0 would work very well. Be two different sets, but easy to manage through the installer. As it is, all I would have to do is zone another tract of residential, boom IR demand will rise quickly. All R$EQ<4 ask for more than 1 farm job by themselves, 1.66, 1.15, 1.05. I'll admit, CAM 1.0 asked for 16, 1.6, .16.

I'm pleased to report that, as far as I can see at least, CAM 2.0 Rural does what it says!  ;D :thumbsup:

Putting these here for you to interrogate  ()stsfd()


(The IM demand is that low because a massive ACME Cold Storage facility just opened its doors down the road  ::) :P )

Please tell me you have 2 cities going in this region. The numbers seem to coincide with that. If so, everything is looking great. If not, the setup dat pack did not work. Numbers aren't doubled, especially the industrial, so I don't think this is the case.

I do have two cities. One purely R and C and the one ehere the screenshot is from, which is IR, IM, C and R.

Perfect. Everything is looking great then.  :bnn: 

Frank,

Lets bring this conversation public here. This is a great conversation about the redevlopment of PIM-X IR Stages with the expansion of stages I have included in the new CAM.

I have expanded the number of stages from 7 to 10, as has been discussed earlier. The difficult part is how to make PIM-X play nice with this. I have devised a new properties.xml to handle this, but there is rightly some concerns about the values I have used.

Quickly, some tables about about Stage vs. Density. For all types except IR, this has always been number of workers per tile. IR was total jobs. This new file makes it workers per tile for IR as well.

First, the original table from CAM 1.0

2      16
3      40
4      90
5     180

Now, this table Expanded to 15 stages

2   16            9     4808.7
3   40            10   10779.3
4   90            11   24163.2
5   180          12    54164.9
6   426.9        13   121417.7
7   957          14    272173.5
8   2145.2      15    610112.4

And finally the table I have developed for PIM-X

2     5           9    70.9
3    8.1         10   90
4    12.7       11   152.2
5    19.2       12   218.4
6    28.1       13   313.5
7    39.6       14   450
8    53.9       15   645.8

Remember, this is workers per tile again.

So, to clarify this a little bit. Let's take Pedriana's Plants as an example.

In Vanilla Maxis, this building has an occupancy of 13. The lot sizes are 4x4, 4x6, 6x4. So tiles are 16 and 24. This puts the workers per tile at less than 1. Should be a stage 1 farm. Is a stage 3

In CAM 1.0 this has remained unchanged. CAM 2.1.0 doesn't change any building occupancy values yet. That is planned for 2.1.1

Anyways, this building, once run through PIM-X brings the occupancy to 88. This is 5.5 per tile and 3.7 per tile. Still within the Stage 2 and Stage 1 setting except for CAM 1.0 which puts it into Stage 3.

This is because Maxis placed their stages somewhat randomly and CAM 1.0 IR stages are based on total employment instead of workers per tile. So, in CAM 1.0, if the employment was 90 and the lot was 5x4 (20 tiles) then It would be a Stage 4 farm, even with 4.5 workers per tile. This disruption of stage vs. density really throws IR off balance with the rest of the game and could even be part of the reason IR does not upgrade on its own.

PIM-X using Dirty industry values, which is what I'm trying to get IR values to emulate, with a proper filling degree of 0.18 brings our occupancy to 149. On a 4x4 lot, this is a stage 3 building at 9.3 workers per tile. 6x4 lot is a stage 2 building at 6.2 workers per tile.

The industrial dirty occupancy and stage numbers I do trust. They also fall in line with lower density type industries. Testing for this post did bring up a problem with PIM-X with IR, it seems hard programmed to calculate as total employment instead of per tile.

I used a different list for my Farm Stages. This one:
Stage 1 = 1-15
Stage 2 = 16-31
Stage 3 = 32-59
Stage 4 = 60-99
Stage 5 = 100 and above
Stage 6 and 7 do not have a capacity recommendation because of the nature of the land use.

I can't seem to find it, but I got it from either RippleJet or Jim Myers. And it should be somewhere in a CAM 1 thread.
These numbers correspond with what SC4-Pim gives me when I create a building and a lot with it.

I did check with my self made, pitifully still not released, Farms.
There is this certain Stage 5 lot. It has 161 workers and the size is 7 x 8 = 56 tiles. This means in CAM 2: 161/56 = 2,8 workers per tile, making it a Stage 1 lot.
In CAM2 it needs at least 56 x 19.2 = 1076 workers to make it a Stage 5 lot!

After a bit of calculating I found out that alle the Farms I had made will be CAM2 Stage 1 lots, if I keep the jobs as I had made them.
So I definitely have to make CAM1 versions and CAM2 versions if I want the whole community to have fun with my Lots.

I must say: this makes the step to using CAM2 a bit harder, because there are no CAM2 Farms yet. Off course I could start with my Maxis Farms Override set.... I could make an edited version for CAM2. I suppose I can use your properties.xml for that? Just put it into the SC4-Pim directory and go ahead?

No, please do not use that XML file. PIM-X is not reading my changes very well with IR. It is still reading as total employment with IR, so what should be stage 3 is reading as stage 9. Good thing this is a test and discussion phase. lol. Gonna have to straight decompile PIM-X to see how it handles ID and IR. See what the differences are and how to change them.

Anyways, that post makes me wonder if my line of thinking is any good. I know my intention of bringing Farms to an equal form of industry is a great one. As you well know, I have some really strong ideas about this.

That certain stage 5 lot, although 7 x 8, the main buildings, do they fully cover the lot?

Lets say the buildings together are 14 tiles, this would be actually be 11.5 per tile, with a pasture, yard, courtyard or something in between, at the edges, etc. That would be a solid Stage 3 and could be a Stage 4 without unbalancing the game. Not too far off. Of course, I would need to know these specifics and what makes this so fun to figure out.  :thumbsup:

Let me know if this is accurate first, before I continue this line of thinking.

Let's take the large farm on this image as an example.

(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi277.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fkk63%2FFrankU_bucket%2FDutch%2520Farm%2520Lots%2520-%2520growables%2FFarmsoverviews-0004a.jpg%7Eoriginal&hash=1147398c8ce2b3500af18884c83327473da69893)

It is a piggery. Stage 5. The size is 5 x 10 tiles. It contains two houses, several barns and a hand full of other objects.
It has 162 jobs.
(I have no image of the lot I used as an example in my last post, so now I take this one. The issue is identical)

Jim Myers advised me to calculate the jobs on a lot by taking 1 job per tile plus jobs for every building, shed, barn etc.
So I made a long job-list of all the sheds and barns I use: one by one I made them a building in SC4-Pim on a test lot, guessed the right filling degree and wrote down the amount of jobs SC4-Pim gave me.
This list I used to calculate the jobs for every lot I made afterwards. Then I had to use a very large filling degree for the actual building on this lot. In this case The building is the Dutch farmhouse on the left. The filling degree I used in order to get these 162 jobs is 40!

So for this lot I have 50 jobs for the 50 tiles, plus some for the houses, plus the barns, and maybe a handfull just for the fun of it. ANd it dadded up to 162. It could easily have been 149 or 176 or something around these values. You know how much guessing is needed for the filling degree.

There is of course an important thing we tend to forget: the game is not representing real life jobs etc, but it is a simulation that handles numbers in order to make a fun game. This goes certainly for farms, because in real life even these large farms hardly employ more than four or maybe seven people: the farmer and her/his husband/wife, one or two grown up children and, on busy times, maybe a hand full of contractors. So nothing about 162 jobs.
And 1 job per acre? It would make food unpayable!

But your aim is to balance the use of farming with the other industrial countings and in that respect we indeed maybe should have much more jobs. So don't bother if the amounts seem unrealistic: they need to be in balance with the rest of SC4.

Of course the jobs on the farm field tiles play an important role too. When we have farm lots with many jobs and farm fields that have little jobs there can be very different outcomes when you use small farming areas or large areas. If you make small areas in your city there is a relatively small amount of farm fields, so the outcome is many jobs. If you zone large areas, there are not so much farm lots, but many farm fields and then there is less farming jobs in your city. I don't know if this is a problem or a feature, though... ()what()

QuoteOf course the jobs on the farm field tiles play an important role too. When we have farm lots with many jobs and farm fields that have little jobs there can be very different outcomes when you use small farming areas or large areas. If you make small areas in your city there is a relatively small amount of farm fields, so the outcome is many jobs. If you zone large areas, there are not so much farm lots, but many farm fields and then there is less farming jobs in your city. I don't know if this is a problem or a feature, though...

Great point. Could swing either way. One problem is some zone in very large plots, could easily handle this building plus another same size in fields. For me, this would not be a problem. Your piggery could be justified with more jobs by saying the farm house holds the owner and their family ($$$ or $$ sims). The other building, similar to a house would be a servants or help quarters ($ sims). The barn to the right with the entrance facade would make a great pig housing area(low density sims), the one behind it that connects a slaughter area (high density sims), across a processing facility (Such as making Chops, halves, bacon, etc. High density) and the processing/shipping as the last (Medium to high density assembly line). This is consistent with modern large scale industrial farms.

With this in mind, We could PIM-X the occupancy with the different types of industry already in PIM-X, House and Help quarters, IR, Slaughter house ID, Processing facility ID or IM, and packaging/Shipping IM. This would give some good pollution, power usage and water usage values as well. By adding together all the occupancies, you could get a total Occupancy and then put it together as a farm. Also, averaging the stages could be a great way to get a final stage.

Farm fields attached would be feed for the pigs, extra product for processing and distribution or trade for needed equipment.

These numbers are not really out of line with what would make this a Stage 5 lot with the proposed curve.
Todds Packaging Plant, a 6x2 IM lot about the same size as one of the barns shown above, is a stage 4 with 362 jobs. A large scale processing lot would require about the same.

Of course, this lot would make a great industrial lot all by itself, no fields attached. It really is that good. :)

Not having a great knowledge of building these, This does seem like it would be pretty easy after designing everything. A bit of reader work and all is well. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I'm not too sure how people would take this idea though. That is the important part. I know I would love it, as some would, but would the majority?

QuoteI must say: this makes the step to using CAM2 a bit harder, because there are no CAM2 Farms yet. Off course I could start with my Maxis Farms Override set.... I could make an edited version for CAM2. I suppose I can use your properties.xml for that? Just put it into the SC4-Pim directory and go ahead?

This would always be a problem at first. The good part is that Original Maxis Farms, CAM 1.0 Farms and content for both would still grow just fine with CAM 2.1.0 until there was enough content to overtake that and the older custom content got revised to the new standards (Not developed yet though  ()sad())

QuoteThere is of course an important thing we tend to forget: the game is not representing real life jobs etc, but it is a simulation that handles numbers in order to make a fun game. This goes certainly for farms, because in real life even these large farms hardly employ more than four or maybe seven people: the farmer and her/his husband/wife, one or two grown up children and, on busy times, maybe a hand full of contractors. So nothing about 162 jobs.
And 1 job per acre? It would make food unpayable!

This I too forget very often. Fields like lettuce take an immense amount of help, but it's very seasonal. Cotton, we just go with early 1800 USA before the cotton gin, again a very labor intensive farm type that is seasonal (This one I'll leave the type of worker out so we don't cause a major debate about the morality of my home country at this time). Being that this is a simulation though, we cannot simulate seasonal labor.

Personally, I think this would be a valuable set of standards for the game. Farming is one of the largest industries around the world.

These standards would put a lot of current material in lower stages, so I don't think anyone would have to develop separate sets for the different versions. A stage 4 CAM 1.0 farms would become a stage 2 or 3 with the new standards, so they would still grow with any version. I'm expecting CAM 2 to overtake CAM 1 in the future so this will not a be a big problem for too long.

I don't know, hence why I brought the productive debate public. Bluntly and honestly, is this a good change? We know what I think but I want to know exactly what you and everyone thinks.

Well, about the compatibility of older lots: there are more developments that require a new region or extensive bulldozing. Like CAM 1 itself: installation is best done in a new region.
So if someone likes CAM 2 he or she should take care and download CAM 2 compatible Farms. As far as I have understood there are noe new properties in other inrustrial, residential or commercial lots, right?

And, if it was not clear already: I am perfectly willing to make my Farms in two versions. So if there is a SC4-Pim properties file that I can use for the new farms just tell me and I will start with adding a CAM 2 version to the farm lots I have already uploaded.
And hopefully I will be able to finish the Dutch farms Set with mrbisonm's props soon. As he is in the hospital right now it will take some time.

Quote from: FrankU on January 31, 2016, 03:52:40 AMOf course the jobs on the farm field tiles play an important role too. When we have farm lots with many jobs and farm fields that have little jobs there can be very different outcomes when you use small farming areas or large areas. If you make small areas in your city there is a relatively small amount of farm fields, so the outcome is many jobs. If you zone large areas, there are not so much farm lots, but many farm fields and then there is less farming jobs in your city. I don't know if this is a problem or a feature, though... ()what()

Coming from San Diego, I'd say it's a feature (small farm plots=lots of jobs). San Diego county (4200 sq. mi/10 900 sq. km) had over 6000 farms in 2010, of which 4000 were under 10 acres (which in game terms is still 160 tiles, but everything's relative), and I think most of the 4000 were really under 5 acres.

I'd say it depends a lot on what look you're going for; arguably farming is not the go-to zone for the casual player, and requires a bit of precision when achieving the look you want. Chances are that most casual users will not notice much of a difference, because likely farming is a stop gap measure at best, and more serious players will already be aware of the fact that smaller farm plots equal more jobs in general. The game already works this way, and when I zone farms as a stopgap I make them smaller because of this.

On the question of auto-upgrading farms, I feel like as nice a feature as it is, it's not completely essential. Unless we are going to remake all of the existing CAM lots for farms, I would say it's not worth it to rewrite the stage tables. Farms are already a niche zone, great for rural areas (which I am fond of, and terrible at making); very little has happened custom content wise for farms recently. The most I can recall is FrankU's work with the Dutch Farms, and his work in Nexis on the MFP, but the Dutch farms are now 2? years old, and the MFP has been in development hell for at least as long (something like 4 years, right?)

Sure going forward the new standard should be more adopted, but consider that major reworking of existing parameters is probably going to limit adoption.

As an example, the IRM by TWrecks is a great revision of the way industry works. It probably messes with development a little, given how it reworks the zone density into an industry type picker (Mid-Ind for I-D, High-Ind for I-HT, and I-M split cleanly between the two per aesthetics). The problem with the IRM is that it requires all of the non-Maxis lots you might have to have their occupancy groups adjusted in the Reader manually to conform with the new zoning logic. I have been using the IRM for the past year (Someone--I forget who--made a CAM version that works great), but have only just started on sifting through all my industrials to get them up to speed.

Chances are, unless there is a massive effort to convert the existing farm lots to the new paradigm, it won't happen, and CC dev in agriculture for the game isn't high enough to warrant mass adoption either.

I have never used CAM, since I didn't like watching my cities turning into a metropolis. But after seeing your threads and reading about I-R fix and CAM 2 general awesomeness, especially with different playing styles available, I will have to rethink about it.  ;D

Back to farms, one thing I have on my mind: I have always wanted to make my farms look "traditional" - small, narrow fields without huge processing plants. Barns, hayracks and sheds were acceptable. Now, my point is, looking at this thread I imagine CAM 2 farms are created in a more "industrial" style of agriculture, like plantations. Am I right? Those simple barns I was talking about would fit in stage 1, maybe stage 2. I like the idea of being-able-to-upgrade farms, but I am little concerned about what will happen to small farming communities (one of my strongest concerns with CAM). What is your opinion? I have no idea how do you plan to organize newly developed I-R stages, but maybe you could leave some stage 1 farms even for the biggest regions. A matter of playing style maybe? Or is this controllable with education, similarly how it is I-R demand without CAM?  ()what()

I admit I am a little bit confused, maybe my wishes are incompatible with the fundamental idea of CAM.
Anyway, keep the good work, I wish you luck!  :thumbsup:

QuoteAnd, if it was not clear already: I am perfectly willing to make my Farms in two versions. So if there is a SC4-Pim properties file that I can use for the new farms just tell me and I will start with adding a CAM 2 version to the farm lots I have already uploaded.
And hopefully I will be able to finish the Dutch farms Set with mrbisonm's props soon. As he is in the hospital right now it will take some time.

I have edited and edited that file. lol. So far, I can extend RCI except IR to 20 stages very easily. IR is another matter. So, I'll probably put up an extension to stage 15 for ID, IM, and IH. This will set up for at least the future expansion of IHT to higher stages (Them darn SOMY buildings violate the stage vs. density ranges).

Frank, I think I will continue with the optional Farm Plugin for you and the niche group that would enjoy them. Yes, this would require a special set of farms just for CAM 2. I will post them once I develop them. Depends on what I have to do to get this to work, while keeping the remaining system in place.

So far, you well know I have scattered ideas on this right now.  :-\

@APSMS Thank you for that reply. This really does help me to refine my thoughts a bit. A lot more details to work out of course and I completely agree this is not for the mass audience. More of an optional plugin to the CAM. I'm not a rural player myself.  Large city grids and regional economies are more my thing.  ;)  Plus, I like the challenge of trying to get this system working correctly.

Hopefully this doesn't become a first of many failed projects to come, lol, but it does give my brain something to work on.

@Mandarin(a)
I have never used CAM, since I didn't like watching my cities turning into a metropolis. But after seeing your threads and reading about I-R fix and CAM 2 general awesomeness, especially with different playing styles available, I will have to rethink about it. (//http://)

That is perfect. Please, do try it out and see which style brings you the most fun. I am very sure you will enjoy the CAM. For most of your questions here though, please read through the manual http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=17318.0 (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=17318.0)

Now for some answers for you. :)

As the stage of a region progresses, stages less than that do not stop growing. Lets say an area is growing full stage 15 skyscrapers of all types, a new zone is just as likely to grow a lower stage building. Depends on percentage chance, desirability of the area and some other factors.

So, to control farms to remain at lower stages, don't provide fire coverage to the farming areas. Manually dispatch trucks if a fire does occur. This will cap your growth to lower stages. Another trick is don't put a park lot (i.e. Park, flower garden, plaza, etc) anywhere near a farm area. This again will restrict the stage of farms.

The IR Fix itself does not affect demand at all, except it provides some IR cap relief through the normal connections (Freight station, neighbor connections, etc.). It also causes Industries to grow in stage slightly faster because Farm jobs count as total industrial jobs now. Other than that, without the CAM, demand is not affected at all.

With the CAM, this is a very different story. CAM spreads the IR demand throughout the education and wealth types. This keeps demand up, even if you have a college, high school, university, etc. CAM decreases overall abandonment and makes farms a lot more tolerant to air pollution and traffic. As long as you zone residential, you will get IR Demand. Rural has the same benefits except a massive boost in IR Demand. Expect to have more IR Jobs than population with the Rural version.

I understand this thread can be confusing. It is a brainstorming and experimental thread for a possible farm/industrial overhaul. The original CAM will not be affected by this optional plugin, so please, feel free to download the CAM and have some fun with it.

Listening very closely to earlier suggestions and working within the limitations of programs I don't want to rewrite right now, I have come up with expanded values for PIM-X. The new properties file has been expanded to cover ID, IM and IHT up to 15 stages. IR is expanded to cover up to 10 stages.

IR is staying with the Classic Agricultural model for now. I don't want to alienate the work that has already been done or make a huge amount of work for future development with methods I'm not sure how to implement quite yet. As with previous IR lots, the values are based on total employment as opposed to density per tile. The original CAM 1.0 values up to stage 5 are the same, stages 6 through 10 are graphed to a light positive curve (non-linear) to try to get the best of both ideas. Again, the original values are the same, just expanded.

ID, IM and IHT have been expanded using the exact same exponential curves as the original values, just expanded to stage 15.

The idea of the expanded industrial stages originally was embraced by RJ in the development of CAM 2 in the Beta forums. With this knowledge, I'll get those implemented in the minor increment of CAM 2. For now, the only buildings I'm aware of that would fit into stage 11+ industrials would be the SOMY 1 and 2 IHT buildings. CAM and PIM-X will now be able to handle all future versions of all industrial buildings from here on out.

I'm experimenting with a whole bunch of things with my SC4 game right now. So much, that I really don't get a chance to play. Usually, the changes crash to desktop. lol. This is the nature of progress and development. Strangely enough, it's where I really have some fun. I'll bring this idea up again when I get closer to a new form. Until then, I still wish to hear all of your comments, concerns and ideas about CAM Farming.

CAM is my 2nd favorite mod after NAM but I disliked how forestry wasn't represented in Industrial-Resources (though national parks/forests were). Forestry would be on stages 2-7 (competing for space with big farms and factory farms) from old fashioned working forests and lumberjacks through fast growing tree farms for paper or engineered lumber, all the way to giant factories fed by (rapidly growing) bamboo forests, outputting tons of paper and engineered wood. Stages 8-10 would consist of intensive aquaponics and highrise greenhouses (Skyfarms).

Interesting idea here. Even with this version, the only thing really stopping this is no development on them. Having the lots and BATs developed would grow on CAM just fine, both versions. :)

The work that has been done with the CAM 2 is amazing.

I'm currently waiting for the installers to become more "polished/stable" before I try it on my current region.
The changes that you made to the IR to make it more resilient and last throughout various levels of education makes CAM 2 really interesting for players like me who like to build a region exploring the principles of Natural Growth.

On the subject of auto-upgrading farms, APSMS makes some good points although I believe we all agree it would be an awesome improvement.
My take on it currently is, don't give up on the idea but focus first on getting the core features of CAM 2 stabilized and matured. Let's see first how the community and the various CC creators react to CAM 2 over the next year, and then you'll have more feedback on it being worth implementing or not and how to do it.
Who knows, maybe speeder, who is doing the work on reverse engineering the code, might discover usefull information to help implementing the auto-upgrading for farms. Hope doesn't pay taxes yet, right? :D

Like I said before, as soon as the installers become more stable (particularly the Windows one since that's my current OS) I'll install it on my game. Since CAM 1 first came out I've never played SC4 without it (and the NAM of course) and I suspect that CAM 2 will follow the same trend.

Anyway, keep up the amazing work.

@Mad_genius - The only real issue I'm having with the Windows installer at this point is the SC4 Dat Packer issues. The backup functions are working beautifully, so feel free to run the installer. Worst case, you copy your SimCity_1.dat from the backup directory back to the SimCity 4 install directory. This has not failed to work at all yet. :)

SC4 Dat Packer is working awesome for the most part. Only a few issues with certain system types. It may be a while yet before I get JDat Packer running from the command line. Feel free to check it out. Every error is helping me to finish polishing the installer. :)

Working on PIM-X'ing the growables at the moment. Time consuming but not difficult. Doing this, I'm also breaking the family system and giving every building it's own lots. This should make the selection more random, whereas right now SimCity seems to get stuck on certain family types pretty quickly.

That is some very solid advice. I took APSMS very seriously on this and I agree with the arguments you both have made. I will end up developing the new farming methods, just it's a little on the back burner until I figure out how to make it happen. For now, little things to fix with the current version. I need to get this thing as polished as the NAM lol.

Hi Ocram,

You could make farm lots with farm fields filled with trees, right? If that is what you are looking for you should take a look at my Dutch Farm Fields (http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/27456-franku-dutch-farm-fields/) set. It contains several farm fields with trees and you could use them to make your own forestry lots.

Ocram, 
Frank does some beautiful work and work with him and you should have some unbelievable forestry lots. I am basic when it comes to lotting, useless when it comes to BATing  :crytissue: but with Frank's help I cannot even imagine the awesomeness that will come out of these lots.

FrankU's fields look really nice, however they won't grow with CAM. Do I will make someting unbalanced if I merge the .SC4lot files into the "CAM_2.1.0_Buildings.dat"?

Hmmmm, Mero90, is there something wrong with my farm fields? As long as you have Farm lots that grow with CAM my farm fields should grow with them.
The download I pointed at only contains farm fields, so there is nothing growable in that set.
If you want prefab farms that grow my farm fields I can point you at:
1. The Dutch Farm Lots Stage 0 (http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/29112-franku-dutch-farm-lots-stage-0/)
2. The Maxis Override Set (http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/29629-franku-dutch-farms-maxis-override/)

The stages 1 up to 7 that I am preparing now for more than 4 years are still to come, sadly....

Frank beat me to it.  :D

Farm fields require a building to reference them before they will grow. This is accomplished by adding the Field IID to the IR Building Exemplar entry Field Lots.

Hopefully this helps as well.

Thanks, they are now growing  ()stsfd()

There is any way to make greenhouses grow only on higher stages?

I also liked the idea that Ocram had. Moonlight made some wondeful bamboo models http://blog.livedoor.jp/moonlinght/archives/cat_59226.html

Which greenhouses? 

Reason I ask is I can download them or load them and change the stage for you real quick.

In FrankU there are some greenhouse fields. In my opinion they look like a more higher stage than 1, what do you think?

However I downloaded the ilives reader, and made it run on wine.  ()stsfd()
My question is: is it possible to change the stage of a farm field?

I have made a screenshot.

My testing so far has shown as no, not fields. They are set as monopoly pieces with a stage of 0xFF. Any attempt by me to change this to a different stage, turn monopoly piece to false, remove the monopoly piece listing or set Fields to a building occupancy of out, mech or anchor has yielded very unpredictable results.

Setting as out or mech has caused them to grow as anchors. Really cool, but horrid to game play. All other attempts have done absolutely nothing or caused them to not grow.

Try testing them though. I was trying to force them to grow like normal industry, so your idea may come up with modifications I didn't try.

I agree, they look higher than stage 1. Once I can figure out how to build that IR Plugin, my original idea for the mod, we have a similar idea. These would look great as mech buildings attached to an anchor. :)

Hi,

Farm Fields are attached to Farm Lots. The lots have stages, the fields not.
So if you do not want the greenhouse farm fields to grow in lower stage farms you should not connect these fields to the lower stage lots.
In the building exemplar of your farm lots there is this property called "field lots". Behind this is a list of all the Instance ID's of the farm field buildings (and lots too, by the way) that are attached to this lot.
You could delete the Greenhouse field IId's from the lower stage lots if you like. And if you think "what the heck is this guy talking about?", then please pack the farm lots you want changed and PM them to me. I'll do it gladly for you.

Thanks FrankU,

I'll try it by myself, that's an opportunity to learn something about to use ilive's reader.  ()testing()

That's why we all like Frank. He comes up with the simple and effective solution.  :thumbsup:

Quote from: InvisiChem on February 18, 2016, 12:05:06 PM
That's why we all like Frank. He comes up with the simple and effective solution.  :thumbsup:

&blush

Hi Mero90,

When I visited this forum today I found out you gave me a Karma point. Thanks for that! But the reason was: for the CAM farming rework..... but I still have to start doing that, so now I feel obliged to do it. Maybe that was your aim?  ;D
I am going to do it anyway and I hope you will not be disappointed.  :thumbsup:

@FrankU

You are already doing it! :thumbsup: You gave a lot of good suggestions and shared your work for the CAM Farming, that's why I nominated you for a Karma point. ;D

I'm also using your Dutch farms with CAM 2.1.0, I'll give you a feedback soon.  :)

Disclosure: I have never used the BAT or iLiveReader. I have used the Lot Editor and 3DSMax but the only mods I ever made (besides reskinning/changing textures) were for Cities: Skylines. In order to add forestry, I would need to find not only farm fields with trees but also buildings that look like lumber mills, then use LE and iLiveReader to change them into what I want. Seeing as I have no experience with iLiveReader and no clue what the policy is with uploading derivative works, I don't think I'm good for anything besides ideas and encouragement. I have made modern and futuristic lumber mill models but I don't know what to do with them besides Ploppable RICO and my textures get compressed to "medium" quality on my Surface.

I could make various paper mill, lumber mill and lumber yard building models but I would need an expert to teach me the ways of BAT for 3DSMax.

Hi Ocram,

Maybe you should open a thread in the Independent BAT projects (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?board=9.0) forum. And ask for help.
If you do the BATting, certainly someone else will be able to help you with tutorials and tips.
And certainly there will be someone willing to help you with making good lots with your BAT models. I might do that myself, depending on time and RL.

Frank