Am I on the right track?

[divadarya]

First, I want to say how grateful I am for this site, and how much it has improved my experience of SC4 over the last year or two. I've quietly been using custom content and reading the readme files and I feel like I know each developer by their awesome content. I think I've crossed that line from happy hacker to serious player.

I'm starting a much more ambitious, reality-based city and I want to control the architecture more than I ever have before. I've downloaded and installed the BSC "No Maxis" file in my plugins folder and installed the buildings I want to encourage the growth of as well. I'm going to remove the custom buildings that I don't want, and plop as many functional buildings as I can.

Am I on the right track? Hints or shortcuts gratefully accepted from this experienced but still green newbie.

[jmyers2043]

Hey DD

An interesting approach. I'm a growable type of person and have very few cosmetic (plop)  lots in my game. You should post some pictures as you go along.  City at 10 years, city at 25, etc. Post some graphs too. Such as population vs jobs - education level, and taxes/income. I'm curious to see how many R$ Sims are employed in the city if you only plop, oh let's say, CO$$ buildings. That sort of thing.

I think you'll find out quickly where the deficiencies are when 1 or 2 buildings grow like crazy because of the lack of variety.

Good Luck

- Jim

[cmdp123789]

The only thing that I would recommend you is, depending on what "style" you are trying to approach, try to download house packs, and what I mean by house packs is different wealths, different levels BUT of the same style. The problem with blocker's is that at some point you are gonna have to hit the play button and basically what happens is that you wont fulfill the needs of every level, so 2 things might happen at that point:

1) NO GROWTH
2) If demand is high enough... experience a lot of repetition...

So, be careful and do as I explained above, try to download "housepacks"

[divadarya]

Well, I think I'm luck in the sense that I'm doing a very close facsimile of New York city, so I've set the default style to New York 1940. New York has a LOT of similar style buildings(two-three story medium R), and I'm anxious to see the cool ones I've downloaded from NYBT to start showing up in stage 6 or 7.

Frankly, right now, I'm still messing with terraforming the default New York region map. Thanks for everyone's input.

[Aaron Graham]

Good to know you making a New York City like city, I hope to see a city Journal of your city, I am a Happy NYBT member.  The team I hope to keep a smile on your face as the New York style building grow in you cities.

[divadarya]

Aaron...THANK YOU!! I'm really looking forward to seeing some of your beautiful buildings growing in my city. I'm trying especially to create a realistic looking Peter Cooper village(just north of the Bowery on the east side above Alphabet city) and one or two of your creations fit that bill. I'm definitely creating a Journal.

cmdpP123789; I didn't really respond in the last post, but thanks for that advice! I do have enough housepacks(I hope) to get through all of the growth cycles. I can always change back to Maxis.