Sim City (4) Succession Session!

I didn't even know this existed here until tonight! I'm a huge simcity 4 fan. Do you accept new mayor's for this? Id be interested, i've recently uninstalled the new simcity, it was a underwhelming game, I do like some of the changes but it just did not hold the same interest that the previous games had and the city sizes drove me nuts. I've been playing simcity since Simcity2000, which was my first pc title.

We certainly do! Welcome aboard! We'll slot you into the rota somewhere and you'll be good to go.

I feel for you on the SimCity front, thankfully I dodged that bullet, all the same it's a shame to see what's become such a good series.


To everyone (including spectators and lurkers):

It may have come to people's attention that Fort Consternation has become rather large, with little room for new development. I like this set up we have going on, but I'm worried the turns might become a little... unadventurous in a few turns time if expansion becomes too limited. Should we do something to spice it up, like adding a second city? Or something different? Or am I becoming unduly concerned?

I think I would be interested in joining a new city and ideally one where mass zoning and allowing the AI to auto place the roads is not allowed.

I'm not sure if this would work but I was thinking that each of us could run a city in the same region which we then upload every 5 years to keep on sync. The idea would be to not build directly on the borders so that over time the cities could become more connected.

Thanks Peak, i appericiate it. Like I said I do like some of the directions they took with the game, but its just not enjoyable enough for me to keep playing it at the moment, Hopefully when they fix the issues it'll improve.

As for the new city, yea i was thinking that too, We could renovate some of the areas, but I agree with working on a region. That might be a good idea, 10 years on each city site? It's a lot easier to work with multiple cities but that may become a bit too confusing, although we could use the rotate player system. Its just an idea

Sorry, I'll be delayed again- BUT I have a good reason

I've compiled an entire region we can share into a .zip file

Just download and extract the folder FF7 into Documents/SimCity4/Regions and hopefully it should be a loadable choice once the game has started.

If this works, there veritable smorgasbord of options available to us; personally I'm up for establishing a colony somewhere, and having whoever's mayor lord over them both Fort Consternation and it's offspring for 5 years. Plus there's the option of adding our own personal cities into the region to make it buzz with activity

A region could be fun. Either as everyone has a city, or rotating. I'm not sure if I'd have enough time to be able to keep up; real life has become more eventful (which is a good thing).

But I for one have more plans for Fort Consternation, and that goes beyond simply tearing down dirty industry and reclaiming hills whenever I'm mayor. I may or may not retire after another term, but there's still unfinished business in this city.

I'd also welcome i_imperator and, if he's still interested, Lord Iggy as new mayors. We could use more variety.

I'm going to (hesitantly) place my name at the bottom of the list. I'm not that great of a SC4 player, but all the better to screw over everyone else I can try.

OOC : I tried to download the patches, it says the file has been deleted .. some one help me with this ? Dropbox maybe ?

The Network Addon Mod?

Here's a new download link. Hope this works

I've updated the link on the first page, too

Mayor Peck presides over a Decline, of Sorts


Mayor Peck's term started with a map of the region sprawled over the desk, Fort Consternation was becoming crowded and it was generally agreed that further growth meant looking to outside the city boundaries.

Two city sites jumped out as particularly favourable. on the other side of the mountain, lay a sweeping plain in which Fort Consternation could spill out into, with a view to turning the area into a healthy bit of Urban Sprawl.



The second site was on the another continent, and while it was less convenient than the first choice, it somehow seemed more exciting, the grater opportunity to have a clean break with the past.



This was something worth discussing with the committee, Probably with a vote over the city's future to be held some point in the future.



Still that was for the future, the here and now demanded the Mayor's attention, and the first act of office was to dezone the commercial development on the as-yet-unnamed island (Peninsula?) opposite Thorgalaeg Bay, to be replaced with low density housing, giving it a small town community feel.






Next up came the troubleshooting:

Overcrowed schools? Rebuilt.

Overcrowded Roads? Expanded.



A gap in the water pipes? (I couldn't believe it either) Filled.

And all the other bad news was shredded leaving message box full of a pleasant green and grey messages.




With that all sorted, the administration set out looking for things to do, and found the subway system.


Previous administrations had done a good job setting up and expanding the subway system on Fort Consternation, but there was large areas that were just not covered, and the administration set out to provide everywhere with, at the very least token subway coverage.

This led to some, interesting engineering which I'm sure shouldn't have been possible:





But the end result certainly looked satisfying:




Flushed with success, the administration attempted to once again, repair the damage done by METY's first Hillside industry over half a century ago. Despite a bloated budget, and zealous exectution, the end results were disappointingly modest.

Before:


After:




With so much time, money and effort spent on, what opponents deemed "vanity projects", real life in the city was beginning to stagnate: the population had fallen to under 400,000 and unemployment was a becoming serious. The only employers interested in Fort Consternation were Hi-Tech companies, but there was nowhere for them to set up, that they would find acceptable:



To make the area more attractive, the older, polluting, industries were destroyed, and plazas added to make the area desirable. Thus the die were cast, either new industry would arrive to pick up the slack from destroyed industries, or there would be a full scale economic collapse.



By mid term it was clear Fort Consternation was ill. The population had shrunk by 70,000 inhabitants, unemployment was through the roof, and economic growth was either sluggish or non-existent, even in desirable Volcanoside area. The mayor had gambled and had lost...

Still, the administration stood firm and was rewarded with a modest, short-lived recovery




And a crowning achievement to balance out the cities economic woes: A Space Port!


Most, if not all of the credit for this achievement lay in the preceding administrations, but the need to finish the term on a high took precedent. As it stood on the hillside to the East of the city, the Space Port was a physical manifestation of Fort Consternation's latent industry and ability, but after the term Mayor Peck had had, it seemed to be a façade, masking a seemingly terminal decline- or maybe his own mayoral incompetence. The facts showed it all, by far and away this was his least successful term yet...



Fort Consternation

Mayor: TBD (see below)
Funds: $75,759 (-$332538 )
Population: 382,810 (-10,637 -Not as bad as I thought!)
Mayor Rating: between 11.5/12

Save file

EDIT: Crikey! Those images are big!

OK, so, to shuffle thing around a bit here's how I see the rota looking

Peck of Arabia
MoreEpicThanYou
Mythmonster
Quintillus (I thought it'd be easiest just to push your turn back a bit, hope you don't mind)
i_imperitor
SouthernKing
Dell19 (If we agree on a new "colony" city)

On hold:
Germanicus
Thogalaeg

Is that about right? Have I left anyone out?

Also, on Dell19's point, I'd be in favour of a ban on mass zoning and AI Auto built roads if we do agree on a new city to run.

Roller coaster subways! All you need now is a vertical loop and you're set.

The above list seems fine to me, and TBH I'd prefer if we started a new (or second) city, but I'll do whatever seeing as I'm like five turns away.

The proposed rotation sounds good to me. I'm OK with a second city although I may or may not be able to participate in both due to there only being 24 hours in a day. I definitely want to have another chance to transform Fort Consternation yet again.

That's a huge loss of dough! But I know how quickly subways can add up. And I like the space port, that's a good use of $96,000.

Congrats on getting Fort Consternation above 400,000, even if temporarily, too.

Also, how is "no mass zoning" defined? No AI roads is easy enough, but if we're willing to place them manually, when does it cross into "mass" zoning?

I like to read this. Made me buy simcity 4!

Why not to expand this on multiplayer?

I would love to join Dell19 with the colony.

I totaly HATE huge, ugly grid parts. I love to build my citys up from villages to big citys, and therefor i use a lot of small roads, farms and all of that. And just later on the small villages grow together and center areas are slowly rezoned to make way for bigger buildings.

I dont say everyone has to play like me, but if anyone spammed such a huge grid in my town I'd be out the very same moment. So if you agree to start a slow growing eye-candy town, count me in

Hmm, how's this for a plan:

We start a new city (name suggestions anyone?) but we carry on the rota as normal. When it gets to your turn you can choose to run Fort Consternation, the New City, or both for a five year period (depending on your tastes/how much free time you have)

For the New City there'll be two rules: every zone must be done with the shift key pressed (i.e. no auto roads) and zoning can only be done at the second (or third?) closest zoom level with the additional guideline of "use your imagination a bit, this city needs to look pretty"


To further complicate things, if people want to build there own cities and place them in the region (you know, to fill it up) just say where it is, and throw in a save file every once in a while and everyone can download it and add it to their own version of "the region" on their own PC- I'll post up regular images of how the region is growing, and if others want to as well, that's fine.

Actually, has anyone managed to successfully download the region I uploaded? That would make that last idea a lot more feasible.


So how does that all sounds? Fine and good, or am I being a bit over ambitious? Under ambitious ambitious? Anything that needs tweaking?

That seems fine to me.

I think its quite a good idea for each new city to have some minor ground rules so for instance there could be an environmental city where we are lot allowed to build anything that causes more than medium polution (except for incinerators) or a heavy industry city so that each is a bit different.

If we have one big rotation then it makes sense for each person to give an indication of which city they are going to play when it comes round to their turn.

I like the New City idea, but I feel like the other one is a) a bit too complicated and b) kind of takes away from the idea that this is a succession game, not just us building independent cities in a shared region. (or am I completely misunderstanding the idea?)

I was able to download the region. Haven't set it up yet, but the download link was fine (and blazing fast with more than 1.2 Mbps Internet). Edit: It works, although it has a blank area where Fort Consternation should be. Easily fixable with the Fort Consternation save. Also, that's a really big region. Much larger than the ones I'd had previously, and with lots of nice big city sites.

I like the colony idea. I mostly agree with SouthernKing on the region... it kind of loses the succession sense, unless perhaps we make it so that whoever starts a city sets some ground rules and thereafter it's a succession city. But even then, we don't want 31 cities or it'll be difficult to keep track of them all for those reading along if nothing else. So I'd be inclined to expand gradually.

Yeah, the "Everyone place their own city" idea was a little half-baked, but I'm glad there's an overall consensus as to the other ideas.

Anyway, this thing needs to build momentum again; has anyone seen METY around recently?

We also need a name, a location, and a person to found the new city (I did all three for Fort Consternation, so it's only fair someone else gets to do it this time)