Carlton: A town on the rise

I've just re-started to play Simcity 4, and after a few horrible disasters, this one looks pretty good.

The name is quite well suited for the city, as I intend to make it a high-wealth paradise, much like Monaco.


About 5 years ago, a groop of over-taxed wealthy people decided to build a city of their dreams: Full of Cash, low taxation (on the wealthy, screw the poor) & a bunch of women in low amounts of clothing

So they searched for a nice looking spot, and found an area without any previous inhabitants. There, on a smallish island, they first built the Mayor's House, on the highest point of the island, named Carlton Peak. Now the town has grown, and has already had to raise land from the sea to accomodate all of the wealth. It is visible as the first land movement project was done to accomodate the ring-road, named Corniche.

At the moment there are only a few high-rise areas zoned, most of them near the tourist area. All buildings are therefore medium-rise, the highest tenements being 10 floors high. This was a idea put forward by the city leaders, as it would create a large-ish looking town, without strianing the road network too much.

Here is the island at 4 AM, getting ready to wake up for another productive day:


The College, Elementary & High Schools, Museums & Library are all on the same area, making field trips easy:


The Garbage disposal is on the continent, and the ferry trip for the 12 commuters must be quite long & smelly:

Note that all garbage is burnt, as there isn't a landfill anywhere.

As the town is situated on an island with a hill, the landscape is very terraced:


This is where the rich people live, well named as Beverly Hill:


The highest point on the island is the Hospital's Landing Pad. Also, the Fire & Police Stations are here, giving a quick passage anywhere in the island:


Carlton Beach, with the city casino & marina. Tonight there's a small beach party:


The area slotted for tourism: Has the Hotel, some local shops & The Living Mall. The Cruise Ship Port is just right of the hotel. The Mall also has a hotel, actually the 2 walls are covered in rooms.


The public transportation system is very good in Carlton City, as are the walkways. Due to a few recent bus stop additions, road traffic has gone down by 300 during the last few months. The bus system has been a real life-saver for the road system, as road traffic has been reduced by 1/4th, even though the population has doubled simultaneously. The high Pedestrian traffic is because of the clever mixing of Residential & Commercial areas, so that most jobs are a walk or small busride away.


Quite a nice start in 5 years. And there are 3 new large projects being thought of: A new high-rise residential area, a port & an airport. But all of these projects will cost a lot of money, so it is a tough call. There aren't any Industries at all, although some High-Tech areas are planned for the future.

I'll post a screen of the region (which I did with PSP in a few mins) later today or tomorrow. I'm thinking of creating a huge city which would be 3x3 Large plots (the region size) big. Also, more on the city as I build it. This is what came in a single sessionand I am sure to play more now that it's started out nicely.

I'm using 5 big mods: Network Addon, Euro Road Textures, Euro Cars, Street Light Colour Pack & Cousin Vinnie Ordinance.

I just spent the last 4h playing, actually started a new city which sent over 3000 workers every morning into Carlton (in a town the size of 10 000, that posed some serious transportation issues...). Everything was going nicely, until:
*poof!* Windows decides that now (instead of 4h ago) is the best time to inform me that I have disconnected my network cable. And SC4 crashes... So that's 4h of work into a beautiful city gone up into cyber-heaven.

Feeling... A... Bit... Annoyed... With... Windows!!! >:O >:O >:O >:O >:O >:O >:O

EDIT: Now doubly so because I had 1000 posts, now its 1001, which doesn't look as good.

Damn, makes me want to get Simcity 4. I played 3000 but could never get a city going successfully. Always went into debt then got bored and destroyed what little I had with UFOs.

It's pretty easy with the easy setting: gives you 500 000 § to begin with.

Carlton City has grown quite a lot, and has had some growing pains (road traffic over quadrupled from 2000 into 9000) but the new subway & new bus routes has lowered it down to about 4000 now. I've added a few other towns into the region, and I'm now thinking of expanding the region from 3x3 large slots into 5x5 large slots, to begin with. I'll ad some new pictures later today.

Looks very nice, do keep us up to date on the state of the city.

You may even have inspired me to purchase myself a copy of the game unless, by some stroke of luck, my flatmate forgot to take it when he moved out.

He didn't...bother.

I have been building a lot of new stuff, but on 2 different PC's, so I'll integrate them tomorrow & show the region + detailed views of the other towns in Kalmakt'ha.

I tihnk I will consider getting SC4 eventualy, (htere are too many games, not enoguh time and I don't have a good comp yet). I have SC3 and it was fun, but I didn't rnkow the strategies... holy s***, I jsut realised that 2 thirds of my computer knowledge I've leanred since August this year...
Anyways, yeah, I never managed to balance the budgies.

Balancing is quite simple: Start without any schools/police/fire/hospital, just a coal power plant. Zone 3/5th residential, 2/5th industry & 1/5th commercial. And don't start too big, maybe a 20-40 square radius of stuff. Then, when your income allows it, build an elementary school, police kiosk, health clinic & small fire station. Notice that almost everything except zones cost money every month to upkeep, so build only what's neccessary. And zoneing in high-density is useless, as they won't grow unless there's a BIG need to go up. So low/medium is enough, to begin with. Also, when you get notices from the advisors, do what they say, as they are almost always suggesting something good. I've got the screenies now, writing the post now.

OK, here's the Region:

I've called it Kalmakt'ha, don't remember where I got the name... It's a twist of some word. Anyway, It started as a 3x3 large plot region, but as I saw that that was too small, I expanded it into 5x5 large plot region. As you can see, it's not completely ready yet, but it's presentable.

First, the mouth of the Loure River, with the Susa river coming in from the west. As you can see, some adjustemnts need to be made, but there are 4 big cities/towns, and I'll be showing 3 of them later.



Now we go North, to have a view of the Karme River, which has burrowed itself into a very weird shape.



Going North-West, here's the Lake Suo, which looks a lot better in the city-mode, but it is a wet swamp.



Now the West Coast. It has some of the same looks as the Southern US Coast, but the inland hasn't yet been explored (ie hasn't been done yet).



And finally the East Coast. It has two large Mountains, named Twin Peaks . You can see the town of Green Valley between the two ridges, and a small part of the suburbs of Blackcliff.



I'll post the different cities later...

Carlton: The Island Paradise

It began as a small city of 7000 inhabitants, but has now grown and quadrupled in inhabitants, and atleast doubled in size. First an overview of the city in daylight:



First up is the new High-Rise area, which is small, but still has about 5-10% of all inhabitants:



Next, going north, is the new Municipal Airport, which has boosted the economy in a big way. This has also been built where there used to be water, as the original beach was where the ring-road is:



Now, the Port of Carlton City, which is the largest in the region. Although Carlton City itself does not have much industry, the port is still busy by handling the cargo traffic of the other towns in the area:



Due to the lack of land, new construction has had to go up. But due to the height restrictions imposed, none of these are real scy-scrapers. They look nice though:



But the greatest change has been the colonization of a completely new island, Isle Nuevo. Most of it is medium rise, although all buildings are allowed to grow. Pictured here is a normal neighbourhood with the rail system going through the middle:



As the population has grown, so has the traffic. The total amount of traffic is around 37 000 trips per day, and as you can see, over 1/4th of that traffic is done by pedestrians, while less than 1/5th is by car:




And finally we say good night for this tax-paradise (only 1% for all inhabitants/businesses) and move on:

Bakerfield: The Great Farm

Others than just rich people saw this new area as a perfect place to build: farmers. Just a few km upstream, the land is very fertile, and so a small village started to farm the land, and in two years the place had grown into a bustling seaport town:



In just 3 extra years, Bakerfield had grown and grown, and now had a good lot of farms, and a new village, Akonville, had grown to house the ever-growing amount of people. Also, the USMC had built a fort, Fort Bakerfield, to ensure peace in the entire region:




Susa: A Small Metropolis

Carlton City was not the only city to grow in the area, another one was founded on the North bank of the Susa River, named into Susa. From the very beginning, it was planned as a well organized Metropolis, and thus has a very dull grid system, giving the city a very American feel:



The city has grown incredibly fast, and in only 30 years has become the largest city in the region, with over 80 000 inhabitants. The City Center has a large park, named what else than Central Park:



But most of the Susians live in the large, and very dull, suburbs:



In Susa, there are four styles of work: Manager, Clerk, Farmer, or Factory worker. As you can see, the downside of Susa's growth has been the large yellowish pollution clouds that have gathered over the industrial area, and the residential areas around it:



That's all for this time, I'll start building again.

Wait, so this region thing is basically the neighboring cities thing from 3000, except you can build them youtself?

Yes, and you can specify the size and city sizes.

Love the volcano over Susa...just HAS to go off...

Wow... that makes me want to start playing again. I got the game when it was new, played it for a while, and lost interest. I was never very good at getting my little cities going from the ground up. Your cities look great.

Damn you!!!Do not tempt to play that wretched game again!!!

Now I really want to start playing it.... thanks for giving me the motivation.

Yeah, you made me go play SC3000 again, and get pissed off enough at how god damn time consuming it is to create so much as a tiny area of the city sucessfuly. I got bored and sent a UFO swarm after my city after about 2 hours when all I had was one area of medium each type of zone. Wretched people not coming to my city.

Yes, my secret agenda is to get as many civ-addicts to change the game for just a few hours

I've been adding a few towns here & there and also the region has gotten more shape.

SimCity is interesting game, but somehow I never able to made succesful city Either traffic is horrible and land value also. Or then nothing just growing.