Growing a city to may 2017

[kdrnic]

#404

I did so and encourage you to do the same and share results.

I started from 1900, but you may pick a later date for a smaller session.

The city is called Newer Kadrenice, as New Kadrenice burnt down. Due to that I turned off disasters. I started on easy.

It is a bit disappointing that it still has ~70k inhabitants, yet there’s already little space left other than hills on the map.

Residential areas were mostly placed around parks centred in a 9×9 square of land surrounded by roads, which is apparently a very efficient manner.

In 2016 the military asked for land, the only such event that took place, but they found no suitable area.

The city seems to be plagued by traffic, and I hear “Helicopter one reporting heavy traffic”. I have not put down rails, highways, bus stops, subway etc as the benefits of each aren’t very clear.

I can’t figure out exactly the water problem, other than putting pumps near water. The water towers seem to do nothing. It seems hard to have the whole city watered.

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   newerKadrenice.png
   

[Tijn]

#407

Ooooh, this is a good challenge! I’m already beyond 2017 in my current game I think, but I’ll start a new one for this 🙂

[toasty]

#409

Ooh, count me in, this sounds interesting.

I’ve found highways in particular help with the traffic, though I’d prefer to have an effective rail system…

As for the water problem, once the city size increases you might need some desalinization and water treatment plants too. I think the point of water towers is to store water over Winter in preparation for Summer – check out the current month next time you have a shortage.

[wan]

#415

> “It is a bit disappointing that it still has ~70k inhabitants, yet there’s already little space left other than hills on the map.”

In case you missed it, it’s possible to level the terrain by holding the mouse button on the “Destroy” icon. The tools are a bit weird to use but they can be very useful in this kind of situations!

[sorceress]

#416

yes, and you can use the ‘edit map’ option to create an (almost) flat map to begin with

[kdrnic]

#417

I was aware of the terrain leveling, although they are rather costly and sometimes explode nearby buildings

I feel starting with a flat map is a bit boring, or cheaty

[toasty]

#422

Presenting Toastopolis: a sunny town of ~60k inhabitants.

I tried to embrace building on some of the hills, and to get a reasonably high population density, so there’s quite a lot of flat land left for further development. It has highways, which I think have helped increase the density, but also a traffic problem. It probably needs more bus depots, and for me to finish the subway system (which has barely started).

I was quite lucky regarding disasters: only a plane crash in 1963, in which 111 people were killed and a “stubborn llama” escaped. As of May 2017 the llama is still at large.

I wanted to upload the file but it seems I corrupted it by quitting too soon after taking screenshots. The city is now a completely flat desert. Goodbye, Toastopolis ; _ ;

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   toastopolis-2017.jpg
   

[kdrnic]

#429

See if you have a toastopo.bak in your folder – when saving, Sim City 2000 seems to copy the old save file to a backup one

[toasty]

#430

Aha, thanks kdrnic! I do: it’s a few decades old but much better than nothing 😀

[sorceress]

#433

“I feel starting with a flat map is a bit boring, or cheaty”

I wouldn’t call it cheating, because flat maps are not without their own set of problems: Floods tend to be more damaging, and windmills don’t get an elevation bonus.

[wan]

#440

Here is my very first game lasting over a century, I present you WAN TOWN, with a mere 22k inhabitants as of May 2017.

On the upper hand it has a soccer stadium with a capacity of 25k 😀 (attendance is 1500 on average…).

I feel like there’s still a lot I have to learn regarding startegy. In particular I had troubles re-funding power stations every 50 years, requiring me to issue bonds a couple times. I think I have also invested way too early in various buildings for fun (2-station subway anyone?), leading to costly upkeep.

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   wantown.png
   

[kdrnic]

#442

Did you play in hard?

Taking bonds is a trap, it is better to save funds in advance of having to refund power stations, and perhaps switch to coal or oil…

[toasty]

#446

As you can see, Hardville is not a grand city. We’ve had our ups and downs over the last century or so, weathering the economic storm of SimNation and occasional disasters. The Great Fire of ’52 burned down the Great Northern Industrial Estate, crippling us financially for nearly 20 years; the earthquake of ’73 and the Twin Floods of ’83 didn’t help much either. When it came to the Medium-Sized Fire of 2003, nobody was paying much attention.

Still, we persevered, and oh boy, did we succeed! In ’86 the town saw its first school. Soon after we had a road heading out of town, and in ’97 the gracious mayor even built us a hospital. Imagine! Just last year, he even spoiled us with college.

Today Hardville has a population of 20790. The people are unhealthy and kind of stupid, but the future looks bright for the city. Estimates suggest that by 2100 we’ll even be able to pay off our debts. Just imagine what we could do with that extra money!

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   hardville-2017-05.jpg
   

[wan]

#448

@kdrnic: Nope, I was in Easy… It was my first >50y game so I never realized until then that power plants had an expiration date. I’ll learn from the mistake yeah 🙂

@toasty: Congrats for your Hard-mode city, it was almost as successful as my Easy one!