Dynamic cities do you guys like them?

[rss334]

When I bought this game I was looking forward to dynamic city growth and in fact that's all I wanted to play. Now I'm finding I don't like it the same way I did in Cities in Motion 1. In the first version there were airports, shopping districts, and then residential and entertainment districts. For example on the first map for the US campaign in San Francisco it was fun and more realistic because building a line made sense, connect the airport another high transportation hub.

With dynamic cities it's too dynamic. My cities grow with no control and stuff is spread out all over, there are no major airports, entertainment or malls like in 1. I like the idea of dynamic cities just not finding a way to control it but just not enough control to make it realistic or fun. I wish we could zone part of our city for residential, entertainment, industrial .... yeah I wish we could zone the stuff, then this would be the perfect game. The roads are amazing and it's easy to create realistic cities. Anyone else feel the same? Different?

 

[douglasrac]

I think dynamic cities have nothing to do with the fact that there are no airports or railstations.

Shopping districts and entertainment districts also doesn't have to do with dynamic growth, but with the map. Sure, they can disrupt them if they exist, but that happens.

You can create a map and you will be able to make places with only shopping and leisure facilities. If you don't want them to change in the future, play with dynamic growth disabled. You can also mark some areas of the city to not grow anything new on it, which will probably preserve the buildings in the area, even with dynamic city enabled.

 

[jq371]

i like the dynamic cities.... however, as a few others have said, i wish there was a way you could select a building to "preserve" it, so that it wont change... that way if you have specific building integral to your lines etc, they can stay an important feature in your map

 

[unmerged(438945)]

There was nothing wrong with the way dynamic growth was handled with CIM 1. The transit options should have very little effect on the growth of the city.

 

[Lord Vetinari]

There was nothing wrong with the way dynamic growth was handled with CIM 1. The transit options should have very little effect on the growth of the city.

I completely disagree. A lot was wrong with Cim1's city growts. It could destroy the player's stuff if they were in the wrong place, I can't see how that can be considered good.
Also, in real life buildings density is indeed affected by the public transport.

The idea of dynamic cities is sound, it just needs better balancing.

 

[Senap]

Wait what? CiM1 had dynamic growth? I thought those had specific times when they would trigger and they were decided by the map makers?

While major buildings are missing (train stations, airports etc), I think you will find that a lot of stuff is still in the game. We have the humongous malls, cinemas and endless theaters + museums.

One thing I've come to dislike in games are the static worlds. In CiM1, if you accidentally crushed a building you needed, you would be screwed because nothing would "grow" on that land ever again. In this game, however, buildings do pop up on land as long as there is space available.

That said, I do think the dynamic growth could use some tweaking (sky scrapers popping up along every new road is a bit crazy), but I rather have the growth as it is now than not having any growth at all.

Also, I still don't get any stadiums or schools from growth in cities, what's up with that? And no, they don't have stadiums or schools.

 

[Splott]

The game doesn't have dynamic cities, it just pops up buildings for no reason and in random locations. The main reason i stopped playing the game is that i play it just as a city builder, where as in CiM i could play the game and get a relatively enjoyable experience as well as creating my own maps.

 

[rss334]

The game doesn't have dynamic cities, it just pops up buildings for no reason and in random locations. The main reason i stopped playing the game is that i play it just as a city builder, where as in CiM i could play the game and get a relatively enjoyable experience as well as creating my own maps.

This is exactly how I feel too. I've tried and wanted to enjoy dynamic cities but it just feels wrong and results in more frustration than enjoyment. I felt CIM 1 was enjoyable as well. For me, being able to designate zone like you do ticket prices (but allow residential, industrial, entertainment, or other) would be a complete turn around. The above poster also mentioned being able to mark a building permanent, that's a great idea too.

 

[jq371]

perhaps, there is a bit of a need to do it the old sim city way and be able to assign specific areas as commercial, industrial, residential, education etc.... in the same way we paint our fare zones, we could paint building zones....

 

[unmerged(438945)]

Yes, it does, but not even close to the level in which CIM 2 has implemented. You made a complaint about things popping up and messing up a player's progress but that's more realistic than 10 schools popping up and skyscrapers showing up in residential neighborhoods and the whole downtown becoming one suburb.

 

[vonhaubitz]

If you don't like it, you can turn it off.

 

[douglasrac]

Sure 2-3 schools appearing at the same area is not realistic, but a public transportation company deciding where is commercial, where is industrial zone is not realistic either.

Dynamic cities are suppose to create an extra challenge, meaning you should be able to respond to the city changes without having control over it. If you want to create eternal hubs that never change, you should disable city growth.
Certainly is frustrating to have skyscrapers popping on industrial areas, but once the city is big enough and the needs (house/workplace/leisure) is balanced, this weird things should stop.

 

[jq371]

i'd like to see an option where the buildings arent replaced... however if you build a new street with nothing on it, id still want buildings to generate there....... or in any deleted "empty" spaces....

 

[slincoln_wx]

The idea of dynamic cities is great and is an interesting way to approach city growth that differs from the timeline approach in CiM 1. In many ways I liked the CiM timeline approach better, because I could specifically customize the growth of the city almost like a simple city builder, then make myself design the transit infrastructure to handle the growth. In the new game it is nice to have the ability to work with the roads as you play, but some of the growth is just crazy. Numerous schools in the same area? Giant skyscrapers on two-lane roads on the fringes of the city? Just a tiny number of people working in huge buildings? Seriously, that is kind of crazy. The way it just starts plopping these huge buildings on the fringes of cities is probably one of the more annoying aspects of the game, and in general I really like the game. In a new patch, I would strongly suggest that the developers address this.

Larger buildings are built because land values for an area - coupled with strong demand for industry/commercial - favor the development. This usually involves areas in the middle town with good traffic infrastructure. I don't know how dynamic it is for me to build a two lane road dead-ended out in a rural area and then somehow the city thinks that is just the greatest place for the city's tallest building.

 

[unmerged(758045)]

I can't explain it but I thought it would work more like this:

[video=youtube;-fGD4NHgp6c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fGD4NHgp6c[/video]

 

[douglasrac]

Your video is way too abstract.

For growth, I think what people want is something more like OpenTTD growth. Where you always have small houses around the town, and big buildings only grow in places where huge centers are.

[video=youtube;dWtc6WlOIc8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWtc6WlOIc8[/video]

But this also wouldn't please most players. That would mean if you want a big town, it would obligatorily be a very busy downtown (in the center of the city) and suburbs all around. CiM is more complex than that. You have industries and you have many types of roads that affect the growth. It won't always be the same scheme. Another thing is that people want to control where commercial zones are, residential, industrial, leisure, etc.

I'm glad CiM 2 cities don't build roads on their own. It would change too many lines too frequently. In a big network that would require a lot of work just redesigning.

 

[diesseits]

I enjoy the dynamic cities. I just wish that buildings would start small in any area where you lay new roads, and only get bigger if they are served by transit. The big areas of high density commercial buildings that are cropping up at the edges of my city are weird.

 

[scottn72]

I enjoy the dynamic cities. I just wish that buildings would start small in any area where you lay new roads, and only get bigger if they are served by transit. The big areas of high density commercial buildings that are cropping up at the edges of my city are weird.

My thoughts are similar to this. But as buildings are coded towards certain conditions and not an organic growth as such, it will remain this way.

 

[zibu]

I enjoy the dynamic cities. I just wish that buildings would start small in any area where you lay new roads, and only get bigger if they are served by transit. The big areas of high density commercial buildings that are cropping up at the edges of my city are weird.

I agree as well. What I also don't understand... the city itself doesn't seem to create roads whatsoever. So when there's the task of increasing the population, there is no way of doing that unless you build roads first. That's a bit odd I think. Because - taking London as an example - that would mean that London would only grow if the underground/metro system (TfL) would build a street somewhere first. Which is rather odd, because it's the city that builds the street and gives building permission, not the TfL.

And then once you built that road it's like totall random and makes no sense what's being build. I once made a road and withing a short time I had 3 operas in proximity, no houses and it was quite far outside the town. Weird, don't you think?

 

[qifrurgrtgn]

This is my take on dynamic growth:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...h-is-just-utterly-broken-(Picture)&highlight=
(You can only see this thread if you have registered CiM2 on the forum)

Its broken, utterly broken. As in totally, definitely broken.

Look at the picture, its a mostly tram town and this is how it looks in the entire town:
On this picture alone are 20 Libraries, 19 art galeries, 17 theatres, 4 opera houses and 18 night clubs. Maybe even more.

PS: This is from 1-2 patches ago but it still tends to look like this, just cant be asked to circle all buildings on a new screenshot again.