PROPOSED SOLUTION: Small farms

[Hannodb]

Sure, 4x4 farm sizes are not realistic, but so too is the idea that mayors get involved in agriculture. City councils don't get to zone for agriculture. Quite often, it happens the other way around: Agriculture is there first - often creating the incentive to start a town in the first place, and then the city need to buy out that land in order to expand.

My proposed solution is to remove agriculture from the city building mode of the game all together, and move it to where it actually belongs: The terrain editor.

Once you divorce agriculture from the zoning functionality, you immediately remove all the restrictions that is valid for city development but not agriculture: Farmland is not restricted in size, nor does it have to be next to a road. You could have a circle tool to set pivot irrigation, or a polygon tool for large farmland areas. A line tool can be used for planting trees between lands, and then you can have dirt roads between farmland. A tool similar to the district tool can be used to define the borders of individual farms, with farm names automatically popping up.

Once you're happy with your agricultural land, you can start your city.

The plus side of having farms is that it could provide your small town with an economic boost.

The minus side is that you'll have to buy out each farm before you can expand on it. One could even consider keeping the farm boundaries as new districts in the city that can be merged with existing districts. New suburbs often inherit the name of the farm it is build on.

I think this will elegantly resolve the farm issue in a realistic way, which, as far as I can see, is the biggest objection that has been raised against this game.


I would love to hear the feedback from both fans and the dev team

 

[uebs]

The farms they currently have look really silly, it's better not to have them at all.

If they are going to have farms they should look at how C:XL does it....

 

[kosh22]

I think the farms in CSL are best regarded as a form of factory rather than true farms.

 

[iMarvin]

I've honestly never used farms. I tend to make large cities, and large cities don't have farms in the city limits.

 

[CalPolyFan]

Sure, 4x4 farm sizes are not realistic, but so too is the idea that mayors get involved in agriculture. City councils don't get to zone for agriculture. Quite often, it happens the other way around: Agriculture is there first - often creating the incentive to start a town in the first place, and then the city need to buy out that land in order to expand.

My proposed solution is to remove agriculture from the city building mode of the game all together, and move it to where it actually belongs: The terrain editor.

Once you divorce agriculture from the zoning functionality, you immediately remove all the restrictions that is valid for city development but not agriculture: Farmland is not restricted in size, nor does it have to be next to a road. You could have a circle tool to set pivot irrigation, or a polygon tool for large farmland areas. A line tool can be used for planting trees between lands, and then you can have dirt roads between farmland. A tool similar to the district tool can be used to define the borders of individual farms, with farm names automatically popping up.

Once you're happy with your agricultural land, you can start your city.

The plus side of having farms is that it could provide your small town with an economic boost.

The minus side is that you'll have to buy out each farm before you can expand on it. One could even consider keeping the farm boundaries as new districts in the city that can be merged with existing districts. New suburbs often inherit the name of the farm it is build on.

I think this will elegantly resolve the farm issue in a realistic way, which, as far as I can see, is the biggest objection that has been raised against this game.


I would love to hear the feedback from both fans and the dev team

Great solution and post.

I think this would be a great work-around to farms, and would be more realistic- Like you said, cities usually develop around farms, not the other way around. You're also right- farms are not part of a mayors job.

Paying money to remove them is the best solution.. that way the mayor is more likely to take the more "natural" course to city growth and grow around the farm in land that is unused instead.. instead of just plowing through farm areas (until the city becomes too large, and it makes sense to develop that land).

Anyway, the only thing I would add is fields should just spawn like they did in Transport Tycoon, with a main cluster of farm buildings that are connected by their own dirt roads... With larger field areas which are basically eye-candy (but would cost more to remove obviously, like you said).

Perfect solution!

 

[Hannodb]

I've honestly never used farms. I tend to make large cities, and large cities don't have farms in the city limits.

In all honesty, me neither. I was just annoyed by some people complaining about this like its the end of the world, without making the least amount of effort to understand why the limitations exists, or to help the 9 (!) people of Colossal Order to come up with a better solution. Seriously, I feel ashamed how degrading some people get in their criticism of little side issues, despite the fact that this little company of 9 people already showed their willingness to listen to their fans as best they could, and already produced something that is by far superior to anything mightier companies could produce. They deserve our support, not our whining. Criticism is good, but lets keep it constructive.

 

[Person012345]

I like the idea, I think it may satisfy a lot of people although it might be nice if it were something more than pure decoration (a minor source of goods for instance, so that a small town wouldn't have to rely on industry or expensive importing). But as I've said before, I don't think farms as they are now are going to satisfy anyone, I believe this will be an improvement.

 

[medopu]

the one problem i see with this idea is, that since farms would be pre-made, we would also need pre-made farming communities. Where there are farms, there are farmers. Where there are farmers, there are farming communities.

In Europe for example, where lands aren't as abundand as in USA for example, there are less acres of land per each farmer, meaning that even if there isn't a huge number of farms, there should always be a village nearby farms, where farmers live.

It would be also cool if this would be in C:SL. You open a map, filled with some farms and a farming village here or there. Then you would start creating a city on top of them.

 

[sc4mp]

The OP is certainly a good idea. When creating scenarios/maps it would be possible to choose if you wanted to include agricultural land or not - which would keep both sides of the current arguement happy.

Whilst it might not be feasible for CO to include this in the initial game it could be possible for future content or for the modding community.

 

[Chaapa]

Great idea, and do the same with the airport. This since 1) no city would afford/be allowed/have the power needed to build one and 2) no sensible city would build an airport... even less so within the city limits. I like how Simcity V dealt with the problem.

 

[Hannodb]

) no sensible city would build an airport... even less so within the city limits.

Uhm: The old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong?

Johannesburg International Airport is also surrounded by urban area.

I hate the way SC2013 dealt with airports. The best way, in my opinion - was like it was done in SC2000: Simply zone it. I wish we could have that solution. Then people who want huge airports can have it, while the rest of us can enjoy all the benefits with a more reasonably sized airport.

 

[Chaapa]

The old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong was built by the British in their former colony Hong Kong, a place famous for their lack of land. The land was extremely limited because the Chinese controlled all the surrounding land. Hence Kai Tak is an awful example if you want to argue about this. Instead Hong Kong built a new airport as far as possible from their actual city, while still within its area of control. Very far from their city since nobody would build an airport next to their city.

Also I really don't know anything other than what wikipedia says about the airport in Johannesburg, but apparently it was built by an apartheid government in 1952 in order to replace the older airport which was too small. Considering South Africa's history and the general tendencies when developing airports, even in the 1950s, it's fair to argue that the new more-or-less developed areas around the airport were only built after 1952. The same goes for e.g. Bromma Airport in Stockholm, Le Bourget in Paris or Tempelhof in Berlin. They have all been surrounded by development after completion and out of those three airports one is closed, one is for private jets only and the third is soon (hopefully, they're discussing it) going to be bulldozed and replaced by housing.

All those, just like Charles de Gaulle in Paris or Heathrow in London, were built outside the cities because nobody would build an airport closer to the city. People wouldn't allow it, government wouldn't allow it, the airport would protest since it would only face restrictions on when it could operate or how it could expand.

No, do the sensible thing. Do a Simcity V-move and place the airport as some kind of special monument that you could build (by funding it obviously) outside the city. By doing that CO doesn't have to do anything other than write a couple of lines. And then convert the existing one into a local airport for hobby flyers.

 

[Hannodb]

The old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong was built by the British in their former colony Hong Kong, a place famous for their lack of land. The land was extremely limited because the Chinese controlled all the surrounding land. Hence Kai Tak is an awful example if you want to argue about this. Instead Hong Kong built a new airport as far as possible from their actual city, while still within its area of control. Very far from their city since nobody would build an airport next to their city.

Also I really don't know anything other than what wikipedia says about the airport in Johannesburg, but apparently it was built by an apartheid government in 1952 in order to replace the older airport which was too small. Considering South Africa's history and the general tendencies when developing airports, even in the 1950s, it's fair to argue that the new more-or-less developed areas around the airport were only built after 1952. The same goes for e.g. Bromma Airport in Stockholm, Le Bourget in Paris or Tempelhof in Berlin. They have all been surrounded by development after completion and out of those three airports one is closed, one is for private jets only and the third is soon (hopefully, they're discussing it) going to be bulldozed and replaced by housing.

All those, just like Charles de Gaulle in Paris or Heathrow in London, were built outside the cities because nobody would build an airport closer to the city. People wouldn't allow it, government wouldn't allow it, the airport would protest since it would only face restrictions on when it could operate or how it could expand.

No, do the sensible thing. Do a Simcity V-move and place the airport as some kind of special monument that you could build (by funding it obviously) outside the city. By doing that CO doesn't have to do anything other than write a couple of lines. And then convert the existing one into a local airport for hobby flyers.

Whether they were originally build outside the city is beside the point. The point is that real cities *does* have airports within their limits, and I *would* want to have an airport in mine as well. Ofcause, it will be outside the built area when I first place it, simply because airports takes a lot of space, but eventually, I'll build around it.

I also don't want an airport the size of a city tile. Out of necessity, city builders are scaled down versions of real cities (As in, you cannot make a city with as many city blocks as New York) and so the size of the airports need to be scaled down too in order to fit in with the rest of the city. Otherwise, it will look out of place.

 

[Chaapa]

The fact that no modern city would build an airport within hearing distance of its citizens is not besides the point. However the fact that you want to build one close to your city is. CS must surely aim to b4 both realistic and satisfactory to sense and logic. An airport out of scale doesn't satisfy the later two. This while the proposed, to allow local airports for hobby users (convert the larger airplanes into Cessnas) and then make an international airport into a monument which you fund outside the map is the best compromise for the realistic touch.

 

[Hannodb]

The fact that no modern city would build an airport within hearing distance of its citizens is not besides the point. However the fact that you want to build one close to your city is. CS must surely aim to b4 both realistic and satisfactory to sense and logic. An airport out of scale doesn't satisfy the later two. This while the proposed, to allow local airports for hobby users (convert the larger airplanes into Cessnas) and then make an international airport into a monument which you fund outside the map is the best compromise for the realistic touch.

I don't agree, but it's off topic, so I won't say anything more about this. This thread is suppose to be about farms.

 

[Tridon]

I would love to start a city based on a handful of large farms. In most(all?) city builders this is a bit hard to do since you can't make farms pop up without proper road/electricity infrastructure. It may be outside the scope of this game, but one may always hope

 

[BuckyDee]

I would love to start a city based on a handful of large farms. In most(all?) city builders this is a bit hard to do since you can't make farms pop up without proper road/electricity infrastructure. It may be outside the scope of this game, but one may always hope

This is easy to do in Cities XL, which allows free ranging large farm tracts and immediate moderate income from farm production to seed the city's later expansion. And this is realistic as well, because most cities in this world historically started out as large tract farm lands surrounding a strategic transportation hub.

I really hope that C:S looks at this option and seriously considers it...

 

[charlesnew]

My proposed solution is to remove agriculture from the city building mode of the game all together, and move it to where it actually belongs: The terrain editor.

This. This is what we need.

 

[Zarine]

I still think that having farm generate "negative pollution" which, on grass land, would turn into farmland would be the easiest solution for CO and be a quite successful effect for us, players.

Thus the only thing they would have to do, is to put negative pollution on those building (they can already put pollution, so I guess it's a minimal change) and then design texture field look alike that would take place instead of polluted area if the pollution is negative.
It's little work and dynamic system.

 

[Person012345]

I still think that having farm generate "negative pollution" which, on grass land, would turn into farmland would be the easiest solution for CO and be a quite successful effect for us, players.

Thus the only thing they would have to do, is to put negative pollution on those building (they can already put pollution, so I guess it's a minimal change) and then design texture field look alike that would take place instead of polluted area if the pollution is negative.
It's little work and dynamic system.

Sounds highly exploitable.