Does anyone have any road tips for me? I LOVE how I can build curved roads (finally!) but I seem have a hard time drawing symmetrical arcs and semi-circles (I've seen other people do a better job than me in some screenshots). If anyone is familiar with CAD or GIS they have nice tools for drawing curves and arcs and such that would really help here. Is there a way to get the grid that shows when looking at the overlays to show when I am laying roads? Yeah, I'm one of those guys that has to make everything perfectly symetrical and line up exactly. If the buildings would snap to the roads that would be great too.

You can try pressing the shift-key while playing roads for an alternative snapping mode. Maybe this helps.

You must be a Simcity 4 player, right? I say that because what you said...

Quote:I LOVE how I can build curved roads (finally!)

And I know most Simcity 4 players highly desire to build curved roads.

Anyway, my advise is going to come as pictures (sorry if they are large).

Start out by placing 4 short roads (the shortest they can go, and place them like in this picture:

Depending on how far apart you put them, you can make it more like an oval, or more circular or more round corner rectangle etc. It's really all in the placement of the first 4 itsy bitsy pieces of road. You make the 4 initial pieces as small as a road is allowed to build because it allows the curved parts to connect up easier from one piece to the next.

Then once you've got the 4 small pieces of roads, connect one of them to the next one, it should go into a natural arc, if not use the shift key and try again like this:


Now, make arc's between all the short pieces :


When you are finished you end up with something like this:

Yes, this semi round road system is not the end result of the three pictures above, it was the first one that I made to test out how I would do it, and came out nicer than the one that I took individual pictures to illustrate the steps involved as the first three pictures So I show this one since it came out better which just goes to show that maybe you have to try more than once to get the desired road that you want.


You should of course do it better than I did. I just whipped these up right now, so I didn't take any time to make it as symetrical as I possibly could have.

I hope this helps.

For semi circles, you do it this same way, only you only need 3 pieces for a half circle, two on the sides and one at the top, and then again connect them up and you have a half circle.


I took only 30 seconds to put this one together, that is why it's not very pretty, I didn't really try to place the initial 3 short pieces of road in the exact spot to try to get a really nice half circle out of it. I know you can do better.

And remember like the full circle, you can alter the distance between the three short pieces of road to get a different end half circle, be it more like half of an egg (in it's shell) or put them farther apart to make it more of a rounded rectangle semi circle or put them just right and you end up with a nice round semi circle.


OH LAST THING...

When you try to connect up the short pieces together, if you get the road that trys to do an inverted arc (which happens often), simply hold down the shift key, then move your mouse away from the circle, like up and to the right, and then bring it back towards the other small bit of road, and this tells the road system to bend in that direction instead of being inverted. Again, I hope you find this helpful. Let us know if you have any quesitons about this method. And there may well be many methods to do this, but this is how I would do it so that I have most control to make my circle of road.

Since this topic is about roads, I'll post my question here.

How do you create 4-lane roads like in this screenshot?
http://www.tropico3.com/screens/shot07.jpg

That would really help since I'm having a lot of traffic jams in my cities with just two-lane roads.

sivat - I don't think you can make roads like that. It must have been a promotional pic or something?

citybuilder - that was extremely helpful. Thank you! And yes, I played a ton of simcity4. And 3000, 2000 and the original. I pretty much just play citybuilders and sports games. I love city planning so much I became one in real life (since becoming a major league baseball player didn't work out - hehehe). I particularly loved the old historical impressions games like pharoah and caesar. And the new Anno is brilliant.

Cool,glad that I could help. Plus I helped myself too since I have been planning out a city in my head since getting Tropico 3 and part of the city relies on some residential districts to have a circle for the streets and other areas to have the half circle, so I would have had to figure out how to do this one of these days anyway, so your question got me off my butt to figure it out today instead of "whenever" comes around.

Have you joined our forums (link is in my signature), City Building Games is prety much our main thing over there but not our only thing.

As far as the 4 lane roads, I tend to agree with IlliniPete, those are probably promo pics and or maybe even how they had it working in alpha or pre beta. If you look at some of the buildings in that shot and how they are placed you can see that we can not duplicate their placement (so close together) nor can we place the buildings so close to the roads on that slight curve. Lastly, you can see those cars parked off near the buildings that are not on the road, so yes, I think this was a promo picture or maybe something they were working on originally but had to change things before release. I seem to remember one of the team members saying that they had a lot of problems with the roads and what we have now is the end result of what they were able to create with good performance, visual appeal etc. But maybe at one time the original plan was for the 4 land roads, and for cars to be able to park off the street, and buildings being able to rotate at 1° increments etc. The image does indeed look great and it would have been fantastic if that is what we see in our own games.

Another subject to do with roads: like in Sim City 4, will there ever be an expansion pack that allows you to drive or operate the vehicles (not just cars, but boats, ships, planes, whatever is already on the gamers island) both for missions or "free drive?"

sivat Wrote:Since this topic is about roads, I'll post my question here.

How do you create 4-lane roads like in this screenshot?
http://www.tropico3.com/screens/shot07.jpg

That would really help since I'm having a lot of traffic jams in my cities with just two-lane roads.

IlliniPete is right, this shot is very old, one of the first attempts at roads, and it built in the editor, not during gameplay.

I have a hard time connecting some roads due to terrain issues, so I wish there was a way to level/average/smooth the terrain and/or demolish some of those boulders that get in the way.

What you place first, buildings or roads, will determine which is more important in that particular location. If you NEED a road through an area to prevent gridlock elsewhere, place it first. If a particular building NEEDS to be there, place it first. Regardless of which you place first, the former will make the latter a little more difficult to plop and you may not get your optimal placement, or placement at all if the terrain distorts in a way that works against you.

That was really informative thread. I have never tried to make the curve road. In fact that because never got any idea like that. But after digging this thread a very creative idea. Thank you very much guys for it.

(29-10-2009 09:41 AM)City Builder Wrote:  and buildings being able to rotate at 1° increments etc. The image does indeed look great and it would have been fantastic if that is what we see in our own games.

Never did understand why we can't rotate every building at 1º increments. The mechanics are there and cities would look so much nicer

I am big on planning out my city based on my infrastructure layout and found how to level terrian and create circles in the process.
Cricles and be easily done at any size by creating by putting in arcs to connect roads leading out of an intersection and then deleting out the intersection.
Cut out parts of circles you don't need to create a perfectly curved road at any size.

See my city for example:

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/4/2/18...landme.jpg

Just one question:

Why are you guys so insistant on curves?

I usually favor a square design in order to use space most efficiently.

(08-05-2010 02:09 AM)IronFist Wrote:  Just one question:

Why are you guys so insistant on curves?

I usually favor a square design in order to use space most efficiently.

Vehicles turn slower in tight corners so a curve will make traffic flow smoother. Traffic jams is costing the island alot of money if it gets to that.

(08-05-2010 06:18 PM)Sovereign Wrote:  Vehicles turn slower in tight corners so a curve will make traffic flow smoother. Traffic jams is costing the island alot of money if it gets to that.

This makes me wish there was a way to gauge the effectiveness of your system.

For instance, in the almanac there would be something like "Average time in Transit" would be the % of time (out of total) that your people spend getting from point A to point B during the past year or so, rather than working, sleeping, etc.. Is there anything like that? It would greatly assist in choosing the best layout.

Also, I do not have too much a problem with congestion as if you build multiple paths to a point where you know will have lots of traffic (i.e. a residential zone) the people are smart enough to spread out.

@OtakuManJapan I love your city design. Its really impressive.

(06-11-2009 04:27 AM)Haumea Wrote:  I have a hard time connecting some roads due to terrain issues, so I wish there was a way to level/average/smooth the terrain and/or demolish some of those boulders that get in the way.

It's clunky, but there are a couple of ways to level terrain. one is to repeatedly plan and demolish buildings to level out the terrain. the other is to build the road as high as you can, then delete it & you should be able to build it a little higher the next time.

(08-05-2010 06:25 PM)IronFist Wrote:  

(08-05-2010 06:18 PM)Sovereign Wrote:  Vehicles turn slower in tight corners so a curve will make traffic flow smoother. Traffic jams is costing the island alot of money if it gets to that.

This makes me wish there was a way to gauge the effectiveness of your system.

For instance, in the almanac there would be something like "Average time in Transit" would be the % of time (out of total) that your people spend getting from point A to point B during the past year or so, rather than working, sleeping, etc.. Is there anything like that? It would greatly assist in choosing the best layout.

Also, I do not have too much a problem with congestion as if you build multiple paths to a point where you know will have lots of traffic (i.e. a residential zone) the people are smart enough to spread out.

The only thing I can think of is to click on a high population building, like a tenement & sit back to watch the arrows for a while.

I agree about the multiple paths, I build cities in grid patterns and the traffic doesn't get too congested.

OtakuManJapan:

Very nice planning! I especially appreciate your suburban housing design, with cul-de-sacs and everything!

Do you find that placing that double road down the spine of your city reduces traffic along that corridor? I have thought about doing something similar but wasn't sure it would be effective.

(10-05-2010 09:52 PM)sisyphus42 Wrote:  OtakuManJapan:

Very nice planning! I especially appreciate your suburban housing design, with cul-de-sacs and everything!

Do you find that placing that double road down the spine of your city reduces traffic along that corridor? I have thought about doing something similar but wasn't sure it would be effective.

Yes, double roads really help when you hit up around 600 especially, otherwise people just go bumper to bumper and start warping around rather then driving, which I personally don't like.

There is a catch though to making it work though.
If you wish to use double roads like that then you have to have something of value that they will visit on opposite sides. If you don't then they will only drive on the side closest to what has value to them and traffic jams will start.

The value also needs to be balanced to a degree. Like don't have a X amount of buildings that can service a X amount of people that is higher then the X service amount of the other side, otherwise more people will end up going to the side that have more availability since the other will become full and end up increasing the number of higher service quality buildings on the available side over the opposite side, thus more will use the road closest to the side with the highest quality buildings and that lane will become jamed over time while the other road may not be used as effenciently as it could be.

You can use the shift key for perfection to make the road. Thus, more will use the road closest to the side with the highest quality buildings and that lane will become jamed over time while the other road may not be used as effenciently as it could be.

You are still going to get the most benefit out of a road system that minimizes intersections. Intersections are the main cause of gridlock in this game, the second most common cause of gridlock is cars stopping to drop someone off (such as construction workers) and the third is people turning out of garages (which should never be placed close to an intersection)

I have covered the transportation topic very thoroughly here, but ultimately you have to find a playstyle that fits your goals.

My giant loop system works for the game, but would not hold much water in real life where we have access to all sorts of transportation options. It is a necessary evil to be efficient in the game.

I still hope that Kalypso will one day release a Tropico with expanded transportation options.