The Network Addon Mod, or NAM, is a modification for SimCity 4 Deluxe (or SimCity 4 with the Rush Hour Expansion pack), which adds a myriad of new transport network items, ranging from ground light rail, to fractional-angle roads, to roundabouts, and much more.
My first encounter with SimCity 4 was, naturally, a complete disaster. Having never before played aSim-style builder type of game, I wrongly assumed it would be something like with just a touch of Age of Empires and a tad bit of Cultures. It was neither.I tried playing modestly: I zoned a few light, low-density residential areas, propped up a few schools andwaited, waited, waited. Until I ran out of money, got angry and shelved the game for three years. That wasback then in 2003 or 2004.Still, something in that game managed to burrow into my heart and keep hidden there, soft yet persistent, naggingme to give it one more shot. One blue-sky day in year Y2K+7, I walked upon a bargain copy of SimCity 4: Rush Hourexpansion pack and decided to buy it.This time, I was a lot more patient.
And for a change, I read a few reviews and walkthroughs before trying toplay again. This time, it was a success.Satellite view of a rapidly growing region; from a few shacks to a giant metropolis housing millions ofsoulsWhat is SimCity 4 all about?The idea is to build a city, or rather, a whole network of cities, from scratch, no time limits, no goals, nocommitments. It's all about the pure enjoyment of building metropoles any which way you feel like doing it.The only catch is: you have limited money. So an undeclared goal of the game is to manage to earn revenue whileexpanding your city. A chicken and an egg thingie, actually. You invest money in building infrastructure for yourfuture denizens: you zone residential and commercial areas, you create industrial sectors, you build roads,bridges and railways, you plant trees and open gardens and recreation spots. In return, people flock to your cityand start paying taxes. In fact, it's very much like in real life.
This is what makes SimCity 4 such a greatgame. How to make a successful city?If you're smart and patient, your villages will grow into big, busy metropoles, with hundreds of thousandsof people living and working in themYour success will depend on your patience. You will have to balance between over-expanding and letting your citygrow stale while trying to keep the finance sheets positive. It took me a while to realize this, but once I gotthe hang of it, my cities flourished like mushrooms after a radioactive rain.To make your cities profitable, you have to gain more than you invest - the golden rule of money-making. You dothis by very, very slightly depriving your citizens of their needs.
You'll be tempted to bestow all manner ofblessings upon your population. But it would be a mistake to do it outright.Your first immigrants will be a rowdy, uneducated lot with little demands except solid work in grubby, pollutingmills. They won't care about colleges or the subway network - they won't even be able to afford it. So there's noneed to build those until after you have established a solid middle class with some basic education.Thus, you may want to build a small elementary school and let your peasants grow literate.
After a few years,several aspiring minds might clamor for a high-school. Build one, then. Slowly, gradually, expand your servicesto meet the existing needs - rather than anticipating them.
Empty schools are a burden that will quickly bleedyour budget.No one wants to live near the cancer-friendly heavy industries; notice the firestrip amidst the factories,ready to put any of those lovely chemical fires down quicklyThe same rules apply for other sectors of your city life. Build a small clinic staffed with interns beforebuilding large and expensive hospitals. Adjust tax rates to attract this or that crowd to your town. Reduce powerand water spendings in your stations, keeping them just above the max. Demand level. Let your people use busesuntil they can afford subways.If you stick to these basic rules, your budget will grow alongside your cities. With careful planning, you'llstart earning cash, growing more confident, allowing you to take bold steps and make your regions even better.DesirabilityIt turns out that the SimCity people are a rather spoiled kind.
They love to live in clean, beautiful places. Asyour villages progress, you will find them asking for more and more commodities. The plebeians won't ask for muchexcept some suet for breakfast, but the buorgeoise will want more. In order to attract the posh citizenry, thekind that pays a lot of taxes and makes your cities even more profitable, you will have to make your citiesattractive.To this end, you'll have to build parks, lots of them, and all sorts of recreation and relaxation venues, like,tennis and basketball courts, football (soccer) stadiums, and plazas. The rich will also demand safety, so you'llhave to build police stations.Tourists will also start coming to your cities once they become more than just mining labor camps. To cater totheir needs, you'll have a range of historical (and extremely expensive) props available including the Statue ofLiberty, the CN Tower and other buildings. Hotels, the Stock Market Exchange, the County Club, the Marina, theseare all weapons in the hands of a great city builder dedicated to creating a magnificent metropolis.
Then, let usnot forget the religious and civic needs, the worship houses and cemeteries. You must also maintain an efficientnetwork of roads and rails, aplenty with bus and train stations, to allow your workers to quickly and efficientlycommute across the cities - and to and from the neighboring regions. Air and water pollution and traffic noisewill also be a major concern.
It's like real life in the big city.Supply & demandThe success of your cities will also depend on how appealing they are; build lots of sports venues, parks,recreational facilities, and tourism hotspots - and people will flock to your regions, boosting all-arounddemandYou will be amazed how big the cities can grow in SimCity 4. If you're smart, you'll have regions populatinghundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people - with many more just waiting for the opportunity to come.You will have demand meters telling you how popular your city is.
These meters will tell you how many moreresidential, commercial and industrial units your citizens wants. If your regions are popular, you'll always havea long, steady queue of immigrants waiting to come to live and work in your cities.On the other hand, you may also experience emigration. For example, high-tech cities will not want peasants orcoal miners in their posh societies. So it may come to pass that your low-class folks will gradually leavecertain towns and move into other regions, more suitable for their kind. You'll see old factories turning vacantand even entire industrial sections growing completely stale.It is also possible that if you foolishly persist with your chaotic building plans despite the warnings from thedemand meters that you'll overturn the nature of regions around. The influx of undesirable, high-pollutionindustries into green cities might scare away tourists and office workers.
Then, you'll see your skyscrapersturning black with neglect. High-class society will run away and your cities will spiral down into crime-infestedlabor towns.
Which might be exactly what you want. But if you aim to make beautiful, clean cities full of richand educated masses, you'll be pay attention to your AI advisers and their charts.Listen to the needs of your folks. If the demand meter for either residential, commercial or industrial zones isbelow zero, this means that your city does not require the particular type at the moment and even may have asurplus. If the bars are all high, you're lucky; you're doing well and people want to come to your city. Thismeans you should invest in facilities for the newcomers.TransportationExporting power to neighboring regions will help you generate income while your cities flourish; try to useclean and safe energy sources, like solar powerThe best part about SimCity 4 is that individual regions are not stand-alone entities. They are all connected toneighboring regions. For example, you can have a region dedicated entirely to high-polluting heavy industry andhave citizens from other regions traveling to work there.
Or you could export electricity and water toneighboring towns, making a handsome side profit.The ability to chain regions into bigger cities is one of the highlights of the game. As you expand, you willnotice the more interconnected the regions are, the faster their development is. More people will immigrate toyour cities, the demand for commercial and industrial services will soar, your rail stations and airports willbecome busier. This will also spare you from replicating your cities in a predictable and boring manner - youwon't have to build a power station or zone an industry area in every single city.
Instead, you'll be able tomanage your regions just like in real life; some will be more agriculture-oriented, others will be small,peaceful villages communities. Others yet will be skyscraper-only jungles. The largest cities will probably houseuniversities to which people from smaller towns will flock. Industry and power centers will probably resideoutside residential areas.
Hot spots like military bases, jails or airports will most likely be located somewherein the countryside.A developed, high-capacity transportation network is the key to success. If you do not lay down roads and railsthat extend beyond the borders of your regions into neighboring ones, your cities will be nothing more thansmall, underdeveloped ghettos. Once you chain them into a massive grid, you'll experience the true joy of citymanagement.Don't be mistaken! Building a functional network grid in SimCity 4 is one of the biggest challenges. You may notcare much about the layout of your streets in the beginning, but they will clog up eventually, choking theprogress of your cities.
It is critical to plan ahead, even if your city only has a few hundred residents. Youneed to think decades ahead, when the population of your regions grows to hundreds of thousands.Large airports will bring lots of commerce and tourists to your cities, just like in real lifeLike in real life, this is no easy task. But if there's one thing I never skimp on in SimCity, it's thetransportation infrastructure. Save your money elsewhere, but make sure your roads are top-notch.
This means atight grid of bus stops, rail stations, subway stations, and highways. Build your city around the transportationnetwork; not the other way around.Rush Hour expansion packThe original SimCity 4 had quite a few flaws. The major of them was the awful AI pathfinding, which made evenmodest cities turn into traffic nightmares. The Rush Hour expansion pack introduced enhanced transportfacilities, new buildings and new building styles, turning a great game into a fabulous one. If you can, makesure you grab Rush Hour before you play SimCity 4.ModsTransportation is critical to success in the game; without a thoroughly developed network of roads,railways, airports, and sea lines, you will get nowhereAh, yes! What makes SimCity 4 a true gem is its scalability.
The game uses the flexible model of external pluginsto extend its basic, default set, allowing people to easily add their own, custom changes to the game. Thisincludes regions, vehicles, AI behavior, and just about anything else.The best place to look for maps, tools, props, gameplay mods, and just about anything else that allows you totweak SimCity 4 any which way you please is, andits, inparticular.
Personally, I'm using quite a few of these, including the must-have Network Addon Mod (NAM), whichturns the game's inefficient transportation/networking AI into a practical, realistic model. Among its manyfeatures, NAM introduces diagonal streets, light rail, and advanced pathfinding algorithms.Other useful mods include Radical Ordinance, Clean Air, Industry Multipliers, Functional Landmarks, and manymore, some meant to ease the game play, others meant to turn it more beautiful or more realistic.
And then, youalso have custom trees, custom houses, realistic water, and much, much more. Think of SimCity 4 mods as Firefoxextensions. Enough said.ConclusionSimCity 4 is a great game. For any modern urban enthusiast, this is THE one title that has it all: beauty,complexity, realism. It allows you to build huge cities with millions of people, down to the tiniest detail, withroads and railways spanning tens and hundreds of kilometers across your regions and planes swirling in the skiesabove them. Simply fantastic. Best of all, the use of mods allow you to keep it always fresh and modern.The game is compelling and will keep you riveted to the chair for hours on end.
Just for reference, my region ofSan Francisco, the one you see in the regional map, already has approx. 15 regions interconnected, roughly twomillion people living and working in it, has taken me more than a month to polish - and is nowhere near halfcompleted yet. SimCity 4 embodies the modern RTS city builder, just like Caesar III did it for the old-worldscenery.Oh, just for the record, SimCity Societies, the successor to SimCity 4, is a total disappointment. Apart frombeing too easy to play, it abandons the beauty and realism of the former, becoming a would-be social networkingsimulator for the strategically challenged.P.S. Fast forward a few years since this article was written, and you might want to check the region! Three years of work, 4.2 million citizens in 68 districts.
Enjoymost profoundly!Cheers.