4x4 limitation on zoned buildings

[TheeLord]

I know CO is probably completely sick of the moaning about this limitation, but IMO it deserves more attention still. You have built in technical limitations that currently don't allow larger buildings to appear in zoned areas and I think this could be a massive mistake for a few reasons:

1- There is a huge community of realism-oriented players who will be your biggest fans and the ones eating up every bit of worthwhile DLC you throw our way. 645,000 people have registered on simtropolis.com and 570 are actually logged in there right now. Just to give you some idea of the numbers we are possibly talking about. Don't rush this product, delay it a couple months to remove this limitation and take that time to just make it everything a bit more realistic for us.

2- If it's actually a "hard limit" I don't think it will be removable by modding?

3- Farms and "large factories" look absolutely awful, almost to the point where I don't want the game. Building farming towns is one of my favorite things to do in city builders.

4- Sure it's just visual fluff, but a great deal of people play city builders to just "build" and be creative and gameplay comes secondary. It's a way of "painting" for us. Taking those "brushes" away hurts lol. Maybe because you guys built CIM and gameplay was absolutely paramount in that game compared to visuals, it's a little different for you. People who play simcity and the like for years upon years are usually much more into making different "looking" cities each time rather then different "functioning" cities. You need to make sure both camps are happy and you will have a huge hit game!

Thanks!! I really really really hope this gets changed. Hope I didn't come off as too dramatic, just excited for this game

 

[Sinbuster]

I agree with you on every point. I seriously doubt anything will be done about it however. Plopable buildings can be larger than 4x4 so that will be the work-around for most modders. Whether this limitation is removed altogether will have a lot to do with how well the game sells. In other words, curb your expectations for the initial release.

 

[NickSlip]

Absolutely agree, this is an extremely important issue for many like myself who seek maximum realism in their cities. It just seems like limiting buildings to 4x4 serves no purpose whatsoever - there's not a tradeoff being made here, it's just a flat-out limitation of gameplay. CO still hasn't given a reason as to why they feel the game is better off with 4x4 size zoned lots, and it's disheartening, to say the least. The open-ended, organic way of building growth through zoning SHOULD, in theory at least, allow for different size growable lots in the game design, unlike CXL where lot sizes had to be standardized due to the plopping nature of the placement.

 

[Mendeth]

CO still hasn't given a reason as to why they feel the game is better off with 4x4 size zoned lots, and it's disheartening, to say the least.

Ahem, from the 'Skylines is looking fantasic in some areas...' thread:

There are slightly bigger building options for the city services that you can place on the map individually. The size of the buildings are what they are due to technical and artistic limitations and what we consider the best option for the gameplay. Reserving one map tile just for one transport option might not be the best option in terms of the gameplay, for example.

Why we need to make these types of decisions then? Fitting 1 000 000 citizens to an area for what we in Finland consider reasonable for about 50 000 residents is not very realistic (though us Finns like our personal space so this is not a universal truth), yet from my understanding it's more appealing to have a big city in terms of population than the size of one individual building.

I also know that everyone will not be happy with the style, size, look and stats of the buildings we make so there will be a tool for modders to bring their own assets in the game. I hope it allows everyone to enjoy Cities: Skylines like they want.

 

[eaglechopper]

Bigger lot sizes make the surburbia houses look really awkward like SC2013 with huge lots with small house in middle, what would you prefer

 

[NickSlip]

Bigger lot sizes make the surburbia houses look really awkward like SC2013 with huge lots with small house in middle, what would you prefer

The idea isn't to make every lot bigger, it's to expand the variety of lot sizes. Right now we can only go up to 4x4, which makes high-rises look rather silly, because they're on the same size lot as single-family homes.

 

[Anttonilla]

There is also no room between those high-rises... They look way too tight :/

 

[norian]

Bear with me for a moment.

The previous main WTC buildings were almost a square acre at the base. Reference.

The new WTC buildings are actually slightly less.

After a quick housing search of Zillow in Brooklyn NY, the range of a lot size of a single standing home was between 1000ft to 5000ft which is less that .25 acres (10,890ft).

For homes outside a large metropolitan area, it not unusual to have have an acre or more of land for residential locations. For example, Searching Raleigh NC on Zillow with at least an acre of land yielded 77 results, most with over an acre of land.

So, lets say a skyscraper in the game takes up the entire 4x4 lot, an acre of land as it were. It would take at least 8 Brooklyn homes to fill the space, but that would only be one single family home in Raleigh.

Looking at some screenshots, #1, #2,, #3 . Most single family looking homes in the game are taking up a 2x2 (see center of pics #1 & #2). Multi-dwelling homes as in #2 are at 3x3 and larger homes as in #3 are taking up 4x4, but have they the extra land to go with it.

So, a 2x2 would be .25 acre in game terms and might give you 4 homes in the 4x4 space. While the zoning does not work out perfectly as comparable to real world situations (Brooklyn), it is perfectly doable for the game. I see no reason to complain about the current 4x4 limitation.

 

[WilfriedWebber]

4x4 is something like 100x100 ft, that's not an acre; it's a quarter acre.

 

[TheSutekh]

Perhaps they could work around this issue. Couldn't they make two models, each 4x4, but attached at one side. So, your large building models could, say, take 3 4x4 blocks and there would be a code that makes sure that the blocks connect at the right sides.

 

[NickSlip]

Bear with me for a moment.

The previous main WTC buildings were almost a square acre at the base. Reference.

The new WTC buildings are actually slightly less.

After a quick housing search of Zillow in Brooklyn NY, the range of a lot size of a single standing home was between 1000ft to 5000ft which is less that .25 acres (10,890ft).

For homes outside a large metropolitan area, it not unusual to have have an acre or more of land for residential locations. For example, Searching Raleigh NC on Zillow with at least an acre of land yielded 77 results, most with over an acre of land.

So, lets say a skyscraper in the game takes up the entire 4x4 lot, an acre of land as it were. It would take at least 8 Brooklyn homes to fill the space, but that would only be one single family home in Raleigh.

Looking at some screenshots, #1, #2,, #3 . Most single family looking homes in the game are taking up a 2x2 (see center of pics #1 & #2). Multi-dwelling homes as in #2 are at 3x3 and larger homes as in #3 are taking up 4x4, but have they the extra land to go with it.

So, a 2x2 would be .25 acre in game terms and might give you 4 homes in the 4x4 space. While the zoning does not work out perfectly as comparable to real world situations (Brooklyn), it is perfectly doable for the game. I see no reason to complain about the current 4x4 limitation.

You essentially disprove your point in your own post. The WTC may have been an acre at its base, but the lot was certainly much larger. Also, you rely on the assumption that a 4x4 in the game is equal to one acre of land. Just the eyeball test proves that is totally untrue - the WTC would most likely have the footprint of AT LEAST a 6x6 lot, and leaving no room on the sides.

Moreover, I don't know from where you derived the claim that the houses are taking up 2x2 lots, as they look to me like they're averaging 2x4 to 3x4 in size. In short, there is absolutely no way a 4x4 lot in this game is equal to an acre, and even if it was, then it means they've WAY overscaled the smaller single family homes. The houses you're citing in Raleigh are hardly in urban parts of the city, and take up a tiny portion of the lots, while in previous videos of C:S I noticed many larger houses take up nearly the entirety of a 4x4 lot (watch the last livestream, they're the big grey behemoths). When you've found a house that has a footprint of an "acre" (as you so called the 4x4 lots), let me know.

The product of all this, in combination with the cartoon-ish graphics, is a pretty unrealistic depiction of what a city actually is. Pencil-thin highrises and homes that take up over half a highrise's footprint? No thanks. Take for instance an aerial photo of Los Angeles - notice the varying shapes of the highrises and the equally-varying lot sizes they're on, ranging from about 3 times an house's lot size, to perhaps 5 times.

If C:S can achieve dimensions that come anywhere near the appearance of a typical city as above, then that would be excellent. No one's arguing for perfectly scale lot sizes, but an improvement on the current would be much appreciated.

 

[charlesnew]

Well, at least they said that the bigger skyscrapers are plopped, so that means that they probably go outside of the zoning area.

 

[Nichollz]

There is no problem with 4x4, it allows for a large building, and any variation from 1x1 to 4x4, it's comparable with other city builders and is far more flexible than the mandatory square shaped plots in Cities XL where all growable buildings fit on just 2 sizes of square plot.

 

[norian]

The point was that the size works for me. I have no complaints, especially with the game not being out yet. You never know, it may work perfectly fine once you see it all up and running.

 

[Hannodb]

Ever since City builders did away with a grid based system, curved roads created all kinds of problems of its own. The last City Builder I played was CitiesXL, and I must say, the way zoning was dealt with in that game absolutely killed it for me in the end.

For this reason I'm terribly excited about this game. The way they're dealing with zoning in this game is much more elegant and pleasing, and I'm really looking forward to finally get creative with the roads, without having to worry about if the zones will fit in.

Ofcause this solution does have its limitations, and I must agree that 4x4 farms is not exactly a realistic norm - although I can understand why the limitation is there. However, this is nothing more than a slight inconvenience in my eyes.

I would suggest that those who complain about this would be better served by understanding why the limitations are there, and trying to think of solutions that could be easily reconciled with the current zoning model. Remember, we're talking about a company consisting of only 9 people, who have demonstrated their willingness to listen and already produced a game that is light years ahead of its competition. Maybe a fresh suggestion from a fan could be just what's needed for a breakthrough?

 

[WarOnCarbs]

I understand why the limit is 4*4. I'm not even sure that the 4*4 limit is even the problem.

I think the cells are too small. Judging from the pictures and videos, a two lane road is roughly two cells wide. This is not realistic. Where I live, a one two lane in each direction with parking on both sides is about 50ft wide. A medium sized single family home is on a lot that's 100ft deep.

The second issue is that the lotting is poor or at least inconsistent. Single family homes should under no circumstances, take up the entirety of a 4*4 or 100ft by 100ft lot. An apartment building might. A highrise certainly should. but a house should not.

Make the cells bigger, so that visually a 4*4 plot looks like it's 200ft by 200ft compared to the road and you will have eliminated much of the problem. Currently, even if I drew the street grid such that the maximum plot size was only 2*2, it would look ridiculous, at least to an American, because the roads would be as wide as the entire block, even our oldest cities arent' that tight.

 

[cRAGGLE]

So far all I've seen are medium density looking cities.. plot sizes need to be fixed it's limiting everything so much.

 

[WilfriedWebber]

Single family homes should under no circumstances, take up the entirety of a 4*4 or 100ft by 100ft lot.

They don't. The 4 cells only apply to the maximum lot depth and width. Most single-family homes would occupy a 4 tiles deep lot which is, however, not 4 tiles wide.