Are you keeping the Asian and Egyptian and French themes or just using those maps as starting points? If a French theme are there skyscrapers anywhere in France? I am pretty sure there are none in Paris and Paris has a height limit. If you use the same shells in all the worlds they will look somewhat the same as there is a limited selection of shells available?

TBH, I don't think we really understand what you are trying to do, not that we need to. But if you want input.....?

Do you have any completed worlds we can look at or close to completion?

I haven't completed any worlds but I played a lot with CAW and SuperCAW so I'm quite confident and pretty sure of what I do. Basically, I want to make a big city with suburbans that are themed. For example, a french suburban that has french building architecture. The Downtown may have skyscrapers. Also, Country-Side will be there, it depends on how big the city is and if city is taking a lot of space, I can consider making the country-side on another map.

I just created a Trello board.
https://trello.com/b/P4v5tAAy/the-sims-3-project-cities

Sorry - couldn't help myself.

Lol that's okay.

I had interconnected worlds project myself. Finished only 1 (with few lots left unfinished) and the other one without lots at all, just terrain, effects and flora. I planned 6 geograpically/lore connected worlds. I never had the time to finish them. If I ever asked people to help, I'm sure it would have been tho. I still have the plan, location and general look of the worlds. It's just that it is my vision and I would like to make every detail by myself (I'm a perfectionsit). But the fact is, you can't get anything done alone. I have HEAPS of unfinished worlds. I actually never finished a single one. I have two that are completeld around 80% and that's about it.

But now that I see how many talented people and people willing to help there is, and that someone has similar ideas as well, I might return to it and ask for help... when I have free time that is. It's a nice (but extremely big) project of a simple oceanic moon of a distant gas giant planet. Inspired by Uranesia's attempt at alien civilisation but with lore, colonisation, unusual alien races and sim genetics, politics and native tribe surpression. Dang, I wish I had same imagination I did few years back.

Just made some artworks for the project.

Just advanced !

Well dang! I watch House Hunters International all the time and the broker said that the available residences there were so few due to not being able to expand and/with the height limits. I should have checked before posting. So why in the heck she said that, who knows? Beautiful pics. I will now not trust anything she says! LOL

Mixa, your world sounds wonderful. Hope you go back to it. I have 2 worlds about 90% done and what was I working on all last night? Redoing one by someone else in CAW and adding lots to totally rebuild the place.

Shh... Don't go off-topic.

Actually, there IS a Paris world out there. I downloaded it before and checked it out. I eventually removed it b/c it was just too big. But it was a really good work. I kept the CC packages from that download.

http://www.thesimsk.com/paris2/

over 320 lots... a little huge for my taste.

Sneak peak #1

At the risk of being shushed, too, the height limit might apply to certain quarters; plus none of these skyscrapers reach the heights that might enable them to scrape the sky. I'd rather call them high-rises.

shushes Don
....but since we're on the topic, one widely agreed upon treshold for what is and isn't considered a skyscraper is 150 meters. Or 500 feet, if you will. So I think Paris has about 19 of those.
Assuming a minimum of 150 meters and 40 floors, another one that gets named a lot, here's an (outdated) map of how many skyscrapers each European country has.
So by all means, let's dispel the notion that European maps shouldn't have high-density buildings.

I'm back LIVE sweeties! Today, or more exactly tonight, I am showcasing you the project Sims 3 : Cities
https://twitch.tv/dawnshadow96

That map can't be correct. How can there be 0 in any country, especially Europe? I mean, a major city alone should have 5-10 skyscrapers.

The map was from Wikipedia. Consider the source. Griz would be shushed at a city planning meeting by means of being laughed out of the room if he showed up with such material.

If a country doesn't have use for skyscrapers, why would they build them? It would be a total waste of time, space and resources. not the mention the economic factor. Maintaining skyscrapers doesn't come cheap, nor does heating / cooling them, replacing things that become worn out or broken, ect... There is a reason a hole-in-the-wall studio apartment in NYC costs more than 3 times my mortgage in some cases.

Wikipedia is not exactly a reliable source. But it isn't really a question about source as it is more perhaps I didn't realize these countries are more underdeveloped than I original thought. I mean, honestly, there are no buildings that are over 40 floors in Ireland? I thought they're quite modern.

That was my point, but since the bar has been set so low in terms of information, Sweden, according to Wiki, is mostly made up of low and high rises with only one true skyscraper.



EDIT: To clarify, my point was about the use of old Wiki maps. I was not suggesting that Europe was a bunch of underdeveloped countries. Not that it matters, because if never does...

Building a skyscraper in a European city is usually a big deal. Most of these cities are old, if not ancient. So, one point is usually to preserve the old skyline and maintain the general coherence of the city centres (hence the height limits). Secondly, because these cities are so old, the likelihood of hitting ancient remains once you start digging is high and will halt any construction (which also means that the ground is often not stable enough for such a huge building - catacombs, cellars, old sewers, these places are full of these). Thirdly, once you have a wall of skyscrapers, the inner city air will become worse, because you basically cut off winds from one side, and here people do live in the city centres, and very much so. Fourth, environmental protection laws are pretty strict, so if you can't prove that your skyscraper meets them (energy efficiency, pollution) your project will die already in the planning state.

It's pretty telling, I think, that you will find most modern buildings and highrises either in emerging countries or cities that were almost completely destroyed during WWII, cities that don't have much that would have to be removed to make space (we still do love our traditions, you know). Or in authoritarian states that don't care about history as soon as an investor offers to pay.

Calling that underdeveloped is actually a bit insulting, especially since some of the world's best building engineers for skyscrapers are located in Europe, they just don't have a lot to do in their home countries and build in Chicago, Shanghai or Beijing instead. And I think that compared to other "developed" countries our infrastructure is terrific, once you shift your attention away from the lack of skyscrapers.

There's a great deal of resistance against new skyscraper construction, even in the cities that already have them. Both Rotterdam and Frankfurt seem to be full of people who want to maintain the city's "authentic" character or some crap like that, and what they usually mean is that they will fight with everything they've got to make sure that their view is blocked by 2 40-floor apartment towers, not 30.
But yeah, even in Rotterdam, which had a big gaping hole in the middle of it, no one thought to build anything remotely tall until about 1987. So then they tore down the local goat farm (conveniently located in the dead middle of the city's supposedly vibrant downtown) and built an ostentatious business district instead.

Here in my slice of the world, people build entire cities on what is essentially old landfills. They spend millions of dollars bringing in what is called 'clean fill' ( dirt) to fill in any sink holes, pack it down, then build on it. Then it becomes a waiting game.

As the 'the fill' naturally settles as dirt and earth does, problems start. Windows and doors are no longer level, so they don't close properly. Cracks in walls and ceilings may start to appear as the building continues to settle along with the earth that it is built upon. The problems don't stop there. Train tracks can become out of whack because they too will settle higher in some areas, and lower in others. Sinkholes are becoming a problem along the coast. Hurricanes and Nor'Easters remove all the fill that is used and compacted to build on. With time, this fill gets washed away.

Depending on where a person lives, depends on how this is dealt with. Some believe that if they simply use more concrete, the problem will be solved. This of course isn't true. Covering every surface with concrete creates water problems. The problem being, the water was nowhere to go in the event of lots of rain coming at once. Houston Texas is a prime example of why this doesn't work. They are still dealing with issue associated with hurricane Harvey.

As the saying goes, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Yeah, every so often it turns out that the principles on which we've been building cities for the past several decades don't actually work. Either we found out that having dark spots and corners no one can overlook is a perfect recipe for crime, or we find out that insulation material we've been using in all our buildings causes cancer, or we find out that not everyone wants to have to rely on a car to get places....or maybe it just turns out to be really, really ugly and we have to tear it down because it's such an eyesore.

@nitromon If Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, then what is lol? I think people say that because 'it's better than nothing what we have close to the wikipedia, lol.

Wikipedia isn't a reliable source, but its sources sure as hell are. Ask any teacher.