Most of the differences in historic building stock-i.e. The result was that a town in the middle of the Great Plains grasslands could still get lumber, and works such as the Empire State Building were built with limestone from Indiana, some 750 mi away. Local materials was largely negated by the ability to ships building materials by railroad and barge. Smaller factors include climate and local materials Ĭlimate is largely limited to details, such as whether buildings have front porches (used more in warmer climes) or not, flat roofs (useful in arid regions) or not whether malls and stadiums are indoors or outdoors
Louis might resemble buildings in San Francisco and Vancouver.Īfter the colonial periods had subsided and a national identity had gradually been established, stylistic decisions and movements were often region- or nationwide, with historic tradition and taste occasionally invoked (such as the prominence of Mission Revival in California or the English Colonial Revival in Virginia.
Even by 1900, buildings in Washington, DC might resemble buildings in St. By and large, they are nowhere near as pronounced by distance as in Europe. For those not familiar with American architecture, regional differences do exist, but with some exceptions are usually more nuanced and in the details. Under such a model, each city region gets one tileset, which applies without distinction within it.ģ.) In the United States, capturing the regional diversity with the three chosen cities is relatively redundant if not pointless (at least as with the original sets). The examples chosen are not especially indicative of regional styles indeed most of the buildings that dominate the original tileset could equally be at home in New York as in Los Angeles.Ģ.) It isn't useful for producing historically-layered cities. Though many of the photo links are deprecated as of 2019, the text offers evidence that geography was not a major consideration. The forum thread " Maxis References" sought to find the many buildings across the United States used as reference models for each tileset. Maxis' reference buildings for Chicago came from Chicago, NYC, Richmond, Virginia etc. There are several theoretical and practical drawbacks to the geographic model, outlined here:ġ.) It doesn't reflect the original architectural usage by Maxis. Weaknesses of the Regional/Geographic Model The primary game-play advantage of such usage is that it allows a player to be able to build up to four different regions (each with their own distinct but homogeneous look) simultaneously, without having to change growable building files in and out (though likely still having to switch universals such as terrain mods, water mods, street mods, etc.) (More cynically, perhaps ambitious BAT creators just wanted their work to grow all the time, but you will still frequently find growable buildings listed as growing under all four tilesets.) This was the case in SC3K, with its stunningly varied American, European, and Asian tilesets. It seems at some point early on in the custom content era for SC4, the idea arose that style tilesets were primarily a geographic designation. Model 1: Building Sets as Geographic Regions The fourth, "Euro-Contemporary", was added in the Rush Hour expansion. How can, and should, tilesets be used to maximize their impact? Two schools of thought seem to have emerged, each focusing around the cryptic designation by Maxis of the original sets, with a “city + date” format, yielding "Chicago 1890", "New York 1940", and "Houston 1990". Yet they also seem to be the most-underutilized.The biggest difficulty to making a historically-realistic city in SC4-other than finding the right BATs and lots-is getting growable lots to grow in coherent and useful tilesets. Building style tilsets are one of the most powerful tools for controlling growables in SC4, along with wealth and zoning density.