I'm not asking for tutorials. I'm asking what the process is like for you. You can share whatever, but here are some suggestions - Do you start with premade maps, or do you prefer to make your own in SimCity 4? Do you like going into it with a storyline for your town in place, or letting it happen organically as you play? What kinds of things make a good neighborhood in your opinion?

I started Coral Bay with Plasticbox's Elsewhere. I like using a premade hood free of sims as a base. While I enjoy building some of the time, I prefer to play.
I started with 12 couples from CAS and no townies apart from a few handmade ones and as few NPC's as possible. For example no one has ever rang for a nanny, thats an NPC that I doesn't need to be made - who rings causualy for a nanny? I bring in new sims either by making a townie playable, marrying in a dormie or one of the NPC's. I try and keep the whole hood ageing.
I play an integrated hood so those sims have to run as much of all the services as possible. Anything outside of that has to come from the city.
I add more shops and services as it grows since 12 couples won't be able to run a huge amount. I think I started with a grocery/general store, hair/fasion salaon, restuarant, police station, firestation, coffee shop and a church. The kind of thing you might expect to find in a one horse town.

What kinds of things make a good neighborhood in your opinion?
1) Nice scenery.
I love the sea views and pretty trees that i decorated the hood with. It just adds so much. Likewise small gaps or no gaps between lots in the centre of town. Huge gaps looks very unrealistic.

2)Having sims who all know each other and are interconected.
I played my retired school teacher and her family yesterday. Her daughter who lives in the same house was due to have her baby early in the morning like 3-4am. The daughter did little apart from eat, sleep and read the parenting book. Tiarna did some gardening and called old friends and decided to invite 2 over for afternoon tea. She has 21 friends nearly all of them are other founders/children of founders. At the end of the visit since it's summer and Christmas in game (I'm Australain) I looked through her inventory to see if she had any gifts that she could give her friends because you never know wht your sims will pick up at player owned stores. She gave one friend a pair of gloves and the other a Christmas decoration, both of the ladies were pleased.
Tiarna's husband Samuel and their Son-in-law went off to the bank early in the morning (they run the bank) for the day. Later that night I had the midwife come around for the birth. They pay her $100 for her time. With chatting and paying it all raises the relationship to the midwife who cuddles and checks the baby after the birth. I use Community Lot time, so I played both the day at the bank and the day at home. That is a small look at how an interconected neighbourhood can work on one day at one house.

A few pictures, didn't take any at the bank. Even though its dark you can still makeout the scenery. And the passing sim, also a playable. I never have more than 3-5 townies at a time.

I agreed, especially the view from a house lot; I hate when there is nothing around the house. I like to add trees along the back and side of the lot, then add Hood trees of the same type. The same with big rocks. As for new hoods, I like to start a hood that is NOT going to generate townies, or many service Sims. I don't like any community lots except for my own. Some of them are very well done, but for me it's all about function. I don't do owned business any more, just done that enough. I want community lots that hit all the "date" wants, or have skill items. learning skills they can't afford, etc. In one park I've built there are band instruments - fun to watch everyone play, my sims get skills, and tips! There is a pool and a pond, a hamburger stand, playground stuff, and it's "pet friendly" - so people can bring pets. There is a bathroom (with a shower) , a tent for the "homeless" Sim, chess tables, a photo booth, etc. My little "Outpost" has ONE clothes rack & booth, ONE food-buying bin, one cashier,. Jewelry, perfume, vacation souvenirs, and pet collars can be bought, and pets. There's a coffee bar, and a "free desert" thing. Why would I want a huge building with just clothes? or just food? And I've discovered fun/funny things: a golf putting thing in the park, you can ask the Charlatan to teach, and he's quite helpful!

I used a template that came with the game. Then I made some houses, then I made some CAS families, probably around 5 multi-sim families and then a few single sims. I started building community lots for groceries, clothes, restaurants. Then as time went on I got more EPs, added cc - every time I got new genetic styled cc I made a few more sims so they carried those new genetics. I started a custom downtdown when I got NL so they had more places to go to, more community lots to build with that stuff, dating spots etc. Added the pre-made uni hoods, added vacation hoods, started community and home businesses. Added apartments in the downtowns. Looked back on some of my old community lots, bulldozed, and remodeled. Downloaded a bunch of residential houses, remodeled old houses I built. Moved sims around, made a graveyard per each hood and downtown. It's just constantly changing and it's like 14 years old now.

In Tinsel Town, I started with 20 pixels, 10 men and 10 people with randomized everything in CAS. I used a custom map I'd downloaded from somewhere, and decided that it would be a town modeled on people who were all entering Show Business with the object aim of becoming the #1 in the business. That was the general outline-and after 30 years, it's become quite the town, with very interesting storylines.

I think having an connected, integrated neighborhood is pretty fun-with all the households knowing each other, friendships, family relationships are the most important. So that when I go to play, I know the backstory of every single pixel in the town. Letting the pixels decided their fates is more fun to play than deciding it for them. Some of them are very independent minded, and I've learned to not push them to do anything they don't want to do.

As for physical features, having parks, appealing community lots only enhance the town aspect. Most houses have trees, shrubbery and flowers and houses are not cookie-cutter style, either. Variety is a good way to keep boredom from setting in.

1. A map without lots is always my starting point. It may, but does not have to be, a custom one - I prefer those without any decorations, and like them to have no trees at all, but that is not an absolute requirement.
2. I like to build lots myself because I tend to like lots, especially residential lots, to function according to my play style. I like my kitchens roomy with a dining table in it and enough space in a bathroom for toddler potties - my game is blessed/cursed with many twins (I do use some lots by other creators at times). Since I use community lots for skilling (besides fun), I also make them to my own requirements. (I do have, by now, a good number of my own lots in my bin, so that will save me some time when I start a new hood in the future).
3. Sims - I have started from 12 single sims, one for each star sign to 50 families - it depends on what I feel like. 24 pixels, 2 for each star sign, is working well imo.
4. I like to make a family first and then decide on a house for them, but I have done it the other way around once or twice - put down a house and then make a family for that house

I always start in SC4- I love to make worlds! Sims 1 was great but I always wished I could decorate the neighbourhood, and move the houses around, and make my own neighbourhood. Sims 2 gave us that- and with the latest packs I can also sculpt the neighbourhood in-game. So I make a terrain in SC4 and tweak it in Sims 2. The lots are fun to build- I like to make them interesting to look at, but they must be easily playable. I like messing around with the floor elevations but I rarely use split levels for lots I'm playing, as I like to be able to see what all of the sims are doing at once without going up or down levels. Most important is that the lots have to look good from neighbourhood view! I always build everything myself, that's the fun bit.

Sims 3 is lovely for building worlds- absolutely everything is customisable- but it takes sooo long! It took me a good couple of years to build a world, just making a bathroom in Sims 3 takes me ages because of the infinite colour choices. I love it but don't have that kind of time to invest any more. Sims 4 looked promising when it came out, I thought maybe they would let us create little sub-hoods and link them together. But that didn't happen, and they have this strange idea that how many chairs we have on a community lot defines what its purpose is. So Sims 2 still suits me best, it's quick and fun!

I start with a blank terrain like when I used Strangetown's map for my BACC and I'm slwoly building Dodge up starting from a collefction of homesteads to being a farming town and eventually a small town with multiple neighborhoods using subhoods for those.I use my own custom built lots or place one of my custom lots built a long time ago and upgrade it if I don't want to take the time to build from scratch.

When starting out, I typically use world maps uploaded on MtS! I love seeing what beautiful locations people come up with (or are inspired by).

How many Sims I start with is dependent on what my goal for the 'hood is. I've written up a few challenges of my own (that I haven't playtested extensively enough to post anywhere). Often I'll use dice rolls to determine the starting population.

If I'm playing a Build-a-City Challenge 'hood, I strictly start with a single founder Sim. BACCs are my favorite towns to play, and it's rare that I start new 'hoods.

I love playing around in CAS/Bodyshop so all of my townies are custom-made by me. All townies are adults so I don't have to worry about aging them up, and they're basically there to keep the genetic pool diverse. ;P Sometimes I end up with a bin full of townies, because I don't like adding in too many at once but can't stop myself from making more!

Don't believe I've ever had a specific storyline going into a new 'hood. I've had some with light backstories but otherwise I go in fresh. Generally I only focus on one 'hood at a time but once in a while I'll pop into the others if I need a break.

I always start with a theme. Hallowbrook is my first custom hood (updated district) and the original concept was a town of vampires (my next town's theme will be "post-apocalyptic", for example). Thus, I filled the town with vampire references: (almost) all the Sims and buildings are references to vampires in various media forms ranging from literature to video games.

Architecturally speaking, I usually start building a town surrounding one main building - in this case it was the cemetery. Everything else kinda grows from there. I wanted to stay thematically appropriate with the graveyard "district" so I began by building empty lots in that style around it, expanding the area. Then I think about community lots. Like grammapat, I prefer building my own community hangouts. I plan out the essential community lots: where will they eat and do groceries? Where do the townies go during the day? Where do the youth hang out? Where do the sims shop? etc... The houses and community lots always come first even before I've created any sims to occupy them.

Now the Main Street/business district and Seaside district don't technically thematically fit into the whole gothic theme that the town was originally built around but that's a personal decision/experiment, I wanted to have two sides to the town - a cheery district and an old, ancient district.

When it comes to creating the sims, as I've already said, I base them off of characters in fictional works that fit my theme. In this case: vampires. For example: The Voerman Sisters are a pair of influential vampire twins from the video game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines who own a popular nightclub and art gallery. One twin is super serious and runs the business, while the other is super flirtatious and controls the popularity of the club. And voila - now I've already got two sims and two community lots.

I don't tend to have an overarching story for my neighbourhoods, I don't like having "conclusions" to my stories (simply because I don't like things ending) - so I keep the "goals" of the town open-ended. Bob Gray (the evil clown-vampire based on Stephen King's Pennywise from IT) runs a toy shop where he meets children he can later feed on. Therese Voerman focuses on building up her empire and influence while Jeanette seduces every human she meets.

Then I just see where the game takes me from there, adding and remodelling the town as needed.

I don't do anything consistently. A neighborhood starts with a concept; and different concepts have different requirements. Also, the neighborhoods I've started, started at different levels of mastery of the game.

My first real neighborhood, Drama Acres, the concept was that, having gotten the basics down in experimental play in the premade hoods, I would make an experimental scratch hood. Originally I was going to make one adult per aspiration, but by the time I was ready to put the neighborhood together the concept had morphed a bit and I made six core families, each containing a teen (to be sent immediately to University) who would represent an aspiration. I didn't know how to make a map and didn't have or at the time want Sim City 4, so I hunted through the existing terrains to find a map that fit the backstory, slapped SSU and a downtown onto it (I didn't have OFB or BV, so no shopping districts or vacation destinations), built the families, put some into lot bin houses and some into houses I made for them, and got down to it. And it turned out not to be an experimental hood, at all, but a joy and a wonder and an endlessly engaging messy surprise, but that's another story.

The concept for Widespot, based on the creative challenge of creating something that looked and felt like a Maxis BG premade but one planned with the knowledge of mechanics to come, required that I build my own lots and keep everything very empty and basic, but the lots were of secondary importance compared to the families and their interrelationships and drama potential, and the map didn't matter much at all, as long as a highway ran through it. Land Grant University's concept was rooted in my frustration with the premade universities, and absolutely required a custom map and lots that fit the concept. While building I worked out who the characters should be. A BACC neighborhood starts with the challenge rules, which dictates how its built to a certain extent (empty neighborhood etc.), and proceeds with the question, Who do I want to play under these rules? A themed hood requires a different procedure than a challenge hood.

It's important in this game to be flexible.

For me it starts with a song I listen to, which then fleshes out into an idea. After that it's off to the SC4 to create or modify a terrain. I start with a Waffleton grid layout then, as I'm listening to the songs, I make modifications going with the pace of the song until I get a terrain that suits my 2x2, 2x3, and 3x3 lot size preferences. The it's off to the drawing board. I ask myself questions such as "What theme does the song inspire?" and "Would this make for an interesting play session?". Once I have my idea I then do extensive research into the idea, I look at various media that portrays my idea.

When I got the idea for Gotterdammerung I looked into various media that portrayed ill-fated cities, dystopian worlds, and battlegrounds. I looked at dystopia movies, and even WWII. Eventually I decided on going with Norse Mythology's Ragnarok which led me to listen to the Richard Wagner operas. Upon listening to the operas I decided I wanted a two-sides ordeal so I set out to create a creepy Victorian side and a run-down Tudor side of town. Each side effectively fights over being the ruler of the new world as Gotterdammerung is to be the last town on Earth.

With my Nhw-Wr hood it was a much easier process. I had already planned on doing an Egyptian hood but I wanted a twist with it. I decided on going with a "what if Egyptian mythology was still actively ongoing?" I set out to create a big terrain with long streets so I could effectively create what can be considered a mini nation with 5 smaller cities. Each representing and taking inspiration from various sections of real Egypt. Being into Egyptian culture and mythology myself, the idea behind this is to play out a what if scenario.

1. Map: I start with a downloaded map roomy enough to have beach lots, a farming area, a business area and a train as neighbourhood deco. My dream map would also have room for waterfalls. I got SC4 but never succeed in using it.
Since I play generational, I like to have room for families. I tried tiny hoods but I dislike it.
I usually decorate the hood when I feel like it. It's a work in progress since I'd rather play.
2. My playing style is a mash-up of BACC and integrated hood. It begins with a random number of single sims and I see how the hood evolve from there. I dislike planning things ahead.
My current hood started with 12 sims living off the land and having to earn their houses. Houses are made of wood. I'm a terrible builder but I make most of my lots and it shows (boxes of various size ).
The farming families provide food for the entire hood (I play with empty fridges).
3. A good hood is a hood you stick to because of the events happening there. I'm looking forward to discovering what the pixels are up to.
It also must be challenging enough to keep things interesting and nice. I also like how things are intertwined.

- ATM, it's a middle of winter and the farming family sold all their crops. Will some sims die from starving since there is no grocery shop yet? I play my guest house and the fridge here is empty. Will they show up at the takeaway stand?
- Will Frida Phaneuf reopen the restaurant she inherited from her mother? Dates and marriage proposals mostly happen there and now pixels have to be more imaginative or postpone them. As far as Frida is concerned she's more into finding a husband or have a baby. Will her shyness get in the way? On a side note she's in love with somesim who is about to propose to another sim.

Up until now (and this is really embarrassing) I've just used the premade hoods, or "test hoods" and kind of slammed in buildings and deco wherever it fitted my needs without any clear goals other than "get good pictures - somehow!". If it ends up looking decent for pictures, it's mostly because I've treated it as sets I could clutter up as needed, even moving around empty houses just to create some neighbors in proper places (the neighbors around the main house have changed several times - probably from chapter to chapter at times. Hopefully nobody has noticed...)

I do have plans to make a properly decorated story hood at some point, though (working on sorting through my downloads, but that's an eternal project). One with fewer sims and run with empty templates that runs smoothly, so I don't have to deal with a bunch of townies (the original had 1000+ sims and was packed tightly into an already overcrowded original Pleasantview plus a couple test hoods for terrain changes or similar. The story started out as a picture contest back in 07/08 and at that point I didn't have any plans for it to spread so far).

I don't make neighborhoods. My neighborhoods make itselves. I value playing over building and usually start a neighborhood from one corner. Whenever I need new houses or community lots I build or plop them down and neighborhood gets decorated around them. So they are slowly crawling from one corner to another.

I very seldom start a new neighbourhood. In fact, apart from test 'hoods, and Sim-free building 'hoods, I think I've only ever started three. (That's partly because of my odd views on Sims' rights: once I've started a 'hood, I feel I've made a commitment to look after the Sims who live in it.

But, when I do start a 'hood, I start with an idea. (Which might be a lot vaguer than a concept.) I will consider for a while, whether the idea needs a new 'hood, or whether I could do it within an existing 'hood, preferably in Veronaville. Even if my idea requires a new terrain, that can often be achieved by adding a sub-hood to an existing neighbourhood.

If I need to start a new 'hood I will think for a long time about what terrain to use. I'll look carefully at the Maxis terrains, and at ones that creators have shared. And eventually I'll choose one that I think will help me to realise my idea. . .

. . . And then I'll just start. I want to play. I don't want to spend weeks building houses or planning families. I'll make a few Sims in CAS. I'll plonk down a couple of houses and a shop (which may well be Mootilda's minimart). I might add another community lot, such as a swimming pool. If I'm using Maxis bin houses, I'll make a few changes, so they don't look "out of the box".

. . . And then I'll start playing -- with one to three playable households. Which can be anything from single Sims to multi-generational families. And then I'll keep adding more Sims, houses and other lots as they're needed / wanted.

I start with choosing a terrain or installing one if I haven't installed it yet and want to use it for my new town.I choose the town and consider that I'll one day need to start adding districts as the town grows so I don't always have to start with the largest terrain for the main district though it means a shopping district is getting started sooner if the main terrain isn't very big.I'll put down a large community lot and the largest lot size as a residential lot before setting up the rooftops and placing the essential objects.The next step is to create a few couples to be moved in over time.I start with moving one of them in and move onto playing the town as the first couple starts to settle in and build their home while a construction crew camping nearby for the summer is working on getting a building for the service center to move the objects indoors before winter arrives though it's spring when the town starts out.They'll start out lovong off the land as homesteaders and the population gorws very slowly so they won't have kids attending school ot be taking regular jobs for a while except for a few options I allow in the tonw's early days.

I tend to download a sc4 map (currently in the process of setting up SC4 so I can finally edit them to my style!) and build. Build, build, build. I don't like playing as the sims when there is literally nothing around them - I like there to be an established city around them, so there are views and the city looks built up to me. I know that this is really unlike how most people play but I really can't play when the sims are in a lot that is LITERALLY in the middle of nowhere.

Agreed - I love to see my hoods grow, and plop down lots when I need them as well.

@Annaminna -You build towns almost like I do as I've got a Pleasantview Epic Challenge about to be started once I get the community lot set up and place a few basic objects on the homestead which is the residence for the first colonists to arrive.It's taking place in the 17th century and the town is starting off empty and gradually fliining up.

I'm the same. I hate having just a few stray lots on a map, it just isn't pretty to me. I like the ambience of an "existing" town/city, whether there are other sims or just empty buildings and neighbourhood deco. I also (wait for it) hate building with a passion. Nothing ever turns out the way I imagined it and I always end up with buildings of various sized boxes too Essa! I'd rather just plunk in downloaded lots made by someone more talented than me (read: anyone) and have at it.

Well I don't like building or decorating. I build my own boxes because my sims can barely afford the houses out there. I have a few downloaded starters but they're sometimes too small for my taste.
I'm also fine with sims living in the woods. I'm a terrible builder and I deal with it. Enjoying the game is the most important thing to me.

I agree, I need something around my sims to make them feel like they are living in an actual community and while I do enjoy building when the *mood* hits, it's not an always thing. I found downloading lots made by better builders was invaluable for laying out a hood or downtown in the absence of one of my building fevers. Hood deco is also a good stand in at least for down town. It's 14 years in the making but this is how my current and oldest custom down town looks:



It's mix of my own community lots and apartments with downloaded residential, community lots and apartments and cc hood deco

I use pre-made maps, come up with a layout plan, build some of the lots while leaving room for expansion later. My main hood had all the lots planned out in advance. The subhoods, I tend to play it by ear as inspiration strikes. Some parts of my downtown are densely developed and decorated, but I have one section that is wide open with only a few lots because I have plans to build more lots. My downtown residential lots are all only 1 tiles wide, and everything else is apartments and community lots, so it takes awhile to fill the map.

As for sims, I start with families, who have a variety of teens, children, toddlers, so stories can progress quicker, versus starting off my game trying to pair off sims. Sometimes I have plans to pair off teens or kids straight away. Other times, I see what happens as the kids age up or more babies are born. I started a hood with about 12 founding families and haven't needed to enter CAS ever since.

My current efforts at making a neighborhood that I'll actually want to play Sims in are still in the mid-stage of actual building. I started with a heavily altered (to the point where you probably wouldn't have even recognized it unless I pointed it out) map of Desiderata Valley that I carved a river through and cut up into much more dense urban city blocks, and a few winding roads through the subdivisions, and then played around with placement of a lot of the buildings I've already made and uploaded, seeing what would fit best where to start figuring out districts within the city.

At this point that's gone pretty well, the only major building I wanted to include that just doesn't work is my hospital . I've got the beginnings of an industrial and manufacturing district along a portion of the river, a boho-artsy district on one of the peninsulas, a more classic turn-of-the-century upscale neighborhood along one side of central park, a high-tech silicon-valley/cyberpunk district on the other side, and then a more 'normal' modern commercial district on the waterfront, several of which give me good opportunities to actually create a skyline out of the many skyscraper builds I've done. Now I'm going through and working on filling in the gaps that are still left, which in some cases is prompting new projects for upload, and in others is just going to be relatively quick filler facades that I can then gradually fill in once I start to get a better feel for the city as it nears completion.

I still haven't really given much of any thought to the Sims that will eventually inhabit this city beyond wanting them to kind of fit in with the various neighborhoods throughout it, and I'm also quite happy having lots of townies generated, since it's a big city and having my playable Sims know EVERYONE they see on the street would be kind of immersion-breaking. The few times I've actually played the game for any real length of time in the past, I've been happier seeing how the personal interaction side of city life developed on its own, more organically.

I'm honestly still most interested in the building side of this, but building for a city is a different animal than building a freestanding solo building, so it's still an interesting new challenge!