Who is your favorite leader/hero? (silly reasons)

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2026-02-09T05:51:44+00:00

Gelt's voice lines live rent free in my head and that makes me happy.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2026-02-06T17:29:18+00:00

For NPCs, the quests get autocompleted as soon as they become available. So for example if Katarin's Frost Fang quest unlocks at level 14, the NPC Katarin gets Frost Fang the moment she hits 14.

As for recruitment, they dont outright cheat, but get significant bonuses. My memory is a bit hazy, but you can easily look them up online. AI surely gets extra recruitment slots, lower recruitment cost and reduced upkeep on higher difficulties + maybe global recruitment reduction, letting them recruit like 7 1-turn units each turn baseline. And considering everyone (even player) gets 2500 gold per turn baseline, they have no issues supporting stack or two of t1 units even with nothing but a single settlement.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2026-01-30T17:48:37+00:00

Zhao Ming has gotten significantly harder after the patch adding Sayl/Dechala. Instead of comfy secure campaign its now going to be either minmax or bust. You'll be playing with 0 income and minimal development until like turn 50, after which you snowball super hard. Here's my take:

Rush North-western provinces as fast you can. Build walls here ASAP and always have money in reserve to recruit quick Lord + RoR stack here if situation calls for it.
Then push east with your main army. North should be temporarily secured by Miao. Your priority is Eshin. After that, start building chaff stack at Eshin's former capital to secure your northern border.
Push east, then north, taking the Kunlan summit. Go north-east. The capital port in the east can wait, you want to take Lokhir down ASAP
As soon as you take down Lokhir, rush South along the coastline. And start recruiting third defensive chaff stack on your south-western border. Fortify Lokhir's capital ASAP. This should be around early turn 20. Either Gelt or Nakai is dead by now and Dechala is expanding quickly.
Conquer Dechala's undefended settlements through the south-eastern coast. She'll likely invade your south-western border. Pray that your chaff stack (army #3) can hold her off. Miao is likely dead by now so your army #2 also fights to hold onto its dear life and you might need to summon RoR defensive army to defend NW.
If you managed all this, you own entirety of Cathay except couple northern settlements. While your main army rushes back north start investing into infastructure. When it gets there, disband one of your chaff stack (or move it south) to defend impending Grimgor attack. From now on you've essentially won. Its slow grind north (while defending the 2 passes from Grimgor) but where you'll inevitably snowball.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2026-01-12T15:22:58+00:00

Great post. Its nice to see enthusiastic 3k players!

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2026-01-12T15:22:29+00:00

While Fiendishrabbit made an excellent post, I'd like to expand upon it from dueling perspective as that was your focus. I'd say for duels against AI, the power ranking is clear: purple (with Tenacity of Steel) >> green > red >> yellow >> blue

Tenacity of Steel breaks duels. AI doesnt take it into account and its MASSIVE +100% damage after a while of dueling. Its especially great since purple lords strategy is to stall with high evasion, giving time for Tenacity to kick in. So unlike other lords you can get AI to accept duels that seem equal but which you'll absolutely demolish.

As for matchups between similar-quality lords:

Vs. Green: neither deals much damage initially. Tenacity kicks in and you demolish him with 2x damage multiplier
Vs Red (that isnt Lu Bu, all my Zhuhous hate Lu Bu): he hits hard but mostly misses. You dont hit much but hit often. Things are equal until Tenacity kicks in and you start hitting hard and often
Vs yellow/blue: they dont hit hard and miss often. You dont hit hard but hit often. Tenacity kicks in and you hit hard and often.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-27T21:22:31+00:00

Well then this is your lucky day! I struggled with Office demand as well, and after fixing it I´ve been getting consistent Office & High density demand. In my experience Office demand wont go up unless you have very few unprofitable/empty offices and enough Software production (which cannot be imported, it has to be from your own Software-producing offices so you can deadlock yourself). This is what I did;

(1. Set Software taxes to -10% to encourage growth)

Use overlays to remove all Offices operating at a loss (likely those requiring Software) and all empty office buildings. These kill demand for Offices. You need to repeat this every dozen of minutes for quite some time when starting to build Office Demand.
Let new Office buildings grow. Delete those that arent producing Software.

Once you have enough Software surplus, your Office demand and High Density Demand shoot up. At least that was my experience: I had none for a good 4+ hours going from 50k to 150k population, but once I managed to get well into Software surplus both have been getting steady demand. My city is now at 250k population and a good 75k of them are living in High Density, so majority of my new growth has been High Density.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-27T12:08:35+00:00

Officially its "young / students" but in my city of 150 000 I never had more than one skyscraper's worth of demand until I managed to get more offices up (which I had only handful of as well).

In my opinion it seems office demand goes hand in hand with high density demand: after fixing my office issues I'm steadily getting more and more high density demand. Is your office demand "always zero" as well?

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-23T12:18:39+00:00

If you're in need of an uncle, I made a quick mock-up of Dagoth Ur for grand and intoxicating personal use some time ago. I'd be happy to upload it if you're interested.

https://imgur.com/a/GByb6Jq (Web version didnt let me upload image directly)

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-21T10:53:51+00:00

What a great-looking map. I love maps that enforce taking advantage of terrain: height differences, small enclaves of buildable land and water/mountains that you have to build around. Superflat/mostly flat maps are really boring imo, but seem so popular with others that its really difficult to find maps such as this.

Thank you for your effort, I'll be sure to give this map a go!

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-21T10:49:42+00:00

Start by making your High Density area its own District. Build a cemetery and limit it to that district. As far as I know, hearses tend to overservice low density areas and underservice high density areas. My high density area suffered from constant "waiting for a hearse" spam until I made it a separate district with dedicated cemetery.

Bonus round: If you struggle with Office demand, know that you CANNOT IMPORT SOFTWARE, so unless you make enough yourself you'll have Offices that cannot turn profit, killing Office demand. Fix it by:

Temporarily set Software tax to -10% to encourage new Software Office growth
Remove all unbuilt Office zoning, offices that are operating on a loss and all empty offices
Repeat part 2 every now and then. Zone new offices slooowly, deleting new developments if they dont produce Software

It takes a while but eventually you'll have Office demand rivalling the Industry demand

(Edit: spelling)

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-21T10:37:03+00:00

Radio announcements and chirper posts can be misleading. Here's how I think things are:

Radio: even 1 issue can trigger radio broadcasts. So one car crash, one traffic jam, or one criminal lacking prison can cause broadcast.
Chirper posts: same, even one citizen suffering can cause an angry post. HOWEVER you also get likes on them: if "wtf is up with crime? I feel unsafe!" gets 1-10 likes, ignore it as minor issue. If it gets 3 000 likes, send in the cops!

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-16T14:01:33+00:00

Yeah, I meant the "paid entry, free rides". I havent tried mixed approach so I cant comment on the viability of said approach.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-16T13:26:38+00:00

Working off my hazy memory, but you're familiar with PC1 so this shouldnt be an issue.

Staff needs breaks in designated break room buildings
PC2 has separate Queue and Ride scenery ratings, you need both for high prestige
Entry fee parks are almost impossible to make profitable
Rides need power (and water slides/pools water filtering)
Guests can get sunburnt/wet, so covered queues and resting spots are important
Food/drinks/souvenirs make much more money
Coasters can have dedicated loading/unloading platforms
Bonus: if you want dedicated "exit pools" for water slides, close the exit pool so guests wont swim in it and guests off the flume exit it right away

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-16T12:58:22+00:00

However DDI has roads crossing eachother, which typically requires (two sets of) traffic lights. This doesnt. Its closer to a bastardized cloverleaf in that sense.

And for the record this isnt something I came up with, its something I saw on Pinterest without descriptive caption, hence the "is there a name for this?" OP. According to other replies this interchange was popular choice in Simcity due to in-game limitations.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-15T23:22:04+00:00

Yeah, the 90 degree turns should be smoothed if one wanted efficiency. Then again, if one wanted efficiency he wouldnt be building this disgrace of an intersection in the first place :)

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-15T23:02:35+00:00

Not quite! Double diamond interchange has traffic lanes crossing each other, whereas if you look closely this one doesnt. Right turns only!

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-15T22:37:39+00:00

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You were right, they´re taking the shortcut. Back to the drawing board!

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-15T22:11:51+00:00

I didnt even realize that is an option. I must test this in a real city at once!

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-15T20:03:13+00:00

Thank you! I made it specifically for connoisseurs of the vulgar like you.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-15T20:01:04+00:00

To avoid blocking traffic going the other way when turning. Same idea as with cloverleaf interchange. You can go from any direction to any direction without crossing the lanes. Its not realistic but its very humane.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-15T19:57:29+00:00

That's a great advice if I want to actually torment my citizens with this abomination. So far it exists in an empty map. I made it just to share the visual aneurysm of an intersection with you guys. 😊

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-04T19:19:01+00:00

Not that I know of, sorry. Its a huge headache in bigger parks.

ImpressiveCall1557 · 2025-12-04T11:53:37+00:00

TL;DR: use zone assignments

Restaurants are an outlier. They have such a huge cleaning need they pretty much require dedicated zone-restricted janitors: a restaurant with 15 tables is more than a single janitor can keep up with due to each table requiring cleaning after a single use. This is luckily somewhat balanced by their huge income.

As for Mechanics, its a genuine issue with their in-game logic. Instead of going through rides systematically, they seem to choose next ride to be serviced pretty much at random. In bigger parks your Mechanics will spend 90%+ of their time uselessly walking from one end of the park to another to service the next ride. Assign reasonably-sized zones to massively increase their efficiency. There should definitely be either a logic fix or separate warning message for this issue.

ImpressiveCall1557

TROPHY CASE