Colossus Addon Mod

The Colossus Addon Mod (CAM) is a plugin for SimCity 4 that changes the game by adding additional growth stages to all of the development types found in the game.

CAM Developers

People credited with aiding the development of CAM include (in the order acknowledged in the Manual):

• Indisguise
• BarbyW
• Wouanagaine
• JMyers2043
• Shoreman905
• Rayden
• MAS71
• Jplumbley
• Andreas
• Callagrafx
• Tropod
• RippleJet
• Tag one

Early Development

Inspired by this post from Tropod at Simtropolis in 2005, RippleJet began testing what would become CAM, first posting his findings at BSC's private site before making them public. These posts can be found here.

How CAM Affects the Game

Development of growable (RCI) lots in SimCity 4 is based on a property called growth stage. In SimCity 4 (Vanilla and Rush Hour) residential and commercial lots are available in growth stages 1 through 8, while industrial (including agricultural) lots grow in stages 1 through 3.

The Colossus Addon Mod extends these growth stages to:

• Residential: 1 through 15 (9 through 15 are exclusive to CAM)
• Commercial: 1 through 15 (9 through 15 are exclusive to CAM)
• Industrial: 1 through 10 (4 through 10 are exclusive to CAM)
• Agricultural: 1 through 7 (4 through 7 are exclusive to CAM)

Summarized in a table:

Type	Residential	Commercial	Industrial	Agricultural
	(R$, R$$, R$$$)	(C$, C$$, C$$$)	(I-D, I-M, I-HT)	(I-R)
SC4:	1-8	1-8	1-3	1-3
SC4+CAM:	1-15	1-15	1-10	1-7

This might sound like CAM merely allows for additional buildings in the game - which it does. However, CAM does not simply append to the relevant exemplars the ability to use higher growth stages, it completely replaces the growth tables. What this means is that CAM completely rewrites how cities and regions grow. The effect this has on the game is commonly referred to as being more realistic, in that cities are required to build out before building up more so than in the unmodified version of the game. Additionally, CAM has the effect of creating a more even distribution of growth stages present at any given time.

CAM also revises the RCI Demand Ranges. Because CAM allows for much higher growth stages, and thus much higher populations, the game default of +/- 6,000 is insufficient.

Another impact of CAM is to revise what wealth levels of sims work in what wealth levels of jobs, particularly allowing for some portion of R$$ sims to be employed in CS$, I-D, and I-R jobs.

CAM also changes Workforce Drives, Development CAPs, Desirability, Crime Attenuation, and a fix for the Grand Railroad Station. More information about these can be found in the CAM Manual.

Sources

• CAM Board at SC4D [1]
• CAM Manual 1.0 [2]
• Posts donated by xxdita