How to CONTROL THE SPAWN in Mini Motorways (Blocking strategy)
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- čas přidán 4. 08. 2021
- ► A lot of you guys have been requesting this video. I'll show you how I control the spawn of Mini Motorways by blocking essential parts of the map with spare roads. For all of you who are not into this technique: That's absolutely fine, but it's part of the game so it might be used :)
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#minimotorways #spawn - Hry
Road to 5k starts NOW! Thanks for the support :)
Congrats on the channel success. Keep up the good work.
Congrats! That's the way to go! 1-2 series that people love and off you gooooooo!
Congrats! You definitely deserve the 5k and beyond! Your videos have already helped me to reach new high scores and this one helps even more! Thank you for the awesome content!
One day I see that you only have 1k subs, and I’m a blink of an eye you are already trying to go up to 5k subs!
Thanks :)
Well the way is long. Took me forever to get to 500 for example 😅
I started “city planning” naturally when I played the game and it definitely seems like an intentional mechanic to add much more strategy to the game, after watching your last video I was able to score over 7,000!
Nice one! :)
Pretty late in the game here, but this is definitely true. The developers could easily ban this strategy by allowing spawns on road tiles if no car can access the tile.
I like this video concept. One of the things I'm the worst at is building efficient neighborhoods. A video on how to make bad house spawns work for the late game would be great.
Thanks! I don't know if I'm the right person to teach that since neighbourhoods are the weakest link in my games (:
I think the tips on how to protect through lines in your neighbourhood are a good start for that. Because they can spawn pretty much anywhere you would probably have to do fairly in-depth analysis to figure out any patterns. You can pretty much assume that the first few houses that spawn will form larger neighbourhoods as the game progresses so securing multiple lines out of that area for all the malls that might spawn later is good. I also like to hug mall walls with my roads so that different colour houses can't spawn on the wrong side of the road.
So multiple houses can link to one road, because they start from standstill, try to preserve an expansion route, though that can be tricky in Challenges like the recent Zürich without bridges.
Try and have a collector road leading out of estate, linking roads with Y or T junctions, avoid X/+ and more roads meeting. Remember you may need to supply two dests in different directions. If your houses are a small group 1 spur road joining main road in 1 place keeps main traffic moving better, try Y junctions and consider lights late game to bunch traffic with gaps on mixed roads.
Large estates may justify a link with a roundabout, but watching video of this, often the space can be claimed fine with 2 exit roads.
You want the space so you can utilise idle cars with motorways in emergencies.
Remember 1 house on private road near to a dest suffices for square dests, the standard 2 adds headroom for upgrades. If you add roads, ask where the capacity is coming from, fixing 1 issue may cause another if a dest is robbed of all the nearby cars causing city failure.
Disconnecting houses that spawn in bad places may help traffic flow.
As local housing traffic rarely clogs, you don't need perfect optimal, it's the roads near dests with junctions close together that will back up.
Without the space around dests, you may be forced ro try adding roads but find the cars just jam and fail to arrive in time
@@HYDROPHILPLAYS People would point out errors, good enough supplies the cars!
But really your experience is key, to lay a foundation for max demand.
I try putting your ideas into practice, had decent Challenge scores, but then struggle multiple times with Bogey Beijing, as it insists on distant spawns and tangles, so my journeys are longer than LA and it's hard to have enough motorway
This was really helpful and realising my mistake was trying to spawn proof the whole map which made the spawning crazier
I did the same. Ended up with 6 buildings, but insane demand that I eventually couldn't keep up with.
"You're playing better than me, stop that!"
- People who don't like the blocking
It's not blocking It's right of way managent.
This! Lol exactly. Those people just don’t understand those game mechanics or how to utilize them
I mean I think blocking is kind of cheap and ruins the game to some degree, but you gotta do what you gotta do to get highscores🤷♂️
- game journalists
They even make challenges where blocking is essential and have examples of peoples cities that use blocking posted on their Instagram.
I watched one channel from someone trained in real life road management and he failed to manage any roads - It was his first time playing though so it was more just naivety or clickbait. In real life they would predict where the roads might be needed and how the neighbourhoods should grow so they essentially block out those roads from having buildings put on them.
They could easily implement an update to the game that allowed “malls” to spawn on unattached roads. They could even make the roads glow like houses do when they are unattached - you’d just get the roads back if a Mall spawned on them.
It's also helpful to block any remaining open spots where you want to avoid unmatching colored houses from coming up. When a building spawns, or upgrades, you know that some houses that match that mall color are coming somewhere immediately after that. So, I pause at those moments, and place roads in a solid line around the houses where I don't want anything coming up and messing with my suburbs. Right after the 2 to 4 houses pop, I can remove those lines and use them to connect whatever might have appeared elsewhere on the map. It also helps a ton to leave some small road sections (or connected houses work too) in areas that you don't want anything to spawn on. I sometimes just leave those the entire game to avoid thinking about a certain trouble spot.
There is something I want to test really badly. The difference between 2 of the same color on a road or 2 different. Because the houses get calls if they are the same color you can get a far call from a house you don't want called from. Where if it's a different color you control which houses get calls.
this was exactly what I started wondering after the video. Thanks!
@@theAV8R Yea, but often times a house will still spawn on the end of a section of road overtaking any possible open space. So if you do it this way, you gotta completely fill the spot you're looking at. Single open spots can't be covered by other houses driveways(the one that comes attached) since a new house will just pop right onto it and join up if it's the same color (I think).
@@rrteppo Not following what ur saying. Wut? How do you mean that you control the call from houses if the color is different?
@@nicholaswhorley8343 if you have 3 close houses and 3 far houses. If they are all the same color they can call for the far houses and cause traffic, but if they are different colors they can only call the close houses.
One thing you did but didn't say was: blocking using roads that are only 1 tile long. I assume you know that's the most efficient way to use the roads. (ie. block the most space using the least roads) but some people might not.
Some blocking strategies that you didn't mention are: When a house spawns in an inconvenient spot, pause and block ALL the space around it for 2-3 tiles. This should usually force the game to spawn a new neighbourhood of that color in a different area. Also, near the beginning of the game in particular you can often block every tile of an areas (ie. an island, one side of a river, etc) to force houses and malls to spawn in the same area. Sometimes you can even force houses and malls to spawn very close together using these methods.
I do a lot of the wrapping malls in unused roads. Also like you said getting through neighborhoods. Especially preventing houses from spawning 3 in a line if I might need to get to empty tiles behind them. Also always having a road on the border of the map or 1 away so all tiles are reachable by road. And planning a whole island to be reachable.
A good word for what people are feeling is that controlling the spawn is 'cheesing', not cheating. A strategy within the rules that controls and changes the 'natural' flow of the game.
I can get behind that! But there's definitely terms out there like 'cheating', 'should be banned' or 'illegal' in this context :D
Tried to start blocking spawns before watching this video and your video just help me confirm some thoughts. I would pick up further tips from yours. Thx!!
Incredibly helpful context. Your main goal is to control mall spawns - I wasn't sure whether it was that or generic to also cover house spawns. now I can be a bit more purposeful and strategic as to where I place them. Seems like we might even mbe able to control most mall spawns by always having a space or two available.
Thanks! Well you'll never have enough roads to control the spawn of houses. That's the main reason.
@@HYDROPHILPLAYS There are some tricks to manage house spawns a bit though. One use is when houses are spawning in a small area (an island for example) pre-placing some roads could a) make sure all houses that spawn in that area can be connected b) maximize the number of houses that can spawn in that area (or minimize the needed roads) and c) connect the neighbourhood efficiently (ie. less sharp turns, better intersections, etc.)
Also see my other comment for some more thoughts on house blocking in early game
i don't understand why people are complaining about your method of playing.. it's literally what i'm here for. 🤷♂️
Awesome vid! You've said many times control the spawn, keep the city center open, now I understand what that means/how!
thank you for this!!! every time i see other videos with folks controlling spawn points with roads i wonder "wait but what's the strategy here, where do i put the roads????" so i'm glad you spelled it out for us! very helpful
Pleasure :)
Many thanks for this video. I've had have exactly the mentioned problem and now I'll try to optimice my gameplay with this new information.
You're welcome :)
Yes this was absolutely helpful! I've been following your "main" tips/general strats and managed to get top 5 in Mexico City but I legit spent most of the time blocking off as much as possible. I got lucky that round but I realise your way is the more efficient strat, cause you don't want to block off too much, just the worse ones.
One thing I'd like to see your take on is maybe whether it's worth trying to block the double businesses from ever spawning or not, or maybe just letting one of those spawn... It's so hard to control though.
Thanks! I can't really tell. I usually just let them happen since they offer a lot of parking space as well.
very informativ! and high quality as always!
This was very helpful!
This was very useful, thank you! Your videos are great.
Thanks for the love!
Very Informative!
This was helpful, thanks!
This was really helpful! I tried to block spawns before but I had no idea where to put down the spare roads. Also I could have sworn I had 2 malls spawning right next to each other the other day.
Pleasure :)
I thought it was an unintended technique at first too, but one of the recent daily challenges was one where you had no bridges or motorways and an island, without blocking you'd just get a shop in that island and you'd probably be game over within a couple of days.
I love this game even though it is very simple and i suck at it 😅 cheers, dude!
It's nice simply because it is so simple 😊
This video is very useful for me!! Thanks!!
You're welcome :)
Very nice thanks for the video
Bonus blocking tip:
If a house spawn is terrible (I mean really terrible)
If you pause the game and then circle it with two layers of roads.
The game cannot produce another house of that colour nearby and will then randomly spawn it somewhere else on the map.
This effectively gives you a re-roll at the cost of splitting your colours.
It's a risky strategy because you accept that you aren't going to use the bad house, but it can result in a closer house worth more than two at a distance.
The game has a probability table of which colour it will generate next as well as a preference for location, if you remove the high preference locations then it will be a free roll across the map.
Its funny cause one of the recent daily challenges requires you to control spawns since you only get roundabouts and no bridges are given. If you dont block spawn on the other sid of the river you almost immediately lose.
Yeah I saw that they didn't think of this happening when releasing the challenge :D
you gotta reference this video on your others that mention blocking. This one is great
Thanks a lot!
You can control the mall spawn even more if you block everything you can force the mall to spawn exactly where you want it with the entrance being exactly where you want it!
Not sure if that's a thing by now? Back then it didn't spawn just to spawn. It had somewhat of an area where it could spawn but not more.
I tried the blocking everything strategy very recently and even though I messed it up, the demand wasn't too high, except for that there would be a traffic jam at the mall itself because of how many houses I would have to connect to it
(haven't watched the whole video before asking this question) By the way, I noticed that one can spawn-proof the entire area to the point where only the first factory can spawn. However, the demand for this factory then increases very quickly, to a point where the supply is not enough. I wonder if it is an attempt by developers to penalize the excessive spawn control or just an accidental side effect of other game mechanics 🤔
I would assume so. It is a nice soft nudge by the game mechanics without prohibiting to block with roads. It doesn't tell you how to play the game but it doesn't let you get it stale with one factory and a few houses. Good game design in my book. Considering there is no direct choice for zoning suburbs and factories, like choosing for roundabouts or bridges, I consider it an indirect choice combined from all choices you got. And still managing/zoning with roads is not easy, you still have to balance between managing/zoning and building your infrastructure. In my opinion zoning/managing with street tiles is an inherent part of the tools of this game. Just because it isn't a blatant choice in a menu doesn't mean it isn't a tool.
I suspect it is not explicit penalizing, but rather that the demand of a mall that has yet to spawn is split across all the existing malls.
On the Reddit they have said it was an intentional “bug fix”
I think it's on purpose to prevent what I did in the video with blocking the entire map. Otherwise you couldn't score infinitw points in every round.
The way the game works is that each color slowly ramps up in demand.
At firsts each color will get a pin once every few seconds
Then every second
Then multiple every second
But eventually with a single building the demand will be so great that the parking lot of a single building will not suffice
If you have multiple malls, the demand is spread across each of them so instead of one mall asking for 2 cars a second, 2 malls are each asking for one car a second
even though i don’t have the game i love your videos
Thanks for the love!
Great thank you. I bought a new iPhone and apple gave me Apple Arcade for three months. This is the only game I’ve found that i’m playing every day. I’ll be sad when my three months is up as it’s probably not worth subscribing just for one game.
Will definitly try those to beat my few 3500 records ! Thanks
You're welcome, go for it!
I think blocking strategy is valid, like blocking that mini island in Japan. Although I also think to block everything is cheesing and potentially reduce the game's fun to zero. Still, it is a single player game, play as we want. :)
How it can be cheating if game doesn't restrict this kind of behavior? Only if i could have more roads I could make a beautiful and functional city... Great guide by the way, thanks a lot.
Thanks, I can absolutely agree on that!
Spawn blocking is like combos in Street Fighter 2, denials in DOTA, or rocket jumping in Quake. It's not an intended feature, but the developers left it in because it adds another layer of depth to the game. Now you have to worry about blocking too little or too much, using all your roads effectively, and city planning.
Yeah most important thing is they're stopping blocking everything and cheesing your way to a highscore. With that it's 100% fine imo
Finally, it's a strategy game
You don't need to care about single tile area around shops and houses since overlapping those areas on spawn is prohibited. Also I found that placing cross figures in advance near the lvl 2 malls and high density residential areas is helping a lot to have space for roundabouts later.
I've been doing a little of both. Sometimes I block and others I don't. So for I've been able to hit 4k+ but I'm sure I'll need to learn this meta to get 10k+ and beyond.
Yeah you definitely wanna have some free space as well to work with and to not be overcome by increasing demand.
Good to know
I haven't tried to control the spawning, but I have tried to plan ahead and make road networks that allow for easy expansion, and it really feels like the game knows what I'm doing and intentionally spawns things further away to punish me.
I think it was my second game I managed to get 1490 in LA. Had no idea what I was doing, just plopping down roads in a panic trying to connect places wherever there was space. Every subsequent game has been worse, my best score since I started trying to plan ahead is 990.
It's like the game knows exactly what to do to screw me over. If I have no motorways it puts houses and malls on opposite corners. If I've got no bridges it spawns them on opposite sides of a river. I'm really starting to think my first game only went so well because I didn't have a plan so it didn't know how to screw me.
Cheers bud
I don't mind blocking because I feel as if in an open and solo game like this you should be able to play however you want, but I don't feel like the developers made things unable to spawn on roads for blocking, but instead so the current road networks you built won't get interrupted. Unintended features exist in games all the time and sometimes the players can make the most fun out of them :). I should also not assume the blocking strategy was completely unintentional.
At 4m surely the yellow road to 2nd dest can squeeze on the diagonal, if the blue's road is also put diagonal by its top right corner?
I have nice starts on LA map, keeping the centre partially clear, until I have to delete control roads later to link up a new dest. It definitely needs some practice!
Yeah you don't necessarily have to keep everything clear, but a less crowded centre definitely helps imo.
Cheers!
Hey thank you
What key/mouse button combo are you using to see the red grid overlay? (excuse potential newb question )
There's no such thing as newb questions ✌🏼
It's simply the delete mouse button without moving 😊
Malls will not spawn right next to each other unless otherwise specified (there was a daily challenge like that some day), so it's not necessary to block anything right next to another building.
Houses can spawn right next to malls though right
@@Henry-qt3py Really? Never seen that happen, unless you mean right next to the exit.
That was changed in an update. Still got it in my way of playing from the old days.
@@HYDROPHILPLAYS Yeah, I guess there's no harm in it as long as you got enough roads.
I think in Drawing Deads last video he had two “malls” (or whatever they’re called Down Under) spawn right next to each other. Is that what you mean or did you just mean the entrances?
Back then it would spawn directly next to each other. Didn't happen to me since then so I thought the community might be right...
Thx
As in any game if there is a cheat or even exploit the dev's will sort it. This mechanic of the game has not been changed so it's legit imo.
How random are the spawns between different games? It pretty much always starts the same, and then I kinda lose track and also haven't played that much games. If the spawns are mostly the same maybe if you replay the same map a lot you can make a more specific plan?
It's so random! Feels like a tree diagram that gets more complex with every week passing by.
I think there are some challenges where everyone starts with the same RNG seed meaning you can get the same sequence of pseudo random numbers every time you play the map. On those you could _probably_ get a lot of control over the spawning by playing the map _several_ times and just restarting to change something every time something goes wrong. I'm not completely sure, depends on what the RNG is controlling, if it is just spawns and weekly bonuses it can work but if it includes car movements it would be just too difficult to pull off.
There’s a static probability map which determines:
A) whether houses or malls spawn in a certain tile
B) the probability of them spawning as a weighted value
C) the density or modifier to chance to spawn based on how many buildings are close to the given tile.
So spawns are semi random each map, but the parameters governing spawns are static having been handcrafted for each map.
I watch it even if I dont own this game
Maybe I’m stupid, but how do you play this on a computer? I can only play on my phone and can never see the whole city at once
How do I stop the houses spawning in between my other roads early game? I’m doing the same thing and the malls spawn in the right places but the houses spawn in the holes.
There's hardly a way of controlling the houses since they only need one space. I try to put the roads together so no houses spawn in between. But you can't tell 100%
I just realized! you probably also want to make sure you have a 12x6 slot at any given time for the dual-mall. .. or maybe it's worth avoiding the dual-mall in favour of increased demand? Hmm
Well it's not really in your own hands since a space for a double destination could still be used for a single destination spawn.
@@HYDROPHILPLAYS do you reckon it'
s worth it to block double spawns?
at 4:35 could you not have squeezed in both roads diagonally between the blue and yellow?
On the right side: Yes. But not in the middle or on the left.
Hey can you do another tips and tricks?
Hah that's great, I did that one for today :D
@@HYDROPHILPLAYS thanks i just saw it now
is it able to use roundabout to block the spawn?
Roundabout is road, so a building will not spawn over it.
Yes
Wouldn't it make more sense to move the roads touching the edge of businesses out one square?
It would. Still have this in my way of playing since malls could spawn right next to each other back then.
@@HYDROPHILPLAYS Awesome, love your content.
Are you playing on desktop or tablet?
Desktop. The older videos were on iPad tho :)
This was hugely helpful! I’m determined to beat my boyfriend’s high score 😈 Thanks Phil!
Nice, go for it! 🙌🏼
Boop
HYDROPHILLLLLLLL
I MADE IT BUT ACCIDENTALLY BROKE 1 ROAD
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
THE INFINISCORE
Oh no, that's the worst thing to happen :(
Keep going!
Here I am feeling proud of my 2.5k high score....
Nice one! :)
I watched an interesting video about the development of this game ( czcams.com/video/crxKvSC9cDg/video.html ) - the 'density' on the map is interesting and would affect the strategies around where you might place 'blocking roads'. What are your thoughts?
I THOUGHT MY 2K PINS IN LOS ANGELES WERE GOOD BUT 71K??????
Rather than blocking, call it zoning. In real cities, you want your malls, box stores, factories, etc. clumped together on arterial roads (often four lane) and highways. Seventy plus years ago, it would be downtown with all the multi-story commercial buildings jammed together. Cities can also use eminent domain to repurpose property.
The game is not 'real' in any meaningful sense. Those cars should be stopping at those T-intersections not to mention the commercial areas would be swarming with pedestrians. Mini motorways life is a libertarian nightmare. The city provides no utilities or emergency services since transportation takes up 99% of the municipal budget.
The unfortunate part is they cannot fix this now as it will impact the high scores. They should have ignored unconnected roads or roads with nothing attached etc.
They can and they will. At some point the leaderboard will have a reset I'm sure.
@@HYDROPHILPLAYS but as you say it has been two years, I think you are right and they won't address it/it isn't cheating.
The reality is that you are just zoning land like happens in any urban area
blocking is not cheting but i feel it's an exploit, i hope the devs find a way to patch it out
it adds extra skill and strategy in a non-intrusive way
I don't get it, isn't the fun part actually getting bad spawns and fixing the issue and isn't that the challenge?
Yeah, manipulating spawns is great but that's basically sim city? That game already exist.
please use night mode, my eyes hurt so much i'm sorry
you dont have to start every video with saying “this is not cheating”, it makes you sound like you’re cheating
Gotta say this until the same old comments under every new video are gone (:
I wish high scores would be divided into "used spawn blocking" and "non-cheaters" 😜
The developers need to patch that. If it’s not connecting to a road that is connected to a supermarket, the game shouldn’t allow you to do that.
This needs to be patched
I guess it won't since this has been a thing for two years of the game existing.
PLS put your facecam somewhere in the water
You didn't miss anything in that corner tho :)
@@HYDROPHILPLAYS but my inner monk is screaming