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I’ve gone and made some grad-maps for Sim City 4 for you all to download and enjoy
Before you download I will explain a few things about the process of importing and changing certain characteristics of your Region.
First of all note that regions come in two standard sizes; 15 x 15 squares (961×961px) and 16 x 16 squares (1025 x 1025px).
By ’square’ I refer to the smallest sized area on a region.

When you create a new region in SC4 a new folder appears in your region directory, often located in your My Documents folder if you’ve not moved it.
In that folder you will find a file called ‘config.bmp’, this is the file which determines the segregation of your region.

This is broken down into 3 choices: 1 Red Square = 1 Small area, 1 Green Square = 1 Medium area (2 x 2 Red) and 1 Blue Square = 1 Large area (4 x 4 Red).
This is an SC4 generated map: , and this is a config.bmp I put together: (both shown actual size).
I can’t confirm for certain that specific red/green/blues need to be used, I’ve used lighter shades and had no problems.
Anyways, I tend to settle for 4 x 4 Blue Square as it severely reduces the time it takes to import a grad-map.

So, in order here’s what you do.

1, Either download one of my grad-maps (located at the end of this post), or create a 8bit greyscale .bmp grad-map at either 961px x 961px for 15 Sq or 1025px x 1025px for 16 Sq (white = highest point, black = lowest, about 75% black is water level).
If you’re creating a map in an application which supports grids and guides note that it’s handy to set them to a distance of 64px and work your way from there. If you wish to place rivers in the dead centers of your areas, set your grids/guides to 32px for good measure.
All of my grad-maps are for use with 16 x 16.

2, Open Sim City 4 and create a New Region and call it what you will.

3, Atl+tab back into windows, navigate your way to your regions folder, then change your config.bmp to suit your taste (you don’t have to change your .bmp but if you do make sure you don’t rename it).

4, Alt+tab back into SC4 - and press alt+ctrl+shft+R. By doing so a popup window should appear (if not then just re-select a random area to activate SC4 as the current app.) this will allow you to locate your grad-map (this file can exist anywhere on your network and does not need to be in a specific place).

5, Once you’ve clicked OK SC4 should then proceed to open each and every area, re level it then reward you with what you wanted, a crisp new custom region.
If this does not happen it will be due to your config.bmp saying ‘this area should be this size’ and your grad-map saying back ‘yeah but you don’t fit me’. If you’re lucky SC4 will notify you as to which px x px it wants, so either resize the grad-map or the config.bmp… again I note that if config.bmp is 15×15px then the grad-map should be 961×961px, if the config.bmp is 16×16px then your grad-map should total 1025×1025px.
I repeat this fact so that it will stick in your mind because there’s nothing worse than creating a grad-map, which can be mucho time consuming, only to find that all that fine design and tuning you did doesn’t fit, and yes it DOES MATTER.

So, there you go, some things which may help you import MY maps *ego-trip’d smile*. I hope you enjoy them and make a few of your own.

Note: Click a picture below to get the grad-map then click the ‘Full Size’ option to save.

Note²: Full size versions of these pictures can be found in the Screenshots section under Sim City 4.