Supported
About This File
Give yourself much more mayoral control.
In our 5th official CoriBoom™ release to the STEX, @CorinaMarie and I are proud to finally present a mini (yet magnificent) mod which allows much finer control of city simulation growth:
NKO
This mod grants the flexibility to have all 3 wealth levels (low, medium, high) coexist in any given location, without the higher wealths gobbling up the lower ones. This is a vast improvement over the default game setting, where the two lowest wealths can upgrade to a higher wealth. While this behaviour is desirable in certain situations, it forces you (the mayor) to mark lots as historical as a preventative measure. This can be a tedious process which soon becomes a boring chore. (Like washing dishes.)
The default automatic upgrades are a common cause of population instability and a major factor causing the dreaded no job zots. In regular gameplay, a higher wealth and stage often takes over before the conditions are suitable. NKO fixes the method which the SC4 simulation uses. By doing so, the control is now at your fingertips to decide when a wealth level should be allowed to upgrade and replace a lower wealth.
For example with houses, it means R$ can coexist within an area containing R$$ homes, and even R$$$ mansions too! There's no need to mark each as historical for preventing them from being destroyed and replaced with higher wealth. This finer control means there's significantly less micro management involved to ensure RCI growth sustainability.
Then if one wishes, the bulldozing tool is useful for giving the green light for a higher wealth to take its place. At this point, certain zones will reassess and grow what the simulation deems as appropriate (based on the RCI demand and local desirability factors).
What does "Kickout" mean?
The standard SC4 growth simulation automatically allows lower wealths to be replaced by higher wealth levels. This means they can be taken over and redeveloped by a higher wealth at any time the game decides. When this happens, the process of such is described as "kicking out" the lower wealth level.
What NKO does is prevent this from happening by setting a Boolean False toggle.
In the exemplar property:
Tract Developer Kick Out Lower Wealth
Name Value:
0x47E2C540
Does NKO prevent higher wealth ever growing?
No, not at all. Any new zone will develop just as before based on economic conditions in your city. And you now have the choice of when any given grown lot should be allowed to redevelop.
Tax rates can be adjusted accordingly to encourage the development of certain RCI types. This is related to the methods explained in Cori's Residential Revamping tutorial. Then should one later wish to upgrade an area, it's possible to selectively bulldoze. At that point, it provides higher wealths an opportunity to reconsider and grow in place when they're able.
As a result, it gives you (as mayor) the ability to decide if you wish to grow something else instead.
Power of the Bulldozer
Via the bulldozer tool, it gives us an expansive freedom to develop RCI how we wish to. NKO isn't a restrictive mod, but a revision of the simulation and this puts the city design decisions in our own hands.
The bulldozer is our friend for this very reason. It means how if wanting to redevelop areas to higher capacity, then using the tool makes way to allow R$$ or even R$$$ buildings too, because then the demand and desirability decides. This applies to residential, commercial and industrial inclusive.
For residential and if wanting R$ to stay, then they will do. This could be useful for maintaining a lower wealth area of housing. However, once bulldozing to bare zoning and it's a free for all again. 
Completely CAMpatible
NKO is fully compatible with the CAM too.
By comparing the properties in the exemplar which NKO uses too, we've made sure that the same properties are added along with the setting toggled to prevent lower wealths being kicked out. Just makes sure NKO loads after CAM does, so that way it'll be applied.
A Couple of Things
Thing #1
NKO works very well combined alongside @Bones1's Less Abandonment mod.
This is recommended when CAM is not installed. (Which has its own version of Less Abandonment built in.)
What the "Less Abandonment" mod does is make sure the city is ready for RCI development when the demand for growth is much more likely to be sustainable.
As such it fits along well in harmony with what NKO does. It sets the threshold higher for when buildings will grow, which means they're more likely to stick around once they do sprout.
Thing #2
A caveat you should be aware of:
NKO does not prevent buildings from upgrading within their own wealth class.
This means if you have some lower capacity building you want to keep for aesthetic reasons, you'll still need to click the historical option for it.
It is rarer for this to happen in a stable city, but it does occur and well worth being mindful of.
Complete NKO Overview
To learn more of the advantages to using NKO, see the following thread we made:
It contains picture previews to show the real benefits of what NKO provides. Also this doubles up as the official Support Thread if you've any comments or questions we can answer.
Replying to the Comments section here on the file entry is fine too if you'd prefer.
Installation
This mod uses the standard process of installing SC4 content.
Copy the Cori's_No_Kickout_Lower_Wealth_CAMpatible.dat file into your Plugins folder.
If using the CAM, make sure NKO loads after it since the exemplar is the same. To make sure, a good idea is to place NKO directly inside the same folder CAM is installed to.
One way is to place our file in this folder:
Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins\a_CAM\a_Core
Or as one of the resident experts @twalsh102 posted in our thread:
On 8/28/2020 at 6:59 AM, twalsh102 said:By default, all CAM files are installed in a folder titled a__CAM. As long as you put Cori's mod in a folder that comes alphabetically after the CAM folder, it will load after CAM.
So I would just create a folder with the same name as Cori's mod, and place the .dat file in that folder. If you just took that dat file and placed it as is at the root of your Plugins folder (not inside any other folder), it would install before CAM.
That way it'll make certain the loading order is correct.
We hope you enjoy using NKO in your cities!
// CoriBoom™ Productions Release \\
Cori's No Kickout Lower Wealth Mod v1.0 — (02 Jan 2021)
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