Maximizing Residential Population

[tunheim 0]

Mission

The goal of this experiment is to maximize the residential population of a city. This assumes no cheats or mods. Only Sim City 4 Deluxe / Rush Hour patched with the latest patch (currently build 638). The game is played at hard level.

Method

Here are some of the more obvious thoughts on how to accomplish this

• As many services as possible must be situated in the neighbouring cities
• Commercial and industrial zones will be in neighbouring cities
• All zoning, which will be residential,  will be high density
• All residents will be §, since that gives the highest density
• Subway will be the mode of transportation, as it is the most area efficient
• This won't be a place you'd like to live. Public facilities will be cut to a minimum to save space.

I'm not sure how to practically implement this, but here are some ideas.

In order to have complete control of the traffic flow, I'd like to build the city as isolated neighbourhoods only connected by subways. This also reduce the space lost to roads. The building of choice would be the «Project Feelgood». This is the highest population density building I've seen. It's a 3×3 structure with around 2500 residents and 1000 commuters. My neighbourhood would be a 7×7 block cramming three of these buildings in around a subway stations. The remaining 15 squares would be used for other necessary city improvements. See figure below.

RRRXXXX

RRRXXXX

RRRXXXX

SSSUSSS

RRRXRRR

RRRXRRR

RRRXRRR

A possible 7×7 block.  Residential, Street, sUbway station, X = unknown.

A large city consists of 256×256 squares. Allowing some room for error, this gives us room for around 1000 7×7-neighbourhoods. Giving us a total of 3 million commuters and 7.5 million inhabitants. Each subway station is dimensioned for 2000 commuters, but I've seen up to 3000. 3000 would fit with the 1000 commuters coming from each of the three buildings in the 7-block.

The traffic congestion of a subway line runs yellow at 2500, orange at 4000 and red at 4500, although I've seen up to 7400. However, some of the commuters will have to travel almost from the center of the map, so it will be advantageous to reduce commuting times as much as possible. This leads to having one separate subway line for each block. This means 1000 subway lines. A large city has 1024 possible exit squares, so this fits nicely.

Moot

Here are some ideas why it might go wrong

• Can high-density buildings be «forced» by simultaneously having a limited supply and high demand for residential areas.
• Will residents to commuters always stay at a 5:2 ratio?
• Can part of a residental building be without road access? 1/3? 2/3?
• What are the economics of running a city literaly undermined with subway tunnels?
• What problems will arise when there is no road access due to isolated neighbourhoods? U-drive-it missions might prove difficult  

Mhmmm...

I would greatly appreciate any and all feedback on this. Especially my interpretation of the game mechanics.

This thread is a continuation of the one at https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=23&threadid=77092

Also, can someone tell me how to get my bullet list to show<

[Sam 163]

This sounds like a very interesting experiment. Good luck with it. One suggestion for the residents in the centre of the city might be to have one or more dedicated subways which go straight out of the city with no stops on the middle or outer edges. This might improve commute time for them.

[cogeo 960]

If you want to pack as many sims as possible in an area as small as possible you should zone for lots sized 4x4 and 4x3 (not 3x4) instead of 3x3. The largest buildings come in 4x4 and 4x3 lots (just have a look at the lot editor and SC4Tool). You may also consider using custom buildings from the STEX, there are various sizes like 5x3.

Some parks can keep desirability at decent levels so that you don't face dilapidation problems.

Road top busstops and subways can also save some space, and they can prove useful after your lots have been developed.

You will need an elementary school (preferably the large one) and hospital even for these ugly large tennements to develop; desiability should not be too low even for tennements. You can set bus and ambulance funding to zero (this will save you a lot of cash), the coverage radius is still large enough.

[Gridlock 9]

Hey cool experiment ,but without mods or cheats the people at the centre of the map will NOT find jobs or if they do the commute will be to long they will abondon for sure,i know this through my cj i tryed to zone resi in the centre of Dallas,and was forced to place Coms instead as the residents towards the centre could not find work . Wallace Manors are the densest 3x3 and Simnation highrise the densest 4x4 , 4x4 Sc4 R$$ towers arent as dense as the 3x3 s . A 1000 7x7 blocks full of wallace manors would give you a pop of around 14.8 million . Id guess to achieve this your gonna need a region with at least 6-7 million HT industrial jobs to get enough Co$$+$$$ demand to create your city . Good luck could take a while so dont give up.

[TinySim 4]

If you want to pack as many sims as possible in an area as small as possible you should zone for lots sized 4x4 and 4x3 (not 3x4) instead of 3x3. The largest buildings come in 4x4 and 4x3 lots (just have a look at the lot editor and SC4Tool). You may also consider using custom buildings from the STEX, there are various sizes like 5x3. quote>

Yes, I remember the first 80k+ city I built, I was shocked by a project building (can't remember the name) with 8000 residents! It waas 4 by 4, so that would probably be the best lot size. And, as far as I know, only one tile of road needs to touch the lot for it to develop.

[shivsood 5]

sounds fun! i cant wait to see pics!

[tunheim 0]

Originally posted by: sam One suggestion for the residents in the centre of the city might be to have one or more dedicated subways which go straight out of the city with no stops on the middle or outer edges. quote>

Sounds like a good idea. I might be giving every subway station a dedicated line.

Originally posted by: cogeo If you want to pack as many sims as possible in an area as small as possible you should zone for lots sized 4x4 and 4x3 (not 3x4) instead of 3x3. The largest buildings come in 4x4 and 4x3 lots (just have a look at the lot editor and SC4Tool). You may also consider using custom buildings from the STEX, there are various sizes like 5x3.

Some parks can keep desirability at decent levels so that you don't face dilapidation problems.

Road top busstops and subways can also save some space, and they can prove useful after your lots have been developed.

You will need an elementary school (preferably the large one) and hospital even for these ugly large tennements to develop; desiability should not be too low even for tennements. You can set bus and ambulance funding to zero (this will save you a lot of cash), the coverage radius is still large enough.

quote>

1. Where can you see the lot size in SC4Tool?

2. When you say 4×3 instead of 3×4 I assume you mean 4 in the road-facing direction?

3. The whole topic of lot-sizes is confusing me a little. The same buildings seem to sometimes occupy different sized lots. Sometimes within the same city. And they have different capacities dependent on the lot size thay occupy. Is there any pattern to this?
4. Dilapidation - Is that the phenomena when loads of poor people move into your expensive buildings?

5. Do you have any more in-depth advice on the topic of "giving just the right amount of services to make high density R§ to develop"?
6. The road top subway is very tempting. But since it contradicts with my initial statements I'll have to pass on the custom lots.

Originally posted by: Gridlock Hey cool experiment ,but without mods or cheats the people at the centre of the map will NOT find jobs or if they do the commute will be to long they will abondon for sure,i know this through my cj i tryed to zone resi in the centre of Dallas,and was forced to place Coms instead as the residents towards the centre could not find work . quote>

Are you sure this wasn't due to a faulty transportation network? I tried running a subway line from the middle of a large city to the middle of a bordering large city. My commute time averaged at around 75 minutes.

[soldyne 111]

I think I can answer a few of the questions:

1: open the lot editor and pick a building. you will see the lot size instantly in the pic on the right. you will also see the facing of the building as it will show where the road will be when the lot grows.
2: generally the first number in #x# is the number of tiles facing the road.
3: yes there are many different ways a building can grow and the general correlation is that large lot size = larger capacity, but that is not always true for all buildings.
4: yes, dilapidation is when a building becomes inhabited by lower class sims. dilapidation can also be a precursor to abandonment.
5: I actually dont have alot of experience with high density. most of my building career has been with suburbs and rural areas. But i can say that R$ are very easy to make happy. they dont need a lot of services and very little desirability to make them happy. I have a medium sized tile in my CJ with over 150k R$ sims, they have no schools or police at all but do have hospitals and fire service. If you place hospitals then you might want to consider cutting funding of the ambulance service to 0 to save money.
6: that is a good choice to stick with your initial rules, it makes for a good experiment i think.

some suggestions:
try to make your city full of highrise R$$$ as much as possible and then let them abandon and get refilled with R$, this may give a huge boost to overall population. not sure if it is feasable or even possible though.

If you dont care about the realism of the city the layout can be such that you force all residence to take the subway with the following layout:

    RRRR
    RRRR
    RRRR
RRRRRRRR
RRRRrrrRRRR
RRRRrsrRRRR
RRRRrrrRRRR
   RRRRRRRR
   RRRR
   RRRR
   RRRR

Each 4x4 lot can be created using the CTRL key and will face a 3x3 road which surrounds a subway.  A lot does not need to have its entire side facing a road, it only needs one front tile to be on a road for it to build.  I do this all the time in my industrial areas.

the road goes no where and is only there to allow the building of the residential lots.  this will force all sims to take the subway.  this pattern can be repeated as needed.  garbage will still be picked up as long as you have a road connection to the facitility.  fire coverage may be a problem though, but I think you can sacrifice one or two buildings for a station here and there.

If you would like a better pic of the above design let me know and I will work one out in SC and post it for you.

good luck.

[mightygoose 92]

i know a japanese bat that is 4x4 with 8590 R$$ residents...

[tankmank 853]

sounds intresting could work

[natedoggg 0]

wow great !

[tunheim 0]

Originally posted by: soldyne

1: open the lot editor and pick a building. you will see the lot size instantly in the pic on the right. you will also see the facing of the building as it will show where the road will be when the lot grows.

3: yes there are many different ways a building can grow and the general correlation is that large lot size = larger capacity, but that is not always true for all buildings.

try to make your city full of highrise R$$$ as much as possible and then let them abandon and get refilled with R$, (...)

(...) the layout can be such that you force all residence to take the subway (...) quote>

1. *blush* I've actually never used the lot editor. I'll be back when I've played with it a little.

3. So after playing around with the lot editor and sc4tool I still don't fully understand building growth and lot sizes. What is the largest size? 4×4? 6×6? And is it so that any arbitrary building occupying x×y squares can, given the right circumstances, occupy x×(y+1) squares? Because, as previously mentioned, it confuses me how buildings with identical names can occupy different sized lots.

7. Yes, this could be a way of making the city extremely dense. However, would it be a stable solution?

8. This is my current configuration. I'll play around with some different ones.

RRRR RRRR

RRRR RRRR

RRRR RRRR

RRRR RRRR

ssssSssss

RRRR RRRR

RRRR RRRR

RRRR RRRR

RRRR RRRR

s - street, S - subway

PS. I just have to say I'm really grateful for the feedback here. I just recently picked up my old copy of SimCity 4 and I've learned so much more after I joined Simtropolis. My only regret is not joining earlier.

[tunheim 0]

Update

As previously hinted at I'm working on a small sized city for speed reasons. I've also decided to include modds to make the testing easier. This means I'm now playing with multiple informational modds (modds that make no alteration to game mechanics) and one money cheat.

Square-density

My main focus now is increasing the square-density. (Square-density) = (city population) / (zoned residential squares). Write (pop/sq) for short. As far as I can judge the theoretical maximum would be around 1300 using exclusively Ong Condos populated by R§.Currently my square-density is around 315, but I'd like to increase it to over 330.

I'm looking at different strategies to achieve this. Currently I'm using no schools (except museum) and no hospitals since they cost too much for such a high population. Also I'm working on strategies on how to attract R§§§ to build buildings and then have R§ take them over. One way to do this might be to have high R§§§ demand (low taxes, many §§§-jobs) but at the same time make sure the §§§-jobs are just outside of commuter distance. Thus the R§§§ lots will be taken over by R§. Well, that's the plan. I'm working on ways to test this out.

What is the highest square-density anyone has achieved over a larger area?

Zone-density

Second to increasing the square -density is increasing the zone-density. This is where this experiments without road connection supposedly has it's strengths. My current superblock setup is as follows

pppprrrrrrrrp

rrrRrrrrrrrrp

rrrRrrrrrrrrp

rrrRRRRRRRRRp

rrrRssSssRrrr

pRRRRRRRRRrrr

prrrrrrrrRrrr

prrrrrrrrRrrr

prrrrrrrrpppp

p = Skateboard Park

r = High Density Residential Zone

R = High Density Residential Zone facing road

s = Street

S = Subway Station

The Skateboard Park is chosen since it's the most area effective non-reward residential cap increaser. Each park raises 4000, giving the superblock a max population of 8 × 4000 = 32 000. This means 5333 in each4×4-lot or 333 pop/sq.

The superblock is 13 × 9 = 117 squares. Out of those 4 × 4 × 6 = 96 are residential zones. Giving the superblock a zone density of 82%.

City population estimate

For a small city this would give a population around 64 × 64 × 333 × 82% = 1118454. However this doesn not take into consideration the space lost on police, jail, fire and city edges where the superblock won't fit. It also diregards the space savings possible from using rewards instead of Skateboard Parks.

Has anyone ever gotten over a million in a small city?

But most importantly: I've no idea if the commuting will work. I've never ever squeezed that many people trough the same subway station. 

[IGGYMAN 101 1]

On the large size map, I will get over 2 million residents as a result of fall down on demand. What should modding to do on the residential population? Thanks..

[tunheim 0]

Originally posted by: IGGYMAN 101 What should modding to do on the residential population? Thanks..quote>

 

I'm not sure. But there are all kinds of modds you can use to make the game easier, and I'd like to avoid them.

[Bones1 96]

Tunheim, your analysis sounds good. However, the theoretical population max would never be reached in practice, because the simulator restricts stage 8 buildings to about 20% of the total building count. So, you could never get an "all Ong Condos" city without resorting to cheat mods.

I think your aim of about 1.1 million is likely nearing the practical maximum.

(Another poster recently claimed a higher pop, but when asked for proof they said their hard-drive crashed. So, I'm very skeptical of that claim. Your method of experimentation should be able to determine the real maximum, and put this speculation to rest once and for all. Please keep us up to date on how it's going.)

[Tolomar 5]

stop by chat sometime...see if I can send ya a city with the Doozer grid...fairly close to yours...but a little bit of difference here and there in my grid pattern...you might find it interesting....and a great help...I've done quite a few population experiments...as I personellyy play for the big buildings...

it's a 9x9 grid system ...sort of need a little space beteween builidings for parks....to break demand caps

[Gridlock 9]

Hey some interesting ideas , i feel that at the end of the day the potential size of Max population is mostly dependent on your

Transport System ,zoning is also important ,but transport is paramount.im currently growing a default city that may hit 9 million

i can easy provide enough jobs ,easily zone enough resi ,and bust caps ,but can i build a transport system to cope,the 65535 bug is a major problem, i tryed many ways to manage this bug ,and have found the only way is to carefully ensure u dont,go over dense along certian routes. obtw i journaled the city from day 1 ,and will post the pics someday.Even tho i say default i hav a few bats ,but they all hold less than Maxis buildings anyway. New Ark will be mostly zoned as not inc roads ,23 x 7,lol tunheim ,faulty transport system ,at 5332% over capacity without a Capacity mod, yes i did have a few probs .

[Bones1 96]

Yes, transportation is an issue, but much of that should be able to be solved by intermixing residential and commercial. Of course, then you cut down on the zoned residential area in the city, so it might not work out. My guess is that zoning all residential and using monorail to neighbouring cities where the jobs are, is probably the best way to go. Monorail has no capacity limit (it doesn't suffer from congestion).

To do a proper test, you really have to not use any BATs, though. (Nor mods, of course.) Even if the pop is less than Maxis buildings, the other stats may be out of balance. Or, the lotstage might not be appropriate for the pop. There are just too many things in BATs that can throw off the test.

9 million in a large city is certainly getting pretty extreme. If you want that much pop, yeah you'd certainly have transportation problems (without mods).

[tunheim 0]

I'm very grateful for the feedback received. I just wanted to appologize in advance if I'm a tad slow posting results. It's just that I'm a rather slow player, and as always there is this so called "real world" that always interferes.

Originally posted by: Bones1 Monorail has no capacity limit (it doesn't suffer from congestion).quote>

Are you sure? I seem to have seen some sort of table giving monorail a high, but not unlimited, capacity.

[Tolomar 5]

if your looking for the original capsitities and speeds, costs of the all the transit (except ferries)...try downloading the Traffic cop mod

I don't recomend using it in your game as it is now an outdated mod...but it does gives you all the original stats values...

https://www.simtropolis.com/modding/index.cfm?p=details&id=247

if your lloking to for more cities I can send you some more that may help in speeding up the experiment...or try cloning the cities (make exact copies and import them to your game)....great time save and help keep the factors to a minium

[Bones1 96]

Originally posted by: tunheim I'm very grateful for the feedback received. I just wanted to appologize in advance if I'm a tad slow posting results. It's just that I'm a rather slow player, and as always there is this so called "real world" that always interferes.

Originally posted by: Bones1 Monorail has no capacity limit (it doesn't suffer from congestion).quote>

Are you sure? I seem to have seen some sort of table giving monorail a high, but not unlimited, capacity.quote>

 

Yup, I'm sure. Monorail does have a capacity of 3000 (same as other rail systems), but it's the only network that "ignores congestion" (other than walking). So in effect, its capacity is unlimited. You can see that in the traffic congestion map. I've had tens of thousands of sims on a monorail line, and it always shows as green.

Note that the monorail station has a fixed capacity. Once it reaches around 500% over-capacity (around 10,000 sims), it will block traffic. So, it's important to put the stations on their own branch off the main monorail line, so you don't block the traffic on the main line. (Or, download some stations that have a really high capacity, if you don't mind cheating.)

[SC4BOY 21]

Tolomar.. good point.. COPY AND IMPORT is great for any repetitive city grid structure .. can save TONS of time.. even if you're not going for supercities.. Only problem.. I WISH WISH WISH there were a way to ROTATE a city when you copy and paste.. Do you know of any way?

[shane453 1]

Dilapidated Tri-Tip Towers holds like 15,000 $ sims.... You could get a lot of folks into a city at that rate.

[Norwegian Neko 12]

But who actually plays a game with the very unrealistic transit settings that come with Rush Hour?

I stopped using them years ago in favor of Traffic Cop, and now the NAM, because I can much more accurately simulate real-world transit breakdowns and time. Ie, stock in-game speeds for walking take a sim about 3 hours to walk 1/4 mile. Thus, noone will walk. Additionally, your average street/road in a normal city can handle much more than 100/1000 cars per day worth of commuters - and 6 lane freeways FAR more than 4,000 (try more like 250,000 in the real world).

Here is my NAM file that I use for commuting purposes - its a modified version of the 10x commute speeds/2x capacity NAM file.

Here is a screenshot of the values in the NAM file that you may modify to get more realistic numbers.  This is what I currently use, and I feel it is much more accurate than any values anyone else uses, but won't screw your region over by limiting the commute patterns:

[SC4BOY 21]

Originally posted by: zilfondel But who actually plays a game with the very unrealistic transit settings that come with Rush Hour?quote>

Lots of ppl who do "challenge building" of various have no interest in adding mod's as they make fair comparison of efforts difficult and unverifiable. Different people have different attitudes about the use of mod's, and this issue was discussed early in the thread pro's and con's and it was stated it would be done WITHOUT mods (other than report-type mods). REALISM was NOT the objective here.  As was also made clear in the discussion ppl here were clearly aware of the NAM availability and effectts. Your game is not everyone's game. I suppose you didn't have time to read it before commenting. 

 

[Bones1 96]

SC4Boy put it well. If you want to use the cheats in NAM to make the game "more realistic", that's up to you. However, I prefer to play "a game", and games are not meant to be realistic. I want some challenge. I use NAM only with the perfect pathfinding. I don't use the commute cheats, as I see them as unnecessary and removing much of the challenge which is what makes the game fun for me.

And for experiments such as this, it makes no sense to use any mods or BATs. You have to use a baseline for comparison, and the common baseline is the game without any plugins.

[matt_sbs 2]

someone should try to biuld this city

[tunheim 0]

And also my computer is wayyy to slow to run NAM

[RushHourFreak 1]

It is a really useful experiment. It will help me with a lot of things