Confused when conceptualizing concepts

[Vandraad 0]

I guess I could sum this up the gist of this post by stating one of Newton's Laws:  For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction....except in SimCity4.  What I've noticed is that there appear to be some variables that seem, at least on the surface, to be directly related but the numbers just dont add up.  There is no reaction to the intial action.

A few of these work perfectly:  You put in a fire station who's operational radius covers 100% of the city and you have no fires with which to contend.  That relationship works.  The action of placing the fire station produces the reaction of having no fires.  Others, however, do not appear as such.

Education, as best as I can tell, doesn't function as one would expect when it comes to the relationship between the sims wanting an education vs their actually utilizing the educational system.  I built a R$ town neighboring a I-D/power town.  There were minimal amenities and the population approached 8,000.  The EQ was hovering so low the sims needed to be reminded to breathe.  Of those 8000 sims, 1000 of them were of the age to attend an elementary school. I expected to see the attendance at the school (who's bus radius encompassed 100% of the town and funding was at the default level) to be at least near that 1000 mark.  Yet at most, over a span of 3 game-years, attedance never went above double digits.  The rise in EQ, however, was dramatic.  How  could less than 100 sims attending the elementary school at any given time over a 3 year span have produce such a lobsided result?

I continued the experiment with a Highschool and eventually a College.  Tracking the number of potential students by the Population by Age window and comparing that to the actual number of students attending were never remotely similar yet the EQ continued to climb.  As of right now, my town of 10,000 sims that has 1 elementary, 1 HS and 1 college have an average EQ of 190.

Double checking various education posts on the forums, I did make sure to place the schools in strictly residential areas with good transportation access.

Lastly, Residential Demand vs Job Availablity.  This one continues to confound me.  In my city of 10k sims, my R$ demand is off the charts, my R$$ is mid way and my R$$$ is at 0.  No sims currently show as unemployed.  C$, C$$ and C$$$ all show at 0 as well.  My industrial demand, however could not possibly get any worse.  All 4 industrials (all with default 9% tax rates) show maximum negative demand.  Why would sims desire to move into an area that has zero demand for job growth? 

I added up all the jobs from the 3 Commercials and the 4 Industrials and compared them to the maximum number of employable Sims assuming a working age between 18 and 60.  Those numbers were, at my best estimate, quite similar.  I-D and I-M were in their own seperate city connected by bus, subway and avenue.  I-HT was in it's own city also connected by bus, subway and avenue.  I-HT had plenty of parks, trees, zero water polution, zero air polution and all lots reported short commute/freight times...as did I-D and I-M.  The demand for all 3 were still as maximum negative demand.

I then chose to pause the game and just spread out this HUGE parcel of light residential until i got the "this zone is too large" error...and unpaused the game.  In less than 3 months, ever lot was full..and the RCI demand remained unchanged.

Unemployment is non-existant.  EQ is still at 190.  Transportation shows no bottlenecks and commute times are all under 60 min yet more people want to move in and the demand for jobs is not going up.  What could possible cause this?

[Silur 3,308]

There are many questions - my mind step by step ...

And you must remember SC4 - no real life - this is only game from MAXIS ...

[pnorrell 4]

Funny title - definitely caught my interest. I too am often confused when conceptualizing concepts. I'm considering conceiving conceptions from now on instead.

About your questions, Bones1 has done some experiments on both issues. Check out this thread and this thread. They may help...

Though not related to the questions you pose here, this thread is also an interesting experiment.

[Spinmaster 75]

About the R$/jobs battle, you may also have overlooked something. Transit stops have jobs, too. The in-game ones are well-balanced, but if you're like me and you like to pepper your city with lots of custom bus and sub stops, heed this. Many of the custom stops, unfortunately, were left with what appear to be default values for jobs. I say that to point out that it's 99% sure probably not the creators' faults, my guess is nobody knew about the values when they were made - many that I have were made long before SC4Tool existed (which is what I use to check and fix them).

Anyway, many of them have 95 jobs for R$ (and 5 for R$$). That's right, a tiny 1x1 bus stop, with a capacity ranging from as little as 500 passengers, and it has 100 jobs in it. For some things like train stations, which you might have maybe a dozen or so at most, eh... 1200 jobs lost. But if you have that many train stations you probably have enough sims to not really notice the gap (plus true train stations could realistically have 100's of jobs if large enough). But think about 50 bus stops in a city with only 10,000 sims ... yip yip yip yip, half your sims working in bus stops (and thus not working in your tax-generating C and I zones). Query some of your custom bus stops in the residential areas - see if you notice 100 sims walk in, and 3 leave on buses. Those 3, of course, are merely taking the bus to go work in another bus stop. In another city. Two tiles away (I've seen this). Goofy little bastards. It could also be that the bus stop is consuming 61 MWh of power. For a bench. Maybe one constantly flickering light. No wonder you have high R demand, all your poor widdle sims are getting fried at the bus stops, which they all work in and thus don't need your stinkin' industrial jobs.

Well don't ditch those bus stops completely, just take up the SC4Tool and tweak 'em (it's a pretty simple tool to figure out, if you haven't used it). I now do it as a rule whenever I download something that I might use with high frequency (park pieces come to mind now, too), just to be sure someone didn't inadvertently leave 100 jobs in a 1x1 parallel-universe plot of concrete with a high-voltage dandelion-of-death in it. Unfortunately you will have to bulldoze & re-plop the errant stops if you do tweak them, for the changes to take effect. This does not help with the other issues, mind you. But I suspect it's having some impact in your case (explains screaming R demand and tanked I demand).

[pnorrell 4]

Good advice and an enjoyable post to read.

[Normandy 0]

Interesting... Brings up another question:

If my industrial building says it has 78/79 jobs, why do I only see 59 cars going to it? I guess it might be carpooling, but I don't have carpooling incentive on!

And why does it seem custom lots that are MEANT to give jobs never work, yet lots that aren't meant to give jobs, give too many jobs anyways?

Oh yeah and the 100 job bus stop sorta reminds me of that commercial/industry free city that other guy built

[Vandraad 0]

I'm going to look into how many jobs are taken up by the Bus Stations then check out the SC4Tool. Thanks Pnorrell.