high wealth desirability

[rob9926 0]

hi

i started this topic because of an issue i am having with desirability. now high wealth residents are the most easily annoyed in the game and without careful attention to the main concepts of the game your city will not prosper.

i am here to find out the best methods for building high density, high wealth cities. now i know that R$$$ require everything to be perfect, that is low crime, garbage, pollution, traffic noise and good services, land value and commute. Easier said than done don't ya think lol.

now i have a region at the moment with about 400000 people. there are 3 main cities and there are high amounts of all wealth levels (at least i think there are). the only problem is that i have no mods assisting my high wealth folks and they are all driving on congested roads to their office jobs. they don't like the pollution, noise or crime in the neighbourhood and there is not many desirable areas on the chart anymore. the city grows more and they can't handle it so become distressed.

if anyone can offer advice on these problems i thank you in advance. i am looking for people who have large cities with high wealth residents and how they deal with keeping everyone happy. i am open to modding discussion but there are not many that can help desirability without cheating right?

cheers

[villagemayor 0]

If you want your new city with R$$$ right off the bat, I suggest adding manufacturing. Because they will have low EQ, they won't work in high tech or CO$$$ or CS$$$. Like you said, they are very fussy. Once the education levels are high, then you can begin to add HT, CS$$$ and CO$$$. Add lots of parks or forests to maintain high desirability, and keep the manufacturing away from the residential areas.

Like you, I've started a city of just R$$$ (kind of like a high wealth cottage area). Didn't work. I had to add some R$$ too just to keep the balance sheet in order. Good luck!!

[rob9926 0]

reply to villagemayor:
this sounds like a good idea and is much better than allowing dirty industry into a city. i do wonder though if when you start a new city in a region if you first zone for manufacturing and then convert to high tech when your education is established? this is a problem i sometimes stress over. i think high tech cities are really hard to get going with all the things they require, i usually end up satisfying demand for it in an adjacent city.

also i was wondering if you used an option with NAM to increase traffic values (capacity, speed, commute etc) would this affect commercial desirability? an increased capacity would result in less congestion and commercial would have less customers wouldn't they? i have my commercial offices next to my residential areas and unless traffic volume is high the desirability chart shows red in my commercial districts. i then place plazas every couple of blocks to increase desirability but this takes up a lot of space and does not seem like an ideal solution.

also are there any opinions relating to use of mass transit in high density ares? after a certain population you must add some sort of mass transit to pursuade sims from driving. as mentioned above pollution from cars is a big problem with my high wealth residents.

keep the ideas coming guys and thanks again

[writingliberty 0]

The main problem I've been having (and yes, I have the NAM, using the 5x speed and 10x capacity version of the traffic control) is that even in isolated residential districts with dead-end streets with less than 50 cars on them, everyone says traffic noise is "high".... can't figure out how to stop that.

[villagemayor 0]

Rob9926 and writingliberty,

Over time, when the education system is high enough, allow for new HT to grow slowly but don't bulldoze the manufacturing. My mistake is that introducing HT too quickly, the R$$$ will have nowhere to work. Same goes from CS$$ to CS$$$. I find that for every manufacturing building, 12 R$$$ will be employed.

I don't pay attention to high traffic noise. In my R$$$ cottages, I use the streets (grey colour) and not the roads (block colour). I am assuming slower traffic will reduce traffic noise. I have never seen a R$$$ abandon due to high traffic noise.

I have NAM, and it certainly helps. However, if they commute to adjacent cities, have the connections close by. Mine are one the four corners of the map, and many R$$$ end up having long commutes.

With regards to transit, they will use it, but if you are building sprawling estates, you'll need a stop every few houses. Not economical. I suggest forget the transit unless you can afford them.

One more advice, if everything is going very smoothly, don't be tempted to zone med-high density. You'll be sorry.

Hope this helps.

[rob9926 0]

reply to villagemayor:
i think you're right overall about traffic noise, it's not a huge factor for residents. also i was wondering which settings you use in the NAM? my city at the moment has around 130000 people and i think because my roads are congested the air pollution levels are too high in the residential area. i've put busses in but they get congested as well and theres not much else i can do to fix it. i was wanting to use NAM to forget about my travel problems because without it i don't think i could get bigger cities lol.

i think i got the hang of high tech, i now only introduce it when demand is high and education is strong. the only troubles i am having with high tech is keeping traffic pollution low. i end up zoning parks on every corner of my high tech zones. anyway i think with NAM it will help me forget about traffic and worry more on development, don't you agree?

[politicman 1]

It's difficult to explain

[Spinmaster 75]

It's difficult to explain.quote>

Well thank you for clearing that up!

i think with NAM it will help me forget about traffic and worry more on development, don't you agree?quote>

50% agree. You still have to carefully plan and build your traffic networks. NAM does nothing for a poorly-planned network. What it does do though is make your sims choose their routes according to best time, as in actually go somewhat out-of-the-way to take a faster road, or take the train, etc... Kinda like most sane people do in the real world. Without NAM they take the shortest distance - which often means they'll all bee-line it through the severely clogged neighborhood streets, even though there's a highway just two blocks away. NAM's pathfinding changes this to shortest time - which means what makes sense to you will (for the most part) make sense to your sims; they'll go out of the way to some extent to take the faster routes you've laid out for them, even using multiple forms of mass transit efficiently. Even if you choose not to use a capacity/speed/commute limit boost, which are optional, the pathfinding alone makes NAM an essential. Personally I regard it as an almost-official patch! Playing without it is just too frustrating.

I have noticed the traffic noise issue also (I do use 2x capacity and 10x speed). I'd guess that's due to total volume. At a given point-in-time there may only be 50 cars on the street, but throughout the day those boosts probably mean increased total volume on that street. If it bothers my sims enough to bother me, I'll adjust something, an upgraded road, some transit stops, cut off through-traffic (e.g. turn a street into a dead-end, so the only traffic on it are the folks who live there), etc... Just a thought. It's still worth paying attention to traffic noise though, even though it doesn't seem to tick them off too much.

Anyway yes, NAM will help you, not by letting you "forget about traffic" though, but because if you plan your transit network properly, your sims will use it properly - that's what NAM does (nevermind that it also adds a plethora of detailed road pieces, diagonal streets,  turning lanes, roundabouts, GLR, bridges, .... )

[rob9926 0]

thanks for your reply spinmaster. it is good to hear your opinion of the NAM and how you think it should be used in the game. since my last post i have tested the radical option in a few cities and the results are interesting.

(1) i experienced a large drop in commute time (something i havn't really had trouble with before) (2) no congestion (3) normal amounts of traffic pollution and noise (easily fixed when MT available) (4) lastly no benefits were evident in commercial areas (businesses had low customers)

now from this i have learned that the NAM can be really helpful if you want to increase the capacity of transit networks. it however does not remedy desirability factors in residential areas affected by traffic. i did enjoy the fact that i did not have to worry about providing high capacity, expensive networks like highways etc. while spinmaster believes the NAM is not a way to forget about transit, i can honestly say i have always considered transit in my cities. on the other hand i'm a bit of a grid fan and i don't plan my roads for aesthetic benefits *sigh*

also there were obvious effects in my commercial areas. all my businesses were reporting low customers and thre was low desirability for my commercial offices.

if anyone has different experiences with the NAM please post your results. as for desirability please contribute any information or ideas you wish to share.

[Spinmaster 75]

Take care not to fall into the same trap I've found myself in countless times (as well as many many other members here). "A prosperous city has a lot of rich people."

Survey says: xxx

A lot of rich businesses, yes. People, no. High-wealth commercial offices and services, and high tech industry... they're beautiful, they pollute minimally, and they pay a killing in taxes, even with a low tax rate - which is how your city becomes "prosperous." And yes, those businesses do employ the most rich people, who have beautiful houses and also pay a lot in taxes. But even the richest commercial offices are only 15% occupied by rich sims (and high tech, 10%). The rest are mostly mid-wealth sims, with a healthy dose of low-wealth sims.

Moral: too many rich sims = too many unemployed rich sims, and not very many rich businesses.

With NAM pushed to the extreme options, I suppose one could "forget" about traffic. That's just a matter of taste though. Some like to deal with the realism of traffic problems, some don't. NAM adds a lot of needed flexibility, from no help at all to radical increases in speed, capacity, and commute limits. How far to push it is left up to the individual user.

Personally, I use 2x capacity and 10x speed (no commute limit increase), because 18 people in a tiny single-family cottage (6 ~ 9 of whom are commuters - overwhelming my streets et al), and 90 minutes to drive across a 2km x 2km (medium) city tile (I can walk that far in less time)... I felt those needed fixin'.

[rob9926 0]

thanks for your post spinmaster, i actually got a giggle out of it lol. in regards to prosperous cities i think rich business are definetly are key feature. one should also have a good profit margin.

as for the NAM, after i changed it i havn't got too many problems with traffic. before the changes i had bad congestion, long commutes and distressed buildings. the NAM provided an easy fix to these problems but at the expense of my commercial areas. i would need to have thousands of sims on one road before the desirability effect kicked in. it is in my opinion that high traffic is the best and only way to boost desirability in commercial areas. the major restriction on commercial being crime and also if industry is too close to commercial this can also hurt businesses. basically i have had to increase traffic to insane amounts in order to see any benefits lol. i think i will fix this by setting my transit capacities to normal and use the 10 x speed and commute settings instead.

i noticed you (spinmaster) are using twice capacity and 10 x speed. i thought your reason behind using those settings was rather funny lol. anyways is there a reason for using the 2 x capacity? i'm guessing you were sick of congestion or something like that. that's why i changed to the radical options, however i am going to change again like i mentioned earlier. well thanks for your opinion thus far spinmaster.

please feel free to share your experiences with the NAM and desirability. if you have any ideas for solving my commercial desirability problems i would like to hear them. thanks in advance.