R$$$ and C$$$ problem

[Agricola Avicula 0]

Hi,

I might need some help with the wealthier residential and commercial buildings in my city. The problem is that it takes a very long time for these constructions to grow, if they grow at all, although I think all requirements have been met. Land values are high and landmarks, parks, trees are all present. I have more than enough health care and education facilities with good covering. There is almost no pollution and desirability rates are high. I assume my high tech industry areas provide enough jobs for the better educated sim.

Nevertheless, when I zone a residential or commercial area for the rich, low and medium wealth houses, stores and appartments keep growing in these areas. Only when I'm lucky a wealthier building may pop up once in a while. But after some time a lot of the residential buildings get a no job zot and are abandoned. This also happens to some high-wealth commercial buildings, caused by 'lack of demand'.

Another thing is that in some areas of the city health is bad (red in the overview map), although individual building's query menus report high health care. This occurs primarily in the younger aged population, no matter how many hospitals and clinics I build and how high health funds are.

Can somebody help me out? I already tried playing with the taxes, but as I said, demands seem okay. I also built a big (temporal) residential area for the poor near the industrial area, but that doesn't seem to help either.

Thanks!

[xxbydesign 1]

A picture would be a big help, Avicula.  Screen shots are a great way of visually displaying a lot of information about your city in ways that people familar with the game can easily understand and often offer advice that is specific to that particular city, rather than just generic descriptions of possible solutions.

That said, here's my suggestions based on your excelent discussion of the issue nonetheless.  Demand, Demand, Demand.  That is one of the driving forces of this game.  If demand is south, you need to boost it; you might get construction in the wealth area you want, but if the demand drops its not going to stick around very long.

Demand in Sim City is easy to understand:  after Residential development, the people demand work, which raises demand in commercial and industrial development in the associated wealth levels.  When these industries expand, they demand more workers, so residential demand rises.  Look at your expanded demand indicator and really look at what is missing from your city.  A screen shot of this can help me more closely understand the current economic state of your city.

You did the right thing in making a residential space for the R$ wealth level; a good cities requires, unfortunately, a great deal of R$ to sustain it.  Don't be afraid of high levels of R$; too often players will get rid of all their R$ and then realize that jobs are leaving cause they can't find enough workers.  R$ can work for any wealth level, whereas R$$ and R$$$ can only work for thier respective industries.  This makes R$ more flexible, and therefor more dependable and profitable.

Also, realize that it is natural for zones to construct first as $ before addictional development converts it to $$ or $$$; again, these things take time.  Also, make sure your transportation networks are working well.  If you are getting the development you want, but it doesnt stick around becauset here are 'no jobs', it may be that the jobs are there but that the workers arn't getting there on time and the businesses cant stay open.  A screenshot of your transit congestion or zoning would be useful.  If you have congestion issues, try to de-concentrate where people work, so that there are a lot of options in many directions, not just all options in one.  This tends to give sims more options and your city more variety.

Health and Education for the 'younger' is always low, because they just moved into the city; it takes time to raise their education and health levels.  Thats why older generations tend to be healthier and more educated, which is why its the older folks living in R$$ and R$$$ most of the time.  That said, certain buildnigs cater specificly to different ages:  Health, well, health is universal, so clinics and hospitals help everyone.  But eduaction is a different matter.  Elementary schools work best for the younger, which tend to be the R$ populations.  Place a high school in a sea of R$ and youll find that practially no one will use it.  High schools cater to the R$$ populations.  Colleges, the next age level and wealth level up.  LIbrarys are heaven: they are cheap and boost ALL age level's education.

I think thats all for now; I hope this helps with you problems, but if not please post again.  Maybe even a screenshot or two just so we can all see exactly what you are dealing with.  Good luck, and welcome to Simtropolis!

[bluemoose 223]

Welcome to Simtropolis!

For the Health issue, the young sims will have lower health, because health(and edcucation) develop over time.

Every new sim will automatically start with 0 health and education.

EDIT:

darn, xxbydesign got it in before me

LOL

[Agricola Avicula 0]

Thanks for your comments, xxbydesign and bluemoose. Things are going a bit better now, although I didn't change much. So maybe I am just a little impatient

Still, I'm not completely satisfied. For example, I have one temporal R$ area and two  temporal  C/I areas to provide enough jobs. But together they take up more than twice the surface of the actual city! And they're still complaining about lack of offices. And in the city itself, it's very hard to get the commercial buildings I want.

But first I think you need to know something about what I'm trying to make. I've got this street map of a fictional city drawn on sheets of paper, and I'm trying to implement this in simcity. So almost everything is fixed, I only need to copy it into the game. It's a historic European city, slightly inspired by Prague and I reserved a whole region for it. I am now working on the first city tile, which is almost entirely going to be taken up by the (historic) city center.

Because of this, chances are high that I'm not going to want ANY R$ or C$, nor any industries in this city tile. They will arise mostly at the outer parts of the city. I wonder if this is going to work in the game.

And now a screenshot, as you requested:

As you can see, I wanted to make a block of Dutch style housing, but those tiny low wealth homes (red circles) kept popping up. In the end I managed to get rid of them, but it took me about 50 sim years. In the green circle is a C$$ building that I find very ugly, but which keeps on bothering me.

Finally, here is the demands overview as it was this morning:

EDIT: If you need more pics, just ask!

[His Divine Hand 244]

I would say based on your discription and demand chart, you have one of two, or even both problems. First one, you don't have the population necessary for what you are trying to do. Simply enough, before you get a lot of rich sims, you need to have a lot of poor ones first. Build out, to get demand higher. The second problem could be that taxes are too high, and are stifling demand. Your demand chart needs to be much higher in the low wealth categories to boast your over all demand. As another note, to make sure you have plenty of R$$$ demand, make sure that your education is excellent everywhere. The more highly intelligent sims, the higher your high-tech industry demand, the more R$$$ sims you have demand for.