heavy R$$$ abandonment

[autumnsolace 0]

i've recently gotten into playing SC4 again and i'm building cities bigger than i ever have before. i have NAM simulator Z with medium capacity, but no CAM. in my city, there is high demand for R$$$, and big condo projects develop. they are usually very close to the kind of things they'd want - I-HT, I-M, CO$$$/CS$$$, etc. but they suffer hugely from abandonment due to commute time.

so i check the average commute, it's hovering around 0.6. is this hours or minutes? i also notice before they go abandoned, the commuters from the building usually aren't more than a few blocks away from where they work, and over half would use mass transit (subway) or simply walk.

i always had this problem back when i played SC4 vanilla, except commute times were much longer. i get so sad when i see a beautiful building grow, then dilapidate only a few minutes later.

i feel like it's something else besides commute time. amenities? proximity to leisure? do i really need CAM?

[bigthing 35]

Could be a bug, check all of the services (healthcare, education...), add a few parks for good measure.

Cam is a mod that changes the stage that a building can reach from R-7 C-7 I-3 AG-1 (i think) to R-13 C-13 I-7 Ag-3 (i think). This just means that you can get a larger variety in your cities. If you do download make sure to download some Camelot or Campatible buildings that will grow. You can also get large packs to save time but just make sure you get all of the dependencies.

Good luck!!

[autumnsolace 0]

doesn't CAM also increase transit volume? also, their education & health are always high, the only thing that seems negative usually is traffic noise. it's typically medium

[Shlarin 0]

Do those buildings go completely abandoned or they just get replaced with R $$ or R $ sims?

[SC4BOY 20]

I'm guessing from what you say that you have WAY overdeveloped R$$$ population.. you need to greatly tax them (and tear up their buildings if necessary) to get them down to no larger than about 15% of you population and allow a large number of R$ and somewhat less R$$.. otherwise R$$$ can find no work (they fill up the jobs there since so few of them are needed and then the others have no place to work).. this is easy to do in SC4 as they always want "more, better, higher".. you have to put YOU in control.. not the advisors.. A symptom of this is that a the buildings have no commuters or that the number is significantly less than the building worker population (roughly half of an R building capacity)

[Mr.Bear 0]

My City is like that too. Do you have many landmarks and Business rewards? Once I put those in R$$$ kept flocking in. One way is to build dirty industry (Pollution) and they will flock out. Another thing is to raise taxes (Over 12%) and they will scatter like pigeons. The last way I know is to destroy anything rich (e.g. country club) or you can do all three. Note: R$$$ can create lots of good rewards so you should keep them, leave the rich on another island if you don't want pollution affecting them if you ever decide you want the rich back

[cogeo 960]

First of all you need to check if abandonmant is due to low demand for R$$$ (as a result of having too many R$$$ buildings developed) or due to low desirability (low school/hospital ratings, high crime or pollution, long commute times, few parks and rec). It is quite common to have R$$$ developing fast, but then quickly dilapidating or abandoned: before the areas get developed, desirability is high, but as the population increses it may fall (crime, traffic, pollution etc). So try to find what's wrong with your city and attempt to fix it.

A mod that can really help - without being a cheat - is the "Less Abandonment Mod" by Bones1. How it works? It makes desirability ranges for R$, R$$ and R$$$ overlapping, and quite higher too. For example, to get R$$ you will need higher desirability than before (the threshold has been raised), however the threshold for R$$ to dilapidate is now lower (not equal to, as before) than the threshold to get R$$. This means that the R$$ will tolerate some deterioration before dilapidating. That is it will be harder to get R$$ and R$$$ than before, but these will be much less likely to be dilapidated or abandoned, resulting in more stable cities.

This mod has been incorporated into CAM, with the same settings.