Non-linear Population Growth

[Kredit 0]

Hey all,

In a number of threads I've read remarks about "non-linear population growth", i.e., one house takes more citizens when there are more houses....

This got me wondering... First of all, is this actually true? (Never assume people on the internet are right )

Secondly, if it is true, why? What's the point? For all the complaints about lack of realism here, I would imagine this is one of the biggest reality-breakers!

I mean, how does a 1 family home all of a sudden take a dozen families? (and yes, I realise in some parts of the world this does happen, that's not really the type of sim this is, I thought)

And what about traffic? My 6 buidling low density residential zone has some roads around it, which work for the 6 families living there... I doubt they would work as well for 60 families.

And then, there's the issue of population density... let's take a look at the numbers for a well-known large city, which happens to have some high-density buildings

Area
- City	468.9 sq mi (1,214.4 km2)
- Land	304.8 sq mi (789.4 km2)
- Water	165.6 sq mi (428.8 km2)
- Urban	3,352.6 sq mi (8,683.2 km2)
- Metro	6,720 sq mi (17,405 km2)
Elevation	33 ft (10 m)
Population (July 1, 2008)[1]
- City	8,363,710
- Density	27,440/sq mi (10,606/km2)
- Urban	18,223,567
- Metro	19,006,798
- Demonym	New Yorker

Hmmmm... 8mill+ pop, 1200 square km....

CXL maps are 10x10 km, or 100 square km... and the biggest beta city had 16+ mill pop..., that's twice as much pop, with 1/12th of the available land (assuming you terraform your whole map flat)

In NY, there's 10,606 people per square km. Translate that density to CXL, and you'd have a city with, wait for it, 1 million citizens.

My largest city currently has 1.1 million... and half the map is still mountain. So, it's already a much denser populated city than NY....

No wonder I have traffic problems!

Bottom line here is simple: Why did they choose to "fake" large cities, in a game called "Cities XL", no less...?

The only reason I can think off is  "challenge", by limiting the amount of land available, it becomes harder to build an efficient city. If you have a 1000 square km map, you don't need to get into any trouble with polution, traffic or space in general for a looooong time. But to me, that seems a really, really silly way to force "challenge".

For instance, they could've provided much bigger maps (let's say 30x30km, 900 square km) and then made distance matter more (so if you place your industry 40km from your residential zones, they'd be far less efficient, unless you have a high-capacity, high-speed road connecting them). I'm sure there's a load more ways to still provide a fun challenge.

Another way I'd like to see is the option to acquire more land once your city is a certain size. For instance, upon reaching 500k pop, you get an option to "expand land", allowing you to buy extra land added on the side of the map. The higher your pop, the more you can buy!

Anyway, yeah, I'd really like to know if this "exponential growth" is indeed in place in CXL. And if so, I'd love to hear from MC why they chose to do this, and why no-one said "but wait, this is supposed to be a reallistic city building game... isn't the population density one of the most important defining factors for a city?!", or if someone did, why the rest of the company didn't say "OMG how could we've missed that!'


 

[John-SJ 13]

Here's an easy way to find out.  I just plopped a low density unqualified home in a city of under 100 population.  The home added 16 residents.

If, in a much larger city, a similar home adds more than 16 residents, the growth is non-linear.

By the way, not sure if you played the game or not, but the ability to buy plots of land to expand your city was something that MC had in City Life.  It was also possible, while not as cleanly, in SC4.  I guess I don't understand why MC chose to follow SC:S on this rather than its own previous offering or a 6 year old game, both of which managed to do this better than CXL.

[Kredit 0]

I'll give that a try and post results... I did see a post where someone had tried it and found it does increase, but of course I can't verify his findings

It really puzzles me why they'd do this though... i just can't imagine they'd think it's a good solution. I'm no reality freak, at all... but if what looks like an apartmentbuilding for 16 people houses 160 or something, even I start to think "hmmm, now that's not very reallistic..."

And yeah... acquiring more land for your city would seem to be a very good way of extending longevity for the game.... Right now, once your city is one big grid full of high-density buildings, that's it... nothing more to do.

I think the option to gain more land (at a high financial cost, either purchase fee or " rent") could drastically improve this game: you could choose to build a big city "quick and dirty" (fill the starting area as much as you can) or you can take your time, earn lots of cash, buy more land and then expand... you could have a 20 mill pop city with NO high density residential zones, for instance.

Prestige would not only come from Cashflow, Pop or Budget, but Size and Population density as well....

[Kredit 0]

Another interesting fact:

Dhaka, Bangladesh, is the most densely populated city in the world. It has a population of 7.000.940 on 153 square km. If a CXL map is indeed 10x10 km, that would mean that a similar city in CXL would have a population of 4.575.777...

So what the game wants us to believe is that it's possible to have a city with a population density about 3 times the highest currently on earth, and that city could be a nice place to live, with ok traffic and air pollution, services, etc.

Sure

[gyzzzmo 0]

Originally posted by: Kredit

Another interesting fact:

Dhaka, Bangladesh, is the most densely populated city in the world. It has a population of 7.000.940 on 153 square km. If a CXL map is indeed 10x10 km, that would mean that a similar city in CXL would have a population of 4.575.777...

So what the game wants us to believe is that it's possible to have a city with a population density about 3 times the highest currently on earth, and that city could be a nice place to live, with ok traffic and air pollution, services, etc.

Sure quote>

Rocketscience: I dont think there are THAT many highrises in Dhaka, do you think?

[Kredit 0]

I don't think, I know...

You obviously think, since you are mistaken

Also, as I pointed out, it's the most densely populated city in the world... (not biggest, not most populated, but most densely populated) you think they got to that point with straw huts? 

I know, "Bangladesh" doesn't really make you think "skyscrapers" instantly, but although most of the country is rather poor and there's a lot of rural and underdeveloped area's, Dhaka is an international Megacity and probably a lot more developped than you'd expect... a quote from Wiki:

"Modern Dhaka is the center of political, cultural and economic life in Bangladesh.^[4] Although its urban infrastructure is the most developed in the country, Dhaka suffers from urban problems such as pollution, congestion, and lack of adequate services due to the rising population. In recent decades, Dhaka has seen modernization of transport, communications and public works. The city is attracting large foreign investments and greater volumes of commerce and trade. It is also experiencing an increasing influx of people from across the nation."

Funny thing is, reading that it reminds me a lot of Cities XL, except for the part that a city with twice the population density in CXL doesn't even have half the issues

 

[gyzzzmo 0]

Sounds you're doing more a Dhaka promotion than adding anythign to the discussion since you cant compare a High-rise city in Cities XL with your Dhaka, that has few Highrises that are in the game.

[Kredit 0]

And, even more interesting facts!

My own city, The Hague (The Netherlands), currently has a population close to 500.000. The area? About 100 square km just like the maps in CXL (though without the mountains...)

I can assure you, we have pollution issues, trafic issues, even housing issues... and it's quite crowded I'm sure the population will grow the next few years... but to say I could imagine 5 or 10 million people living here... or even 15+ million? Uhm... the whole country only has about 17 million

(incidentally, if someone from MC is reading this and thinks "but the maps are 50km * 50km!, what's his problem!", please post! )

[Kredit 0]

Originally posted by: gyzzzmo

Sounds you're doing more a Dhaka promotion than adding anythign to the discussion since you cant compare a High-rise city in Cities XL with your Dhaka, that has few Highrises that are in the game.quote>

Excuse me for asking, but what's your point exactly? Dhaka is the most densely populated city in the world. It is not even close to being as densely populated as an average "big" city in CXL. Conclusion, densely populated cities in CXL are not reallistic, as there are no such cities, or even anything close to it, in the real world.

And no, there's no highrises in Dhaka that are in-game... so? Are there anywhere else? Nope...

Also, I think you fail to see the significance of the most densely populated city in the world (and most of the top of the list, for that matter) actually being in a third-world country.

Finally, it's not "my" Dhaka, rather, "my" city is The Hague, for which I also specified the details in a previous post

[Okeanos 0]

I'm not starting a discussion about the pros or cons of the way citizens are implemented in citiesXL. But I want to give some informations on how it is working internally. Maybe it is easier to understand the hole concept.

CitiesXL is using something you might call a "citizen unit". It is the base unit which is used for the "size" of a city. And it is also used in the demand calculations and within the economy in terms of  required amount of workers. So you may call it more appropriatly "worker unit".

I give you an example:
T1 (Tier 1) industry buildings (heavy industry) requires 2 units of unqualified workers. Other buildings and other building sizes have different requirements in type (unqualified, qualified, executives, elites) and amounts. But they are always the same, in cities with a population of 1.000 or a population of 1.000.000.

A T1 residence for unqualified workers have a capacity of 1 unit. Therefore you need 2 buildings. T2 residences have a capacity of 2 und T3 a capacity of 5 units.

The total amount of citizen units within the city is the true city size indicator and it is linear. And it is also the base for the needs-table.

The core problem is how many citizens do you want to put in a residence. 1, 4, 10? And if you do that, do you really want to force the player to build 10 Mio. buildings with 1 or 1 Mio. with 10 or even 100.000 with 100 to get a population of 10 Mio? The "simplyfication" to have a fixed/linear "citizen unit" which scales up the population count in larger cities is quite brilliant. And it simplyfies the requirements for buildings with workers greatly.

The needs table stops at 40.000 citizen units. This should be something around 28 Mio. or so, I'm not sure.

Hope this helps a bit ...

-Okeanos

[Partydude67 0]

Your forgetting something about this game obviously.The people in the city aren't the only ones who make up the traffic in the city,its the tourists,other people stoping at your city,people who come to your city for work like industry or the offices.Freight also makes up your traffic,so that could be realistic.People coming from the next door city,from the link of the city.Also one small density could hold dozens of people like you said,thats how some cities are in reality.Oh and just because the population density isn't like New York,it doesn't mean it has to be the same.One residential high rise skyscraper could hold thousands of people,one resdidential medium household could hold hundreds of people,and low residential household could hold like tens or dozens of people.Ive seen in reality in cities with more than 20 people in one household.So cities xl could possibly be realistic like reality.I consider it to be much more realisic than any other city simulation game.Hope this could of helped.=)

[mentarman 14]

SimCity 4 was similarly unrealistic in populations in buildings. I don't know that it was nonlinear as you are saying CXL may be, but the populations weren't at all realistic. I think it's just a tradeoff such games make so that players can feel like they made a "real" big city when games at this point just aren't capable of actually duplicating the complexity and size of a real city. Ironically this realistic feeling of making a big city is done through unrealistic numbers for populating buildings..

[Kredit 0]

Originally posted by: Okeanos

I'm not starting a discussion about the pros or cons of the way citizens are implemented in citiesXL. But I want to give some informations on how it is working internally. Maybe it is easier to understand the hole concept.

CitiesXL is using something you might call a "citizen unit". It is the base unit which is used for the "size" of a city. And it is also used in the demand calculations and within the economy in terms of  required amount of workers. So you may call it more appropriatly "worker unit".

I give you an example:

T1 (Tier 1) industry buildings (heavy industry) requires 2 units of unqualified workers. Other buildings and other building sizes have different requirements in type (unqualified, qualified, executives, elites) and amounts. But they are always the same, in cities with a population of 1.000 or a population of 1.000.000.

A T1 residence for unqualified workers have a capacity of 1 unit. Therefore you need 2 buildings. T2 residences have a capacity of 2 und T3 a capacity of 5 units.

The total amount of citizen units within the city is the true city size indicator and it is linear. And it is also the base for the needs-table.

The core problem is how many citizens do you want to put in a residence. 1, 4, 10? And if you do that, do you really want to force the player to build 10 Mio. buildings with 1 or 1 Mio. with 10 or even 100.000 with 100 to get a population of 10 Mio? The "simplyfication" to have a fixed/linear "citizen unit" which scales up the population count in larger cities is quite brilliant. And it simplyfies the requirements for buildings with workers greatly.

The needs table stops at 40.000 citizen units. This should be something around 28 Mio. or so, I'm not sure.

Hope this helps a bit ...

-Okeanosquote>

Thanks, that clears some things up I guess. Still doesn't change the fact that apparently, a house which holds, say, 16 people at one point can magically hold much more later though (I could maybe understand that a bit if the building actually changed), which I think is really strange.

Effectively, if what you say is correct, you would have to look at the number of citizens per worker unit at close to 0 pop and then divide your population by that number to get a realistic population...

What I don't get here is that in a game where realism is important, and it's all about creating "lifelike" cities, am I really the only who's put off by the fact that as your city grows, more and more and more people stuff themselves in houses that were full just a minute ago?(up to the point where your economy colapses because no new workers can move in to the existing building... unless you build a new building next to it, then all of a sudden more people fit in the old building...)

Also, for me it ruins the realism of things like traffic, enviroment, services etc. as well... Especially traffic. Real cities' populations aren't so much limited by the amount of housing you can build, but rather by the infrastructure around it. Sure, I can build a whole city full of skyscrapers as high as I can, and stuff those as full of people as I can... that's all fine, if they never leave their house. But they will. They won't get very far though...

Which is why I don't get that if the number of people in my HD zones increases as the total pop increases, but the roads don't get bigger, why don't the clog up completely after a while? I've had roads in residential zones that were orange at 200k pop, and are still orange at 1 mill pop.... without any changes to the infrastructure. But, aparently a lot more people are now living in that zone... I guess they can fly! That, or the road's capacity magically changes with pop as well...

Bottom line: If I build a two-story, four bedroom house, that will hold 1 family. It might, in times of need, hold 2. But to assume that that same house will hold, say, 10 families at some point (in a stable, profitable city...) is silly.

 

[Kredit 0]

Originally posted by: Partydude67

Your forgetting something about this game obviously.The people in the city aren't the only ones who make up the traffic in the city,its the tourists,other people stoping at your city,people who come to your city for work like industry or the offices.Freight also makes up your traffic,so that could be realistic.People coming from the next door city,from the link of the city.Also one small density could hold dozens of people like you said,thats how some cities are in reality.Oh and just because the population density isn't like New York,it doesn't mean it has to be the same.One residential high rise skyscraper could hold thousands of people,one resdidential medium household could hold hundreds of people,and low residential household could hold like tens or dozens of people.Ive seen in reality in cities with more than 20 people in one household.So cities xl could possibly be realistic like reality.I consider it to be much more realisic than any other city simulation game.Hope this could of helped.=)quote>

I'm sorry but I have no idea what you mean...

[Kredit 0]

Originally posted by: mentarman

SimCity 4 was similarly unrealistic in populations in buildings. I don't know that it was nonlinear as you are saying CXL may be, but the populations weren't at all realistic. I think it's just a tradeoff such games make so that players can feel like they made a "real" big city when games at this point just aren't capable of actually duplicating the complexity and size of a real city. Ironically this realistic feeling of making a big city is done through unrealistic numbers for populating buildings..quote>

And that's exactly what I think is weird... why not just make the map much bigger, or even have population numbers closer to "reallity"? Why do all cities have to have millions of citizens on 10x10 km? All this does, to me, is make the number of citizens a sort of arbitrary "high score", rather than an indication of the size of my city...

What gives me a sense of size of a city, is the amount and size of buildings, and the size of the land... not some number that increases following some formula designed to "cheat" you into thinking you have a big city

[zwr100 2]

I went to google maps and looked at satellite images of Dhaka, and NYC.  I had a hard time finding skyscrapers in Dhaka.  Perhaps Dhaka is how real cities get exceptionally high population densities, but in cities XL we can place excessive high denisty residential.  I don't think skyscrapers are often built for residential purposes and perhaps that's why we're getting such high populations for a tiny area.

Would it make everyone feel better if they just dropped a 0 from the population numbers?

In SC4 I would plop my big elementary school, small HS, and big hospital and fill in the circle of coverage with high density residential and the result would be a full HS, full hosp, and population in the tens of thousands.  In CXL the same place ment results in hundreds of thousands.  I just don't pay much attention to the population number and think more about how the population feels to me.

I don't think any of us would enjoy true realism.  The amount of land it takes to support a large city is huge.  IRL we can only grow large cities because we have abundant resources.  Check out where NYC gets its water.  http://nyc.gov/html/dep/html/drinking_water/wsmaps_wide.shtml .  In other words, for one person to play Manhattan a bunch would have to be managing the rural areas that supply it's water.  Maybe they could make a "sim-natural resource" game that would be more realistic?  City builders can't be realistic unless many people have to build the rural areas that supply cities.

[Kredit 0]

It's true that Dhaka isn't full of skyscrapers, though they do have some... but that's part of the point indeed. If we look at cities around the world, the ones with high population density are almost exclusively in third-world countries. Yes, NYC has loads of skyscrapers... but the population density is MUCH lower. Aparently, given any sort of choice, people avoid population densities that high...

Conclusion (again ): The population density associated with a "succesful" city in CXL isn't realistic. As I said before, I'm sure it's theoretically possible to fit that many people in an area, however the infrastructure needed would be impossible and no-one would want to live like that.

Now, since I can find no apparent reason why the game should not use "realistic" population densities and the game has to actually cheat to reach the population densities we have now... I can't help but wonder...

Why?

And that's really all I have to say about this It's not a very big deal to me, it just puzzles me. And what puzzles me even more is that apparently no-one else cares

I've seen complaints about "lack of realism" relating to: trading workers, zoning for wealth, lack of MT, government involvement in leisure activities, the looks of the avatars, location on planet not mattering, the way roads are upgraded and many other subjects...

However the fact that the size and shape of a building apparently bear no relation to how many people can live in there doesn't seem to annoy anyone but me

/puzzled

[gyzzzmo 0]

Nobody here is holding you from building a realistic city, i dont know why you blame the game.

Also your list about 'lack of realism' is incorrect. Cities in real life also exchange workers, zones for wealth is realistic, (MT? whats that?, leisure IS government funded. avatar looks is a graphics choise, location on planet does (kinda) matter and the road upgrades are realistic.

And also if you're realistic city growth with a game's city builder growth...... A city in real life does not get designed by 1 person from scratch, and that person does not have hundreds of years to control and continue that growth like in the game.

But i think that if some architect had unlimited funds and has to design a city for huge amounts of people on a tiny area, it would be possible to make a city with alot of high-rises and facilities to keep them happy. Maybe even by using megastructures like in Simcity 2, but building those isnt that much fun in a game, wich is also why Maxis didnt implement those buildings in the newer simcities.

[Vorret 49]

Wow... seriously it seems like you read and understand what you want to understand.

How can you create a realistic city if the population growth isn't realistic?

He put. in detailed, the worse possible exemple of density yet the game is 3 times worse how is that even close to reality?

Especially since as far as I know, we're not building poor cities, it's *rich* cities.

He's not saying it's not "possible" but it just does NOT make sense.

[Kredit 0]

Originally posted by: gyzzzmo

Nobody here is holding you from building a realistic city, i dont know why you blame the game.

Also your list about 'lack of realism' is incorrect. Cities in real life also exchange workers, zones for wealth is realistic, (MT? whats that?, leisure IS government funded. avatar looks is a graphics choise, location on planet does (kinda) matter and the road upgrades are realistic.

And also if you're realistic city growth with a game's city builder growth...... A city in real life does not get designed by 1 person from scratch, and that person does not have hundreds of years to control and continue that growth like in the game.

But i think that if some architect had unlimited funds and has to design a city for huge amounts of people on a tiny area, it would be possible to make a city with alot of high-rises and facilities to keep them happy. Maybe even by using megastructures like in Simcity 2, but building those isnt that much fun in a game, wich is also why Maxis didnt implement those buildings in the newer simcities.quote>

That´s not entirely true, because if I have a city of, say, 500000, apparently my "1 family houses" allready hold substantially more than one family... (also, I don't "blame" the game, I'm just wondering why a certain choice has been made)

And my list about "lack of realism" was a list of complaints from other people, that I've read here on the forums. And yes I agree most are incorrect, that was sort of the point

And yes, once again I agree, there are a lot of other things that aren't realistic. Most concessions are made in favor of gameplay, which is good. This one concession I don't understand though, which is why I started this thread 

And, again, yes. That's most likely possible. However, it's not how cities are built in the real world now. And eventhough the whole concept of "building" a city as we do in this game is unrealistic, I got the impression from most of the game that the intention is to end up with cities that could exist in present-day reality.

Of course, I could be completely wrong there, in which case my point is pointless

[mentarman 14]

Originally posted by: Kredit

And that's exactly what I think is weird... why not just make the map much bigger, or even have population numbers closer to "reallity"? Why do all cities have to have millions of citizens on 10x10 km? All this does, to me, is make the number of citizens a sort of arbitrary "high score", rather than an indication of the size of my city...

What gives me a sense of size of a city, is the amount and size of buildings, and the size of the land... not some number that increases following some formula designed to "cheat" you into thinking you have a big city quote>

Why not make the map bigger? I don't know, but I'll assume there's technical limits in there somewhere and that this is the size that MC deemed a good balance between performance and realism.

Why not have realistic numbers on that size map? I just don't think the players would respond well to that. "I filled up my whole map! Woohoo!" "Yeah? What's your pop?" "I got to 150,000, yeah baby!" The unrealistic populations bring the populations up to more realistic levels for what can be accomplished in the game.

I can see what you are saying on one level, but keep in mind this isn't an exact city simulator, it's a game. It's supposed to be fun. There's probably a thousand and one other things that are not realistic in the game. When a game tries to replicate real life to some degree, there are always going to be places where things have to be sort of roughed in for gameplay, fun, and performance reasons.

So overall I'd say it's a matter of letting go of everything needing to be exactly like reality. Afterall, I'm sure a person familiar with municipal water supply systems would be apalled at these games. Traffic engineers would be disgusted with their simplistic simulations. Education experts exasperated wth the entire enterprise. Etc. Etc.

In short, think of it not as a direct one to one version of reality, but a rough approximation that values fun and interest over authenticity when the game designers feel that choice has to be made.

[Kredit 0]

Originally posted by: Vorret

Wow... seriously it seems like you read and understand what you want to understand.

How can you create a realistic city if the population growth isn't realistic?

He put. in detailed, the worse possible exemple of density yet the game is 3 times worse how is that even close to reality?

Especially since as far as I know, we're not building poor cities, it's *rich* cities.

He's not saying it's not "possible" but it just does NOT make sense.quote>

I was starting to think I'd gone crazy, but apparently my point was clear Thanks! 

[Vorret 49]

I have an idea...

How about two modes :

1- Arcade

2- Realistics

Arcade would be pretty much what we have right now with unrealistic growth, traffic, school coverage, etc.

Then you'd have a realistic mode where the option would reflect more "real life" ?

I'm sure it's something that could be done one way or another.

[Androv 6]

I just assume that there are more suburbs off the map area which are contributing to population

[Kredit 0]

Originally posted by: mentarman

 I just don't think the players would respond well to that. "I filled up my whole map! Woohoo!" "Yeah? What's your pop?" "I got to 150,000, yeah baby!"

quote>

Apologies for selectively quoting from your post, but I have 2 good reasons for it  

First of all, I agree with the rest of your post

Secondly, this quote illustrates exactly what I;m trying to point out... apparently it is about the "artificial high score".

If a city with 150000 doesn't satisfy someone,  but the exact same city with a 0 added to the pop number does, it's not about realism, gameplay or system limitations, it's about people wanting "big numbers" (which to me seems a bit shallow...)

[Kredit 0]

Originally posted by: Androv

I just assume that there are more suburbs off the map area which are contributing to population quote>

Heh... that's actually quite a good idea! 

Now if they'd let met play  those sub-urbs

[Livin in Sim 83]