Retail, retail, and more retail?

[jkangas 0]

I have a city called Annatown with about 800 000 residents at the moment with 0% unemployment and about 65 000C in profit per turn. Taxes is at 13% for Residents and 14% for Commercial. And I just keep on building retail, the citizens are never satisfied! So far I got 45 High Density Retail Zones placed along roads that have a lot of passengers and still the demand for retail is quite high. Elite, executives, and qualified residents all complain that there is too little retail, even though most of them live quite near retails stores. I got one Elite area across the street from 4 high density retail zones and they even complain about retail. 

Retail is also almost to the very left of the "offer - demand" scale.

Any ideas? Bug? Should I just keep on adding retail?

[urbanlife 2]

It is a bug and it sounds like the recent patch takes care of this issue.

[SimBurger 0]

Ive never been able to place more than 4 or 5 Retails without the game freaking out saying there are too many.

In fact this is the only nonrealistic thing about the game in my opinion. In real life, commercial retail is EVERYWHERE.

In this game, nowhere

SB

[gyzzzmo 0]

I dont think its bugged, its just unbalanced. But what i do is building sets of 4/6 low density retails scattered around the city, wich works for me: no complaining.

[Asheroo 53]

I love it. I can finally build a whole lot of shops. And it's realistic too. I really hated before this patch how little shops I could build. I wanted to create more bigger shopping centres and many little fast food stores. And I finally can. And also build lots of malls in the city and shops and markets and all. It's realistic and it's great.

[jeremy12 0]

Originally posted by: Asheroo

I love it. I can finally build a whole lot of shops. And it's realistic too. I really hated before this patch how little shops I could build. I wanted to create more bigger shopping centres and many little fast food stores. And I finally can. And also build lots of malls in the city and shops and markets and all. It's realistic and it's great.quote>

same

[Kredit 0]

I think it's also important to get the right type of retail for the type of worker, this might be causing your problems...

[Okeanos 0]

We discussed this topic on the german community site I normally am (citiesxs.de) thourouly. I discoverd something about the needs-system of citiesXL which also has something to to with the education bug/problem, for which I have created a fix for, which is currently evaluated at MC.

I do not want to go into too much detail about this because it would need some time I currently not have, but to give you a fast solution for the retail problem: Retail-buildings are giving a certain amount of retail goods a resource and retail goods as service (some people likes to shop in their recreation time). The service part is making the citiziens cry for more.

For that you need to know that every distinct version/layout of a T1/T2/T3 (light/medium/dense) building is providing a small amount of this service. There are currently 9 T1, 9 T2 and 9 T3 buildings. You should try to build all to get max service output. Only problem currently is, you cannot build distinct buildings with zoning/single mode, which is only available for residences, offices and industries.

To use number: T1 provides max +3 service, T2 provides max. +5 service and T3 provides max. +7 service. This makes:

9 * 3 + 9 * 5 + 9 *7 = 135

135 total max service if placed not too far away from each other, because they have a decreasing influence range based on traffic density and type of road.

Problem left is the other part for retail buildings the resource part. You need to provide enound agriculture for consumption and you should not provide too much retail goods (as resource) because prices are falling and profit margin for the shops reaching critical values and may lead to bankcryptcy.

My recommondation for you:

Build T1 retail building to a maxiumum of 9 and check they are different. If not enough build max 9 x T2 more and if that is still not enough max 9 x T3 more. This should give you maximum service with not too much resources.

Hope this helps.

-Okeanos

[SimBurger 0]

Oh - I didnt realize the patch fixed the retail issue. Maybe I can place more now. Cool!

SB

[jkangas 0]

Thanks for the input. I have now balanced the retail so the citizens no longer complain about retail. It took quite a lot of work, but I got some interesting results from it. Will post some screenshots soon of my creation, probably when I have reahed 1 000 000 citizens in a few days

[Livin in Sim 83]