population per residential building

[pete1061 0]

I was recently trying to figure out what the actual population per residential building, and I discovered that it is not constant.

As the total population rises, the number of people per building increases.

For instance, when i start out with a very tiny town of a couple hundred, the population would only increase by 15-20 when I add a medium density lot. But as the total population reaches 2000 or so, the population would increase by 40-45 when I add a medium density lot.

I'm going to fiddle around more and try to get some better statistics, but i figured I'd post a topic, so if any of you have done or read any research on this, we can colloct data in this thread.

This was inspired when I was noticing that with a city full of medium density residences, the total population seems too high judging by how the city looks. But in a city full of high density residences, the population is too low for how the city looks.

I don't think that there is really very much of a population increase when you go from medium to high density residences.

The tall buildings are merely eye candy.

[YannickSHE 0]

I noticed what you are saying as well. What I do, to make it look real, I build a lot of low/med housing with a nice dense skyline. That way, you achieve a sizeable amount of residents and when you look at the skyline, it makes sense.

[mr-tom 2]

Visit here: http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.citiesxs.net%2Fwiki%2Findex.php

Shows how many people live in each building. And no, 1 person in a house but 5 in a sky scraper makes little sense to me, either.

[pete1061 0]

That guide shows population units. ( 1 for low, 2 for med, 5 for high )

What I'm talking about is the actual population.

So far, I've been working on a city, adding one low density residential lot at a time and recording how much the population increases.

1st lot......population: 1

2nd lot.....population: 2.....an increase of 1

3rd lot......population: 5.....an increase of 3

4th lot............................8.....an increase of 3

5th lot..........................12.....an increase of 4

6th lot..........................16.....an increase of 4

7th lot..........................20.....an increase of 4

8th lot..........................25.....an increase of 5

...and so on, the population jump gradually increases..

by the 50th lot, it's a population jump of 13

by the 100th lot, it's a population jump of 20

by the 300th lot, it's a population jump of 36

by the 600th lot, it's a population jump of 53 each time I add a lot.

The increase seems to be slowly leveling out, but i speculate that by the time the 1000th low density lot is added, the population will increase by as much as 75 or 80 each time. But even with 600 low density lots, my population is 20,236. That's a little over 33 people per building when you divide the population by the number of residences. That doesn't seem very "low density" to me.

It's a tedious process, but I'm a math/numbers geek, so it's fun for me.

I plan to do the process for medium and high density as well. It might take a while, but I'm curious.

[BorisS1990 27]

That's some interesting info you got there Pete. No wonder traffic and adequate services start becoming a problem so quickly. i doubt MC will do anything about it in CXL 2011, but let's hope it can be modded out.

[morriswalters 16]

The number of people in any house will rise as your city gets bigger.  As the population increases the number of people in a home increases.  There's some type of multiplier.  That is how some players managed to get 80 million on 1 map.  This is also true for businesses.

[pete1061 0]

In the real world, the number of people living in a residence weighs more on economic conditions than the size of the city. In Los Angeles, there could be 6 people squeezed into a studio apartment in the poor neighborhoods, while there is one person occupying a 6 bedroom mansion in the Hollywood hills.

I think MC made this population algorithm to make the city look "right" to them.

But I find it detracts from the realism. One city of mine that is all medium density reports a population of 2.5 million, but really only looks like it should have 300,000 maximum. Another city of mine that is all high density reports a population of 5 million, but looks more like it should have 10 million.

I think they should have had a fixed population per building that is appropriate to the physical size of the building. Most cities have zoning laws that limit the number of occupants in a building.

and in response to BorisS1990,

I doubt this can be modded out. I'm betting it's an integral part of the simulation engine.

[mentarman 14]

SC4 also has unrealistic populations. I think it really comes down to players who want to build cities with 10 million plus residents, but the games can't handle that for a variety of reasons, so they fudge the population numbers.

It's not that big a deal to me. It's a game and a lot of things have to be messed with to make it work, this is just one more thing.

[pete1061 0]

I'm not really 'bothered' by the inaccuracy. It's merely a curiosity to me. I understand how impossible it is to accurately simulate every single citizen of a city of millions on your average home computer. Fudging is necessary. It is a game after all.

This is more or less an informational project of mine, to understand the dynamics of CXL.

Thought I'd share my findings with the community.

Progress report:

My low density city is now up to a population of 53,393 with 1122 residences. 74 people are added with every new building making an average of 47.6 people per residence. this city is 95% unskilled, working in low density industry. I only have enough skilled to satisfy city services. I am using the sandbox mod to make the Omnicorp prices more friendly.

[mentarman 14]

Yeah, I wasn't knocking your project, it is interesting info. Just sort of generally commenting on the situation.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I read about this months ago. I am glad that there is now a st list. I think that each building should have a different population (I saw a low rise skilled residential in high density grow next to a high rise, very unrealistic, not to mention the mega mansions in high density). I think that the population value should either be flat or a sine graph with the multiplier starting at 1 then eventually going to 100 at population 50million then going back to 1 at 100million.

[joshphillips999 0]

Yeah It probably wouldn't be able to be modded out, because it interferes with traffic and the demand for certain industries and tokens (i think) etc.

Although, I don't think it affects the number of workers. Usually its 1 per low-density, 2 for med-density and 5 for high density, right? -Just like city life.  But then that doesn't make sense, why would there be so many more cars on the road if only one/two/five people in the building work, out of about 50? It's a major flaw in the realism of this game and it just doesn't really match up to the side effects.

Also, this is irrelevant, but you know where a business asks for a certain amount of workers, either low, medium or high, is that proportionate to the residential buildings? Ie, a business which requires a 'high' number of skilled workers, would require the same number of skilled workers who live in a skilled workers' high density residential building (5). Is that correct? Or does 'low' number of workers mean 1, 'medium' mean 2 and 'high' mean 3?