How can I increase the agriculture demand?

[Thorx21 7]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

The Reader, Beginners Guide

I found that one but overlooked the readme link in where all the information is I required.

Having read that I managed to Change the "Capacity Satisfied" lines of all the farms. Unfortunately this requires me to change said lines in the .dat files of all the CAMeLots also which is quite a bit of work. Then I can play by changing the values until they match the desired balance I like to simulate. Most of the Farm CAMeLots are of SImgoobers so I changed all the capacity satisfied values to 0x0000000 and now I require 4500 sims to cover a med city like the one in my test city earlier posted.
Maybe this throws of the balance once my region grows to a larger population and I may try to revert the number to their original but for now this works.

 

 

[rsc204 21,866]

In-short, you need to edit the property "Capacity Satisfied" for the Buildings Exemplars of the Farm Fields to 1, which will return the number of workers in the fields back to their vanilla values. You could edit the same property for the farms themselves (separate Building Exemplars), but I think the fields is sufficient. I've copied out the necessary farm buildings from the CAM mod, edited said fields for you and attached them in a "patch" to this post. To start with you can just place the patch in the same folder as the original file "CAM_2.1.0_Buildings.dat", this will override the necessary files. You further tweak the values if you so choose, but once you're happy, I'd DATPack them making a modified custom replacement personally.

- It appears you beat me to it, I guess I forgot to refresh my browser before posting! I'll leave the attachment, someone else may find it useful -

As you mention, there is no solution but to edit all farms/fields that you want to change, there is no single property that will adjust everything.

I notice though that your screenshots of iLives reader doesn't list the property names, which is going to make life VERY hard for you. You should check in Options / Options / XML Properties files that you've correctly added a "new_properties.xml" file (should be located in the install directory). If it still doesn't appear, your permissions in Windows don't allow Reader to access this file, try running Reader as an Administrator in which case.

zCAM_Farming_LowerFieldJobs_Patch.dat

[Thorx21 7]

@rsc204 Wow thanks.

It definitely works but I'm still trying to get the right balance. It works for most of the mods. However, I also got BLS Farm fields. I tried opening all the .dat files and even the SC4Lots in the reader just to theck for "Capacity Satisfied" line. It doesn't have these. This mod allocate jobs based of another parameter besides "Capacity Satisfied" and I don't know how to modify the fields of this mod. They now take up most of all the AG jobs and I'm considering removing BLS farms alltogether. 
I'm curious how this mod treats the workforce and whether Ilive reader or a entirely other program can modify it.

And the posted screenshots was before I read the ilive readme, I had indeed added the .xml file to it.

[rsc204 21,866]

5 minutes ago, Thorx21 said:

This mod allocate jobs based of another parameter besides "Capacity Satisfied" and I don't know how to modify the fields of this mod.

Could be a linked Parent Cohort, which is how the original Maxis Files worked. Basically a cohort is a set of properties, that are shared by more than one exemplar. So if I make one with the Capacity Satisfied of 1, then link all related Buildings Exemplars to it, that way changing this single value affects all the exemplars linked to it. Much better than altering each one at a time, eh? The problem is, most modders are unaware of or simply never used cohorts, for example CAM removes them as part of it's modifications. Ultimately though, if Capacity Satisfied doesn't exist somewhere in the chain, the lot provides no jobs.

[zebulon_stonehenge 135]

On 4/16/2018 at 9:01 PM, monkeywater said:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1831
one of the census lots in this download increase ag demand.

Thanks! Yes, I tried that and it works! I had an already-built-up city I've been trying to add Ag to for months with no success. I tried various Ag mods and Demand mods: no success. The I saw your post from 4/16/2018 just now (8/20/2018), and I tried what you suggest, and it works! I was able to successfully get Ag demand up and get farms to sprout on my Ag-zoned land by plopping both the 2x2 BSC Census Repository Vault and the 1x3 BSC Census Repository Facility in my city. (Though to plop the 1x3, I had to use the "Ctrl-x you don't deserve it" cheat code.) Farms sprouted up! After they sprouted, I was able to demolish the "Census Repository Facility" (which costs 400/month), but not the "Vault" (which only costs 50/month), and Ag demand stayed high. (I tried demolishing the "Vault" as well, but Ag demand dropped to 0, so I re-added it.)

[zebulon_stonehenge 135]

Ah, always something new to learn in this game! I was just playing around with a test city to see what happens if I don't build any higher-education facilities at all, just an elementary school and a high school. And the result was, after running forward 50 years, all the age 0-30 sims have EQ (Educational Quotient) of 200, but all the age 31-99 sims have EQ=100. One of the results of this is that Agricultural demand stays positive! So, one way to have agriculture in big cities is, don't plop any colleges or universities; keeps the sims dumb enough to want to do field work. Check out these two photos:

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

37 minutes ago, zebulon_stonehenge said:

So, one way to have agriculture in big cities is, don't plop any colleges or universities; keeps the sims dumb enough to want to do field work.

Looks cool, but does this also bypass when the number of all jobs combined in the city passes 30,000? Traditionally, that's also when Ag demand goes to zero.

[Prophet42 1,503]

I agree with Cori.  I think it is hard coded into the game that Ag demand goes to zero once number of jobs reaches 30,000.  According to the Prima guide as other businesses grow they go against the Agriculture Demand Cap and force Agriculture to stagnate.  A true test of your theory would be to keep the education level the same in your city and then grow the businesses to see if you can keep Ag demand positive past the business cap.

[City_Slider 2,716]

That should be regulated through taxes.

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

2 hours ago, Prophet42 said:

I think it is hard coded into the game that Ag demand goes to zero once number of jobs reaches 30,000.

I seem to remember reading that SPAM and possibly the Ag favorable option of CAM can set this via the Census Drives (and/or some related exemplar properties), but yes, without modding it would be the same as built into the game.

[City_Slider 2,716]

Right, I hadn't thought of SPAM.

[Propfam 2,305]

The 30,000 number is actually the cap for farms. The solution for this is available:

https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33986-cap-lifter/

Let me know if you just want farm lifter or commercial lifter etc.

[monkeywater 910]

On 12/8/2020 at 1:44 PM, CorinaMarie said:

I seem to remember reading that SPAM and possibly the Ag favorable option of CAM can set this via the Census Drives (and/or some related exemplar properties), but yes, without modding it would be the same as built into the game.

This census facility can also increase ag demand.

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1831

 

I just tested it in a city with 120 k population and SPAM and no ag demand. 

 

After placing a few I had enough ag demand to zone and grow new farms, despite the population.

[rsc204 21,866]

On 08/12/2020 at 4:45 PM, Prophet42 said:

I think it is hard coded into the game that Ag demand goes to zero once number of jobs reaches 30,000.

I'm pretty sure that's not right. After this thread came back on the radar, I went into a single-city region I made a while back, thinking 30,000 jobs was the "magic" figure. Instead, to my initial surprise, despite over 30k jobs, I still had pretty healthy I-AG demand:

Of course, this is very explainable since I have SPAM installed, which is supposed to increase this Cap to 60k. Likewise, CAM I believe also increases the overall I-AG cap. This does lead me to think, by simply raising this cap sufficiently, you could retain I-AG demand long into the game. I'll add here too, it's not all that easy to get 30k I-AG workers using Vanilla SC4. Not impossible of course, just there is a finite amount of space and farms don't employ a lot of sims.

However, I had visited the above city to make a case for the opposite argument, which is that no matter what you do, I-AG demand always fizzles out eventually. Whilst that's certainly not happening there, I still believe something hard-coded is preventing I-AG from being sustainable. The proviso being, if you have significant other development, i.e. a large Commercial and Industrial base from sources other than I-AG, will eventually kill off demand, regardless of any caps.

On 08/12/2020 at 4:45 PM, Prophet42 said:

According to the Prima guide as other businesses grow they go against the Agriculture Demand Cap and force Agriculture to stagnate.

Exactly, this is the widely held knowledge here, although it doesn't specify exactly how the game does this, I'm just saying it doesn't seem to be the caps that are behind this. I suspect it would take a lot of testing to get to the bottom of the absolute specifics here. Something those involved with both SPAM and CAM development, would be most knowledgable of.

I'm wondering if it could have been connected to the Capacity Satisfied/Demand Created properties. But the way I-AG demand switches off forever, it seems far more likely this is hard-coded behaviour we won't easily be able to work-around. But I've certainly noticed this happening and anecdotally, it seems to occur when other Industrial jobs grow beyond a certain level. That said, expecting that, I wouldn't have been paying too much attention to such things. But I have a couple other archived regions which may enlighten things I plan to look at.

[Propfam 2,305]

It would be interesting if the game magically nullifies demand of I-R beside of the caps. I-R is indeed the special industrial type. One is the only industrial zone to have fields instead of mechs and outbuildings. Second, it's not the same region of code in Demand Satisfied. I-D, I-M, and I-HT is 0x40A0, 0x40B0, 0x40C0, while I-R is 0x4900. (The exact code here mayn't be accurate but you get the idea). Third, you can't dilapidate I-D, I-M, and I-HT to I-R, unlike I-D, I-M, I-HT to each other.

[monkeywater 910]

In regards to the limits of increasing agriculture demand.

 

In a city of 1.7 million and negative agriculture demand, I placed 125 census repository vaults, with no resultant growth in agriculture demand.

 

So there may be a hard cap on the ability to grow farms, but it is somewhere between 120k and 1.7 million.

 

Or I did not place enough census repository vaults to increase demand enough. 

 

 

[Propfam 2,305]

5 hours ago, monkeywater said:

In regards to the limits of increasing agriculture demand.

 

In a city of 1.7 million and negative agriculture demand, I placed 125 census repository vaults, with no resultant growth in agriculture demand.

 

So there may be a hard cap on the ability to grow farms, but it is somewhere between 120k and 1.7 million.

 

Or I did not place enough census repository vaults to increase demand enough. 

 

 

Try to use my cap lifter first:

And then report the result.

[shubharora734 0]

I conducted a test in an empty sandbox city.  I plopped the Census Repository Vault, gave it street access, gave it power, and un-paused the game.  There was no change in the IR demand bar.  I plopped further iterations of the building, with again no change.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

3 hours ago, shubharora734 said:

There was no change in the IR demand bar.

Right -- Cap relief is not the same as demand.

[jesarshare 3]

In a city of 1.7 million and negative agriculture demand, I placed 125 census repository vaults, with no resultant growth in agriculture demand. So there may be a hard cap on the ability to grow farms, but it is somewhere between 120k and 1.7 million.

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

3 hours ago, jesarshare said:

I placed 125 census repository vaults, with no resultant growth in agriculture demand.

Did you happen to test with @chfzdn's Cap Lifter? I use it for Ag and it works well in city tiles with 100k pop, but I don't have any larger than that to check.

[CorinaMarie 29,892]

On 12/9/2021 at 8:00 AM, jesarshare said:

So there may be a hard cap on the ability to grow farms, but it is somewhere between 120k and 1.7 million.

I finally have a city with a population of 425k and I did have to adjust the agriculture tax rate down to the new neutral amount of 8.6%, but while using @chfzdn's Cap Lifter, there was no trouble at all growing new farms. Ofc I cannot say it will still work with higher populations, but I see no reason now to suspect a hard cap limit for them.

Just be sure to adjust the farming tax rate to whatever is neutral for the size population.