Commercial Wealth/Customers, Population Income, High-tech Slow Dev. Questions

[Moneywell 0]

Well I decided to group all of my questions together to hopefully increase the probability I will get some good responses and save the forum from multiple topics. So here it goes. My first question is in regards to the wealth of commercial buildings. What causes them to decrease and how can they be fixed? In one of my cities I have  commercial buildings in parts of my city that have that dirty tint to them and when I click info they are missing one of the simoleon symbols for their wealth even though they have “high” customer volume (crime is low). My second question deals with the customer factor of commercial buildings. Do they really make a difference? Usually I will always hold back on zoning for a lot of commercial areas (especially commercial services) when they’re in high demand because they would usually have low amounts of customers. But I’ve observed having large buildings in areas that have "low" customer volume and this didn't make much sense to me. This has me question if this factor only affects how fast it will grow, not if it will stay in business (demand) or what building stage it will reach. Thus if there is enough CO jobs and a population to supply it, the commercial building could hit stage 8, even it has low customer volume.

My next question deals with the high-tech sector. Demand for high-tech zones in my city is through the roof, but whenever I zone, it takes forever for the area to develop. I make sure it’s a desirable area (on the index) with a police station, fire station, and access to major transit. Yet I still get the same result. That is why I am wondering if population has something to do with it. With how high the demand is, one would think zoning would be full within a couple months—not the case.

My final question is in regards to the income of the city population--what causes it to decrease? I have great education in my cities about 170, and my average income use to be at about 70k in both until it started fluctuating sporadically and is now settling at below 20k (image provided). My first guess is that it has to deal with the increase in population—since now the job ratios are different. My second guess would be raising taxes. Before I decided to start eliminating manufacturing and dirty zones altogether, I hiked their taxes to 15% to discourage development. I don’t know if raising taxes on industrials affect population income or not but it could be possible. My last guess is that it has to deal with eliminating my manufacturing and dirty sectors completely. I started out slowly by removing the manufacturing and dirty zones until they were completed eradicated. I didn’t have as many industrial jobs relative to commercial, so I don’t understand how removing a small industry would cause population income to decrease by 40k.

(Resized image: exceeded 800x600 pixel limit - Astronelson)

[joshriddle 29]

First of all, the issue with your low wealth commercial is called "Dilapidation". Usually if desirability or other factors are undesirable, the building will look like it was cooked over a barbecue. Try checking out the desirability data view to see if desirability is high enough for your CS buildings.

Customer volume increases depending on (strangely) the traffic on the road it is facing. So if it says that customers are low, traffic is probably low to moderate on the road or street that the building faces. On very busy avenues, that get a good 900-1000 vehicles customer volume would increase.

And really I-HT likes to live near residental zones. And yes, it does take awhile for them to go up unless conditions are absolutely perfect. So be patient in that field.

You tearing out the industry is part of it, but I don't quite know what the rest of it would be though.

[eggman111 8]

Buildings usually dilapidate due to desirability. They can also dilapidate due to demand, but if you are showing high demand for CO$$$ and you have CO$$$ with only two $$ highlighted, then it's probably desirability.

How many parks do you have in your city? I find that CO$$$ doesn't like to be far from parks. The same holds true for I-HT. I build parks every couple blocks in my commercial and industrial districts (2x2 or 3x3).

Another common issue is pollution. Cars produce quite a bit of pollution, as do major office towers. Trees and parks help with this as well. Factories spewing out smoke will make I-HT stay away.

Traffic is another factor that helps desirability for commercial, but lowers it for residential. I don't believe it has any effect on industrial. If you have lots of parks around commercial, they can grow with low traffic, but they do best with high traffic (try making arterial roads and avenues between residential and industrial with feeder streets).

A picture would be helpful as well.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

No question you should check your desirability displays.  To keep commercial areas happy you need some open spaces.  I like to have a plaza every couple of blocks or so, with a flower garden or a park in there occasionally.  If you have small, irregular areas that can't be zoned for buildings, put open grass areas on them and lay on some trees.  This usually gets a favorable hit from any near businesses or industries.

The other thing that keeps the commerical buildings happy is high traffic levels.  I like my traffic on commercial streets to show up in the new flow display heading towards the green (cyan is a nice color).

The oldest trick is to place your industrials at one end of the business district and the residentials at the other in such a way that the Sims have to pass through the commercial area to get to work in the industrials.  Try to keep the big buildings in the commercial area near the industrial end.

I don't take IM out.  Only ID, and I usually don't kid around with it.  I set the tax to 20% right at the start unless I am starting a new region and need them.  I generally keep my taxes at a level rate for all types of property.  Differential rates are a pain to manage, and don't really seem to do much for you.  The only thing I do at the beginning is to set I-Ag to 7%, and keep it there.  I cut taxes if development goes into the doldrums, but only a few hundreds of basis points at a time.

I suspect your real problem is lack of open/green space.  Sims like this too, and they like playgrounds near schools including the skateboarding park.  I have a policy with schools.  An elementary gets a playground if there is room.  A high school gets a soccer piech.  A large elementary gets a softball diamond, and a large high school gets both a soccer field and a softball field.  When I get the university, I try to keep some nearby space for the minor league stadium.  Makes a good field house and  field for the U.  I also give private schools some kind of sports facility if at all possible.  We don't have an available cricket pitch.  Maybe I'll bat one later.

I put my schools right in the middle of the Sims neighborhoods, even if I have to blot some lots.  Schools are quite often a neighborhood thing.  If you have to upgrade a school, you have to be quite sanquine about urban redevelopment and just plung it in where the old school was (bulldozed, of course).  Police and Fire statons, likewise, along with clinics and hospitals.  With hospitals, you can place them and build a neighborhood around them, or just drop them on some lots, built or not.  If there are residual single zones after that, I convert them to commercial.

About the university:  Lately I've been putting down a college building and a small airport, and labelling them the aeronautics institute and the flying school respectively.  Just a quirk of mine, but I like the idea.  Causes a lot of commercial development if you zone it.

[Moneywell 0]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

No question you should check your desirability displays.  To keep commercial areas happy you need some open spaces.  I like to have a plaza every couple of blocks or so, with a flower garden or a park in there occasionally.  If you have small, irregular areas that can't be zoned for buildings, put open grass areas on them and lay on some trees.  This usually gets a favorable hit from any near businesses or industries.

The other thing that keeps the commerical buildings happy is high traffic levels.  I like my traffic on commercial streets to show up in the new flow display heading towards the green (cyan is a nice color).

The oldest trick is to place your industrials at one end of the business district and the residentials at the other in such a way that the Sims have to pass through the commercial area to get to work in the industrials.  Try to keep the big buildings in the commercial area near the industrial end.

I don't take IM out.  Only ID, and I usually don't kid around with it.  I set the tax to 20% right at the start unless I am starting a new region and need them.  I generally keep my taxes at a level rate for all types of property.  Differential rates are a pain to manage, and don't really seem to do much for you.  The only thing I do at the beginning is to set I-Ag to 7%, and keep it there.  I cut taxes if development goes into the doldrums, but only a few hundreds of basis points at a time.

I suspect your real problem is lack of open/green space.  Sims like this too, and they like playgrounds near schools including the skateboarding park.  I have a policy with schools.  An elementary gets a playground if there is room.  A high school gets a soccer piech.  A large elementary gets a softball diamond, and a large high school gets both a soccer field and a softball field.  When I get the university, I try to keep some nearby space for the minor league stadium.  Makes a good field house and  field for the U.  I also give private schools some kind of sports facility if at all possible.  We don't have an available cricket pitch.  Maybe I'll bat one later.

I put my schools right in the middle of the Sims neighborhoods, even if I have to blot some lots.  Schools are quite often a neighborhood thing.  If you have to upgrade a school, you have to be quite sanquine about urban redevelopment and just plung it in where the old school was (bulldozed, of course).  Police and Fire statons, likewise, along with clinics and hospitals.  With hospitals, you can place them and build a neighborhood around them, or just drop them on some lots, built or not.  If there are residual single zones after that, I convert them to commercial.

About the university:  Lately I've been putting down a college building and a small airport, and labelling them the aeronautics institute and the flying school respectively.  Just a quirk of mine, but I like the idea.  Causes a lot of commercial development if you zone it.

quote>

I've had SimCity 4 since it was released as a birthday gift. And since that time I have always believed the buildings advertised on the cover were simply that, advertisements. I had no clue you could actually get those aesthetically pleasing buildings because I could never get them when I played. Well that’s not completely true; I did get the “Grand Hotel” once or twice although its size is greatly exaggerated on the cover. So due to this recent discovery I decided to install the game yet again and give it another try . I could always get some CO$$$ but never enough and none of the "stage 8" buildings. That is my main objective this time around; to get the "stage 8's"...at least one of each. I’m presently following a SimCity 4 Tutorial on YouTube by “VBackseatRomeoV”. You might have seen his videos or hey, maybe you’re him/her. My biggest mistake since I had the game is that I would only really start one city and try to develop it and then move onto another one. I was ignorant to the fact that Maxis actually programmed some complex interactions between cities that influence development. Now that I am aware of it I am somewhat more capable of supporting my city and region.

In the present city that prompted me to ask these questions, I decided to delete along with the entire region. The driving factor was my own fault. I was in the large city and I was focusing on one part of the city experiencing difficulties with employment. I decided to fast forward and many parts of the city, coincidently none where my view was fixed, lacked water due to my deteriorating water pumps. My utilities adviser did not bring this to my attention...By the time I realized this was occurring many residential, commercial, and high-tech sectors exited my city and my 10k profit turned into a 20k deficit. It forced me to demolish all my hydrogen plants and replace them with cheaper energy alternatives. The first thing that came to mind was quitting but I decided to stick it out and see if they would return. Some high-tech did but the vast majority that left did not. Once this occurred, the demand for residential, commercial, and high-tech trailed off. The few zones that were in demand were R$ and CS$ and CS$$. This, along with transit and population income issues, convinced me to delete the city after some time had passed with no results. The BackseatRomeo’s tutorial is what actually led me to delete the entire region. I realized that I took away a lot of the CO$$$ demand from my big city in my smaller cities while trying to increase high wealth in them to support the big city (in vain). Because I didn’t control taxes, I allowed CO$$$ to develop in all of them. So now I’m restricting development to CS and high-tech in my neighboring cities. I’m also restricting any CO$$ and CO$$$ development in my big city until the time is right. This is so that when I develop other cities there will be astronomically high demand for CO’s, increasing my chances of getting the stage 8’s in the big city.

So I think my biggest problems now are transit and like you said; green space. I never like putting a lot of parks around because it would take up valuable space that could have been an office building. But now that I know the dimensions of the stage 8’s (4x4), I’m not as worried. However, a major determining factor in available park space is the civil services facilities. Hospitals, police stations, and schools take up a lot of space, especially when you need multiple ones in a single area. This is what happened to me; two to three hospitals taking up a block with two police stations and two large elementary schools a couple blocks from each other. But I guess a good way to avoid this is to zone residential better so that they aren’t intermixed with commercial. But when they are mixed together, commercial receives more traffic and subsequently more customers so… The other issue is transit. People say it’s best to put up highways before you create the city but that can be expensive so that’s why I never do it until I know I need it and can afford it. But then when the time comes it creates a mess of things. And I never use monorail or train because they take up too much space. So I resort to subways and even then there’s still congested streets.

One last thing, the info on buildings in general is very limited on the net. I wish there was a buildings catalogue accompanied with pictures and details. I'm actually surprised there isn't one here or elsewhere on the web...unless there is one that I've overlooked.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, good luck with all that.

One thing though, when you post your writing from your HTML editor, please check the box that says Do not parse emoticons if you want to eliminate some of the junk in your headers.

[Dizastrow 4]

As a rule, I always build I-HT in large industrial parks.  Plop green space and trees around every zone.  You will see some nice development then.

Also, with your commercial zoning, try to diversify it.  If you get a couple of block of C$$ businesses, landmark them. Then do so for C$ C$$$ and so on, do this with all zones and you will see your city balance itself out.

[Dizastrow 4]

As a rule, I always build I-HT in large industrial parks.  Plop green space and trees around every zone.  You will see some nice development then.

Also, with your commercial zoning, try to diversify it.  If you get a couple of block of C$$ businesses, landmark them. Then do so for C$ C$$$ and so on, do this with all zones and you will see your city balance itself out.