Solutions for lifting the demand cap?

[jsimcity4 18]

I have built many large and successful cities in my game, but recently, I have noticed a major decrease in residential and commercial demand in many of these cities, and also new ones. I know of the "demand cap" that appears in the game, and I have heard of solutions for it, like creating large numbers of neighbor connections between cities helps increase tourism and demand. I also have lowered taxes, specifically on high wealth commercial office, which right now, in my case, is just over 4,000 points below the middle of the demand graph, but the demand never goes up. I also realize that I could raise taxes on lower wealth residential and commercial, but I am unsure if that would do any good for my city. Should I just continue to build up neighboring cities or should I just stop pushing for high demand?

[Lucario Boricua 7,026]

What kind of neighbor connections do you have? In terms of RCI demand, the game recognizes these as different types of connection:

- Road (road, avenue, highway, RHW if having the mod)--up to 3

- Heavy rail--up to 3

- Light Rail (subway, El-Rail, ground light rail if having the mod)--up to 3

- Monorail--up to 3

- Ferry--up to 16 terminals

Also, have you tried other ways to raise the demand?

- certain ordinances (tourism, health, reading campaign)

- rewards (temple, cementery, government buildings, statues, tourist trap...)

- landmarks

- parks

- airports

  Edited June 28, 2011 by Dragonxander  

[jacksunny 741]

And if it just suddenly dropped reccently, it could be a new plugin causing the problem. You might want to check anything you have downloaded recently and see if it is cauing this to happen.

[jsimcity4 18]

I should have re-worded that. My demand, as my city gets larger, seems to go down, but I do have mostly road, rail, and a few highway connections between cities. Plus, I have many functional airports and I do stay up to date with building rewards.

Also, I don't have any radical demand ordinances in my game, and I tend to only download landmarks and plopable and growable commercial and residential buildings.

[Tsokoa 9]

Demand is falling in several cities of the same region ? If so ist going down the same way in every city ? There is no problem such as polution, crime, low education level or so ?

  Edited June 28, 2011 by Tsokoa  

[jacksunny 741]

Could we see a demand chart?

[jsimcity4 18]

[yigit007 2]

Seeing as there's little demand for R$$ and R$$$ and lots of R$ demand, might it be because you need R$ workforce for the high wealth offices? (or maybe you have enough R$ but they're uneducated for working in CO$$$.)

  Edited July 7, 2011 by yigit007  

[jsimcity4 18]

My education level city-wide is 160, so I don't see why they aren't occupying those jobs. I thought the education level had to be 120 and over for CO$$$ demand to go up. Any ideas?

  Edited July 9, 2011 by jsimcity4  

[jsimcity4 18]

I am just baffled about why my commercial demand (in general) is so low. In most of my cities, my education levels are above the average requirement for me to start seeing more CO. Plus, I have started to make purely residential cities bordering the city I would like to have a good CO population. Still, in my main city, commercial demand still sinks. I really don't understand.

  Edited July 11, 2011 by jsimcity4  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Take another look at your desirability display, and if it is at all down, drop in a few plazas.

[simcity4deluxe 95]

Get more residents in that city and more industry in outside cities, then you will get more commercial office growth.

[cogeo 960]

First of all you have to check if you have indeed hit demand caps. Download and install the Census Repository from the LEX. If you find these buildings hard to blend in, architecturally, you can try my Chamber of Commerce and Industry lot - it uses a more conventional BAT. The query dialog will tell you if you have hit caps or not. Also, what the neutral tax rate for the size of your city is.

As far as I can see from your graphs, your problem is not desirablity, as all CO$$$ demand was more than satisified (you would otherwise have positive CO$$$ demand, unable to cause growth). You have a lot of unsatisfied R$ demand, which would have been even higher, if you had developed more CS$ zones (for which you have high demand too). I would say try to get more R$ sims, as both I-HT and CO$$$ need R$ workers as well. Newcommers will be poorly educated (EQ 20 ) but if you have good educational coverage of all grades (elementary and high schools, colleges, libraries and museums - play with the sliders, esp for school buses, so that the cost is affordable) and run your city for several years, you will get a good supply of additional educated workers, a prerequisite for the CO$$$ demand to rise again.

The low (or "very low") CO$$$ taxes may have actually caused an overgrowth of CO$$$. I would suggest that you gradually (once demand starts to rise) increase taxes, to a level close or at the neutral rate for your city size. Lowering taxes only causes a few more buildings to grow, not a sustainable or continous growth. The number and level of highly educated workers is the key.

Mods you may find interesting:

- A mod that fixes the I-HT buildings bug: THEY EMPLOY NO R$$$ SIMS

- The "5% R$$ working in X$" mods, included in CAM, where X$ can be IR, ID and CS$.

Look out, these MUST be merged with Maxis' simicity_1.dat, otherwise they cause another bug, double-counting R population. Check the SC4D forums for instructions on how to do this. I do not use CAM (I prefer the 8-stage SC4 setting), but do install these.

I would also recommend installing the "Less Abandonment" mod by Bones1. This makes harder to get mid- and high-wealth development, but you will be facing much less abandonment, and enjoy a more stable city. The mod works by employing overlapping desirability ranges. The threshold for a building to dilapidate is set lower than the one required to get mid- and high-wealth development, or exit the dilapidation state.

You may have also activated the so-called "Eternal Commuters Bug": if you have many R areas near the cities borders (connections), your cities will be (falsely) "seeing" more workforce than the actual one. Better zone C and I close to connections, ie make it easier for your workers to work in the same city they live in, rather than commute.

[DavidB_ 83]

What kind of neighbor connections do you have? In terms of RCI demand, the game recognizes these as different types of connection:

- Road (road, avenue, highway, RHW if having the mod)--up to 3

- Heavy rail--up to 3

- Light Rail (subway, El-Rail, ground light rail if having the mod)--up to 3

- Monorail--up to 3

- Ferry--up to 16 terminals

Also, have you tried other ways to raise the demand?

- certain ordinances (tourism, health, reading campaign)

- rewards (temple, cementery, government buildings, statues, tourist trap...)

- landmarks

- parks

- airports

So is there an effective limit to the number of neighbour connections? I hope not, because my cities are very closely joint!

[cogeo 960]

So is there an effective limit to the number of neighbour connections? I hope not, because my cities are very closely joint!

Not really, but every additional connection beyond the 3rd has a diminishing effect.

[DavidB_ 83]

So is there an effective limit to the number of neighbour connections? I hope not, because my cities are very closely joint!

Not really, but every additional connection beyond the 3rd has a diminishing effect.

That's not good at all, I wonder why that is... shouldn't cities be closely linked anyway? It would take a lot of work to change my region though, the cities are completely interdependent!

[jsimcity4 18]

Thank you for the great suggestion, Cogeo. I installed the Census Repository and your Chamber of Commerce and I have started zoning for more CS. Hopefully, in time (if I am correct) more CO jobs will come. Already, because I have started to zone more commercial, demand for CS$ and CS$$ have increased.

Thanks everybody!!!!!!

[His Divine Hand 244]

So is there an effective limit to the number of neighbour connections? I hope not, because my cities are very closely joint!

Not really, but every additional connection beyond the 3rd has a diminishing effect.

That's not good at all, I wonder why that is... shouldn't cities be closely linked anyway? It would take a lot of work to change my region though, the cities are completely interdependent!

It should be noted that this only refers to raising of DEMAND CAPS. For transportation means, sims will go to the nearest or fastest to get to neighbor connection.

[DavidB_ 83]

So is there an effective limit to the number of neighbour connections? I hope not, because my cities are very closely joint!

Not really, but every additional connection beyond the 3rd has a diminishing effect.

That's not good at all, I wonder why that is... shouldn't cities be closely linked anyway? It would take a lot of work to change my region though, the cities are completely interdependent!

It should be noted that this only refers to raising of DEMAND CAPS. For transportation means, sims will go to the nearest or fastest to get to neighbor connection.

That's what I mean about the demand, cities being interdependent and influencing region-wide demand. Oh well, at least my sims get around...