Gameplay problem: Too much R$$$

[xbfernandez 3]

Hey ST people! I have a question. Whenever I establish cities, there comes a time for each one when the residential zones get overwhelmed by 3x4 mansions by R$$$ residents. I mean, yeah, it's nice that the city has a really high median income and all, but those mansions just suck up so much space.

So when my cities get infested by villas, I zone more residential, place schools and hospitals where they are most accessible, and I get normal 2x1 houses at first, but then they, too, get replaced by R$$$ lots.

This is especially concerning to be now because one of the cities is already building skyscrapers. I want to house the residents in high-density tenements, apartments and condominiums, and I do get those occasionally when I zone high-density, but most of the time, I get, you guessed it, R$$$ villas.

So how do I manage this? How can I make some inner-city ghettos or middle-class suburbs like in real life for a change?

[Ltw 401]

I think you have to make your city unpleasant to live in. R$$$ comes when there is a good education, short commute times, a lot of parks etc.

If you make residential zones without all these things (just zone and don't give them anything else than housing) it should be okay.

If this doesn't work, the problem should be more sophisticated. Are the people working in the same city or in another? If they are working in your city, you could build more industrial and commercial zones which give jobs for the residents with lower incomes.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

R$$$ is more trouble than it's worth they create a number of problems in the game, raise taxes as high as you want and bulldoze as you see fit. From my experience R$$$ will stick around even with high taxes, but they won't want to grow anymore. So you can keep some to prop up your income if you want.

[steelersfanforlife 43]

I always put R$$$ taxes at 20% because i hate seeing those large mansions. Max out R$$$ taxes before you start building then simulate a couple of months. The demand should drop all the way down.

  Edited August 29, 2011 by steelersfanforlife  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Taxes at 20% will exclude them, but as your city grows and you start getting big office buildings, you will need some of them. With respect to mansions, I don't lay down loarge patches of single occupancy lots. When mansions start showing up, I rezone them at the highest density. They get clobbered by the next building cycle. If necessary, I up their taxes, but not beyond 12%.

When the game wants a lot of R$ (low wealth Sims), I zone for high-density and usually get tenements. This is especially true if the lots are next door to I-D. R$$$ won't live there, but R$ will. You get nice short commute times, too.

[Zeth 23]

I also have problems with too damn many R§§§ sims in cities where I provide blanket services. It's very annoying because (a) it's just aesthetically stupid to have a posh villa surrounded on all sides by slum tenements, which happens a lot and is an example of poor design implementation, and (b) half of the villas end up dilapidated before long.

I usually deal with it by cutting off health services to all of the city except little spots where I want the rich people to live (then I build a hospital with ambulance funding 0). This isn't perfect, sometimes the damn rich oafs will move into the slums anyway (since I keep education high everywhere).

Raising taxes works in the short term but I find it causes problems in the long term, because demand for high-wealth commerce and high-tech industry wants to grow but your city can't attract enough high-wealth sims to properly staff them.

[jacksunny 741]

If you don't want Maxis mansions and just small, suburban houses, then zone only 1X1 or 2X1 lots.

[EyeofMobius 27]

Another trick which hasn't yet been mentioned is to go along rows of single width R-lots and make avery third one historical. This keeps the maxis mansions from popping up in the lower density. This will not work with some of the Custom BATs of R$$$ in which case you may need to make every second house historical.

I was running a tile this afternoon and gave it water; the wealthy showed up in a bunch of spots and dropped my population down about 3,000 from almost 11,0000. I saved that point but experimented afterwards to see what I wanted for implementing a park, hospital, school/highschool/sports field and my population completely went to R$$$ popping the country club reward and the solar plant reward at a cost of a further 3,000 population. As I revisit the tile I am going to have to find just the right amount of taxation; R$$$ is definitely getting a major jump and I suspect R$$ wil also get a jump; Also Co$$ needs a jump since they are making it hard for sims to find a place to buy fuel.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

Taxes at 20% will exclude them, but as your city grows and you start getting big office buildings, you will need some of them. With respect to mansions, I don't lay down loarge patches of single occupancy lots. When mansions start showing up, I rezone them at the highest density. They get clobbered by the next building cycle. If necessary, I up their taxes, but not beyond 12%.

When the game wants a lot of R$ (low wealth Sims), I zone for high-density and usually get tenements. This is especially true if the lots are next door to I-D. R$$$ won't live there, but R$ will. You get nice short commute times, too.

As far as I remember even the big office buildings have a tiny proportion of R$$$ jobs available, R$$$ creates more demand for C$$$ (Which I hate) than it does anything else. I can never seem to build enough C$$$ or C$$ anyway and making entire C$$ districts historical is a pain in the arse. As such most of my cities are 50/50 R$$/R$. If I didn't exclude the rich quite often the stupid low density 4x4 mansions will build even on high density, it may upgrade over time to a much larger stage 8 R$$$ but the problems remain the same, don't use public transport, massively picky about jobs as even the high wealth offices have a small proportion of them - ect ect, both lead to long commute times, and because they all insist on driving their cars it can add a huge amount of road traffic to an area.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Taxes at 20% will exclude them, but as your city grows and you start getting big office buildings, you will need some of them. With respect to mansions, I don't lay down loarge patches of single occupancy lots. When mansions start showing up, I rezone them at the highest density. They get clobbered by the next building cycle. If necessary, I up their taxes, but not beyond 12%.

When the game wants a lot of R$ (low wealth Sims), I zone for high-density and usually get tenements. This is especially true if the lots are next door to I-D. R$$ won't live there, but R$ will. You get nice short commute times, too.

As far as I remember even the big office buildings have a tiny proportion of R$$ jobs available, R$$ creates more demand for C$$ (Which I hate) than it does anything else. I can never seem to build enough C$$ or C$ anyway and making entire C$ districts historical is a pain in the arse. As such most of my cities are 50/50 R$/R$. If I didn't exclude the rich quite often the stupid low density 4x4 mansions will build even on high density, it may upgrade over time to a much larger stage 8 R$$ but the problems remain the same, don't use public transport, massively picky about jobs as even the high wealth offices have a small proportion of them - ect ect, both lead to long commute times, and because they all insist on driving their cars it can add a huge amount of road traffic to an area.

Of course if you don't provide roads that go beyond the residential suburb, the R$$$ have to bite the bullet and take transit or move out. The important thing to remember that R$$$ should never be more than 15% of your work force. The R$ do all the heavy lifting. When an R$$$ mansion abandons, you can rezone it (wipe it first) back to 2 x 1 or 1 x 1 lots, or make it into a neighborhood plaza by zoning C$. Sometimes I do this with some glee.