Building development

[AnthonyRM1 10]

I've got a city with 630k residents, plenty of everything such as IM, IHT, CO, CS etc and the demand for everything is still maxed out on all bars except farms, but when I zone new residential areas, regardless of how good the local services, parks etc are, they just dont develop into anything. Theyre powered, watered, served by roads but nothing will seem to build.

It is the only city in my region so far (will eventually be the downtown to a massive metropolis), so does development of new buildings depend on how well connected a city is to other developed cities its next to in a region?

Hope someone can give me some pointers, I've been playing SC4 for years and never had this issue before?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I've got a city with 630k residents, plenty of everything such as IM, IHT, CO, CS etc and the demand for everything is still maxed out on all bars except farms, but when I zone new residential areas, regardless of how good the local services, parks etc are, they just dont develop into anything. Theyre powered, watered, served by roads but nothing will seem to build.

It is the only city in my region so far (will eventually be the downtown to a massive metropolis), so does development of new buildings depend on how well connected a city is to other developed cities its next to in a region?

Hope someone can give me some pointers, I've been playing SC4 for years and never had this issue before?

Sounds like you've been capped. Try dropping a school on top of some of your residential, and if nothing happens, a clinic, a fire station, and a cop shop until things start growing. If necessary add a park.

[AnthonyRM1 10]

Ill try giving that a go, although I have been doing that before posting this. Does a cap only get relieved by a Maxis building, or will a plugin listed in my parks menu/schools menu etc still have the same effect?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If it is a properly designed park, it shouldn't be a problem.

The other thing to check is your desirability display.

[cogeo 960]

To see if you have hit demand caps dl my Chamber of Commerce & Industry (you will need the Census Repositoty from the LEX too), or the Census Repositoty alone (without the CCI) - the CR buildings raise some demand caps too, the CCI doesn't, but it doesn't have a negative park effect either, nor requires to nearly hit a cap first, for the lot to become available. The query will tell you about demand caps, as well as the neutral tax rate for your city size. My advice is don't lower taxes below or well below the neutral tax rate. While high taxes have a negative effect on demand, low taxes won't finally cause more growth, just some few more buildings, and they will finally mess your city up, eg causing growth that your city (workforce etc) cannot sustain.

So if demand is high, and desirability OK (services, no crime or garbage/pollution, parks etc), you should have development. A reason that may not allow additional development may be the lack of proper lots (size- and density-wise). There are some settings in the simulator that relate the occurence of lots to the population, eg for a certain population level, some set percentage of the lots must be stage-1, some stage-2 etc. The larger the population the higher the percentages for the higher stages. So:

- If you have mostly low- and medium-density development (for R), add some properly-sized high-density lots too. The simulator works best if you have lots of various sizes, eg for hirises 4x2, 4x3, 3x4, 3x3 and finally 4x4; 4x4 have the biggest buildings, and are stage-8 (you may even grow a smaller building on a 4x4, which can finally be upgraded to the biggest buildings). You may even examine the lot sizes available for each stage by using the Navigator tool in the reader (all lots/buildings are in simcity_1.dat). And a tip, R hirises need parks nearby to grow (even the R$ ones), and growth is greatly encouraged by the presence of MT stations. The road-top mass-transit (RTMT) pack allows you to place stops and stations on already developed areas, without requiring additional space and without having to bulldoze anything.

- If instead, you have a lot of hirises, the situation is quite more difficult to cope with, as the rule about the percentages I mentioned above has been violated, and the simulator refuses to grow more hirises befoe some mid- and lowrises develop. But the problem is that at the same time the simulator appears to refuse to grow mid- and lowrises, if demand is too high! I'm not sure what you can do in this case, but the goal is get some more mid- and low-rise development. Maybe try to develop a new suburb (where land value isn't very high yet - zone medium or low density there), or finally another city.

Problems may also be caused by using those so called Maxis blockers. Maxis has actually done an excellent job as far as the lots are concerned (it's the building collection instead that's poor so players complain about getting the same buildings all over the place): there are lots of many sizes, densities and stages, ensuring smooth stage transitions and growth. Now if you block these, you need to supply a full range of sizes/densities and stages of custom content lots, which I think is very difficult, as the stats are in many cases broken, inconsistent or wrong (eg CO$$$ skyscrappers w/ 4000 jobs, sized 4x4, but of stage only 5!). So I would say uninstall Maxis blockers, if you have any.

You said you have I-HT. Can you check if they really employ R$$$ sims? (check the commute paths) There is a bug in the game that prevents R$$$ working in I-HT, and you may face no-job zots in your R$$$ areas. There is a fix on the STEX, this however causes another problem (broken regional statistics); you actually need to merge these fixes with your simcity_1.dat to avoid this. Refer to the SC4D forums for instructions on how to do this correctly (and of course backup your original simcity_1.dat before).

Hope this helps