Why do Sims Crave Industrial?

[AlexTheRose 1]

I always hate how in SimCity 4 in particular your Sims seem to crave I-D, I-M, I-HT, and even I-Ag, and I don't like how commercial demand is always so dull in your cities' early stages. Lately, I found that you will (at one point) get very high demand for I-Ag. Don't place any low-density industrial, as the way it works is that the RCI can fluctuate without agriculture. This may be because Ag was an unfinished feature, and for me I'd like it to stay that way, as farming should stay with SimFarm, not SimCity. Anyway, if you don't zone any I-Ag, then commercial and industrial should develop (more or less) equally, at least until people stop wanting agricultural jobs. This thread is here so other people can share their cities who "Just Can't Get Enough" industrial, or share cities that use the trick I mentioned earlier, or so you can (possibly) share your own tricks as to develop the job-producing zones as equals.

I mean come on, look at real life. Do you see factories at every corner of where you live? I'll admit that every county in real life has a few huge factories here and there when driving on rural roads, but the number of factories in some SimCity cities greatly outnumbers those you actually see. So, my question is: Is it realistic?

[Eʟᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ 273]

You know there are hundreds of ways you can combat the demand for industry.

First, the most simple way to decrease demand for industry is to raise taxes to very high levels which should combat such high demand.

Second, there are mods made which can double the amount of maximum jobs per industrial building.

Finally, not every factory needs to be ugly you know. The Hi-Tech buildings are especially nice and definitely add quite a bit of realism to your city. Downloads also help because they are way more realistic than the maxis standards.

[D'vega 10]

Sims crave industrial because, historically anyway, that's where the majority of people found their jobs. The reason why you probably don't see factories on "every corner" (assuming you live in the States, anyway, and there are plenty of places you do, especially in parts of the north-east) is that thirty years of de-industrialization and outsourcing has left our cities with a huge industrial surplus, which more often than not, was simply just cleared away and built on top of. I guarantee you that that lovely new waterfront park in your nearest city was most likely a railyard or a mill or a warehouse district that fell to the wrecking crew. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you're trying to build up a city that is as it currently exists, it's probably not very realistic, but if you're building a city that actually goes through the stages of growth as you're building them, it's fairly realistic. (Now the amount of jobs these buildings hold is another story, which is why I find the industrial-quadrupler mod to be essential)

[cogeo 960]

Industry isn't a sustainable way to achieve large populations in SC4:

- It requires a lot of space (for the amount of jobs it creates). There are mods like the industry quadrupler but these don't scale-up the other stats (power, pollution etc) proportionately, so they are not realistic.

- The taxes they pay are not high enough.

- They pollute a lot. Finally you will need those expensive treatment plants. Haven't checked if importing water from a "clean" city solves the problem,

- They consume a lot of power, costing you money (or creating even more pollution, if you rely on coal).

- The jobs they offer are 100% R$ (unless you are using a special mod from CAM, but even so it's still 95%).

- And most important, demand will plummet as soon as your EQ starts rising.

- I-M isn't much better, it just pollutes less, creates more R$$ jobs, and demand will simply drop later.

That is, the primary employers for a successful city can only be CO$$ and CO$$$. CS is very useful too, they pay high taxes, and even CS$ is better tban i-D in any regard. Only demand for CS is created AFTER a population rise (which can be caused by I and CO), and can easily be exhausted ("satisfied"). I would say, try to exhaust any C demand (even CS$) before zoning for more industrial.

So I (I'm talking mostly about I-D) is only useful during the early stages of your city's/region's development, to kick-start your city, ie support some decent population, which you will then have to educate and create demand for CO$$ and CO$$$. But once you have it, don't dezone it, unless you absolutely need the space.

Take also a look at this thread (and my links at the bottom). You may want to consider other forms of development too.

I have started a new region recently, with no industry at all, and posed some additional restrictions, finding normal gameplay too easy. Here is the setting:

- Hard difficulty level.

- No start-up funds (made a mod for this).

- No loans, except for an initial $1000 loan which has to be paid-back in 3 years (made another mod for these).

One would say it's impossible to start a city under these conditions, but you actually can. Here is how:

- Use the $1000 cash to build a wind powerplant ($500), a 1x3 low-density R zone and a 1x3 low-density C zone, and of course a short road or street connecting them.

- Set funding of the PP to a very low level, ie some $10 or so.

- Run the city for 1-2 months. The zones will develop and then you can enact the gambling ordinance ($100/mo). This will be your main source of income for some time. It more than covers the loan payments and the powerplant cost.

- Demand for R and C is now very low (for C it may even be negative), so development won't go far, even if you zone a lot. You need more jobs.

- Run you city for some months (a year or so) until you can afford building a school. I'm using a modded version of DEDWD's mixed elementary/high rural school, as the ingame one has a very small coverage radius, if you set bus funding to 0. Set school funding to the smallest possible value (it costs you pennies).

- Look what's happening now: The school offers some civic jobs, which increase R demand, so you can zone some more R zones (and expect them to develop); and EQ will be increasing as time passes, not dropping. So you can zone as much R as needed to satisfy all R demand.

- As the school offers some R$$ jobs too, R$$ development is possible as well (you will need to place some parks too).

- If C (CS$ or CS$$) demand has risen (as a result of more population), zone some more C.

- That is, at this phase try to satisfy all R and C demand, as you go.

- If all demand is satisfied, run your city until you collect enough money ($1100) to build a hospital (not clinic). The ingame hospital is OK, the custom ones are almost always BADLY modded, usually too cheap to run (cheaty). I use some custom ones too, which I have modded so that costs and other stats are proportional to the capacity. Set ambulance funding to zero - the radius is still large enough, it should be covering the ® area you are developing. Also set the hospital funding as low as possible.

- Now, the hospital employs a lot of sims, so demand for R should again be high (many of the jobs are R$$). This should start another R/C development cycle. Again, zone R & C as needed.

- Repeat the above procedure and build a library, a college and a museum.

- The hospital and the college offer R$$$ jobs too, so you can have some R$$$ development as well. $$$ development (of any kind) needs water though (everything $$$ or medium-and-above-above density require water, ie without water you can only get $ and $$ low-density). Put a water tower and pipes, and pick the area for R$$$ development (put some parks too). You will get some nice villas, each paying $14 or $20 per month.

- At this point your city should be generating enough cash, to develop it the way you like. EQ will be on the rise, creating demand for CO$$ and CO$$$ too. These may not be so easy to get though, as they need high land value (put some plazas) and high traffic (customers), which for such a small town you can't have. I usually build this initial commercial area around a central avenue (with all R zones directed there), so as to get as much traffic as possible.

Quite challenging, but I like it!

  Edited October 2, 2011 by cogeo  

[Freiluft 6]

High demand for farms just tells you that there is empty land suitable for farming. There are no ill effects if you don't zone for farms, although it is very difficult to start the very first city in a new region without them. If you'd like to play around with farms though, you can install Pegasus' SPAM mod, which makes farming a sustainable industry and adds a lot of variety to the game. I just did a medium grid divided by an elevated highway where about half the grid was farming. Population around 200,000. A lot of fun to build.

Commercial really likes highway connections and eventually an airport. For small cities, you can keep the highway connection but run avenues through the town, though this can create major traffic problems later if you have connections on all four sides to developed cities. At any rate, commercial loves traffic, and the easiest way to generate traffic in a town is to put the commercial between residential and industrial. Why people, say, have to buy insurance or stay in a hotel on the way to work is beyond me, but this is the way the game works. Commercial immediately adjacent to industrial, even high tech, never seems to develop well regardless of traffic, but you can put a narrow greenbelt of trees

To boost commercial, you can also get several airport equivalents with the AC functional airports pack suitable for small and medium grids or mountainous areas where there simply is nowhere flat enough for an airport. The larger bus shuttle, for example, looks really amateurish and has WAY too many dependencies, but it will easily satisfy the commercial needs of a small grid.

Demand for industry will lessen in surrounding cities if an adjacent city has lots of industrial jobs. On the other hand, if your industrial city has lots of commuters using highways to come to work, your demand for commercial goes way up. It's very hard to keep a balance, since the game is designed to make a capitalistic progression from industry to commercial.

What I've found impossible is to maintain a manufacturing city right in the middle. I downloaded all these great custom factory buildings and wanted a large industrial zone with lots of factories, but the jump from ugly "dirty" factories to high tech was almost immediate. I've tried, say, plopping a city college rather than the university to limit high tech, but that doesn't work either.

[UncleSim 2]

You can't put bean-counters to work if there are no beans to count.

Commerce is about selling, and servicing. Industry is about producing. You can't sell what you don't produce, and you can't service what you don't have, so your city/region will need plenty of connected industrial before robust commercial development will occur.

[Wiimeiser 434]

Unfortunately, my regions seem to instantly get tuck in a rut where agriculture demand skyrockets and dirty and manufacturing industry demand is fixed around -1600. If I plop any industry in affected cities I get a crash every so often...

[Fennergrad 0]

I filled an entire Medium city of soley industrial jobs, about 75,000 in that one alone and most of the small city slots. I still have max demand for all divisions and it dosn't seem I can ever put a dent in demand.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I always hate how in SimCity 4 in particular your Sims seem to crave I-D, I-M, I-HT, and even I-Ag, and I don't like how commercial demand is always so dull in your cities' early stages. Lately, I found that you will (at one point) get very high demand for I-Ag. Don't place any low-density industrial, as the way it works is that the RCI can fluctuate without agriculture. This may be because Ag was an unfinished feature, and for me I'd like it to stay that way, as farming should stay with SimFarm, not SimCity. Anyway, if you don't zone any I-Ag, then commercial and industrial should develop (more or less) equally, at least until people stop wanting agricultural jobs. This thread is here so other people can share their cities who "Just Can't Get Enough" industrial, or share cities that use the trick I mentioned earlier, or so you can (possibly) share your own tricks as to develop the job-producing zones as equals.

I mean come on, look at real life. Do you see factories at every corner of where you live? I'll admit that every county in real life has a few huge factories here and there when driving on rural roads, but the number of factories in some SimCity cities greatly outnumbers those you actually see. So, my question is: Is it realistic?

First of all, welcome to the conversation.

You are confused in thinking that this is a city builder only. It is actually a regional municipality builder, ergo, farms etc. If you don't like the farms the way they come in the game, get the SPAM from either the STEX or from Simpeg.

Realism isn't a feature of this game. You get to live within the parameters as programmed nearly 10 years ago, and the model is Silicon Valley, California. The program is written with algorithms that require balance. I generally open a new city with a farming community and grow it into something else. I look on the farms as land banks that can be pre-empted ad libitum (I am god, after all). Generally, I regard the demand graph as an indicator of building permits available. You do not have to respond to it. When the area is mature enough, I set the I-Ag taxes to 7% because by then it has been capped by the population exceeding 30,000, and I set the I-D rate to 20% which provides a tax harvest while they are slowly replaced by I-M and I-HT. I only zone high-density industrial in good neighborhoods after the I-M quota has been reduced.

The system needs balance, which in general means a ratio of 15:25:60 approximately for high:medium:low wealth levels. If you keep your Sims happy and employed, you are doing well. My general goal is to stay in the black and make a nice city.

Skyscrapers don't interest me much any more. I've been playing since the game came out and have evolved to wanting spacious semi-rural to rural communities included in one city tile. I find this more satisfying, currently. I change my methodology about once every six months or so. My region is a scattering of such tiles. I like riparian communities and often terraform for water coasts and rivers at the moment.

I am also fairly remorseless about starting a region over if I muss it up beyond repair. I don't use outside programs to create regions so can just render the map again at any time within the game. If I want a new map, I generally use the Landscape Designer to generate a random map, then go from there. This gives me a gray-scale map that the game will happily render with no other software.

There is absolutely no point in asking for realism. It isn't in the program.

  Edited October 21, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[Finkle 14]

I do the same as Nonny Moose, start with ag, than the poor get I-D or dirty (I like to make them suffer) than the rich get I-HT or high tech, I like them a little more besides their cloths get dirty other wise (spelled wrong).

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I do the same as Nonny Moose, start with ag, than the poor get I-D or dirty (I like to make them suffer) than the rich get I-HT or high tech, I like them a little more besides their cloths get dirty other wise (spelled wrong).

Rather sadistic of you isn't it? Eaten any babies lately, Dagon?

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 02/10/2011 at 10:24 PM, cogeo said:

They pollute a lot. Finally you will need those expensive treatment plants. Haven't checked if importing water from a "clean" city solves the problem,

I tried that experiment, importing water from a pristine neighbour ... sadly, does nothing for water pollution in the city.

Water Pollution is always based on local groundwater reservoirs, even if you situate your water pump in a pristine location of a large city tile (which is always important).  I think the SimCity 4 water pipes are porous.  

The only time I import water now is if I build an entirely dirty industry (I-D) small city tile, with no residential at all, and no water treatment plants — sim residents living in a cleaner city tile next door.  I don't do that very often, as it's a wee little bit depressing ... but it provides HEAPS of R$ jobs!

With few things killing R$$, R$$$, CO$$, and CO$$$ development like water pollution, the primary solutions are distance, or lots of Water Treatment Plants.

One other thing that seems to make a difference is mountains.  I think mountains alter the underground water table, but I haven't specifically tested that out, yet.  I once had a city that had dirty industry (I-D) on one side on a small tree-filled mountain range (the I-D valley on that side nicknamed "The Valley of Mordor"), with residential on the other side of the mountains, a moderately steep mountain pass for a monorail and three MHW vanilla highway tunnels through the mountains.  Not only did R$ towers grow on the other side of this small mountain range, huge R$$ towers grew there, too, even with just one Water Treatment Plant for the entire large city tile far, far away!

There WAS excellent transport infrastructure throughout, both Mass Transit, and MHW interchanges.  One thing 20% tax on I-D does is provide plenty of tax $$$$ for highways and Mass Transit!  I'm even less sure of whether the mountains contained the air pollution, but I do have to say that vanilla MHW tunnels do an awesome job of cutting road pollution along the highway!

I've still got that city, Castro Valley in San Francisco, if you'd like any pollution view screenshots.

This reminds me of another post of mine, describing that same, "Valley of Mordor", and it's effect on C$$ business on the far side of the I-D valley.  There's probably nothing you don't know already in this one, @cogeo, but it's a fun post, and quite relevant to @AlexTheRose's original issue, if he's still on Simtropolis.

 

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

16 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

I tried that experiment, importing water from a pristine neighbour ... sadly, does nothing for water pollution in the city.

But importing does supply clean water, which is more than a pump in a polluted area can do. In my region, most of my cities import water.

 

[Naomi57 2,985]

6 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

But importing does supply clean water, which is more than a pump in a polluted area can do. In my region, most of my cities import water.

The primary advantage of importing water, in my experience, is if your entire city tile's Water Pollution levels are so high that a Water Pump would be shut down by the extreme pollution.  Something like this, in Water Pollution view, would shut down a Water Pump really quick!

Thing is, that extreme level of Water Pollution will make most other aspects of SimCity sickly, too, whether you're importing your water or not.  I can't emphasise this enough, check your Water Pollution view!  Even importing water from the pristine city next door, water pollution of this magnitude in the local area will delapidate every medium and high wealth lot in the neighbourhood.  I go into more detail in that Ten Silent Killers of SimCity 4 Commercial Growth post of mine, above.  I actually performed that exact experiment, attempting to import clean water, in my Castro Valley, San Francisco city tile mentioned in that post.  Much to my disappointment, it doesn't actually improve the Water Pollution view at all.  Sim-world rules don't quite simulate the real world, and yes, I was very disappointed about that!  

That's why I only bother importing water for an extreme dirty industry (I-D) city, where I don't have any concern for using Water Treatment Plants, because all the R$ sims (and their C$$ businesses) live in the city next door.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

15 hours ago, Naomi57 said:

attempting to import clean water... doesn't actually improve the Water Pollution view at all.

Of course not. The two are completely unrelated. The imported water doesn't go into the ground to be pumped out. It is immediately usable so that you don't even need a pump.

If you need to clean up water pollution, then plop some water treatment plants. Better yet, don't build commercial and residential near your dirty industry... unless you want low-wealth development, in which case the water pollution is a side-benefit rather than a problem  :o.