Growing a city and connecting cities

[pata nahi 1]

Hi all,

I just started playing Simcity4 10 days back, I used to be a big fan of ceasar3, but nothing new there so left that and started Simcity4. In less than a week of playing i was able to create a region of about +300K sims and skyscrapers.

used Typical grid system. Started with three cities, 1 for industrial(ID and IM) and one dor residence and later 1 big city for Commercial(CBD). As i went along built couple of more cities with ID+IM and one city with only HT (more than 30k jobs), I can now build a Hydrogen plant but dont have any funds there because of low tax for HT and high cost for power and water :-)

Ok so far. My demands for $$$R and $$$C started shooting up. So created another city adjoining CBD to have only $$R and $$$R (Residence2) with subways and Highways.

Now, Once the population reaches more than 250 k, the demands are fluctuating ex:- in my R city all the residency show negative (Except for $R) and in my CBD and HT , $R, and $$R are very high with mostly negative on $C, $ $C.

I have only altered taxes in HT city with HT Tax as 5 % and other Industries as 20 %. and reduced accorrdingly taxes for Residence in residence and visa versa.

I don't understand what to do, managed to get rid of all traffic issues by converting them to roads or Avenues. There are no zots, but many building are vacant sudenly with either a message that - vacant due to low demand or desirablity.

So thought perhaps its due to pollution, So i created parks, plazza's trees, water treatment plants etc to bring air pollution and water pollution down.

I tried creating $$$R in my CBD to enable quick commute for the welathy, the fluctuation is even more increasing. Schools, hostipals are balanced and fire and police protection is not too much but nevertheless not less as well. no luck

Also tried getting rid of very high demand for $R, so created another city with only $R.

Now i am thoroughly confused of what to do next ?? Any ideas, suggestions ?

Attaching sceenshots for your references

  Edited December 9, 2011 by pata nahi  

[pata nahi 1]

Hi all,

I just started playing Simcity4 10 days back, I used to be a big fan of ceasar3, but nothing new there so left that and started Simcity4. In less than a week of playing i was able to create a region of about +300K sims and skyscrapers.

used Typical grid system. Started with three cities, 1 for industrial(ID and IM) and later 1 big city for Commercial(CBD). As i went along built couple of more cities with ID+IM and one city with only HT (more than 30k jobs), I can now build a Hydrogen plant but dont have any funds there because of low tax for HT and high cost for power and water :-)

Ok so far. My demands for $R and $C started shooting up. So created another city adjoining CBD to have only $R and $R with subways and Highways.

Now, Once the population reaches more than 250 k, the demands are fluctuating ex:- in my $R city all the residency show negative and in my CBD $R, $R, and $R are very high with negative on $C, $C.

I have only altered taxed in HT city with HT Tax as 5 % and other Industries as 20 %. and reduced accorrdingly taxes for Residence in residence and visa versa.

I don't understand what to do, managed to get rid of all traffic issues by converting them to roads or Avenues. There are no zots, but many building are vacant sudenly with either a message that - vacant due to low demand or desirablity.

So thought perhaps its due to pollution, So i created parks, plazza's trees, water treatment plants etc to bring air pollution and water pollution down.

I tried creating $R in my CBD to enable quick commute for the welathy, the fluctuation is even more increasing. Schools, hostipals are balanced and fire and police protection is not too much but nevertheless not less as well.

Also tried getting rid of very high demand for $R, so created another city with only $R.

Now i am thoroughly confused of what to do next ?? Any ideas, suggestions ?

Attaching sceenshots for your references

[Rury 37]

Well for one thing, I noticed that your cities are connected in a way that permits a loop in your highways and transit. I'm not sure if you know but theres a bug regarding traffic called the "infinite commuter" bug. When you make a loop of connected cities in a region, sims traveling to the next city will go in and then out into the next city. They continue to do this forever around the loop of connected cities, and thus they are "infinitely commuting to work." This is probably why you needed to upgrade your avenues to highways.

The "infinite commuter" bug may be messing with your RCI demand in other cities. Also, you mentioned that you created an all residential city. If so then this forces your sims to commute to the neighboring city which forces their commute times to automatically be "long". Long commute times will lower the desirability of a building and may also be compounding your problem of rampant abandoned buildings.

These things are the likely a large part of your problems. To resolve the infinite commuter bug, its best to design your region in a branched network so no loops can form. If you wish to have a loop, then it is probably best to line the loop with jobs (commercial, because commercial likes traffic), but it's ill advised.

Which cities are you having traffic problems with? (probably not YMC yard if I'm correct)

Which city is the all residential city?

  Edited December 9, 2011 by Rury  

[pata nahi 1]

Thanks Rury for the comments. I checked and disconnected the loop, but still no luck. And yes YMC does not have traffic issue.

Sorry didnt mention details of graphs Btw, the graphs are as

1st graph - second residence (Only $$R and $$$R) of population 100k in two major blocks

2nd Graph - first residence of population of 160k in four major blocks

3rd graph - HT jobs city, with about 5k population of low and medium wealth

4th Graph - The main CBD with only commercial's

Any other suggestions ?

Anyway in the meanwhile, I got bored of seeing the same city, so started with another region city, with a different strategy, again with some other questions/issues :-

Current strategy and status:-

- Total cities 3 ( 1 for Low wealth residence and some medium; 1 industrial, and 1 big city with Residence, commercial and HT Jobs)

- Created a grid of 10x12, with Residential and Commercial in checkered manner ( 1 block residence and the next one commercial. With bus stop and subway on each of the block (This time using RTMVT) works great, commute time is reduced to less than 2 (Not sure what is the unit)

- Air pollution and water pollution is less than 20 (16 and 19 i guess) pretty neat and healthy place :-)

- HT Jobs of more than 30 k, so have a hydrogen plant in place (finally).

- City population is 160k sims

- There are no zots across the city, cause the commute time is less. Most ppl are using subway than bus, which is good, faster and less pollution and traffic

- All the requirements for health, education, water and air pollution, safety graphs are in green,, more than 90%

-Budget is neat making more than 12k profit a month

Issues :-

- There is very high demand for $$R and $$C (about 6000+),

- I don't know why the $$R and $$C do not get converted to $$$'s. Am i missing something ?

- The $$ building become some mediocore building and stop. But not skyscrapers, Built 1landmark and many parks and plazza's and trees using god mode

- Waited for a long time at 50 k sims for $$$ demand to grow but with no luck.

- I created another two blocks with $$R and $$C, the the demand does not go down and $$$R and C are zero or negative. I still have more that 5000 demand for $$R and $$C but nothing for $$$

I seem to be hitting a road block after some time and donno what to do next to keep the city growing to skyscrapers. Any suggestions ? Please help. Am i missing something fundamental.

How can i see what is missing, My SIMs Seem to be happy :-|

Well for one thing, I noticed that your cities are connected in a way that permits a loop in your highways and transit. I'm not sure if you know but theres a bug regarding traffic called the "infinite commuter" bug. When you make a loop of connected cities in a region, sims traveling to the next city will go in and then out into the next city. They continue to do this forever around the loop of connected cities, and thus they are "infinitely commuting to work." This is probably why you needed to upgrade your avenues to highways.

The "infinite commuter" bug may be messing with your RCI demand in other cities. Also, you mentioned that you created an all residential city. If so then this forces your sims to commute to the neighboring city which forces their commute times to automatically be "long". Long commute times will lower the desirability of a building and may also be compounding your problem of rampant abandoned buildings.

These things are the likely a large part of your problems. To resolve the infinite commuter bug, its best to design your region in a branched network so no loops can form. If you wish to have a loop, then it is probably best to line the loop with jobs (commercial, because commercial likes traffic), but it's ill advised.

Which cities are you having traffic problems with? (probably not YMC yard if I'm correct)

Which city is the all residential city?

[MandelSoft 2,775]

I currently have four cities that have grown beyond 300K inhabitants. My strategy is not to specialise cities, but offer for various wealth groups a place to live and a place to work. In this way, I could grow Schellingen-Mitte to beyond 800K residents, even with a non-grid setup, one huge park with no real function than to look pretty, a river going through the city, only 1/6th of the tile zoned with High Density (the rest is medium or low density), 1/4th zoned as industrial and with quite some polution of waste-to-energy plants (to get rid of the trash).

For the record, here's a (somewhat old) picture of how the city looks like at zoom 1:

Best,

Maarten

  Edited December 12, 2011 by mrtnrln  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

^ I am a little late in this discussion, but one of the things I've learned over the years is that the program doesn't really want to support separations by lot class. The algorithms are based on a fair mix of all types in one tile with each tile more or less self-supporting.

I have tried the class separation scheme and abandoned it several years ago because it was more trouble than it was worth. I have also abandoned the idea of population as a goal. Population in SimCity 4 is a given: It just grows to meet the space available.

Of late, I've been working on waterfront towns and cities with or without ports. There are some examples on my web site at:

http://www.ezlink.ca/~jwinterton/Images.htm

Just scroll down, and enjoy. This page contains pretty much all the images I post on sites, so don't be surprised at what you find.

Currently my largest population in a city is 70,603 within a region of 265 616. This region has been under development for about a month and is not my current working region.

[Rury 37]

It seems like you need to better understand how demand and stages work in simcity 4. You have a good understanding that having low taxes and by adding parks, hospitals, and schools help attract more sims to your city, but unfortunately that is not all there is to it.

As Nonny Moose and Mrtnrln already have pointed out, stratifying your population by income levels leaves poor results (as will isolating all residential,commercial, or industrial in one city). Part of this is because not 100% of your population can be R$$$ sims, only a small fraction of your population can be R$$$ sims. I believe for a new city, you initially only can have 20,000 R$, 20,000R$$, and 10,000R$$$ sims, for a total of 50k sims. As soon as you add a park or rewards building, you raise the "demand cap" and allows more sims to move in. If you wish to raise the amount of R$$$ sims in your city, you must also raise the cap for R$ and R$$ sims.

Along with these demand caps in simcity 4, there are stage limits. Buildings are categorized into 8 different stage levels, where stage 1 contains one story houses, and stage 8 buildings are the tallest and fanciest skyscrapers. Like the population, only a small fraction of your buildings can be stage 8, and to reach stage 8, you must meet a specific demographic. The links at the bottom show a list of the stage limits and demand relief values. So from what you said, with a population of ~50k sims, if approximately 9571 of them are R$, and 43859 of them are either R$$ or R$$$, then expect about 2% of your residential buildings to be stage 8 (doesn't necessarily have to be, but thats the probability).

Now keep in mind the stage limits are a region wide value, so theoretically you could have an all R$$$ city (if you had lots of R$ and R$$ elsewhere in your region), but then your somewhat limited by the demand caps which are not region wide.

What does this all mean? Well essentially if you wish to have nice tall fancy skyscrapers, you need some R$, some R$$, and R$$$ sims. By effectively taxing a specific income group out of your population you won't meet the threshold for big fancy skyscrapers. Same goes for commercial, and industrial jobs; you can't just remove 100% of the lowest $ out of your population if you wish to see the biggest skyscrapers. I figured this out the hard way, as I use to tax my R$ population to 20% to remove them from my cities. I thought by doing this I'd have a rich-fancy-nice looking city, but I never saw the big skyscrapers.

Stage Limits: http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:Stage_Limits_and_Threshholds

Cap Relief: http://www.simcitycentral.net/html/cap-relief-list.html

  Edited December 13, 2011 by Rury  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

To put this another way, not all members of the orchestra are the conductor (R$$$). Some are first chairs of various sections (R$$) and the rest are the regular players (R$). No matter how many orchestras you may have, conductors are rare, and only abut 15% of the total population. The leaders (R$$) need support by R$, and you can expect that there will be substantially fewer R$$ each supported by several R$. We can't all be first violin players in the orchestra, some of us have to push wind through the tuba.

[Dizastrow 4]

I have had success with offering every type of demand in every city, as long as it calls for it. I utilize the "Make Landmark" feature a lot. My neighborhoods, business centers, and industrial areas contain all three levels of wealth jobs. Doing this, I have managed to control demand effectively and every city in my regions prosper, whether small or huge.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I have had success with offering every type of demand in every city, as long as it calls for it. I utilize the "Make Landmark" feature a lot. My neighborhoods, business centers, and industrial areas contain all three levels of wealth jobs. Doing this, I have managed to control demand effectively and every city in my regions prosper, whether small or huge.

And I, on the other hand, can't remember the last time I actually used a landmark. To each, his own.

[emperordaniel 1,281]

I have had success with offering every type of demand in every city, as long as it calls for it. I utilize the "Make Landmark" feature a lot. My neighborhoods, business centers, and industrial areas contain all three levels of wealth jobs. Doing this, I have managed to control demand effectively and every city in my regions prosper, whether small or huge.

And I, on the other hand, can't remember the last time I actually used a landmark. To each, his own.

I'm not sure, but I believe he meant the "Make Historical" feature (which prevents an RCI structure from being replaced by another one automatically)

[Dizastrow 4]

I have had success with offering every type of demand in every city, as long as it calls for it. I utilize the "Make Landmark" feature a lot. My neighborhoods, business centers, and industrial areas contain all three levels of wealth jobs. Doing this, I have managed to control demand effectively and every city in my regions prosper, whether small or huge.

And I, on the other hand, can't remember the last time I actually used a landmark. To each, his own.

I'm not sure, but I believe he meant the "Make Historical" feature (which prevents an RCI structure from being replaced by another one automatically)

Yes, I meant the "Make Historical" feature. Thanks LOL

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

In another thread this morning, I remembered something. If you have lots of bus stops to improve transportation, it also encourages growth. You should definitely use RTMT for this.

  Edited December 15, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[clarelvsroxy 0]

Well for one thing, I noticed that your cities are connected in a way that permits a loop in your highways and transit. I'm not sure if you know but theres a bug regarding traffic called the "infinite commuter" bug. When you make a loop of connected cities in a region, sims traveling to the next city will go in and then out into the next city. They continue to do this forever around the loop of connected cities, and thus they are "infinitely commuting to work." This is probably why you needed to upgrade your avenues to highways.

The "infinite commuter" bug may be messing with your RCI demand in other cities. Also, you mentioned that you created an all residential city. If so then this forces your sims to commute to the neighboring city which forces their commute times to automatically be "long". Long commute times will lower the desirability of a building and may also be compounding your problem of rampant abandoned buildings.

These things are the likely a large part of your problems. To resolve the infinite commuter bug, its best to design your region in a branched network so no loops can form. If you wish to have a loop, then it is probably best to line the loop with jobs (commercial, because commercial likes traffic), but it's ill advised.

Which cities are you having traffic problems with? (probably not YMC yard if I'm correct)

Which city is the all residential city?

I suspect this bug is nothing more than a rumour. One, I have never seen any evidence of it and I have all my cities connected. Two, IF this bug even existed in the first place well its been like 8 years since the game came out so either Maxis or the modding community would have come up with a patch to fix it.

[CaptCity 4,914]

I suspect this bug is nothing more than a rumour. One, I have never seen any evidence of it and I have all my cities connected. Two, IF this bug even existed in the first place well its been like 8 years since the game came out so either Maxis or the modding community would have come up with a patch to fix it.

Oh, it's more than just 'rumour' (Link). The reason it's probably not more prevalent is that it does take a very specific setup to have it appear. And it's not something that can be 'modded' out of the game since it involves the game's basic function.

[clarelvsroxy 0]

You've got a fancy graphic to try and support your theory, AND?

[MandelSoft 2,775]

^^ It's not a graphic chart to support the theory, it's a chart that explains the problem. In some cities of mine, it does occur, where one of my RHWs has traffic going only in one direction to the city borders, no matter if it's the morning commute or the evening commute. It's a known bug, just as hovering a transit enabled lot over a puzzle piece causing the game to crash is also a well-known bug...

Another example of the Eternal Commuter bug (provided by meister1235). You see here a combined image of the traffic view of four city tiles right next to each other:

Best,

Maarten

  Edited December 19, 2011 by mrtnrln  

[CoastRunner 24]

Yeah, infinite or eternal commuters are definitely not just rumor. The residents see that the neighboring city is closer than jobs in the city they are currently in, or that the neighboring city has more job opportunities. Then, when they reach that next city, they leave it again for the same reasons. It's one of the basic mechanics of the game, so you can't just "fix" it with patches or mods.

[emperordaniel 1,281]

I've also experienced this bug before, so it's most assuredly NOT a rumor.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Quite so. Be wary of fast transportation networks such as ferries and monorail. Try and keep your network in a tree structure.

[svachon 3]

To expand on the loop problem. I connect my cities via subways and avenues. I typically have my subway network connected to all 4 neighboring cities. Is this loop bug only a problem near corners? Is that what I should avoid? In other words if I connect via subway or avenues and avoid the corners, I won't have this problem?

[CaptCity 4,914]

To expand on the loop problem. I connect my cities via subways and avenues. I typically have my subway network connected to all 4 neighboring cities. Is this loop bug only a problem near corners? Is that what I should avoid? In other words if I connect via subway or avenues and avoid the corners, I won't have this problem?

It is usually more likely to appear at corners because that is where the distances to the map edges are shortest. A strategy of not connecting a block of cities at corners would probably help reduce the chances of the effect, but it can also depend on the zoning patterns of the cities involved. In addition, while I haven't experienced the issue with all forms of traffic, I have read where others have.

[svachon 3]

To expand on the loop problem. I connect my cities via subways and avenues. I typically have my subway network connected to all 4 neighboring cities. Is this loop bug only a problem near corners? Is that what I should avoid? In other words if I connect via subway or avenues and avoid the corners, I won't have this problem?

It is usually more likely to appear at corners because that is where the distances to the map edges are shortest. A strategy of not connecting a block of cities at corners would probably help reduce the chances of the effect, but it can also depend on the zoning patterns of the cities involved. In addition, while I haven't experienced the issue with all forms of traffic, I have read where others have.

What do you mean by "depends on the zoning patterns"?

[Rury 37]

What do you mean by "depends on the zoning patterns"?

It means just that. It depends where you zone residential and your jobs relative to the loop. See the link CaptCity provided (https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=1444.msg143098#msg143098), if the industrial zones and residential zones were switched in that scenario, the loop bug would probably be less likely to occur. Thats why I mentioned earlier that its best to line loops with commercial, (commercial likes heavy traffic and the bug will likely be reduced) but its best just to avoid a loop in the first place.

  Edited January 3, 2012 by Rury  

[MarkShot 631]

I started playing over the last two weeks.

I've read this thread and some of the related "infinite commute" on the NAM thread.

Since the game engine only simulates evolution of a single city tile at a time and little data is passed in from adjacent tiles or the entire region ... I wonder ...

What's the point of regions and making border connections (specifically transit)? How are people using these facilities when playing? Since each city tile must have its own balance of zoning and sims, what can be done to give unique purpose to a city tile? How can a region have a grand design? Are high speed/heavy transit links which run across a region of any value?

Also, someone said to avoid the infinite commute, "don't create loops, but instead use network structures". What exactly is that?

Sorry, I am just quite confused. When I first read the manual and looked at the game, I thought I would be grand regions where some tiles might be suburbs, another tile might focus on airport operations, another be the center of heavy industry ... but now it seems that each tile mainly needs to be a self contained entity. Then, perhaps I am better off rather than trying to develop a region just focus on developing a large tile.

Very confused ?????

Thanks for any insights.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I started playing over the last two weeks.

I've read this thread and some of the related "infinite commute" on the NAM thread.

Since the game engine only simulates evolution of a single city tile at a time and little data is passed in from adjacent tiles or the entire region ... I wonder ...

What's the point of regions and making border connections (specifically transit)? How are people using these facilities when playing? Since each city tile must have its own balance of zoning and sims, what can be done to give unique purpose to a city tile? How can a region have a grand design? Are high speed/heavy transit links which run across a region of any value?

Also, someone said to avoid the infinite commute, "don't create loops, but instead use network structures". What exactly is that?

Sorry, I am just quite confused. When I first read the manual and looked at the game, I thought I would be grand regions where some tiles might be suburbs, another tile might focus on airport operations, another be the center of heavy industry ... but now it seems that each tile mainly needs to be a self contained entity. Then, perhaps I am better off rather than trying to develop a region just focus on developing a large tile.

Very confused ?????

Thanks for any insights.

Well the point of regions is to create a bigger community. To make this work well you have to be prepared to switch back and forth relatively frequently. Demands tend to get balanced across the region once you have made the first neighbor connections.

The infinite commuter happens usually across three or more cities if the Sims can switch transportation modes, e.g. from train to ferry or monorail and return without every going to work. Since they are tasked with going to work, they keep trying and go around and around.

City tiles in regions can be integrated or detached or some of both. It is a matter of style and experience, so give it a whirl. Some people make a huge city spanning several tiles, and others, like me, go for a scattering of towns across one or more tiles with a kind of rural/urban setting. Here is a recent example. This region is still under development.

Think of the game as a blank canvas on which you can create a work of urban art.

[red_xiii 0]

hi i'm also kinda new to sc4... would you believe i've still been playing sc2k all this time? ha!

i'm also having trouble getting my big city past about 220k, it's just on a medium sized tile in Timbuktu, but i was under the impression these could get more than a million population. the whole tile is pretty much zoned dense. i have residential areas covered with all amenities, parks, and courts. i've built most of the rewards and a few of the landmarks in commercial zones. i've let it sit for a hundred years now and have switched back and forth between the other cities... but none of the others are near 100 yet.

i tried to follow thy451's tutorial to get started with 3 cities, one with just I-D, another with just I-M, and the third with just I-HT (the third being my 'big city' mentioned above). i've made several more smaller cities around these three with just I-HT also by taxing out I-D and I-M. but it sounds like this is not optimal? typically when i start a new city i've been lowering the commercial and residential $$ taxes to 8.5 and the $$$ to 8.0, or maybe even lower, $ to 8.5, $$ to 8.0 and $$$ to 7.5, but with industry i've raised the I-D and I-M to like 12 or 18 to keep them out. is that a mistake? although the other cities i've developed after the third so far all have thriving HT industries and a range of residential and commercial buildings.

also about this infinite commuter bug, i've been connecting the cities on all four side so there are definitely loops there. would you recommend i use my 'big city' as central and use connections on all four sides, but then limit the connections in the other cities? it was my impression that industry needed to be close to the edge with connections, but maybe they don't need connections at all? it's unfortunate this bug exists....

if you want more details about my cities so far let me know.. thanks

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Funny, I don't have that problem and I don't goal for population at all. The basic problem is that you are fighting the game's built-in design to have balance on all city tiles. It is OK to have industrial, commercial, and residential cities but you will find that a smattering of each of the other types in the specialized cities will help. Also, bear in mind that if you have more than about 15% R$$$ you are top-heavy. You can have only one conductor per orchestra, and you need others to play the instruments. The string section (R$$) does not make up the majority either in a well balanced band, but you need a lot of other players (R$) if you are going to play Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Somebody has to tap the tympani and push wind though the tuba.

To make matters worse, you are trying to separate industrials by type as well. A little synergy would help here as some of these guys are dependent on some of the others, or should be. To get you off to a different start try looking at this scenario for newer players. If you are interested in specialization, you might also take a look at this one.

I've been playing for about ten years now and I go for the aesthetic side rather than mob scenes. After you have made downtown Koli Kutt, that pretty much cools your ardor for high populations.

Now about the eternal commuter: Instead of allowing your transportation network to loop back on itself so the Sims can change trains and just ride around never going to work, you can lay your transportation, including roads, out in a tree. That is, only one line going between any given destination (two way, of course) and the home base. These loops form when Sims can change modes of transportation, usually across three or more cities although I have seen them on corner connected sets. Just break the loop somewhere and force them onto one route. Ferries and monorails are occasions of sin if you are not careful. You can tell you have a loop when the traffic display turns red and you find more Sims on a transportation line than you have in your city. Remember, only about half of them work.

Have fun with this program. It is addictive. If you run in Cheetah all the time, slow down. You are missing about half the fun in the animation. A lot of work went into it. Cheetah is only good for quick, specific results.

[red_xiii 0]

Thanks Nonny, so what do you with your taxes?

I don't exactly have population as a goal, but i'm just trying to get a grasp on this and figure if it's bad planning, a bug, or just something i don't quite understand yet. You're right SC4 is really fun to watch progress but there is a lot more technical details than what i'm used to with sc2k. If i can figure that out and build a large metropolis then i'll be able to build any type of cities or regions.

I was under the impression that one of these medium tiles that is almost 100% land and densely zoned could have a large population of millions or more. Is that only with mods? I've only installed NAM really. Is it something that only happens after the whole region is developed?

From what i've read it doesn't seem to be bad planning on my part. I can look at the desirability view and R$, Cs$ and Co$ are all bright green all over the city, and i do have a lot of skyscrapers already. Although my R$ is about 15%. I attached a graph.

And i'll look at my connections. I've been making use of everything... roads, rail, hiway, subway.. Also attached my transportation map. my big city is the one with the airport at the bottom, with the hiways also.

BTW i was also under the impression dirty industry doesn't need water (as shown in that first tutorial) and it actually contaminates the water quickly, forcing one to build a treatment plant sooner. I-M and power plants too. I read the only thing it does it help prevent fires, but that can be covered with a nearby fire station.

  Edited January 11, 2012 by red_xiii  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Taxes:

My tax policy is pretty simple. If I start getting a lot of $$$ mansions I put the tax rate up on R$$$ to something between 9.5 and 12% to slow them down. At the beginning I usually keep everything at default (9.0). After four years, assuming I haven't given up and obliterated the city, I set the ID rate to 20% to slowly drive them out of the city and inhibit any more, the I-Ag to 7% because I am a good god, and leave everything else where it is. Over the life of the city, I will reduce taxes regularly by 0.2% across the board except for ID and Ag whenever I am making what I consider excessive profits. This slightly increases demand. I have yet to go below 5% at any time.

Regional development encourages everything. To get a large population on a medium tile you need to have good population. I would place the ID/IM outside this tile with good transportation links. You can also sell power to the R/C/HT city from the ID/IM city, which will limit pollution in the residential areas. Power connections are easiest if you start them before you begin building the client city. If they are already present when the first power demand comes on, you just have to activate them. You can sell water from the R/C/HT city to the ID/IM city. Good balance in both says you might want to have a patch of R$ in the ID/IM city in tenement (high density) close to the industrial pod. ID/IM is NIMBY for any but R$. With care, and careful feeding of both cities, making sure the power and water supplies are ample on both sides, you should be able to grow the resdential/commercial city into downtown Koli Kutt if you wish. It just takes time to get to stage 8. Don't forget parks, plazas and play space. Plazas and parks (not very many) help the industrial city too.

The main population of this kind of city will be R$$ (about 60%) with about 15-20% R$$$. You can get more R$$$ as you start getting more CO$$$ buildings but remember even these employ no more than 30% R$$$. The copy machine kids you will always have with you and somebody has to push the mail cart around. The program is quite balanced, and so you need to understand that even this model is pushing it.

If you water your industrial pods you'll get more IM and ID, and ID being medium density does need water according to the manual. Only single occupancy lots can get along on wells. Remember that if you place farms in your residential city at the start, you can just over zone them when you want to develop the area, and meanwhile you get some income from them.

Just don't rush, and you'll be fine. I think about a month of play hours should see you over the hump. Have fun.