San Fran stuck at 250k

[Dead Guy 0]

Hello, first post, haven't lurked enough to get a very good feel for this place I'm afraid, but you guys seem happy to help people out despite you probably getting this question a million times before. Anyway, on to business, and the lack of demand for it!

So, I'm playing the SF region, somewhat flattened (yes, I need some handicap). My main city is the big tile at the bottom right of the bay, here's a region view (linked because of size):

http://i303.photobuc...02-12_00001.jpg

The tile NW of the main has some scrapers, I wanted to get the cruise ship port (and I did!), so I had to grow it vertically for the commercial pop requirement. No other tiles do though. Some of the neighbours are high wealth, high education with some CO$ and hi-tech industry, and most of he small ones to the east are dirty industry garbage burning towns with some low wealth residential.

My problem is that I've been pretty much stuck with the main city for a while. I've still been able to increase the demand by developing two more tiles somewhere away from the main, then going back to the main and some big office buildings may pop, but then demand goes down and stays down. I've also got a lot of empty commercial lots that aren't exactly in the center of the city, that are not even getting populated by CS$. Here's shots of the entire main map, RCI and taxes.

Oh, and my pops:

Res 250.000

Com 156.500

Ind 51.000

http://i303.photobuc...02-12_00002.jpg

http://i303.photobuc...02-12_00003.jpg

http://i303.photobuc...02-12_00004.jpg

My commute time is at 60, air pollution is 50 or so, of course it's all traffic, the developed area around the highway looks like yellow prison cell bars with the air pollution overlay. I hadn't finalized my grid layout when I built this, as usual :/ That is, a lot of the between-blocks avenues aren't used all that much because I wasn't aware of exactly how stupid sims are. I've tried to force them to use mass transit and highway/avenues by removing roads that connected blocks directly, across the avenue. It worked somewhat well, but yeah, could've been done better. My next build will be one where the avenues are the only connection between the blocks, and are at the center of them instead of encircling them like they do now. Oh, and of course almost all roads inside blocks are one-way in an up/down/up/down by left/right/left/right fashion. I have a very developed subway network and some pretty well-used railway stations, mainly in the less dense areas, I guess mostly long commuters (to/from other cities). Would some monorail connections do me any good? Oh, and I've cheesed and made lots (2 for small tiles, 3-4 to large tiles) of highway neighbour connections that immediately convert to avenues for the cap breaking effect, though I'm not certain that works.

I guess I might need more low wealth residential, I saw that mentioned somewhere... High wealth res keeps popping in the less dense blocks only to go no job and then drop to $. But I've had negative R$ deman for a while, only recently adjusted the taxes, so maybe i need to do some demolishing now, and see if things correct themselves.

Hope that's somewhat sufficient info to get an idea of things... Extremely greatful for any advice with this. I'm so close to that grand central station! And it's nice to see people still play this great game from 2003. Right, final note, I play completely unmodded right now.

Cheers

/DG

  Edited February 12, 2012 by Dead Guy  

[simplybatman 1]

Getting citiy population past 250K is extremely difficult without a few (additions) lets call them. I had been playing this game for years also unmodded and had this problem too. Its to do with the way sims nove about. About a month ago I downloaded NAM and wow what a difference that makes.They actually use the transport systems you put in and travel more intelligently. The city I was playing at the time was next to a city of 250K and had 131,000 in there. As soon as I gotr NAM the population swelled to 436K! Plus the extra bits for roads and networks in NAM (Network Addon Mod) are totally worth it.

The NAM,an Air Purification Plant and a Reverse Osmosis Water Treatment Faciltiy transformed my cities. I would reccomend Pacthing the game up,and getting NAM at least.

If you dont want tot do that,you gotta stick with the oddities of region play. The game seems to know how much of each type of workplace are about and you obviously know how one city can affect another. You could maybe bulldoze or undeveleop the other city thats got a lot of CO in it and the demand might transfer back to where you want. Or you could boost population even more and add more industrial only workplaces and maybe CO demand will rise again. Making the area you want CO in highly desirable with plazas,low pollution(air and water) will help too. Yes Monorail and regular train will help too,but try getting your sims on it.

Ahhh,just had a look at the pics and one thing stands out. CO$$$ just love being in high traffic areas. You have all those avenues there with nothing developed on them. Try zoning some right next the Aveneues and Highways,but you have only R demand,follow the demand trends and add more people.Its the only way out of that there,no I or C demand either.

.....oh yeah and get NAM. Its the best thing by far for this.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Going by the ratios of pop to jobs you need more people, and since you are essentially out of land, you'll have to build up. Try rezoning your res for a higher density. Remember R$ can live in multiple urban residential buildings (MURBs) and tenements. This means zoning for second and third level buildings. Don't be confused by the res demand bar. You need lots more R$, and that doesn't mean single occupancy lots. Try hitting those w and e keys and zone over some areas.

If you don't have the NAM, get it. If you don't do anything with the road network, the new traffic controller will make a big difference.

Also, your taxes are out of whack, IMHO. Try lowering the R$ and R$$ to at least 8% and put the R$$$ taxes up to that too. You don't want more than about 15% R$$$ because there will be no jobs for them. Remember, the higher, the fewer. A CO$$$ skyscraper may only hire 20 or 30 R$$$ but will hire many others as well. Somebody has to supervise the mob, and run the copier, push the broom, and the mail cart.

Oh, and welcome to the conversation.

[cogeo 960]

Welcome aboard!

You're at the right place.

About your city, as you correctly mentioned, you can only develop it further vertically, as there is almost no space left. Also, demand for R$ and R$$ is top high, while demand for C in general is around zero. So the imbalance is obvious, there are clearly more jobs than there are people. With such a high R demand, you should be able to grow residential hirises. And as demand has hit the 6000 mark, you must be able to get true 4x4 R hirises, eg like Project Bootstrap, of the Chicago tileset (6978 R$).

So let's see all concerning factors one by one:

- Taxes: For a city of 150,000-450,000 pop the neutral tax rate is 8.9%. You have some rates set at the initial 9.0%, which is slighly higher, but I'm not sure how much this affects demand. Early on it can make a big difference, causing demand to go negative. Don't know about now, but as your demand is close to the top, it may even inhibit you getting the 4x4 R hirises mentioned above. So I would suggest reducing them to 8.9% and stick to this setting. It may take some 6 game-months until the effect of taxes reduction is realised. To see which is the neutral tax rate (as a function of city population) download and install my Chamber of Commerce and Industry (it uses the query from BSC's Census Repository, which you will also need to install as a dependency). The query displays a lot of useful data, like city and regional statistics, the neutral tax rates, demand cap status etc (check if you have hit any C demand cap, although this looks rather unlikely, as you already have an airport and network connections). Some of your taxes are well below the neutral rate. You may elect to leave them as they are (but for a loooong time) or increase them slowly. For example you could raise R$$$ and CO$$$ rates by 0.1%, without big consequences, as demand for these is positive. The same could be said for CS$$, but it's already at 8.8%.

- High-tech Industry: You have a big bunch of I-HT in your city. There is a bug in SC4 that doesn't allow R$$$ sims working in I-HT! This can easily be verified by using the route query tool. You will see that they employ only R$$ and R$. There is a fix on the STEX, but this causes another undesirable effect, ie some regional statistics are double-count, with unknown effects on regional demand and game balance. The correct way to apply the fix is merge it with simcity_1.dat. Refer to the SC4D forums for detailed instructions on how to do this (and of course backup the original before attempting so).

- Zoning: Seeking to build a dense city, one thing you may want to avoid is wasting of zone space as a result of lot sizes. Eg you may have a 2x3 zone and a 1x3 just next. The 2x3 zone can only develop a condo, and the 1x3 only a R$$ house or R$ small tennement. It is quite uncertain if the simulator will ever aggregate them (growing a building of much higher capacity) esp if the zones are of different wealth type. A zone never changes to a lower wealth type, even if a much bigger building can be built in its place. So if a R$$ house with 12 occupants has grown just next to your 2x3 tennement, and you have high R$ demand too, it may be best ti bulldoze and dezone them both, and zone a 3x3 lot, which can accommodate a hirise tennement. In iLives Reader, open simcity_1.dat and use the Navigator Tool to see what buildings and at what lot sizes are available. Then bulldoze and zone accordingly. Yes, this is "micromanagement", but it's the only way to avoid wasting space in a so inefficient manner.

- Local conditions: In this city R demand is high, but you don't get the development you would expect, and this may be due to local desirability conditions. Placing a MT station or bus-stop (have you heard of RTMT?) increses local desirability and can cause an immediate hirise to grow (almost as soon as you plop it). Also placing a small park can cause a hi-rise to grow, where you previously had small houses and condos). Plopping parks has a transient desirability effect too, ie a sharp and short increase of desirability, as soon as you plop them, and for 1-2 months. A similar effect can be caused by trees, eg if some lots refuse to be upgraded or consolidated, you can try planting 4-10 trees ON the lot(s) (yes!) and you can how this can trigger the upgrade - growth of the new lot will chop the trees down. Of course you should save the city before attempting this, then plant the trees, run the city slowly for up to a month, and if development was the one you wanted, save again, otherwise exit to the region without saving, and try anew, possibly with fewer or more trees. Micromanagement as well, but very efficient.

- City planning: Don't know how much sense it makes to have those large blocks filled with commercial, maybe redevelop these as residential and zone commercial around the busy avenues. Highways bear a lot of traffic, but you can't zone along them, however you can zone along the parallel roads, with their backs towards the highway, they can still benefit from the high traffic.

Hope this helps.

[Dead Guy 0]

Thanks a lot for the pointers!

The reason I haven't developed commercial around the avenues is I wanted a little green belt there to decrease the traffic air pollution, but I guess there might be room for some. I left 4 tiles between the avenues and the ring roads of the blocks, which is a bit much I think. Pretty much all my zones within the big blocks are 6x12, so most lots will be 2x3, or at least 3 deep at most. I will remove the third row of some industrial zones on the outskirts of the high-rise area of the city, re-zone the residential area 4x12, and see if I can get some of those 4x4 R$ highrises.

I also had no idea about the HTI, thanks for that. Will keep that in mind! So I've probably underestimated the amount of R$ sims I need, I knew I needed some low wealth workers at high wealth work places, but did not know it was such a significant amount. I will adjust. This is also why I've dropped the R$$ tax rate so much I guess, they kept moving out and it was the only res demand that was negative, so I dropped the tax. Also, I was making such a brutal profit I felt bad about it. It just wasn't ethical.

One thing though, should I try to keep the R$$ demand kind of neutral for a while to let the R$ buildings pop up? It seems to me higher wealth buildings will never be replaced by lower ones, but that might be wrong. R$$ buildings keep popping up in areas out in the periphery where there are no jobs for them, where instead there could be living happy medium commute R$ sims.

I'll investigate this NAM as well, sounds like a game changer.

Thanks again.

UPDATE: Instant Hamster Tenement: 8k R$ =))))

  Edited February 12, 2012 by Dead Guy  

[cogeo 960]

Pretty much all my zones within the big blocks are 6x12, so most lots will be 2x3, or at least 3 deep at most. I will remove the third row of some industrial zones on the outskirts of the high-rise area of the city, re-zone the residential area 4x12, and see if I can get some of those 4x4 R$ highrises.

UPDATE: Instant Hamster Tenement: 8k R$ =))))

Not so sure about this, I would say check your networks and traffic first. Actually I have never had such big buildings in my cities. With the default traffic settings, roads have a capacity of 1000 (!) cars, that is a single building like these can easily clog them. Maybe more mass-transit (and a special traffic simulator, with the buses NOT contrubuting to traffic - as is the default) and higher network capacities.

So I've probably underestimated the amount of R$ sims I need, I knew I needed some low wealth workers at high wealth work places, but did not know it was such a significant amount. I will adjust.

I don't think that this can be easily planned, because calculations are hard to make. For example, 1000 CO$$$ jobs means that only 150 jobs are actually $$$, 650 are $$ and 200 are $. But these people cause services demand to rise as well, so another 667 sims will be working in the services sector too (all three wealth types), and finally your city will (demand-wise) have 341 R$$$, 1503 R$$ and 1489 R$ residents (3333 total). Put into the equation the differences in densities (per wealth type), and you will find that pre-determining the space needed for each wealth type is impossible. Now that your space is almost completely occupied, the only practical strategy is start developing some areas vertically (small parks, bulldozer where needed and micromanagement) - the rest areas can remain as they are, maybe mark them historical (ough, a lot of work), then you will get a feeling about if you need to adjust or not. My advice is to try to satisfy CS demand too (even in another city), before zoning for more I. The figures above have been calculated in a spreadsheet, I could make it available, if you aer interested.

One thing though, should I try to keep the R$$ demand kind of neutral for a while to let the R$ buildings pop up? It seems to me higher wealth buildings will never be replaced by lower ones, but that might be wrong. R$$ buildings keep popping up in areas out in the periphery where there are no jobs for them, where instead there could be living happy medium commute R$ sims.

Indeed, higher-wealth buildings are never be replaced by lower-wealth ones, unless they are abandoned. I don't think that you should try to keep the R$$ demand low (for the R$ ones to grow); instead if you have enough R$$ demand just "satisfy" it (grow your R$$ buildings taller - the trick with small parks and trees), isn't this what you're after finally? Just take measures to not allow R$$ where you don't want it. And forgot to mention, there is a mod by Bones1 named "Less Abandonment", which I would highly suggest that you download and install. It makes harder for $$ and $$$ to grow (increases the desirabilty threshold), and features overlapping desirability ranges, eg the threshold for R$$ to dilapidate is lower than the one to exit the dilapidation state. When a zone is undeveloped (or has a low-rise development) desirability is usually high. But when it grows larger buildings, it may drop, as a result of traffic noise, pollution, crime, congestion etc. This mod gives you some margin, ie $$ and $$$ buildings are harder to get, and therefore they won't be built everywhere, and in addition they will tolerare some drop in desirability. It's not a cheat neither a demand mod, it just makes things right (albeit somewhat harder for $$ and $$$), resulting in more stable cities. The CAM guys claim that thresholds for CO$$ and CO$$$ have been set a bit high, but you can experiment or change them yourself; in my cities I had no problems.

UPDATE: Instant Hamster Tenement: 8k R$ =))))

Interesting, in my installation it's named simply Hamster Tenements, not Instant Hamster Tenement, do you have the american version?

  Edited February 17, 2012 by cogeo  

[Synergy67 88]

It's called Hamster Tenement in the American version. He meant: "I instantly got a Hamster Tenement." —presumably after taking some of your good advice. I really have been noticing how effective it is to plant trees around and on top of undeveloped tiles, or plop a bus stop, subway stop, park or plaza nearby. It very often causes nearly immediate development.

My challenge has been for growth to keep occuring in a large stable city of 80K to 150K. Conditions are impeccable: low pollution, good mass transit and highways, little congestion, high health, education, desirability. It seems like in the handful of games I have played so far that the game strongly favors endless new growth in other cities to keep a "finished" city growing up. I keep winding up with a very stable, but non-growing city after I have fully filled up all the tiles I am going to use in the city. What can I do to make a single city keep growing on its own, let's say as if there were no other cities in the region yet at all? Is it possible? The game claims it is, but it sure makes it really hard to figure out what is left to do when you have plopped all rewards, multiple landmarks, have many parks and plazas, etc. etc. etc. but there is no more growth unless you find new tiles to zone.

[Cob92 360]

It's called Hamster Tenement in the American version. He meant: "I instantly got a Hamster Tenement." —presumably after taking some of your good advice. I really have been noticing how effective it is to plant trees around and on top of undeveloped tiles, or plop a bus stop, subway stop, park or plaza nearby. It very often causes nearly immediate development.

My challenge has been for growth to keep occuring in a large stable city of 80K to 150K. Conditions are impeccable: low pollution, good mass transit and highways, little congestion, high health, education, desirability. It seems like in the handful of games I have played so far that the game strongly favors endless new growth in other cities to keep a "finished" city growing up. I keep winding up with a very stable, but non-growing city after I have fully filled up all the tiles I am going to use in the city. What can I do to make a single city keep growing on its own, let's say as if there were no other cities in the region yet at all? Is it possible? The game claims it is, but it sure makes it really hard to figure out what is left to do when you have plopped all rewards, multiple landmarks, have many parks and plazas, etc. etc. etc. but there is no more growth unless you find new tiles to zone.

It depends on what you do in the city. I find you actually get a better initial population number if you build the city dense to start off with instead of filling the whole map before building up. Mass transit helps, especially subways. It's also a good idea to make sure that your healthcare and education systems are top notch, because if either one is lacking it will stifle the city's growth. I have a city of just over half a million Sims with its neighbor cities being nearly nonexistent (tiny towns that act mainly as garbage dumps lol).

It's also a good idea not to waste large quantities of land on useless wilderness space. Wilderness produces no money, houses no Sims, and does little to improve your city. If you want green space, it's better to have it in the form of city-operated parkland.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If I want green space around my cities, I place lots of farms early. I have SPAM, so this is visually tolerable. Farms that are close to the city are, of course, land banks to be consumed at need.

[Synergy67 88]

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM lovely SPAM. Makes farms tasty again. Thanks PEG.

Cobhris96, yeah, thanks for the good advice. You've described pretty much everything I achieve in a city, then it goes flat...nothing more will grow, even with strong, positive demand for R and C. I'm presently setting up to play a new region from scratch with even more savvy planning than ever, but the only way I have been able to get any finished city to build something taller or denser than where it is at is to be building something more to create more demand in another city in the region. An individual city really seems to get stuck on its own when I run out of room to be zoning or plopping something new. This bothers me, because, like the real world, alas, it seems to push the goal of endless spread/growth/consumption as the greatest good to keep things developing. Endless expansion until every inch of the world is paved. Is the only solution to mow down parts of my city where I have zoned high density and hope that higher density buildings will emerge in their place? Because they aren't emerging on their own. I have sat for ten year or more on cheetah speed where not one single thing developed further despite ideal conditions all around. Further advice and experience anyone? What am I missing? I really do feel I have done about all I could do in the one city to foster ongoing growth.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You know, I can't say I've ever had this problem, and I have built a city or two with a million Sims living in them. I just follow my rule of thumb and keep the ratio of 2 Sims per job, approximately. And I use the dashboard to find incipient trouble spots, and try to fix them before they are trouble. Then I use the demand graph, but look at it as available zoning permits and not as anything imperative. I'm a god, after all, and you don't give gods orders now do you?

The other thing I do is treat my Sims well. A beneficent god is more likely to get things done than a wrathful one. I guess this arises from my years of training my own dogs.

And you need patience and some time to ponder. Sometimes I only play for less than an hour or not at all for a day or so to let some problems percolate. The game isn't going anywhere, and nobody is going to pre-empt my cities on my private machine, and none of the approved sites are likely to go away, either.

The real fun in this game is the problem solving aspect. The game proposes an initial problem called "starting a new city", then you do things that cause problems for yourself, and these have to be solved but solving them causes a new set of conundrums, and so on.

I've been a problem solver all my life in my work. One of the biggest problems I've ever solved was the maintenance of a corporate general ledger with its data base (designed by yours truly) that handled over 3,000 cost centres, some of whom had private charts of accounts. This kind of thing excites me.