Population decreasing when I build parks?

[ozalpsinan 0]

Dear friends;

 

After I installed the game, my first 2 cities I didn't encounter a problem like that. Now I am playing in a new region and I try to build 2 cities. First I am using low densinty roads, only zoning, there is only police, clinic, and fire stations... My population was 15000 and upgraded town hall lvl2. then decide to go high density, first I build $$$ plazas then I upgraded roads. But my population decreased to 1400-1500?????

 

Is there any one that see the same problem? Or am I doing something wrong??

[CaribbeanSail 33]

If you increase the wealth of a building, you decrese its population.  $$ has less population per density then $ and $$$ has less then $$.  Think along the lines of larger apartments in the same sized building, or a mansion taking up several acres housing one family rather then dozens of familys in small homes on the same land.  If you are placing $$$ plazas this is exactly what you should expect to see.  But it has been this way since the initial release of the game, I am not sure why you didnt experience it in your first cities, perhaps you have just gotten better at meeting the needs of your citizens and encouraging high wealth growth.  Balance is really tough in this game due to the small maps.

[AusQB 2]

Maintaining a balanced population can be tricky. I find it hard to keep myself from turning the whole city into at least medium wealth just to keep everyone happy, but it doesn't work like that. Even though the help window says that basically any land value besides red is good for low wealth, why would a building in a high land value area stay low wealth? I think that scale is broken.

 

I also reach a point where I get fed up with people asking me to upgrade the roads, so I just go on a spree turning ever square foot of asphalt into high density. I'm not sure if this has negative implications or whether it's simply better to have the best roads available.

 

On the matter of wealth and density, is it theoretically possible and viable to segregate each wealth level to a different city, i.e., a low wealth city, a medium wealth city and a high wealth city?

[CaribbeanSail 33]

On the matter of wealth and density, is it theoretically possible and viable to segregate each wealth level to a different city, i.e., a low wealth city, a medium wealth city and a high wealth city?

 

That is exactly what my most recent region experiment was. 

 

Since balancing wealth levels is difficult on a small sized map, I kept running into problems.  For instance, you need more $$$ residental, so you place a plaza, but that causes some commerical zome a couple blocks away to go to $$.  You place a school and more $ goes $$ then you intended.  Its really difficult with map limitations to keep wealth areas seperated so you can manage them, you cant just place the smallest plaza to upgrade one large density building, its effect has a domino effect.

 

So, I tried doing exaclty what you suggested.  Rather then do the seperate industrial, commercial and residential cities I sometimes did in SC4, I tried doing cities purely seperated by wealth but still containing each of the RCI.  In theory, in $ city I could provide limited services, place a few (if any) $ parks.  In the $$ city I could place only $$ parks and give pretty good services, and $$$ cities just spoil the citizens rotten.    And just balance each cities size so they commuted to fill in the worker needs of each other.  The $$$ city still needs a ton of $ workers for its $$$ commercial buildings. I used the region with 7 cities all connected (the island one) just in case I found I needed like 2 $ cities for each $$$ city.

 

It worked to a degree.  Focusing on a specific wealth for each city I could really control the balance.  But the regional commuting bugs ultimately made it not work well.  I got the cities to 200K+ populations without traffic jams on the freeway entrances (each city ended up having 3 train stations at least).  But commuters just wouldnt commute, even with no traffic issue.  My $ city would show 10K $$ commuting in to handle the factory jobs that needed $$, no problem.  But when I swapped to my $$ city, it showed 1000 commuting out, and 9K unemployed!.  Vica versa my $$ city showed 20K $ commuting in to fill the needed jobs in the $$ commercial and industry, but when I switched to my $ city it showed only 3K or so commuting out and 15K unemployed.

 

But the issues with commuters is an established bug, I just hadnt myself tried to force commuting before.  Part of me wondered if half the people who complained about it just had issues with the single highway entry point and traffic jams.  I did manage to force a commuting and intercity dependance situation on a large scale, with zero traffic issues on the highways, and verified outright there is a weird commuter bug (commuters have no problems coming IN to a city, but wont go OUT even when they are obviously arriving in other cities while simulating them).

 

After a bug fix though, I think this will be a good gameplay option since attempting to balance the 3 wealth types on the given map sizes is insanely difficult.

[AusQB 2]

Perhaps, at least for the time being, one wealth level per city is a bit too extreme. Maybe mixing low with medium and medium with high could yield better results.

 

I really wish you could add extra highway access points, a single entrance to a bustling city is just ridiculous. I still haven't really figured out how to properly place roads to minimize congestion, but I've had traffic backed up almost all the way back to the city they were coming from.

 

As for train stations, is it really worthwhile placing them throughout the city? I usually just plop one on the existing track to allow regional commute.

[MayorQuimbie 13]

Getting click happy once your plot is up and running can ruin a great city. Balanced cities need low medium and high welath residential zoning but this varies depending on your desired city type...You dont have to upgrade every road, you dont need to provide masses of every service...

 

Its difficult at times to limit yourself with this game once your original plan has been completed....

[CaribbeanSail 33]

As for train stations, is it really worthwhile placing them throughout the city? I usually just plop one on the existing track to allow regional commute.

 

If you want large scale regional commute without jamming up traffic on your freeways, yes, it is worthwhile.  I saw huge differences in commuters (coming in, not out, due to the bug) without causing freeway traffic, when placing additional train stations.  I thought the OUTgoing commuter issue might initially have been because I placed train stations too close, so traffic got too tied up for enough commuters to the stations durring rush hour, but spreading them out across the city did no good there, its definately a bug.  But placing 2 or more stations even near each other (with a bus or tram to service the commuters, remember incomings on a train dont show up with cars) will drasticly increase the INcoming commuters.

[Bobington 4]

Balancing wealth levels is a $%&^!, specially since the influence zone of parks is circular and the lots are square.

[ozalpsinan 0]

Hi friends!

 

Yesterday, after all your replies, I build a new city. Now its population 109.000. I followed every ones thought so;

First RCI demands are really important! My city has  only low and med.wealth. and coal specialized. I am earning money from the coal, but city income is negative! I have 2 high scool, 1 hospital, 1 clinic, 2 big police staion, 1 big firest. and 1 small firesta.1 advanced bus terminal, ferry. 

This time I am struggling with traffic. my school buses locked on, and all city waiting because of that. 

 

One of said that game is too easy? I think its hard but more realistic! Its so fun! When I sit on playin, I cant understand how time is passing

[AusQB 2]

Hi friends!

 

Yesterday, after all your replies, I build a new city. Now its population 109.000. I followed every ones thought so;

First RCI demands are really important! My city has  only low and med.wealth. and coal specialized. I am earning money from the coal, but city income is negative! I have 2 high scool, 1 hospital, 1 clinic, 2 big police staion, 1 big firest. and 1 small firesta.1 advanced bus terminal, ferry. 

This time I am struggling with traffic. my school buses locked on, and all city waiting because of that. 

 

One of said that game is too easy? I think its hard but more realistic! Its so fun! When I sit on playin, I cant understand how time is passing

 

What exactly do you mean by the school buses "locked on"? What kind of street layout are you using? I used to just use a basic grid layout, but people have said that a brick layout is more efficient, as it makes all intersections three-way instead of four-way, meaning less traffic is held up. I've started using it and it seems to work, though I usually still just use a sparse grid for industrial.

 

It's also apparently bad to have zones and a lot of intersections on avenues. To optimize traffic, I've found it's best to have a few avenues throughout the city with minimal intersections, providing a way for a lot of vehicles to get across or in and out of the city quickly.

 

Bottom line is too many intersections leads to congestion.

[ozalpsinan 0]

Actually I used simple grid, perfect squares, but problem is there were an accident on road, so all the busses are stucked in there. Now I demolish and build school some where else. stucking problem is solved. But I read about the pattern you mentioned. Its efficient but city looks unnatural

[Bibor_Kiraly 21]

HD $ has 400 workers, HD $$ has 200 and HD $$$ has 67. 

MD has 10% of the above, and LD has 1%.

 

It's possible to skew the demand into the $$ and $$$ area by building hi-tech industry and equivalent hi-tech ploppables (consumer electronics factory, university), becuase these demand more $$ than $.

 

So, yes, you can eventually build a HD city based mostly on $$ and $$$ buildings. Obviously traffic issues will be half of those you might expect from $ HD.

 

Theoretically, you can pack more $$ and $$$ sims into the same city because HD $$$ by default requires a bunch of large parks and libraries to soak up the shopper traffic.