"...you want your ratio of residential to commercial & industrial to be 3:1:1. "

[5uper_Mania 6]

According to http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/building-simcity-wealth,

...you want your ratio of residential to commercial & industrial to be 3:1:1.

 

 

- Balance Designer Ross Treyz

 

Is it implied that one-third of residents should work in either commercial, one third in industrial, and one-third in civil services?

[tnobles 38]

According to http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/building-simcity-wealth,

...you want your ratio of residential to commercial & industrial to be 3:1:1.

 

 

- Balance Designer Ross Treyz

 

Is it implied that one-third of residents should work in either commercial, one third in industrial, and one-third in civil services?

Three low income and density residential would equal 12 workers. I believe it is implying that one commercial of the same (income & density) would need 6 workers and one of the same industry would need 6 workers. That's the way I read it. Lets test it and see. 

[AlexMBrennan 11]

The meaning of that quote is made clear by the very next sentence:

In general, you want your ratio of residential to commercial & industrial to be 3:1:1. This means if you want to be balanced, you should have three times as much residential as commercial & industrial.

So make sure to build one massive factory for every three huts...

[bifordus-maximus 16]

This would be good if the game did what it was supposed to I believe. I tried it and it didn't add up at least to me (please note that I am horrible at basic math.) possibly from poor city planning. From what it shows me is that your Residential really needs to consist mostly of Low wealth for industrial and commercial to actually flourish. You can have quite a bit of people in your city that are unemployed and not worry about them going homeless. also - Although it shows that commuters fill the jobs they really don't(?). buildings still go out of business for lack of workers.

 

 

Residential Map

 

 

 

Commercial Map:

 

Industry Map: All Hi Tech

 

Numbers:

[perafilozof 143]

Just take a better look at this : https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiK1gO7pmnQEdEVkck9adUNTU2hoclJoSEpTY21sdEE#gid=2

 

Then you will see that if you went 3:1:1 you would never have enough workers. One low density, 1st tech level industry building needs 20 $ and 6 $$ workers, one low density shop $ requires 10$, 4 $$ workers, one low density shop $$ requires 6$ and 4 $$ workers. That is a total of 36$ and 14 $$ workers.

 

To get that many workers you need : 9 $ low density R and 7 $$ low density R homes.  They create the need for 18$ goods and 7 $$ goods.While those 2 shops provide 7$ and 6 $$ goods.

[azxcvbnm321 17]

Once your population gets bigger you'll always have unemployment though and businesses demanding workers even if you have enough due to poor pathfinding and the way the agent/sink system works.  Since workers go to the nearest sink and then the next and the next until they are all filled up, some will run out of time and go back home before they get to that last open job.  They then will not have enough money and the workplace will have no workers.  The game's fundamental core mechanism does not work well.

[perafilozof 143]

But once you know how those agents move around the city, you can build your road network accordingly to allow then to get where they need to go in time.

[morriswalters 16]

If it your intent to use commercial to drive a city then don't use high wealth at all.  Build and wait should be your mantra.  It takes time for commercial and residential to sync.  Push commercial and let residential lag.  Design your commercial in corridors surrounded by your residential.  Control the agents by reducing the distance they have to travel.  This keeps traffic in check.  This was a test run in an old city, about 45 game years.  I took the screenshot because since the density of the area I was testing was so high, the Lizard had nothing to destroy when he knocked on my door.  Before they shut down the test server for whatever reason I got it to 90 k in this config.  Now I'm rying to do a whole map that way.  Slow going.

[CosmicSpeed 28]

If it your intent to use commercial to drive a city then don't use high wealth at all.  Build and wait should be your mantra.  It takes time for commercial and residential to sync.  Push commercial and let residential lag.  Design your commercial in corridors surrounded by your residential.  Control the agents by reducing the distance they have to travel.  This keeps traffic in check.  This was a test run in an old city, about 45 game years.  I took the screenshot because since the density of the area I was testing was so high, the Lizard had nothing to destroy when he knocked on my door.  Before they shut down the test server for whatever reason I got it to 90 k in this config.  Now I'm rying to do a whole map that way.  Slow going.

 

 

This is EXACTLY the way I have been playing and I have been one to only slightly complain about the game as a whole. I think there is a strange level of flow you need to attain and MAINTAIn in order to achieve what I would call SimKarma. I hardly every play in Cheetah only because I really try and micromanage my civil industries, where my zoning is located in reference to parks and road densities, and checking wind and land values. 

[Board_Marshal 104]

If it your intent to use commercial to drive a city then don't use high wealth at all.  Build and wait should be your mantra.  It takes time for commercial and residential to sync.  Push commercial and let residential lag.  Design your commercial in corridors surrounded by your residential.  Control the agents by reducing the distance they have to travel.  This keeps traffic in check.  This was a test run in an old city, about 45 game years.  I took the screenshot because since the density of the area I was testing was so high, the Lizard had nothing to destroy when he knocked on my door.  Before they shut down the test server for whatever reason I got it to 90 k in this config.  Now I'm rying to do a whole map that way.  Slow going.

 

 

 

 

If it your intent to use commercial to drive a city then don't use high wealth at all.  Build and wait should be your mantra.  It takes time for commercial and residential to sync.  Push commercial and let residential lag.  Design your commercial in corridors surrounded by your residential.  Control the agents by reducing the distance they have to travel.  This keeps traffic in check.  This was a test run in an old city, about 45 game years.  I took the screenshot because since the density of the area I was testing was so high, the Lizard had nothing to destroy when he knocked on my door.  Before they shut down the test server for whatever reason I got it to 90 k in this config.  Now I'm rying to do a whole map that way.  Slow going.

 

 

This is EXACTLY the way I have been playing and I have been one to only slightly complain about the game as a whole. I think there is a strange level of flow you need to attain and MAINTAIn in order to achieve what I would call SimKarma. I hardly every play in Cheetah only because I really try and micromanage my civil industries, where my zoning is located in reference to parks and road densities, and checking wind and land values. 

 

 

I can confirm and agree with you both that there is some period of "syncing" the city does when new roads or agents are introduced.  It's almost a butterfly effect or a drop of water in the pond ripple effect that you need to wait and watch as the changes run their course.  If you're runngin through at Cheetah speed you'll never pick up on the subtleties before you change it yet again by adding more stuff or changing the roadway paths/densities.

 

Captain Davenport: They're pinging away with their active sonar like they're looking for something, but nobody's listening.

Jack Ryan: What do you mean?

Captain Davenport: Well, they're moving at almost forty knots. At that speed, they could run right over my daughter's stereo and not hear it.

 

-The Hunt for Red October

 

I'm certainly guilty of it myself, blazing through the game at 40 knots trying to get to the big, shiny, high density buildings, cool specialty buildings, upgrades, and big bank account.  Then I finally slowed down (my CJ forced me to slow way down) I saw a lot of stuff I never noticed before and began to understand how just upgrading 1 block of houses in density (3-4 buildings), adding a couple of intersections, etc. sometimes to often resulted in significant cascades in agent movement, job acquisition, commercial buildings selling enough goods, traffic, etc.  It may sound funny but I became more attached to the city because I was painstakingly sculpting it like a Bonsai Tree rather than getting out the electric sheers and hacking away at my hedges.

[perafilozof 143]

I find it interesting that there seem to be two very different play styles for R and C development from low to high density.

 

One play style, and the one I use, is to cover a large part of the map at the start of the game and just leave around 25-30% unused for specialization and late game large buildings. Then develop it all into medium density and then later on to high density.

 

The other one, the one you showed us with that screenshot, is the one where you develop R and C piece by piece up to high density, before adding another zone. 

[morriswalters 16]

Well that was a test.  The map I'm doing now, I'm doing all at once.  That map is unlocked and has plenty of cash.  Bringing up a balanced city is difficult in terms of cash flow.  I think the thing I am doing that is helping me the most is considering buildings and not agents.  I work from the building density screen.  Most of the dialogs are, well I won't say useless, rather unhelpful.  I look at raw counts of population but I don't get excited if I have jobs open.  I just don't want unemployed.  But I keep my population close to the jobs.  The farther an agent has to travel the more the chance that won't get there at all.  I still get small amounts of abandonment but I just move the building somewhere else.  I control which way buildings face and where they build.  I wish I knew a way to make them fill the space, but the game is picky about space and will fill from the center if it can.  I use pieces of road to make building grow at specific points, but that is a pain.  The way the zoning is done doesn't like corners.  I think it has to do with the underlying grid.

 

[LGMizzell 15]

My method is to move very slow as well, and try to keep the balance of workers/jobs as close as possible.

 

I've also had very good luck with NOT zoning a full block of just residential/commercial, but mixing them instead. So, a long rectangle New York styled block will be mostly residential, but will have a couple clicks worth of commercial mixed in. Mixing this way seems to help with traffic problems somewhat as well, since agents aren't driving distances from one area to another to get to a job.

 

I only start running into problems when things start upgrading, as low density to medium or high vastly changes the population per square ("per square" -  is that the appropriate term?) and starts throwing your balances off. Slow rezoning adjustments are done to compensate as things progress. It gets more difficult as the population grows, because the numbers get, uhhh, interesting, past a certain population point as has been previously discussed here.

 

These numbers seem to work a little differently after 2.0 by the way.

 

If I take my time, I usually have no problems getting a city exactly where I want it ...

 

At first, I was into the GROW GROW GROW MAKE IT BIG thing, but I'm finding it more interesting/challenging at this point to try and create a place I'd actually want to live myself, which usually involves much less density and fewer towering claustrophobia-inducing tall buildings. Of course, to do this, you've pretty much got to ignore the zoning guy, who's trying to force you to cram as much as you can on the map...

[Board_Marshal 104]

I only start running into problems when things start upgrading, as low density to medium or high vastly changes the population per square ("per square" -  is that the appropriate term?) and starts throwing your balances off. Slow rezoning adjustments are done to compensate as things progress. It gets more difficult as the population grows, because the numbers get, uhhh, interesting, past a certain population point as has been previously discussed here.

 

 

  I place small road tabs and then upgrade the density of the road between the two tabs (sometimes between a tab and an intersection, etc.) so there's only enough room for exactly the number of buildings I want to grow up in density.  Once the construction begins I delete the small road tabs and whatever was zoned under the tab grows back anyway.  This is especially true going from medium density to high density; I almost always go up a building at a time, maybe two but the flood of new residents gets unwieldy with more than 2 simultaneously upgrading buildings.

  Is it aesthetically pleasing to have roads which look like this: intersection-MMMMHHMMM-intersection, not really, but having 4 HD residential or some other R&C combination of buildings upgrade all at once can really screw stuff up and make it difficult to tease out where problems or originating from and potential remedies.

  Thus the reason being able to zone density independently of road density would provide an awesome level of flexibility and reduce the hassle of tabbing my roads, bulldozing, etc.  Again, seems like the zone density linkage to road density wasn't thoroughly thought out or they just accepted that we'd put up with a method that worked but was somewhat of a pain to use.

[morriswalters 16]

The R-C city I'm doing now is up to 90+ k.  No mass transit.  Unlocked solar concentrator at the university.  Currently running a 4500 per hour surplus.  One high school and one elementary school.  Got rid of the University after I unlocked solar.  About 86 percent satisfaction.  Zero pollution and zero industry. Had an earthquake and it took me 2 hours to get back to where I was at.  Mass transit may cause more problems than it solves.  I'm going to push that hard.  See how bad traffic can get and have the city work.  The random nature of agents combined with the random nature of buses may work against the city.

 

Interesting note.  You don't seem to generate tech if no industry that uses it exists on the map.  No golden bars while my uni operated even though it was there long enough to research solar after getting enough students to get the first upgrade..

[tnobles 38]

Doing a test run to try and verify the RCI ratio. Just zoned R&I to start, keeping the population as low as possible and make enough simoleons to play with... and they are happy without commercial. So you can probably build any type city you like, R/C, R/I or whatever. First I need to understand workers to whatever ratio.

  Edited April 26, 2013 by tnobles  

[morriswalters 16]

The latest.  At about 138 k give or take.  Still no mass transit.  Had to add recycling.  Generated too much trash and had to add a second burner.  Didn't like that. Love the building density display. It gives me the best feedback, quickly about the what's going on.  Did some demo to add another avenue.  Has anyone noticed that trash and recycling are no longer quitting at scheduled times?  Or did I miss something.  Waiting for the next disaster.