Large CO building abandoning

[timmyc1983 3]

Hello,

 

This is my first post as you can see, I have been lurking for some time but am looking for help with this particular city I am working on.

 

Firstly, my region is quite large, the total pop. is close to 3 million over around 10 squares, mostly small and medium tiles. I use a money tree mod as feel like normal governments seem to pull money from thin air (or all of our pockets) to pay for things, I like having the freedom to give my city what it needs. Now this has lead to things growing a lot quicker than what it really should, and from what I imagine most of you guys would approve of...

 

This particular city is around 30 years old and I thought was going pretty well, the population for it currently is around the 200k mark. Larger residential buldings began growing which upped the demand for CO which began to grow. Then a couple of very nice CO$$$ buildings grew and I was very happy with things. The problem was they all grew on avenues which haven't got enough traffic on them to keep the large C buildings interested so they then abandon due to low demand.

 

So questions are, is this happening because they have grown too quickly? It strikes me as odd that they would grow in the first place if the demand wasn't there?? and am I correct in thinking that the best way for these buildings to prosper is by over population and the roads and avenues being dangerously busy...?

 

It's strange because I have another city of over 400k that doesn't have this problem, although it's much older, I think around the 70 year old mark...

 

Anyway, any thoughts would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time

[danathomas 7]

Your tax rates are off. Which has created a demand for CO that you do not have the population for. Probably because the CO are in your main city, and the people in this square are traveling to work there. Try lowering the CS tax rate, and add more population close to your main city. My guess is this is happening to the main city as well. This is a little harder to fix. Do not be afraid to blow up offices in places you dont want them. If a new building grows and you dont have the demand for it, a CO building somewhere else will be abandoned. Also do not be afraid to micro manage the offices. Be selective on where you put high density. IF you do that you can force the offices to where you want them, and keep the services on your avenues into the main city. Try to keep your tax rates similar. Which i know is hard, but that is the best way to keep balance. For instance i only change the tax rate in the main city, and the cities adjacent to them. All other cities i leave the tax rate alone.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You are probably out of balance.  You really can't have more than 15% R$$$ because that is all the jobs that normally occur for them.  This is related to your education quotient (EQ) which needs to be very high for any $$$ action. 

 

To check the demographics of any large building you need the extra cheats dll.  Having that installed, enable the query operator then press and hold CTRL+ALT+SHIFT and move the query operator over a building in question.  You will get the full stats for that building.

 

Look at the jobs and population graph.  It is very cluttered but you can turn off the uninteresting lines by clicking on their control box.  Do you have enough R$$$ to fill the CO$$$ jobs?  If not, you need more education to upgrade your R population.

 

Don't over zone commercial.  Keep it down to a few high-density 4 x 4 lots and only add new ones, by re-zoning if necessary, as the current ones fill up.

[timmyc1983 3]

Ok, Thanks for the replies, both answers make a lot of sense! I do have a lot of commercial zoning in this particular city so maybe rezoning some of that residential will help as well...

 

I guess I get caught up in wanting to have big skyscrapers in every city and I know it doesn't work like that!!

 

Thanks again for your help, much appreciated

[timmyc1983 3]

Sorry for the double post but...

 

Ok so things have moved along reletively positively since I used much of your advices and things were going well...

 

Until all of a sudden the R$$ and R$$$ all over the region has gone underground. Every city I open both R's demands are maxed out in the negative. All the cities have excellent civic services of all kinds and there are no cities with any no job zots or anything. All of the cities have high desirebility for the most part in the areas where the populations are living, there's no air polution to speak of and I thought it may have been water polution (esp one city had pretty bad water polution) but I added some treatment plants but that still didn;t help... I'm really at a loss as to what this could be now....

[jmsepe 2,039]

Are you using a demand mod? That might be the problem. Another issue can be the commute time, in that case you need NAM to help fix that. 

[APSMS 1,893]

Pictures?

 

Also, I'm assuming you have the NAM? I'd recommend dumping the money tree and using the moolah cheat to inject cash into your cities ("moolah #" where # is a number changes your city's treasury to that amount).

 

As for the negative R$ and R$$ demand, I'm not sure what to do, other than recommend that you open up a test city in a test region and just zone away like normal to see if the results are reproducible. It may be the result of a faulty demand plugin or something related like that, if you can reproduce it, that is. I had the problem a long time ago when I was new and my biggest city had 30 000 people. I can't remember what I did to fix it, but I think it involved mass redevelopment.

[timmyc1983 3]

Well, firstly i have NAM already... And I don't use any demand cheats, the only cheats I have is the money tree and a traffic air pollution cheat, which I only used because a week or so ago the R$$$ demand crashed and I finally figured out that this was the reason that happened. But now that's cleared up there is no dicernable reason for this new crash...

 

The region has just over 4 million and there are two cities of over 500k that are effected the worst... Commute times are reletively high but only because all the sims persist in travelling to other cities despite there being jobs much closer in their city...

 

Now some of the cities seem to have recovered on the R$$ front but still R$$$ demand is way underground...

 

And btw, how do I retrieve in game photos, I can't seem to find them to upload them... Is it better just to print screen and do it that way??

[jmsepe 2,039]

You can find the in game photos at your documents where you place your plugins. The folder title should be "Album". 

 

Strange, how about taxes? Have you touched them lately? I use to have this problem and until now, it actually persists but only for those cities where I used demand mod. Could it be that because of the sudden growth of the R$$$ due to the air pollution cheat, you have created a lot of commercial jobs but now you're region is saturated with R$$$?

 

Now, now, do all cities have a way underground R$$$, or only those two with over 500k population?  

[Roman_Samudra 213]

Your issues are totally weird since, I have a city with merely 88% of its are High-Rises R$$$ buildings.... and have no problem at taxes, abandonment or anything. The only cheat I use is 'howdryiam' and 'moolah', but a little bit issues with traffic and power

Little bit show off, sorry

 

Idk, my tax rates are at all time 8.0% average (apply to R$,R$$,R$$$) and didn't get serious threat about that, try to works more with other city....

[timmyc1983 3]

Well there wasn't any huge amount of growth... Of course just now I managed to get things back to almost normal, and I had to bulldoze a air pollution to energy plant (which i wasn't even using anymore cos of the cheat mod) and it sent my city into chaos, I had 400k sims abandon in about 2 mins.... I've almost got it back to how it was now but everything has screwed up....

 

Now every city I open in the whole region is screwed, it's now the CS$$$, CO$$ and CO$$$ who's demand has gone underground, I think that's related to above problem tho...

 

I almost feel like throwing in the towel.......

 

The taxes are at a neutral rate on all of the cities by the way... That is to say at 9%...

 

PS, Roman I like your city

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Bulldozing cheat lots will sometimes resurrect any pollution that has been eaten by them.  This can send your city into a tail spin.  Traffic pollution is reduced considerably by the Clean Air Ordinance when you have the NAM.  If you don't have it set, it should be.

 

BTW, I learned long ago that demand cheats are often fatal in the long run.  I never use any of them any more.  When I need funds, I simply moolah for them.  Sometimes I use this command to reduce the treasury by the amount I originally gave.  Consider it a grant in aid that can be recovered.

[timmyc1983 3]

Thanks Nonny Moose I haven't used any demand cheats but I will keep that in mind.

 

Re: the moolah cheat, I tried it but with no success, is there any trick to it that i'm missing?? Just type 'moolah' then how ever much you want...?

 

I have started a new region now, I think that pollution thing ruined that whole region

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Syntax for moolah:

 

CTRL+x to open the command box then:

 

moolah<space><number><carriage return>

where:

<space> ::= a single depression of the space bar.

<number> ::= [0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9]⁺

<carriage return> ::= CTRL+m

 

<number> replaces the treasury balance.  It does not add or subtract.

 

Example:  Suppose the treasury was 1,415 simoleons and you want to add 100,000 more.  Then use:

moolah 101415

 

I always find it more satisfactory to consider the current balance and to simply enhance it.  Note that the definition of number says digits only.  No punctuation.

 

Don't overflow the amount.  The limit is large, but you never really need more than about 500000 in most cases.

[timmyc1983 3]

Ok great thanks I'll try it next time I'm playing!!