Demand Cap or Something Else?

[da1642416424 0]

Hello,

 

Although I've been playing Sim City 4 for quite some time, I've hit a very annoying issue while trying to expand my region. Trying to develop medium wealth office in has hit a wall it seems and no matter what, I cant get the demand up. Lets compare two cities.

 

City 1 (city with issue)

 

Population - 750K + 

Taxes - 0% Medium Wealth Office 

Airport - Yes

 

 

Demand is capped at 5000?

 

 

City 2 (neighboring city) - comparatively worse in almost every metric

 

Population - 300K 

Taxes - 9% Medium Wealth Office

Airport - Yes

 

 

Demand is not capped

 

 

The only thing I can think of is the possibility I over-developed medium wealth office in the first city and should try and diversify with high wealth office.

 

Thoughts? 

 

[Prophet42 1,500]

I see that in both cities you have positive medium wealth residential demand.  Have you zoned enough residential to support your desired medium wealth commercial?  Also if it is a demand cap, try placing some plazas in your commercial zone to see if that will spur on development. 

 

Another suggestion is, if haven't already done so, make sure you have plenty of mass transit infrastructure in place to make sure workers can get to your medium wealth commercial.  Use the route query tool to see if sims are actually commuting to your commercial zones.

[Mister Giggles 310]

6000 (As displayed on the RCI chart) = The maximum amount of allowed demand. While not a hard cap, it is quite difficult to get buildings with bigger occupancy numbers to grow.

 

5000 (Your actual demand) = The number resulting from demand generated by residential occupants and supply cap. Supply cap is a hidden number that determines how many of a given occupancy can exist in your city, and the higher a given occupant type is to this number the lower the amount of demand generated. This will explain the concept quite well:

 

http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:Demand%2C_Supply_and_CAPs

 

I also suggest this ingame utility if you want maximum understanding of what your city is doing under the hood:

 

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1831

 

This will allow you to see exactly what the supply cap of your city is, among a ton of other information. Most of your questions can be answered by using it. Reading the manual is a must.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Mr. Giggles is right about the in-game instrumentation.  Be prepared, though, because this gem really coughs up a lot of detail and does need some study.

[da1642416424 0]

Thank you for the replies. I've ultimately concluded my laptop can't run to the extent I want to play. My region has grown to 4 Mil and its impossible to play on any city.   

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

So, maybe it is time to archive that region.  Put it away until you can get a faster machine, and start a new region.  I have one region with an unplayable city, but I still keep it around.  I have 11 active regions at the moment.  I like variety.