Cap busting?

[MarkShot 631]

Please see attached.  I am more or less stuck around a population of 100,000 for this tile.  I gave read about caps, demands, and busting.

I am running NAM 35, CAM 2.1, and using the cheat with unlocks all rewards (just recently as an experiment).

I really am unable to move my population up more than a few thousand despite using parks, plazas, and various rewards with I have to myself via the CTRL-X cheat.

I how do I grow larger?   Like to a few hundred thousand to a million in this large tile?  (NOTE:  A lot of the labor is heading North to work.)

Thanks.

PS:  I am including something called the Census Resource.  I am not sure of what value it is.

[rsc204 21,805]

So in this city you've 115k residents, roughly 50% of which will want to work (58k). But you've 71k jobs for them. So my guess is you need more sims, in fact I'd say you need specifically more R$ sims. Left to its own devices, the simulator will upgrade much of your R$ to R$$ or R$$$ sims, especially if you've good services/land values. But R$ are the backbone of all cities, without them things don't get done. So you have to ensure you have areas which are suitable for R$ sims to move in. This can be done in neighbouring cities, but the key point is to be wary not to make all your areas too nice. If you do this, R$ sims can't afford to move in and it will start to have dramatic effects on demand.

Bear in mind demands are regional, so you'll need to take into account things across multiple cities. It's hard to speculate on what's happening because you've only shown figures for this city. But if you see the RCI graph, it clearly shows a need for Residential zoning/development.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

46 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

...be wary not to make all your areas too nice.

Wow, that's quite a statement. I guess it means that there's no underemployment in SC4. It also means that employers can't afford to pay R$$ wages to do R$ work. The economy stagnates because it is inflexibly status conscious 

I suppose that's why players declare some R$ buildings to be historic. Then the neighborhood can be spruced up without the building converting to R$$$.

[matias93 7,535]

2 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

It also means that employers can't afford to pay R$$ wages to do R$ work. The economy stagnates because it is inflexibly status conscious 

That's my RL country!! With the slight difference that most other jobs are underemployment...

2 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

 

I suppose that's why players declare some R$ buildings to be historic. Then the neighborhood can be spruced up without the building converting to R$$$.

Luckily, that doesn't work as in RL, because in that case, we would be seeing the same poor buildings becoming trendy gentrified condos, and their original occupants sacked anyway. Make buildings historic in the game is more like to an anti-gentrification ordinance.

To do that it's an option, another one is outright austerity: deprive neighbourhoods of adequate education and health services, avoid creating recreation areas (or using the lowest quality of them, as SFBT low wealth parks), building contaminant industry close or zoning residences to far from jobs and make probable for Sims to lose jobs because of traffic. 

Yup, that is; but don't be surprised if your Sims end voting you out of office and choose some crazy populist in place...

[rsc204 21,805]

3 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

Wow, that's quite a statement. I guess it means that there's no underemployment in SC4. It also means that employers can't afford to pay R$$ wages to do R$ work. The economy stagnates because it is inflexibly status conscious 

So 21st Century Europe then? Where most at the bottom can hardly afford to pay the costs of living, even if they are working.

[twalsh102 1,601]

OK, so the numbers in the CAP column represent the percentage of CAP that you are currently using.  Based on those numbers, CAP is not the problem in this city.

Beyond that tidbit, anything else is speculation (maybe educated/informed speculation, but still speculation) without more information.  A look at your expanded RCI Demand graph could prove enlightening.

Also what density of zoning are you using?

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

Important to remind ourselves that SC4 sometimes fails to model real life. In my public school, not everyone graduated despite excellent teachers etc. Even those who did spread out across the socio-economic spectrum. More than half went to college, but even they were scattered professionally, with some getting degrees that enabled them to ask, "Do you want fries with that?" in six languages.

At the risk of aggravating the modders who know, I wonder if there's a way to spread sims across more econ levels even when they're all provided education to the university level. After all, not everyone is cut out to become a rocket surgeon. Some intellects are destined for lower-ed careers no matter what schools they're forced to attend.

While I'm causing modders to pull out their hair, I might as well go all in: When a city or region has a surplus of jobs, there should be some upward pressure on wages that translates into higher labor participation rate (i.e. money draws retirees into semi-retirement). Also vice-versa.

[CorinaMarie 29,568]

On 2/17/2017 at 3:29 AM, jeffryfisher said:

I wonder if there's a way to spread sims across more econ levels even when they're all provided education to the university level.

I haven't personally tested it, but setting the Tract Developer Kick Out Lower Wealth to False might be the Holy Grail of keeping balance among the residential wealth levels. Here's a pic Tim posted in another thread:

When I'm ready to start my next region I'm going to give it a try.

[rsc204 21,805]

23 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I haven't personally tested it, but setting the Tract Developer Kick Out Lower Wealth to False might be the Holy Grail of keeping balance among the residential wealth levels. Here's a pic Tim posted in another thread:

It'd be great if it were that simple. I can foresee problems with that approach however. Because it's far more likely that a building will upgrade to a higher wealth/density than it is one simply appears. Notice how when zoning in a new area of a map for a first time, sometimes it take a while for development to occur, even with high demands. That's a product of this system, it's part of how the game works at a fundamental level.

Of course it'll be interesting to see what you come up with as always.

[APSMS 1,892]

13 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

rocket surgeon

I believe these are called aerospace engineers :-P .

13 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

While I'm causing modders to pull out their hair, I might as well go all in: When a city or region has a surplus of jobs, there should be some upward pressure on wages that translates into higher labor participation rate (i.e. money draws retirees into semi-retirement). Also vice-versa.

This would be interesting, but I think the simulator demands specific income levels for specific wealth strata, so even if lower-income workers got paid more, the game would still treat them as low-income for the purposes of housing and jobs, and because the game lacks minutiae in the small details, the net effect would be a slight increase in average salary and maybe a slightly better mayor rating, but no visible difference. Well, maybe fuzzies in your heart as your electron-powered Sims theoretically enjoyed a better life, but as a famous person once said, "The poor you will have with you always" (let the reader understand).

The biggest issue is likely that the game only really has 3 wealth levels, and not a whole lot of detail in between those three (though I think it does approximate a monthly/annual income for every Sim, which isn't identical for every member of a given wealth level). Since the underlying economic simulation is static/pre-programmed, there isn't really a way to reflect increased standard of living for your Sims aside from letting poor Sims live in really nice areas by historicalizing their R$ homes and then improving the area, though it still won't keep their population from dropping due to wealth increasing factors like better education and health (???) and available jobs.

On 2/15/2017 at 5:18 AM, matias93 said:

Yup, that is; but don't be surprised if your Sims end voting you out of office and choose some crazy populist in place...

Given that you are defacto mayor, I suspect you haven't really been elected anyways; more like working the city behind the scenes. How else could you bulldoze buildings at a whim, raise taxes, build landmarks, and call upon the gods to rain natural disasters down upon your city's unsuspecting inhabitants? They only boot you out when city debt becomes so bad that your presence can't be ignored.

RL has a way of catching up to people, too, though. It shouldn't really have surprised anyone.

On 2/15/2017 at 5:18 AM, matias93 said:

Luckily, that doesn't work as in RL, because in that case, we would be seeing the same poor buildings becoming trendy gentrified condos, and their original occupants sacked anyway. Make buildings historic in the game is more like to an anti-gentrification ordinance.

I feel like this has happened to a large part of Downtown SD. I've been gone a bit, and whenever I go back I hardly recognize the place. Even the parts that aren't trendy have still been affected. 3 of my favorite thrift stores were downtown, and only one of them, a Salvation Army, is left (and only because I think they've been there for 40 years, and own the building outright and didn't sell during the real estate boom). Of course, the roads are still littered with potholes and cracks, but all the buildings are shiny, at least.

[matias93 7,535]

Every time we end talking about the politics inside the game I cannot avoid remembering that Wright based it on a tale by Stanislaw Lem, about a deposed king that manages to convince an Inventor to create for him a miniature kingdom. The end of the fable is very related to what we are talking about now, but I don't want to spoil it.

[Fantozzi 4,067]

To me it looks strange that R$ cap is still 2 while R$$ cap is 7. R$$$ cap being still 2 could be explained by having not enough museums and high schools (education). But I can't explain why R$ cap is so low while at the same time R$$ cap is so much higher. Can't explain why they are so imballanced (some other demand mod perhaps conflicting with CAM?) but this could be the reason as R$ and R$$$ most probably won't upgrade but only R$$.

 

[EDIT]

On second thought - I'm not even shure what the census repository's telling here. To my knowledge there is no R$ cap for stage 1-3 (they will always grow) - so how it comes there's a cap below 3?

 

[EDIT 2 - hours later]

On 15.2.2017 at 9:27 PM, twalsh102 said:

OK, so the numbers in the CAP column represent the percentage of CAP that you are currently using.  Based on those numbers, CAP is not the problem in this city.

 

Missed this post - sorry - this makes sense. Now I understand. So caps aren't the problem. I agree.

So forget what I wrote before.

We would have to see RCI demand graph to say more. @twalsh102 is right.

 

[EDIT 3]

But this topic is from february? How did I get here? Whom I'm talking to?

Some kind of time warp I got into? Sunstroke? Sorry again.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

5 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

How did I get here?

You followed Corina's link from R$$$ sims displace R$