What influences RCI?

[Linoa06 1,374]

I think I do have a good idea how RCI works, but is there any data out there that shows in detail the inner workings of the RCI demand system? Not their effect on the city but literally how demand is generated/calculated. Just curious ;o

Sorry if that's already been answered somewhere else - I haven't been able to find anything :/

[DaEgi 14]

Here are the factors for residential stuff:

• Available Jobs (+ | +)
• Available living space (free households) (- | +)
• Unemployment (CIMs in your workforce that have no job) (- | -) 
• Homeless CIMs (this happens if you bulldoze houses or enjoy a tornado while CIMs are in shelters) (+ | -)
• Taxes (  | -)

This is for resident demand, and incoming resident demand. The numbers (+ | -) is what the affect is on both.
The first is what your RCI graph tells you, the second affects how many CIMs are coming into town.

So for example:
If you have a lot of available living space (meaning houses that are not full and where CIM can immediately move in) it has a negativ effect on RCI but a positive effect on incoming residents. The idea here is, that your RCI is lowered so that you don't build new residential zones since you have a lot of free houses or flats anyway, but since there is a lot of space to move in, more CIMs want to move in.

Taxes are calculated after that and lower the demand.
They seems to affect only the incoming demand for residentials at least.
But I have not checked taxes very well, maybe you can find out more.

So in order to verify the data yourself, or get the exact formulas you do the following:

The game logic is written in c# and c# is compiled to IL.
Get ILSpy or JustDecompile, both free tools that produce c# or vb out of IL.
Use the tools to open 'Assembly-CSharp.dll'
For me (steam-user) it is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Cities_Skylines\Cities_Data\Managed
The methods you are looking for are in the ZoneManager,
CalculateResidentialDemand(...) - the RCI part
CalculateIncomingResidentDemand(...) - the influx part
CalculateResidentialDemandOffset(...) - the part the applies the tax reductions
just search for the methods and go from there.
the tools provide you with convenience functionality, so you can find out what method is called from where etc.
Programming experience is helpful but not necessary, you can find out by staring long enough at it and thinking hard

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Well, I do know that offices use the same demand as industry and that it's most highly impacted by unemployment.

[rmjohnson144 39]

I know commerce causes demands from generic industry and from residential.  i.e. commerce is low on goods to sell and requires generic industry.  If commerce is low on workers it demands residential.

Same for generic industry as commerce. Except it also demands specialized industry to provide raw materials to generic industry, so generic industry doesn't import as many raw materials.

The game ignores shoppers, so residential may still demand commerce, but is doesn't have any impact.  You just need to provide offices for jobs instead of commerce and industry.

So the demand bars end up being just recommendation bars!  Especially on larger cities when you start running into vehicle limits and you need to reduce the production chain and all of it's importing and mostly eliminating exporting.

[csSniper 1]

Primarily a need for jobs.

[E103 0]

How do you know when need factories? When need offices?

[rmjohnson144 39]

4 hours ago, E103 said:

How do you know when need factories? When need offices?

Zoned Generic Industry provides jobs and also provides freight for commerce to sell, to residential.

Offices only provide jobs.  nothing else.

I use offices as job sinks when I have too much freight, which causes traffic jams.

[Lab Rat 13]

Automated Notice Message

All posts after 1 March, 2026 @ 01:37 GMT were lost in the site crash.

We've added this message thread divider in every topic across all forums for what were then active threads. (We decided active is if the most recent extant post (from the backup) was on or after 1 January, 2026.)

This divider serves as notice that the conversation was interrupted. Answers and further discussion which used to be here have been lost. Keep this in mind when replying. Our hope is to rebuild what is missing.