City services and city growth

[brianc1327 161]

I suppose this is a bit of my followup to my post "Strategy per difficulty."  I explained my strategy of building a "neighborhood unit," then giving it the basic services of water, power, trash collection, and fire protection, but leaving other services such as education and healthcare out (I will call this my "non-serviced city".  I then started putting in education/healthcare when the "non-serviced" city reached $1,000,000("serviced" city). 

When I finished the "non-serviced" city and unpaused it, the mayor rating was quite low, just 2 green bars, but was making a profit of $5K to $6K per month.  After I put the services in, the mayor rating shot up to at least 5 or 6 green  bars very quickly, but the profit was only $500 to $1,000, even after fine tuning the funding for the hospitals/schools.  Since that time, by building new neighborhoods, I have built the profitability back up to over $5,000 (which means to me that I have to look at increasing city services or perhaps cutting taxes), but I have to wonder something.

I wonder if I had kept my "non-serviced" city running for 50 or 100 or however many game years, if the mayor rating would have dropped further, perhaps even down to the red bars, and people/businesses would have started leaving the city, thus eroding the tax base, and eventually getting to a place where it loses instead of makes money.  However, after I had put the services in, if I had let the city just run for however long, if it would have been in a better position to maintain the money it was making, and perhaps even growing a small amount.  The growth would have come not by zoning and developing more land, but by some of the citizens moving from R$ to R$$ or even R$$$ residents. 

I don't think it ever would have gotten back up to the $5k that it was, but I think it was in a position to be maintained and even increased a little in the "serviced" city, but was not in the "non-serviced" city (which might even begin to be abandoned eventually).

Brian Christiansen

[Tysons4 68]

what's cool is it's a simulation so you can test theories like these. I would say sims don't like being segregated as in R$$$ need r$$ just as much as they need r$. so when i build one city that has everything and another city of all r$ it inevitably  fails. but when i use parks and services to beautify sections of a city rather than the whole thing i can entice a more diverse mix of sims to occupy my residential zoning region wide.

[Lucario Boricua 7,060]

One cool experiment a buddy of mine asked me to try was to test which of three cities would develop best (highest population and highest living standard) depending on whether it worked only with motor vehicle traffic only, mass transit only or a balanced mix of both. Once work in my current CJ region slows down I might go ahead and try this out.

[brianc1327 161]

On 5/20/2019 at 3:01 PM, Tysons4 said:

I would say sims don't like being segregated as in R$$$ need r$$ just as much as they need r$.

What I mean is that normally my cities, I get about 50% R$$ residents, with this number varying wildly by perhaps 20% of the entire population, and a roughly even split between R$ and R$$$ residents, making for a rough "average" of 50% R$$, and 25% R$ and R$$$.   In my "non-serviced" cities, I have seen the R$$$ as low as 0%.  I think the R$$ residents were at a  lower proportion as well.  One time I tried running my "non-serviced" city until there were $2,000,000, and it seemed that there were more and more abandoned buildings.  When I put all the services (schools, medical care) the proportion of R$, R$$, and R$$$ went to a more equitable level, from there being a high proportion of R$ residents.

Brian Christiansen

[Lucario Boricua 7,060]

Perhaps the most daunting aspect is how private enterprise in SimCity 4 mimics reality in having a very high proportion of low wage workers (R§) and a very small proportion of high earners (R§§§), with commercial services lacking R§§§ jobs except in CS§§§.

Another thing to consider in regional play is that, in reality, cities as a whole (less so metropolitan areas) never cater to just one socioeconomic rung, this distribution tends to be more granular and normally corresponds to neighborhoods. You will need to have some degree of mixing of socioeconomic levels to have a healthy economy.  If you want more control of the wealth types, there's three powerful tools you can combine to achieve a desired socioeconomic mix in the population: taxes, amenities and pollution control.

* Taxes can be set for each occupant type and wealth level, ranging from 0 to 20% in 0.1% increments. The game starts out at 9.0% for all types and wealth levels, but each one responds differently. From my experience, dirty industry is the least responsive to taxes. I could raise them to 20% and the icky factories would still grow of the region as a whole demanded their non-glamorous services. Meanwhile, higher wealth positions (CS§§§, CO§§§, I-HT and R§§§) are allergic to taxes and will flee the second there's any non-negligible increase. One effective strategy I've used successfully is what I call the fiscal paradise approach: drop the taxes for the employment occupant types you want to develop most (these are the CS, CO and I positions), but not for the resident wealth classes (R). Your region will attract more development for those employment types while the population pays for the government through their taxes, transportation fees and neighbor deals for utilities (electricity, water, waste management). Just be careful not to drop the employment taxes too much, otherwise you lose leverage in fine-tuning the amount of each job type and of course you can risk losing income needed to support the amenities required by the desired occupant classes. Another thing is that, as the city grows, you gain economies of scale: each piece of infrastructure serves more sims, so the overall cost of government decreases relative to the tax base. The game is designed in such a way that larger cities require a gradual reduction of taxes to keep themselves attractive to new occupants.

* Amenities attract, or can even be required, by certain occupant types. The most influential of these are education and transportation. The first of these enables Sims to go up the social ladder, as more skills means they can take more specialized jobs and leadership positions. Each educational facility will influence which age groups get the most benefit from education. Elementary schools chiefly cater to ages 0-20, high schools to ages 20-40, city colleges to 40-60, libraries to 60-80 and museums to 80-100. Universities cater to a broader base, with a peak in 20-30 and another in 40-60, plus they unlock advanced research facility rewards (Disease Research Center, Advanced Research Center and Spaceport) and ultimately expand the region's ability to cater to hi-tech industry. Meanwhile, transportation has three ways of providing what's called capacity relief. When starting a fresh region, capacity for each occupant type is low, or nonexistant in the case of the higher rungs, as such the region starts off with R§, R§§, I-AG, I-D and CS positions. Adding neighbor transportation connections will increase these capacities, the lowest corresponding to the Real Highway (this network is based on a rural road network), which only unlocks 1,000 CO jobs. Road and heavy rail unlock 10,000 CO jobs, rail mass transit (subway, elevated rail, ground light rail) and avenues unlock 20,000 jobs and Maxis freeways unlock 100,000 jobs. Airports and seaports also provide relief, with airports chiefly catering to commercial jobs and seaports to industrial jobs.

* Finally, the mixing and matching of different transport networks helps control pollution levels adjacent to certain neighborhoods. For instance, farms are averse to air pollution, so it's recommended to provide some separation between farm lots and busy thoroughfares (roads, avenues and freeways), said gap can also be used to plant trees and mitigate the pollution. Meanwhile, commercial offices like traffic but not air pollution, so it's beneficial to use both air pollution ordinances (clean air act and automobile emissions reduction act), use parks/plazas and some mass transit to minimize exposure to traffic pollution (noise and air). Hi-tech industries, meanwhile, require high education and low pollution overall, build their sites accordingly.

[twalsh102 1,601]

I would like to expand on a few things that @Lucario Boricua brought up (caveat:  since it's almost never possible to accurately judge level of knowledge of game mechanics, I'm probably going to touch on some things you're already aware of.  So please bear with me):

Neighbor connections:  You can create multiple neighbor connections of each transportation network to each neighbor city to increase your demand CAP relief.  However, beyond three connections of each type, you rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns.  However, there is a large "gotcha" here.  That is the subject of SimNation.  If you make a connection with a neighbor city that has not been initialized / started, you are making a connection with SimNation, no matter which neighbor city you connect to.  So you really only get a total of of three connections of each type.  No matter if you have a large city tile surrounded by sixteen small city tiles, if they're not initialized / started, they all count as one city:  SimNation.  So it pays (from the standpoint of neighbor connections and CAP relief) to initialize / start every neighbor city, even if you never plan to develop them (this has other benefits as well, but that is for another discussion).

Taxes:  Every developer type (combination of RCI category and wealth type) has a neutral tax rate (the same for all).  This neutral rate declines as the population for each  developer type increases.  Tax rates below the neutral rate increase demand.  Rates above the neutral rate dampen demand.  Tax rate changes affect mayor rating, with the higher the change having the greater effect (positive or negative).  The neutral rate for vanilla SC4 starts at 9% with a new city and drops to 4% at a pop. level of 600,000.  If you ever decide to use CAM, this changes and expands the curve (again, another discussion).

Desirability and Mayor Rating:  The results you are seeing for you "serviced / "non-serviced" strategy are those driven by desirability and Mayor Rating factors.
    1.  Desirabilty and Mayor Rating can be different for each Residential tract.
    2.  Things like education and health coverage affect both.
    3.  Low-wealth Sims have a tolerance for lack of both.  Higher wealth level Sims do not.
    4.  EQ and HQ apply to an entire Residential tract, not individual Sims.  
    5.  Likewise, age, as it applies to the various educational facilities, refers to the average age of a residential tract, not individual Sims.
    4.  Low-wealth Sims enter the game with EQ and HQ of 20 points.  There is a decay factor built into the game of .2 points / month.  So within eight years or so, with nothing to offset these decay factors, you can reduce your population to drooling, sickly morons.  HQ also affects life expectency.  Sims with an HQ of zero have a life expectancy of 50 yrs.  There is also a random effect where any Sim with an HQ of 2 or below can suddenly die.  This could explain some of the abandonment you are seeing

On the subject of Demand:  There are two important tables built into the exemplars:  Workforce Drives (or Demand of Occupation) and Census Drives (Demand of Workforce).
    1.  Only about 50% of the residential population is job-eligible (think toddlers, school kids, stay-at-home moms, grand-parents, sick/lame/lazy, etc.).
    2.  Almost all civic buildings also provide jobs.  So this diminishes the number of job-eligible Sims available to take C and I jobs
    3.  The Workforce Drives table specifies that for each new addition of job-eligible Residential Sims (based on Wealth-level and EQ), certain numbers and types of jobs are demanded (specified as percentages of this new addition).  Example 1:  For every addition of 100 job-eligible R$ EQ1 Sims, 37 CS$, 112 I-D, and 1500 I-R jobs are demanded.  For every addition of 100 job-eligible R$$$ EQ4 Sims, 75 CO$$$, 37 CS$$$ and 37 I-HT jobs are demanded.  Note that percentages add up to more than 100% of the new addition (often reaches 160%).  This table drives Commercial and Industrial demand.
    4.  The Census Drives Table specifies that for each C or I building that develops, a certain number of jobs at all three wealth levels (with the exception of CS$, I-D, and I-R, which create only low-wealth jobs) (specified as percentages of the building's capacity).  Example:  a newly developed CS$$ building with a capacity of 100 jobs, actually creates 5 R$$$, 27 R$$, and 62 R$ jobs.  Note that both I-HT and I-R are broken in this table in vanilla SC4, and require modes/fixes to work properly.  This table drives Residential demand.

Sorry for the wall of text,  But this is to partially illustrate that one often cannot look at any particular effect being observed in one's city, and point to a single specific cause.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

17 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

higher wealth positions (CS§§§, CO§§§, I-HT and R§§§) are allergic to taxes and will flee the second there's any non-negligible increase.

I always raise each city's R$$$ taxes right out of the gate, and I still get loads of R$$$ residents, many of whom then ignore the less-abandonment mod and abandon anyway.

Some  mods affect the analysis: SPAM farms have a few higher-wealth jobs representing owners and supervisors among the field hands. Some industry mods likewise shift the balance.

18 hours ago, Lucario Boricua said:

Airports and seaports also provide relief, with airports chiefly catering to commercial jobs and seaports to industrial

Among airport mods is an "airport shuttle" bus stop that has the effect of being a little 2x2 airport that can be plopped on a busy avenue downtown. It seems like cheating, but if you use other mod elements to lay out a gigantic airport complex in one of your "cities" with enough capacity to serve the whole region, then it makes sense to have cap relief magically show up wherever needed.