Trouble starting region

[WRXpilot 1]

Hi, Just recently started playing, so bear with me a little, sorry if this has been covered. I'm trying to get a region going, but I'm having a tough time.  I chose a small tile to begin with; I've had no trouble filling it with development.  Problem is, my demand is unbalanced.   The only type of industry that has demand is Ag.  Yet my residential demand (R$ mostly) stays high.  There's about 2X as many sims living in my city as there are jobs.  Yet somehow residential R$ demand remains pegged high. Now having sims move in is fine with me, but I'm getting a little bored just zoning for low-wealth residential.  Plus, I've basically filled up all the available spacce with low-density res and farms.  How do I start developing up now?  Or at least trade the farms for more lucrative industry? Only mod I'm running is NAM, taxes are all default right now too.

[Peorth 17]

It depends on you what you want to do with your city. Seeing how you developed it, you can actually just make it an agricultural city and move onto the next city. 

If you want to develop your city further, farms aren't going to cut it out. Agriculture (I-A) only employs low-wealth sims. You can start educating your population and at some point they (or their children) will realize that they don't want to hoe the earth for the rest of their lives   At this point, your I-A demand will start dropping and demand for higher wealth employment will start rising. However if your city is filled with farms, you'll probably end up with painful rounds of demolition. In my opinion, cities that start off with dirty industry (which also employs 100% R§'s) are far easier to develop because you can simply convert I-D to I-M and I-HT later on. I-A will always be farms unless you demolish/rezone them. 

Regarding jobs and population, you only need to provide employment for half of your sims. That's because the other half is the non-working segment (children, retirees, etc.)

[dussin23 1]

Yep. You just have to be patient when creating a new city in a new region. When your people are still stupid, they're only qualified to work in dirty industry or agriculture. You need some industry because it'll employ more people and give you more tax revenue, but I try to zone as little as possible because of the pollution. Farms are cheap to build and cheap to destroy, and in real life most cities sprawl out over what was once farmland.

You said you're getting bored zoning low-wealth residential. Well, you don't zone wealth, only density. That's an important distinction. Higher wealth sims will move in only when the area is desireable (that's why I try to avoid pollution) and there are jobs for them. Education is key. Libraries help.

Another thing that shouldn't be overlooked is to build several cities and connect them. Don't wait for one to develop a little before you move on. Several cities next to one another will cause some kind of synergy.

[Idleness75 0]

Agriculture doesnt employ a lot of workers, but it actually employs more than the 'current jobs' thingy says. I have no idea what 'current jobs x/x' actually means but normally the pumpkin acres will employ 15-20 people not 2. If you have residential demand, then they have jobs. there is no way to get demand without jobs availible somewhere in the city...whether or not they can actually drive succesfully to the job is a different matter...

[dussin23 1]

I forgot to mention that if I were you, I'd get that jobs quadrupler if the mods ever come back on line. It'll give you a more realistic number of jobs per facility.