RCI Demand Problems/Public Services

[pimpinstein 0]

RCI DEMAND

ok so i'm a newbie and i have this small city with a population of about 20,000. it's bordered by two other cities (13 k and 5 k populations) so the region pop. is 38k. anyway's, in my largest city, i can't seem to get over the hump of 20k. there is no demand whatsoever for commercial and that seems to be affecting the growth of the city. R and I were also at negative demand, but i lowered taxes, and i was able to get some demand, not much though. I've lowered taxes incredibly (down to 5.5$, 6.5$$, 7.5$$$) for commercial and i used to have them at about 8.5$, 9$$, 9.5$$$, but still no demand. there is also a bit of unemployment in all of my cities. there's not much of a commerical population in any of them. the largest commercial center is my largest city (6k commercial pop. i believe). long story short, i was just wondering if any of you guys knew how to increase commercial demand.

 

PUBLIC SERVICES

i also have problems making much money. i'm making a profit of a few hundred dollars each month. i dunno if thats normal for a city/region of only 20k/38k. my primary concern here is city services. in all of my cities, i've made sure to provide adequate police/fire/schools and basically full coverage for health as well. my mayor rating is at about 50 or so. do you think all these services are neccessary, or should i cut down in order save money??

thank you.

-alex

[BlackJackal 0]

You've probably hit a demand cap. When your city gets to a certain size you will reach these caps where the city will not grow anymore, and you need to provide something for the sims. The biggest one is usually parks. You need an adqauate number of parks to bust through the residential demand cap. Later, things like the airport will help with commercial demand caps. There are probably other threads and resources you can search for, for further information.

As for money, in a small city like that you don't really need a lot of services. Also, you can probably cut back on funding for your schools and hospitals. Go into the budget, and check the actual usage and capacity for each school and hospital -- only fund for what you need. If you have a Large Elementary School with a capacity of 3000 (full funding), but there are only 800 students, then reduce the funding so your capacity is something like 1000. When your city grows, the Education Advisor will let you know when a school is over capacity, and you can raise the funding to compensate (by then you will have more tax revenue to cover it).

[mrbisonm 1,620]

Make sure that you have sufficient connections by rail and road to your neighbors. Like BlackJackal said, Parks can be useful at this time. Have you checked that everyone has watersupply?

Btw, pimpinstein, Welcome to Simtropolis!

mrbisonm/Moderator

[Tolomar 5]

since your new check some of the old stand by's....that your areas have water going to your zoned areas...and have upgraded to med desity at least and  check power capabilities make sure your running with a surplus

also check garbage and/or air pollution...if not taken care of either one or both can stagnet a city or send it into negative demand

if your using the NAM...if not get it...(found in the modd download section...it will help...if your already using it...try lowwering the traffic pluggin capasity and speed...as comercial is tied to foot traffic in front of the store...if your using a x10 capsity type mod...it will take you x10 the ppl or traffic to get the higher comercial buildings (or any for that fact) most of the radical traffic pluggins from the NAM are ment for larger cities...100K+ when speed and capasities of roads become a problem

one growth is re-established....managing a cities civic budget is easiest to do in new cities, micromanaging (actually queing the building and setting the funding to about 10% more than neeeded....this will work with all civic buildings and power plants...doing this , special in small cities can save you a lot of extra money...specially at the start of cities when the $$ is the tighest, as most civic buildings have capabilities and cost that are to used in large cities

ps remeber to only add servies when they are needed, rarely do i listen to the advisors, they want everything all the time...and listening to them will cause you to go broke

I use the "stupid news ticker" mod on the MODD downloading section to block most of their whinny complaints...

[Marty22 0]

Not trying to hijack the thread, but expand on it: Regarding the capacity increase mod - I downloaded DarkMatter's Transit Super mod, mainly in order to improve the path finding, cos some of the sims are quite dumb :-) What i didnt quite understand thouggh was the 10x high/low capacity increase. So according to what you say - does it mean that my commercial buildings wont grow taller unless there's 10x as much traffic?

[zane900 1]

Mind you: At a city of 20,000 you don't need water supply for everyone.

By the way, build out before you build up.

[Tolomar 5]

@marty

well that mod preceeds the NAM...or I believe DM's super demand mod was incorperated or at least parts of it  into the NAM...so I say update to the NAM...but that a personal opion

as for the Comercial effects...overly simplified...the more foot traffic you have in front of a comercial building the better....more ppl, better chance of a sale, which is comerce...yellow on the traffic view is good...red is even better...sort of the opposite of what the Residential demands

if you mod the capasity of a road by x10...it directly effects the stage or size of a building that will appear along that road....your tricking the game to let more ppl down the road...but not making the road go yellow or red from over use...so it inhibits the size of the buildings that will grow there

now there are countles other factors to comercial size growth...tooo many to list...and the boys with the NAM have done their best to balance out the capsities for walking  but it's still a factor when you mod the capsity of roads, which most ppl over look or don't even consider as a problem...so this isn't as much of a factor...but with DM's mod (think it's alomost 1 1/2 or 2 yrs old now) I not sure if this was done for it  ?????

[Peorth 17]

if you mod the capasity of a road by x10...it directly effects the stage or size of a building that will appear along that road....your tricking the game to let more ppl down the road...but not making the road go yellow or red from over use...so it inhibits the size of the buildings that will grow therequote>

I believe your assumption is incorrect. Let's say 2000 cars are passing through a road. Whether you use the original capacity, increase it 10x, 100x or whatever, you'll still have 2000 cars passing through it. Since the desirability boost is dependent on the cars passing by, the boost is the same regardless of the road capacity. In fact, the increased capacity will allow more cars to pass without congestion, boosting desirability further.

[pimpinstein 0]

something kinda crazy happened lol...i lowered taxes and now i've got commercial demand, but many of my C$$ and C$$$ buildings are abandoned. the demand for C$ is at the maximum. i have no idea why. i placed a couple parks and still there has been difference. everything is watered and police/health/fire is adequate. i've got the missle thing, the toxic waste dump and the military base in my city but they placed far away from any commercial/residential...i'm not sure if that has any impact.

i'm not sure but maybe it's got something to do with my neighbors. i've got 3 now (city pop. at ~19-20k and regional pop at 45k) with sufficient rail/road connections. one has a 13k pop and is almost all residential, the others are mixed but mostly residential. none of the 3 has a much commercial (one has no commercial). i figured if there was no commercial in neighboring cities, then there would be more demand in the big city....i dunno lol...keep the suggstions coming...i'll try to place more parks and see if that makes a difference but for now, i'm out of ideas

P.S. one question tho; i know its possible but i was wondering if anyone could show me pictures or state examples of cities that are only one type of zone; such as just industrial. i haven't figured out how to balance the demand because when u have just industrial for example, the demand for residential is overwhelming....

[Peorth 17]

pimpinstein, to be frank, at this point in your city's life you shouldn't preoccupy yourself with commercial employment. 20k is a very small population to support a decent amount of commerce. Even with your neighbors, your regional population is only 45k, which isn't very large at all. To get commercial demand, you need to have a large population first. As I've said previously,  build your city to 6-digit populations, and you're in business, literally.

Second, you should not have accepted the toxic waste dump and missile range. Yes, they give you money but for a price. They will negatively impact both your commercial and residential demands. The army base is a bit better, having some positive commercial effects and a cap relief of 100k for I-M, but it will still have a negative impact on your residential demand. What little commerce you have might have could have been killed off by these NIMBY structures.

Third, you need to exercise fiscal restraint. The fact that those money-giving rewards appeared means you've been having a budget deficit for sometime now.  You said "police/health/fire is adequate", but for a 20k city  that approach is a fiscal disaster. You're placing civic structures far too early without the means to support them. Never forget that your primary goal is NOT to please sims but to earn money first. Remove your police and cut down your fire stations. The crucial areas to focus on are education first and health second. Educated sims will attract higher-wealth employment and health facilities will make them live longer.

Regarding cities of only one zoning type, the presence of high demand is only natural. A pure employment city (I or C) will obviously generate a high demand for residential since sims want to work there. If you build those kinds of cities, you have to switch back and forth between them to synchronize or balance out the demands. I suggest you try mixed zoning first before trying specialized cities, especially if you're still inexperienced. Specialized cities have their own set of problems, like inability to access rewards due to absence of sims in the workplace cities.

Hope this advice helps.

[pimpinstein 0]

ok, thanks for the advice; i lowered the funding on the schools/hospitals to suit capacity and ended up gaining a lot of money from that.  something really weird happened though. i built lots of parks and all of my demands are up now, but there are still many abandoned buildings. my R$ population plummetted and my R$$ population skyrocketted during this stretch. many of the abandoned buildings are R$$. regardless of what i do, i can't get R$ growth (even if i don't provide services)....here are some pics of my city that may help you guys see what my problem is:

i couldn't attach other pics cuz they were too big, but i also have an abandonment problem in my industrial areas...my tax rates are:

R$: 8, R$$: 8.5, R$$$: 9

C$: 6.5, C$$: 7, C$$$: 7.5

I-D: 8.5, I-M: 9, I-HT: 9.5

[Peorth 17]

What message appears when you query the abandoned buildings?

From the way I see it, your taxes are quite okay for your level of city development. Have you tried distributing your play time between your neighbor cities? If you encounter stagnation, sometimes working on a neighbor city or two can get you out of the doldrums.

[Tolomar 5]

well just by the tax rates you have there...you might wanna flip them....having the HT lower than the dirty and manfacturing ind...R$ higher than R$$, R$$$ the lowest

this will encourage more growth in the higher end jobs and res....which as your education and health quota rise...the sims will desire the better jobs that come with higher education

eg...when first starting a city...agriculture demand is high...basicly cause the sims are uneducated and don't have the skills required for dirty manf or HT industry jobs

later on when education rises agriculture demand will go down because the sims now want the higher paying jobs to go with their education...and almost no playing with the tax rate can bring back agriculture demand (not 100% true it can be done...just tricky)

comtue times...dpending on the distance could be a factor... might try and set up either rail or bus servies from your residential section to your industrial area if possible

check the old standbys of garbage, sometime trhis one sneaks up on ppl and without dealing with it can cause any city no matter what the size to fall into stagnation and depression

1 thing I would do though...is unless these building are delapilated (lower class sims actually living in them) i would bulldoze them...as abandoned building cause a reduction in desirabilty in most cases (who wants to live next to the abandoned rat trap ?) see if fresh zoned areas will spark new development

ps do random checks on all three Power , Water and Garbage graphs..make sure their in the postive for water and power, and not above capasity on garbage...

[pimpinstein 0]

thanks for the advice once again..

but i still haven't been able to "fix" the problem. the C$ and R$ demands are at a max, but i zone residential away from services to spur low income development and nothing happens!! 

Peroth: i'll try what u said about playing neighbor cities. the abandoned buildings really don't help. everything is good...the only questionable things are commute time and traffic noise which can be medium or high, but i've replaced streets with roads in many areas to help ease congestion and it seemed to get rid of the problem.

Tolomar: the water/power/garbage is all fine. my mayor rating is really high too...like 70 or 80, i think. i don't think i should lower taxes for the rich...i'm trying to encourage R$ to live in my city. i've also heard from many people that you should tax R$$$ higher than any other group in the game....

either way, thanks...here are some more screenshots to see if u can help me figure out whats wrong. thanks.

the first pic is a picture of my downtown area. note some of the commercial abandonment by the university and note all of the R$$.

the second pic is a picture of a residential development i zoned outside my city center. it was full of R$$, but all the R$$ abandoned so i demolished it all and a few R$ started to pop up.

last pic just shows some of the R$$ abandonment and lets you see how my city is full of R$$.

ST Banners.zip

[Peorth 17]

Seeing how you already have I-HT, try dropping your tax to a low figure like maybe 7%. If you build a good amount of I-HT, R§§'s should start moving in again.

By the way, you still haven't answered my question about what message appears when you query the abandoned buildings.