Emerikol

Why don't you just click on the RCI bars to open up the detailed view? It tells you exactly what kind of demand your city has, and what types of buildings you should be trying to create.

You will also find alot of no job zots if your residential creates poor/medium class people and all you have is high end jobs, or if your population is mostly rich people and you have poor wealth jobs. Also commute times to these varying degrees of wealth jobs/citizens just tends to create jobless sims. The trick to beating this system is to figure out exactly what type of wealth you want in the city, and adjust the taxes accordingly. Starting out you will want poor/medium wealth people, so make sure theres plenty of medium wealth industry and commertial jobs. Then as the city develops you can try to increase everything to high wealth with your taxes. Just remember high wealth sims don't like to ride the bus to work. Some other form of mass transit is needed. I use the bus/subway method. Hope this helps.

I haven't found much of a reason to cheat in this game. I set my taxes anywhere from 8.5 to 9.5 on commercial or residential, and industry could be set to whatever i feel like letting grow there. Just build slow, make plenty of neighbor deals, and micromanage your spending on schools, hospitals, etc. and you will make money. The game also stays interesting much longer if you don't cheat. If you cheat and just build a huge city over and over, you are gonna get bored.

...and I clearly stated that increasing commercial demand in any way in one city pretty clearly also shows that same demand in another city in the same region. Also airports don't always upgrade those 3 levels like they should even though demand is clearly reached. I also do not know if neighboring cities make use of an airport in a different city. That is how I do not understand how airports are supposed to work. I am fairly sure exempler files do not show if a building is used by its neighboring city like the RCI buildings are. I'm done discussing what I know to be the way the game seems to work for me, but if someone can shed some light on the airport questions I have in exact detailed reference to the questions I, and the poster above me have, I would love to hear it.

Maybe I am misreading what you are saying, and possibly you are doing the same for me lol. The way you were talking, it seemed to me like you were saying demand for certain zoning does not cross city limits. I was simply saying if demand for commercial was somehow raised in one city by whatever building may have been added to increase that demand, then it would also be increased in the neighboring city. I tested this today to make sure. Basically I had a medium city built with all res/commercial and a smaller neighboring city supplying the industry. At one point i had a huge demand for commercial but not res. or industry, so I checked out another small tile that was adjacent to both of the established cities, and i also still had tons of commercial demand in the undeveloped city as well. What you said I also completely agree upon, that filling commercial demand in one city will increase residential demand in another. I think we just had a miscommunication Now how airports play into all of this mess, I don;t think anyone is completely sure of, because the behave strangely in this game in my opinion. They definitely are linked to commercial as you said, but the way they upgrade, or fail to upgrade due to capacity is very strange.

Originally posted by: Martin892 Originally posted by: Emerikol Originally posted by: Martin892 All you need is good transportation from one city to the other, the easiest being subway/bus stop and avenues.quote> So highways are just esthetics? you said something about it in your deleted postquote> I never use highways unless I want the looks. Avenues/subway/bus stops work just fine for me. Highways can just be a huge pain in the butt, and I don;t feel like dealing with them. The funny thing is traffic still flows just fine for me in a million pop large city tile. Oh and I put all my industrial in a neighboring city.

Originally posted by: tungston Airports may generate some demand for commercial in the city they are located in, but commercial demand in one city will not generate commercial demand in another city.quote> How do you figure? I don't know if your mods may be making you think the game is acting a certain way normally, but in vanilla SC4 demand definitely is satisfied for more than just the city you are working in.

Originally posted by: Martin892 I thought the airport maybe affected regional commercial demand because my main CBD city also acts as regional commercial centre, for example, in many surrounding cities there are little to no commercial zones. I'm gonna try to build the airport in an adjacent city; btw whats the STEX airport tram exactly???quote> An airport does adversely affect the regional commercial demand, as I explained in my last post. EDIT: Well because this site is being so friggin slow, somehow when deleting one of my double-posts deleted both posts. Basically if 2 city tiles are using the same tax rate, and you fill the commercial demand in one city, you will notice that it will also drop the demand in neighboring cities. People do this with industrial all the time to keep pollution out of their main cities. All you need is good transportation from one city to the other, the easiest being subway/bus stop and avenues.

The way that is always going to be the most realistic would be to toss the idea of planning the city to work perfectly right out the window. On a medium map just run a highway or two haphazardly in one general direction so that it isnt running perfectly in a straight line, Run a few avenues the same way branching off of the highway. From there just build lots and streets in a completely random way to try to keep up with demand. Do this a small section at a time until you fill the map(or don't fill it). It makes for a much more interesting play experience than gridding out a city or planning everything beforehand. You will also get a few surprises here and there. The city will develop just like a real one would, with stupid people living gangsta style in their little slums shooting each other all day, and the rich people staying in the well educated area, with the middle class suburbia living somewhere in between. It is something few people dare to intentionally try to do. It makes it fun trying to make a city that stays in the black.

All links that were posted in this thread are dead again. Unfortunately I will probably be running into this often now that I am returning back to the game, and searching for the files I loved to use to mod it.

I have recently started playing this game with large tiles. While I enjoy the freedom to build the city any way I like, I have discovered that it becomes extremely hard to manage the city once its population exceeds 400,000. I tried the radical ordinance mod, but it made my population skyrocket and it was way too easy. Before installing the mod I could not balance the budget, and utility buildings were everywhere just to try and keep the city running. So what I would like, if possible is a building that handles all utilities for a population of around 600,000 for a monthly cost of about 20,000 or so. It could be in the form of a reward once you reach a population of 400,000. Seems like a fitting reward for such an achievement, and it would make city management much easier. Let me know what you think. Just dont be a jerk about it Jason

from what i hear about dual core processors, you need to control+alt+delete and in the processes tab, set simcity 4 to use only 1 core. I may be completely wrong on this though, since I only have a single core processor.

Bah.....I wanted to see pictures but I guess I am too late

I would like new types of zoning that will only grow low and medium wealth properties, if possible. This way I can match the job demands in my city. I would also love it if there were better commute paths, and the sims drove at a more realistic speed to get to work. No job zots are the main issue I have with SC4.