Okeanos

We discussed this topic on the german community site I normally am (citiesxs.de) thourouly. I discoverd something about the needs-system of citiesXL which also has something to to with the education bug/problem, for which I have created a fix for, which is currently evaluated at MC. I do not want to go into too much detail about this because it would need some time I currently not have, but to give you a fast solution for the retail problem: Retail-buildings are giving a certain amount of retail goods a resource and retail goods as service (some people likes to shop in their recreation time). The service part is making the citiziens cry for more. For that you need to know that every distinct version/layout of a T1/T2/T3 (light/medium/dense) building is providing a small amount of this service. There are currently 9 T1, 9 T2 and 9 T3 buildings. You should try to build all to get max service output. Only problem currently is, you cannot build distinct buildings with zoning/single mode, which is only available for residences, offices and industries. To use number: T1 provides max +3 service, T2 provides max. +5 service and T3 provides max. +7 service. This makes: 9 * 3 + 9 * 5 + 9 *7 = 135 135 total max service if placed not too far away from each other, because they have a decreasing influence range based on traffic density and type of road. Problem left is the other part for retail buildings the resource part. You need to provide enound agriculture for consumption and you should not provide too much retail goods (as resource) because prices are falling and profit margin for the shops reaching critical values and may lead to bankcryptcy. My recommondation for you: Build T1 retail building to a maxiumum of 9 and check they are different. If not enough build max 9 x T2 more and if that is still not enough max 9 x T3 more. This should give you maximum service with not too much resources. Hope this helps. -Okeanos

Nice calculations. Some users here on the mentioned german community site (citiesxs.de) do this all along with quite everything, mostly to get a feeling how much value a certain type of token has and what would be fair prices for it. Or how to get the best profit for buildings, or how to get the best output with minimal input or on minimal space. There are endless combinations for perfectionists. To make your calculations a little more difficult, you need to know, that there are certain buildings which gives bonuses to the base production, e.g. 35%, 40%, 45% and so on. Blueprints/megastructes (available since today!) also can have bonusses. And you need to incorporate the type of workers you need for the buildings and how many, which makes it even more difficult to get a hold on this. And to make it even more complex (and intresting), the circulation of goods and services have at least two cycles. Also there are two important points of intrest in citiesXL regarding money/income/wealth/economic healthiness, the resource part important for trade and building of megastructres and the taxes part for city income. Economic buildings have their own small internal income/expanses/balance calculation based on sold resources/services, needed resoures/services (and their dynamic prices = much available = lower prices and vice versa), type and amount of workers, tax rates, traffic density, environment (for some) amount of freight/passenger traffic), sometimes based on the size of the zone (agriculture) and and and All this makes CitiesXL quite intresting and surely somewhat more complex and more difficulty than any other citybuilding game there is. -Okeanos

I'm not starting a discussion about the pros or cons of the way citizens are implemented in citiesXL. But I want to give some informations on how it is working internally. Maybe it is easier to understand the hole concept. CitiesXL is using something you might call a "citizen unit". It is the base unit which is used for the "size" of a city. And it is also used in the demand calculations and within the economy in terms of required amount of workers. So you may call it more appropriatly "worker unit". I give you an example: T1 (Tier 1) industry buildings (heavy industry) requires 2 units of unqualified workers. Other buildings and other building sizes have different requirements in type (unqualified, qualified, executives, elites) and amounts. But they are always the same, in cities with a population of 1.000 or a population of 1.000.000. A T1 residence for unqualified workers have a capacity of 1 unit. Therefore you need 2 buildings. T2 residences have a capacity of 2 und T3 a capacity of 5 units. The total amount of citizen units within the city is the true city size indicator and it is linear. And it is also the base for the needs-table. The core problem is how many citizens do you want to put in a residence. 1, 4, 10? And if you do that, do you really want to force the player to build 10 Mio. buildings with 1 or 1 Mio. with 10 or even 100.000 with 100 to get a population of 10 Mio? The "simplyfication" to have a fixed/linear "citizen unit" which scales up the population count in larger cities is quite brilliant. And it simplyfies the requirements for buildings with workers greatly. The needs table stops at 40.000 citizen units. This should be something around 28 Mio. or so, I'm not sure. Hope this helps a bit ... -Okeanos

> How many citizens does 1 farm handle Citizens does not consume goods from farms directly. Retail shops using their products and providing retails goods for citizens. But there is no fixed equation for the consumption of the citizens. It is dependend on the amount of citizens living in the city. A farm provides 150 units "agriculture". A T1 (Tier 1) Retail shop is consuming 10 units agriculture and is providing 50 units of retail goods. T2 consume 20 and providing 200. T3 consume 40 and providing 1000. > How many Heavy industry does 1 manufacturing need T1 heavy industry is producing 150 units of "heavy industry products" from 12 units fuel and 30 units "office services". A T1 manufacturing building consumes 80 units "heavy industry products" and 12 units power and 30 units office services to produce 150 units of manufacturing goods. This goes on and on. > How many High Tech does an office need See below. I've written/generated a Wiki-table for the biggest german community site which provides all those detailed information. But sorry all texts there are currently in german only, maybe you can guess the captions or use a translator utility. www.citiesxs.de/wiki/TabelleGebäude This table can give a certain help with the calculation, but there is also a small city-size based over-all consumption, so this really is just not as simple as it looks like. And to answer the question about the wind turbines: They provide 60 units of power. The small power plant provides 600 units, but it consumes 300 units fuel and creates heavy air pollution. But the small power plants are necesarry to get access to the medium ones and those to get to the big ones, which have better values. And to answer you next question: How many power-units are in one electricity token? 1.000 A small power plant therefore provides 0,6 units of the token "electricity". I've created a table for that too (also in german, sorry): www.citiesxs.de/wiki/Tabelle_Token -Okeanos