Negative Residential and Commercial Demand

[Sym333]

For hours I've been developing my main city without serious problems and I've reached the number of 560'000 Sims.

However I'm currently facing a strongly negative demand for new residences and businesses. I've built parks and landmarks, created important neighbouring towns with numerous connections but no improvements are made.

I've heard that this situation is due to a bug. If it's true, can a mod fix it?

Thanks for your help.

[Morkonan]

Can you Sims get to their jobs or are other, neighboring, areas closer to where they now work? Check your routes to see how they're being used.

Sometimes, when creating neighborinng cities, moving there from a large city to a smaller, less developed one, is actually the best thing the Sims can do, since they'll take quick advantage of jobs and developing real estate. That's why I, for instance, don't put a lot of nice residential areas in neighboring cities where I'm developing something like an industrial base - I want Sims to travel, not to move.

Check your tax levels. Raise the taxes in cities you don't want them to move to and lower the Sim's taxes to attract them.

How's the job situation in this city? The only bug I know of is the IH Job issue. There is a fix for it and you can install it without having to restart or worry: http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/22771-ih-missing-jobs-fix-update/

This is a "required" mod, since it fixes a bug in the base game.

Negative demand just means that nobody wants to move in and you're oversupplied in that area. That situation could change, especially if you lower taxes and increase the necessary job availability.

[clif9710]

Regarding that mod you mentioned. It looks like it is from the simtropolis file exchange, so that means I'd need to get it and install it myself...it would not be supplied by Steam, right?

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

There are no mods and Custom lots for SC4 on Steam because it is an old game that doesn't support the Steam Workshop system.

[Sym333]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Can you Sims get to their jobs or are other, neighboring, areas closer to where they now work? Check your routes to see how they're being used.

Sometimes, when creating neighborinng cities, moving there from a large city to a smaller, less developed one, is actually the best thing the Sims can do, since they'll take quick advantage of jobs and developing real estate. That's why I, for instance, don't put a lot of nice residential areas in neighboring cities where I'm developing something like an industrial base - I want Sims to travel, not to move.

Check your tax levels. Raise the taxes in cities you don't want them to move to and lower the Sim's taxes to attract them.

How's the job situation in this city? The only bug I know of is the IH Job issue. There is a fix for it and you can install it without having to restart or worry: http://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/22771-ih-missing-jobs-fix-update/

This is a "required" mod, since it fixes a bug in the base game.

Negative demand just means that nobody wants to move in and you're oversupplied in that area. That situation could change, especially if you lower taxes and increase the necessary job availability.

Apparently, the large majority of the commuter traffic comes from the Sims exiting my city to work in the neighboring towns. The residential demand for these is high, but not the commercial one.

Also my main city doesn't offer enough jobs for low-wealth Sims.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Sym333:

...

Apparently, the large majority of the commuter traffic comes from the Sims exiting my city to work in the neighboring towns. The residential demand for these is high, but not the commercial one.

Also my main city doesn't offer enough jobs for low-wealth Sims.

What are your tax rates?

Could you lower your commercial/industrial taxes to spur industry or lower the tax rates for certain sim populations to encourage them to move to the city?

Maybe a screenpic or three, showing your tax rates, desirability and the city, itself, might help. I don't care if your city is beatiful or artfully constructed or not, so don't worry about that. (Some of my cities are downright embarrasing! :) )

[nobrainer]

By what the OP says in the first post, he's been developing the "main city" for hours.
That begs the question. Have you also spent some time playing in the neighbouring cities or just playing this main city?
It is generally a good idea to, once in a while, save and exit your main city a play a bit in its neighbours some that the effects of the new developments get balanced throughout the region. That balancing act will generally mean that the various algorithms are regularly updated with the new information and helps to maintain an "healthy economy" in the region.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

Or the TL;DR version of what nobrainer said being time freezes for your cities unless you load them and let the in game time pass for a bit for it to catch up with the developments from your main city.

[Sym333]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

What are your tax rates?

Could you lower your commercial/industrial taxes to spur industry or lower the tax rates for certain sim populations to encourage them to move to the city?

Maybe a screenpic or three, showing your tax rates, desirability and the city, itself, might help. I don't care if your city is beatiful or artfully constructed or not, so don't worry about that. (Some of my cities are downright embarrasing! :) )

I need a little more time for the screenshots, my Internet connection is currently experiencing difficulties.

But I can already answer for the taxes: everything is set to the default 9%, except for Dirty Industries (15%). I don't want that filthy smoke in my backyard.

Originally posted by nobrainer:

By what the OP says in the first post, he's been developing the "main city" for hours.
That begs the question. Have you also spent some time playing in the neighbouring cities or just playing this main city?
It is generally a good idea to, once in a while, save and exit your main city a play a bit in its neighbours some that the effects of the new developments get balanced throughout the region. That balancing act will generally mean that the various algorithms are regularly updated with the new information and helps to maintain an "healthy economy" in the region.

Don't worry, I also worked in the meantime on the neighbouring cities (even the game itself advises it). The most important ones count 250'000 and 150'000 Sims.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Sym333:

I need a little more time for the screenshots, my Internet connection is currently experiencing difficulties.

But I can already answer for the taxes: everything is set to the default 9%, except for Dirty Industries (15%). I don't want that filthy smoke in my backyard.

No problem. Good job on taxes, too!

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

If you have the budget you should lower the taxes to 5% to further stimulate growth.

Regarding your strategy of removing dirty industry altogether. That is actually ill advisable as the game requires all RCI types for the whole region to grow.

If Cities Skylines has District specialization, SC4 has city specialization where you need to play each of your cities in the region as if they were one district in Cities Skylines.

Go watch this guy's Walkthrough of Vanilla SC4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMzz2LPYYsY

As you can see he even made sure his first city was a farming city because even if Ag demmand eventually dies off, the game still needs an Ag based city for all the statistical data to be balanced. Further on he creates a Dirty industry based city but there after his newer cities developed either Hitech or Manufactoring.

RFE Addendum:

The only way you can skew the demmands on SC4 is if you use a demmand mod, but doing so will totally screw over your regional demmand stats if you plan on playing regional.

[Sym333]

Originally posted by Cahos Rahne Veloza:

As you can see he even made sure his first city was a farming city because even if Ag demmand eventually dies off, the game still needs an Ag based city for all the statistical data to be balanced. Further on he creates a Dirty industry based city but there after his newer cities developed either Hitech or Manufactoring.

Well I have a few more agrarian towns but nothing spectacular.

The problem with Dirty Industries is the enormous amount of pollution. That thing kills the attractiveness of a city. Plus the Manufacturing factories also offer jobs for Medium-Wealth Sims while being a lot more respectful of the environment.

[Cahos Rahne Veloza]

The thing is even though cities look connected on the region, it's only a visual representation. Pollution never seeps into an adjacent city in SC4 so you can disregard your tree hugging hippie self and create a dirty city for your region :)

Don't give too much emphasis on attractiveness, that is only ever important when you develop your CBD (Central Business District) and suburb.

[Morkonan]

I have a supremely dirty city in my region, right now, called "Steamworks." :) It's rife with pollution! I might just dump some nuclear power plants there and then use it to power all the neighboring cities...

[BrappBrappPewPew]

What I noticed sometimes is that when there seems to be a negative demand for Residential, it actually just was the case that a few buildings were constructed that created an overcapacity of Residential living space. Did you turn a high land value area into high density residential? Or were a lot of buildings being replaced?

[Sym333]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

I have a supremely dirty city in my region, right now, called "Steamworks." :) It's rife with pollution! I might just dump some nuclear power plants there and then use it to power all the neighboring cities...

I know t's just a self-imposed challenge and it may look futile, but I like my towns to be equally viable (balanced budget, reasonable pollution, flowing traffic, etc). So no Dump City for me.

Originally posted by angusp:

What I noticed sometimes is that when there seems to be a negative demand for Residential, it actually just was the case that a few buildings were constructed that created an overcapacity of Residential living space. Did you turn a high land value area into high density residential? Or were a lot of buildings being replaced?

I didn't. It's a long-term issue I'm having for (in-game) years.