Too many seniors On my city

[Disclosure]

so i see the population percentage on my city and it seem my city has a lot of seniors and low percentage on young people . seniors on my city is 43% which is mean almost half of my population and because of that my population start to declining , the death rate is high , my question is , is it normal ?

[Daveyboy]

Mine tends to stay in the 25%-30% range. Guessing it will go down after a while though.

[sparkyga]

Maybe you can add some Eldercare facilities, to help some survive longer. (ie lessen deathwaves)

... adding Childcare might well help the birth rate to regenerate the population.

[Sol]

So, you zoned a bunch at the same time, didn't you. Tsk, tsk. -finger wag-
Everyone who is born at same time, dies at same time. Everyone who moves in at the same time, dies at the same time. Then all your jobs out of workers, and all your deathcare services are overstrained, and too many of their vehicles spamming the road causes traffic issues, doing even more damage. It starts a downward spiral of attrition.

1. You need to zone about four to six 4x4 residential zones per 30 day period.
(This staggers your eventual growth and death rates, ensuring a good population distribution among all age ranges)

2. You want to keep your Residential Demand between about 20% and 50%. When people are born, it automatically goes down. You can skip zoning during months with a high birth spike to flatten the death curve later. When residential flattens, let it develop a bit. Let people be born and bring it down a bit.

3. After a month of Residential Demand decline, PAUSE. Then, add in a little more industry or commerce, build a park, add a bus route, maybe a new school. Look at a few buildings to see what they need to grow and add it. Maybe a few 4x4 Commercial or Industrial. Unpause and let the game stabilize a bit, give it about 30-60 days for the city to catch up to what you just did, then check your demand again.

You want to keep demand consistently about 20% minimum because when people are born, demand goes down automatically, and you don't want residential demand to drop to nothing forever because of new births. Same with the other two - you don't want them less than 20% because they can quickly hit 0 for a long time. Industrial is okay to hit 0 for a little bit.

This is the longer game, it treats the game like a marathon, not a race. It's a much slower start. It takes about Year 5 to reach stability. Stability is when your monthly death rate and birth rates are very close to one another to cause minimum movement in the curve, during all 12 months of the year. At this point, slowly expand by the guidelines above. Keep the magic going.

One more note: Do not zone during a death wave, tempted as you may be. Instead, plop some temporary crematories and de-zone residential. That way a whole wave of people don't all move in at once and recreate your problem. Then, you can slowly re-zone.

Don't forget to mix Low and High residential, they attract different age and type of Cims! If you need more students, you need high density. If you need somewhere for those seniors and rich families, low density residential is the way to go. This will help you avoid getting a disproportionate number of Young Adults all at once, who all die at the same time.

Best of luck!

[Daveyboy]

Originally posted by Shadow:

You want to keep demand consistently about 20% minimum because when people are born, demand goes down automatically, and you don't want residential demand to drop to nothing forever because of new births. Same with the other two - you don't want them less than 20% because they can quickly hit 0 for a long time. Industrial is okay to hit 0 for a little bit.

Generally agree with most things you said, though I zone when residential demand is near-zero. The reason being unemployment is <4% and businesses are abandoning as they can't get workers. So I tend to target the unemployment rate more than anything, zoning more res if it's less than around 7% and more industry/commerce/office when it's above 15%. Dividing it if it's somewhere in-between. I sometimes lower the res tax rate if the res areas are taking too long to develop and I need workers.

[Sol]

My above system accounts the entire life cycle of the FIRST wave of Cims, you want a roughly equal amount of people moving in through each "life stage". That way, when one group reaches a new age category - senior, another is having kids, another is going into university, and the kids become young adults. The 6 year mark is when those first Cims are dead.

What you want, Year 6 Mark: Every month, a small amount of people will die, roughly equal to the amount of people born. Your residential demand is moving up/down at about the same pace.

Every month starts the 6 year cycle for the Cims who moved in this month. So, when Year 7 begins, you will have achieved a homeostasis of population growth balance. All you need to do is keep it going. As you expand your map and build into more tiles, and get that high density going, be even more careful - as they grow, your 20% demand might become 0% quickly and set up a death wave from a combination of new move-ins and births, unprojected.

When you zone High Density, try my 4x1 Rule: For every High Density you zone, add four Low Density and wait 30 days and see. Be aware that as high density residential buildings grow, you can avoid zoning for a few months - this growth will add to future death waves, right?

So, now you have my zoning theory. I am slow, meticulous, and devoted to reaching my goal of Year 7 Homeostasis. because once achieved, it's easy to maintain. And once you get into the good habit of zoning this way, you will stay in the habit.

***** DO NOT zone literally four to six 4x4 every month. Maybe the first 6 months. Then cut to about two 4x4 and if demand dips below 20%, stop zoning, pause, and take some action. Lower a tax, add a service or a park, add a bus stop in its range. Fix a road jam. Give it some time to stabilize, then zone again. You can go as long as 5-6 months of not zoning, assuming you have a healthy birthrate and stay in the zone. Zone according to your demand and ALWAYS remember that both building growth and new births will happen and when it does, your residential demand will go way down, and you don't want to be zoning when that happens.

If you see a bunch of people in one age group, ye screwed it up somewhere. De-zone some homes of that age group now. Target them (paused). Then, restart your six year plan. If you know a death wave is coming, set up crematories (that you will demolish after you don't need them), de-zone residential, and as people are dying, slowly de-zone residential a bit. This will help prevent a bunch of new move-ins from dying at the same time again.

You can start your Year 6 journey at any time - I start it on day one. Easier to end good if you start good. But if you're too late, there is action you can take.

[Sol]

Originally posted by Daveyboy:

Originally posted by Shadow:

You want to keep demand consistently about 20% minimum because when people are born, demand goes down automatically, and you don't want residential demand to drop to nothing forever because of new births. Same with the other two - you don't want them less than 20% because they can quickly hit 0 for a long time. Industrial is okay to hit 0 for a little bit.

Generally agree with most things you said, though I zone when residential demand is near-zero. The reason being unemployment is <4% and businesses are abandoning as they can't get workers. So I tend to target the unemployment rate more than anything, zoning more res if it's less than around 7% and more industry/commerce/office when it's above 15%. Dividing it if it's somewhere in-between. I sometimes lower the res tax rate if the res areas are taking too long to develop and I need workers.

I actually like to maintain about 5% unemployment, it's the sign of a healthy economy. It means when new business opens or a commercial zone grows, there's a pool of workers. The opposite problem, 5% employment shortage is a town killer, 5% unemployment is not. :)

When businesses are abandoning due to workers, I pause the game, and look at my roads. I ask if there's a way I can use underground pedestrian tunnels to get people to work faster I look for traffic jams. Usually small steps like this will have a big impact on the outcome. I always set that bicycle policy and use at least one off-road mass transit option - maybe a Metro, because no clunky station to place for it - and connect two districts. Pedestrian path next to the stop to distribute the people around the district once there, and maybe a bus to hit the farther ends of it.

I am happy to let some businesses abandon, I will de-zone them and replace with a few lower density commercial. I might put on a district policy that restricts building growth (not historical city, maybe the local/organic food one). That will cause the businesses to need fewer people, and shift your collapsing commerce into a stable one.

I also think that commercial shortages like this happen when everyone's over or undereducated and/or a road issue. I like to keep about 20% population in the Uneducated and High School range to protect companies from losing low level workers. Everyone else, highest education possible through campuses. When jobs abandon, the problem isn't "not enough mid level workers", it's too many high educated or too many low educated.

And even if there are no road problems, a few pedestrian tunnels joined at a tram stop going into different districts will remove people from the road, which increases their odds of showing up for work.

[kivagant]

Here's the trick I used when I noticed that 41% of my city population was seniors. I have the Realistic Population Mod, but it isn't really required. So to get rid of some "old blood" and get some "young" instead, I increased taxes for residential areas to the maximum and kept it there until some reasonable amount of people moved out. In my case there I was waiting for 3-4000 people to leave the city. Then the percentage of seniors dropped down from 41% to 37%. My University area got more new students, a lot of buildings got upgraded due to new young people that replaced old and got better education. Repeat the financial bloodletting periodically and you will refresh your city and, as a bonus, get tons of money to survive side effects. Such a nice feeling to be a dictator, huh?

[MarkJohnson]

This is an old thread. When Sunset Harbor DLC was released (A few days before this thread), it altered the cims age and made them live much longer. So it would cause a sudden surge in seniors until the lifecycle leveled out.