Industry/Office problems with my first city

[General Tso]

I have owned the game for a long time. But I just recently made my first serious attempt at creating a city. For the most part things appear to be going well. With the exception of two major problems.

1. Part way through the first year industry demand totally disappeared. And has never returned.

2. There has never has been any office demand and there is a circle with a diagonal line over the office symbol in the city information window.

If it makes any difference... I'm using a lot of mods. I started the map with a few mods and added a bunch more at various times while building the city.

If anybody can tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'd greatly appreciate it.

Here are some screen shots that might help explain what's happening.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2898022724

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2898022715

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2898025119

[Gregomoto]

Hi there, office and industry demand are both in the yellow diagram bar. As what i can see in your screens you have a lot office and industry zoned, so that there is no demand for it. This will change once you build/zone more residential and commercial areas. To balance between industry and office zone you can check your imports/exports to see if you need more/less industry.
Some Mods can indeed interfere with the RICO meter.

[General Tso]

Thank you for the reply. I should probably explain what's happening in more detail.

Early in the map after 6 months or so had passed. I had a balanced map with what appeared to be the right amounts of residential, industrial, and commercial buildings. There where no office buildings. But I assumed at the time that was caused by the small city size.

As I continued to create the city. I kept having demands for residential and commercial. So I kept zoning more of those type. During this time my population increased from 2000 to 36,000. But 100% of the increase was residential and commercial buildings. Not one new industrial building or office building was built during that entire time. So not only is there never any demand. But absolutely nothing is being built on industrial and office zones. And the few industry building that where created earlier in the game have never leveled up.

Also I now have "not enough goods to sell" warnings popping up everywhere. (I had icons turned off. So you can't see them in the screen shots.)

[Gregomoto]

“Not enough goods” warnings mean you need more industry or better import options (freight depot, freight harbour, cargo airport).
In your case i’d recommend you de-zone your existing empty office zones (even a bit more) and let the game run for a bit, it should recover the need for industry/office slowly.
Are you planning to use industries DLC at some point in future? As this will also habe a big impact on industry zone planning.

[General Tso]

I already have the industries DLC. But I haven't used any of it's features yet. I'm still just using regular vanilla industry zoning. I'm planning on looking into the DLC stuff once I get more familiar with things. I just bought it when I did because it was on sale at the time and I knew I wanted to try using it later.

I think your suggestion about removing zoning is probably the right track. I just tried removing all unused residential and commercial zoning. Then I fast forwarded for awhile. Now there's a small demand for industry. And a few industries and office building have been built. I'm wondering if the problem was somehow caused by having large amounts of empty commercial zoning available all of the time.

I need to run the game a little longer before I'm totally sure that things are working properly. But I think we may have found the cause of the problem. Thanks for the help.

[Gregomoto]

You’re welcome.
Although i’m not a zoning expert, in my current city build i do not use the zoning at all (all buildings are plopped).

[buda atum]

You have 27k jobs and only 17k workers, so must be getting "not enough workers too", I'd think, though no residential demand makes that assumption suspect. It's also odd that office is crossed out though you've got some built.

Is your unemployment 0%?

[General Tso]

Yea I'm getting some "not enough workers" icons also. Thanks for telling me why that was happening. It looks like I need more people.

As far as I can tell. There where no office buildings on the map when those pictures where taken. Unless some of the unique building are offices.

My employment percentage in the city statistics screen is 95%.

[buda atum]

Looks like office zoning in first picture I think.

Your "not enough workers" might increase, so you'd need to increase population for the unfilled jobs you got, and that requires desired residential. So zone residential and give them amenities and see if more cims move in.

[BettyB]

Industry produces goods that are used by in game commercial and for export yes, but the main purpose for the yellow or orange bar in the RCI bar is a call for jobs and industry and office both provide jobs. industry tends to provide jobs that require lower educated citizens and office tends to hire citizens with higher education. You can manually zone orange for industry or lite blue for office but the RCI bar will never call for lite blue office. You can cover the map with orange zoning and if commercial has all the goods it needs "not enough buyers" and citizens who want to work, are working, Nothing will be built in the orange zoned area.

Just because you zone an area a certain color is NO indication anything will happen. Zoning is only an indication that you have made a particular area available to be inhabited by a certain type of building when the need arises.

It's really not a big deal and nothing you should worry too much about. You haven't done anything wrong and your game is not broken. Just add a little more of each zone than your city needs (zoning with no buildings) and when the city or the game thinks it needs more of something it will build it. You already have unoccupied industrial zoned so don't worry about that. If you want offices zone Lite blue for office. If it doesn't populate it means your citizens don't want to go to work. So zone more residential (preferably high density) to attract more citizens who do want to work.

DO NOT over zone commercial. Zoning too much commercial just tends to unnecessarily complicate things. The city, the game, and the citizens will in fact, happily go about their day to day routine issue free if you ignore the dark blue RCI bar and zone absolutely NO COMMERCIAL at all.

[General Tso]

Thanks for the reply's everybody!

@buda atum:

According to the city statistics window. When I took those pictures there was no office buildings on the map. I also briefly looked over the map and couldn't find any buildings in any of the office zone. I can think of several possibilities that might be causing the confusion.

1. I'm using a lot of download ploppable buildings. Maybe some of them look like office buildings (or even act like office building and I didn't realize it).

2. I zoned a large amount of high density commercial. Maybe they look office like?

3. I'm new to the game and I don't know what I'm talking about. :)

@buda atum and SQII:

By following the suggestions that everybody posted. I think I figured out what was causing the problem. I was zoning a large amount of commercial with most of it being high density. And as soon as the new zones where filled. I would create more commercial zones. So everybody was working in those zones and this caused there to be no demand for industry. Does that sound like a valid reason?

I tried deleting all empty commercial zones and added a bunch of new residential zones. And it looks likes things are very slowly returning to "normal". The industry demand is still very weak. But at least there are new industry and office buildings being built now.

[BettyB]

Originally posted by General Tso:

@buda atum and SQII:

By following the suggestions that everybody posted. I think I figured out what was causing the problem. I was zoning a large amount of commercial with most of it being high density. And as soon as the new zones where filled. I would create more commercial zones. So everybody was working in those zones and this caused there to be no demand for industry. Does that sound like a valid reason?

I tried deleting all empty commercial zones and added a bunch of new residential zones. And it looks likes things are very slowly returning to "normal". The industry demand is still very weak. But at least there are new industry and office buildings being built now.

Zoning commercial will in fact help create jobs yes, it should however also increase demand for industrial goods and not reduce it. The large amount of commercial and industrial could however very well account for the apparent lack of available office buildings.

You still don't seem to quite understand zoning. Deleting empty commercial zoning is sort of a nothing burger. Again zoning commercial is NOT ordering, creating or building commercial. It is ONLY making land available for commercial buildings. If that makes any sense. Zoned areas with no buildings have no effect on any other aspect of the game.

Deleting empty commercial zones was not wrong it simply is not necessary and actually makes little or no difference. Deleting occupied zoning on the other hand can have an effect on a good many aspects or areas of the game.

[General Tso]

I was looking at it a little differently than that (although I may still be wrong).

I was thinking that it wasn't the zoning itself that was the problem. The problem was that I had a very large amount of commercial buildings (with a majority being high density). And I kept adding new commercial zoning as soon as the current zones filled up. I have also been working to provide a lot of education. So I thought that combination of events was causing a labor shortage for industry. Does the game work that way?

So I removed the empty commercial zones to stop new commercial building from being created. And zoned a lot of residential areas. My thought being that combination would increase the work force available for industry. For whatever reason this seemed to fix the problem. Because shortly after I did that. New industry and office building started popping up.

After the problem appeared to be solved. As a test I tried adding some commercial zones. As soon as the new commercial building started popping up the industry demand dropped to zero.

I then fast forwarded the game and once the commercial zones where filled. The industry demand changed from zero back to low.

So to be clear. I'm not saying the zoning is causing the problem. But it looks to me like the buildings that are created as a result of the zoning appear to be causing the problem. And the problem might have occurred because I was to aggressive with my high density commercial zoning.

Does any of that make sense game wise. Or am I still off somewhere?

[BettyB]

I think you've got it :)
Tomorrow It's your turn .
I have always used DLC industry and very little if any commercial.

Tomorrow you teach me about generic and specialized industry. OK?

[General Tso]

Gulp. I think I need more time. :)

[BettyB]

Your call. Have a Great Day