Why do cities insists on building the wrong type of buildings?

[6000 Chipmunks]

So, from what I understand...If you provide the proper requirements to a city, those reqirements are distributed throughout the catchment area of each depot/bus station. So by careful "De-construction" of the city, and proper placement of depots/bus stations...You should be able to create seperate areas of a city.(Industry/Residental/Comercial). However, as if this game wasn't convoluted enough, cities keep insisting on Re-building buildings in areas where there is NO current suppy for that type of building. (Industrial buildings in comercial material catchment ONLY areas, Comercial buildings in Industrial catchment supply areas, ect) On top of this, it cost a fortune to buldoze these crazilly placed buildings!

I understand that haveing a few "miss-placed" buildings will prevent production chain collapse.

Is my only option to turn off cost, and spend all my time re-dozing?

[Metacritical]

just don't worry about it too much. you can make a lot of money from just transporting people. besides, cities grow 99% of the time due to transporting people, so cargo has little impact on the game other than an extra to make a bit more money. what i find is that if i build a large cargo station on the outskirts of the city most of the buildings that build around it are either commercial or industrial (depending on what cargo i deliver to the station). so i do one of two things, either place cargo stations outside of the area or i carefully place my cargo stations where most of the buildings will be able to receive the relevant cargo.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Good point.

It does make bus/tram route set-up and bit difficult. I was wondering if I should start building my depots(Train/truck) quite a ways from the actual city, and just use passenger service to the city itself...but getting the distance right is the trick. Too far and you've just added more transport...to close, and you've got the custer-jam you were trying to avoid.

[chrisasnyder]

It's a game. The game does things to keep it challenging. These random things are what gives the player something to adjust to and account for in their transport networks. If every city grid was perfect, buildings in the right places, then every map played would feel exactly the same. I don't think it would provide a good gameplay experience.

For those who just want the minecraft sandbox with trains, well, sorry about that.... ;-)

[6000 Chipmunks]

The Chinese word for "Problem" is the same for "Challenge"....so, if your trying to turn "problems" into "challenges"...you may have a point.

On the other hand...
Buildings, roads, rail, stations, depots, ect... cost butt-loads of cash to remove, and unless your into serious Debt-Spamming, or using the No-Cost mod...these "challenges" can be real problems. Lets not even mention the production halts everytime you move a road/rail. Real Challenges...if you catch my drift.

These miss-placed buildings,(that insist on rebuilding after you've spent 1.5 MIL to remove them), effect demand....this GAME is Demand centered...so when your demand is screwed, so are you.

[vpitt5]

It does make sense having residential and commercial mixed, but it can be annoying when you have a lone industry next to your passenger station surrounded by apartments. I think it may be something to do with the shape of the city, e.g. If your city is long and thin and you build a station in the inner city, industry might spread because it is closer. I have a city with a few industries in a little pocket, but my passenger station is on the other side, so I see residential spread around the station. Also, if buildings are placed in the wrong zones, it may become bad for them, so a different building type might sprout up (idk if the game works like that).

[6000 Chipmunks]

Originally posted by vpitt5:

It does make sense having residential and commercial mixed, but it can be annoying when you have a lone industry next to your passenger station surrounded by apartments. I think it may be something to do with the shape of the city, e.g. If your city is long and thin and you build a station in the inner city, industry might spread because it is closer. I have a city with a few industries in a little pocket, but my passenger station is on the other side, so I see residential spread around the station. Also, if buildings are placed in the wrong zones, it may become bad for them, so a different building type might sprout up (idk if the game works like that).

Unfortunately, No...the game does not work like that. Buildings of types completly out of their catchment zone of supply, will insist on rebuilding even in Highly valued areas...and will Never go away on their own, even though they never recieve a tea-spoon of resources. You will pay millions to remove them...only to have them re-build in the exact same spot, for no obvious reason what-so-ever. :(

This game is without-a-doubt one of the most beautiful games on just about every level.
The economic model, on the other hand, would be laughed out of a kindergarten class-room.

[Vimpster]

You can use the supply of materials to make commercial or industrial favor an area in the city. But they certainly do not need materials for growth in general. Commercial and industrial are always going to try to keep pace with the residential more or less, whether you supply them anything or not.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

You can use the supply of materials to make commercial or industrial favor an area in the city. But they certainly do not need materials for growth in general. Commercial and industrial are always going to try to keep pace with the residential more or less, whether you supply them anything or not.

Yes, I've noticed that.
I'm wondering,...If the reason for the "Demands" of the cities are just basicly ways to make money, and have no real bearing on town growth....Why the overly-conveluted demand-side production lines? I've spent the last few days, using every mod, and trick I can come up with, too get the game to simulate even the vaugest simblance of normal in the early years.

It always ends with...Set up production line, wait 20 years...make decent profit.

[Vimpster]

I agree that it would be nice if the cargo items had a more significant bearing on the towns. However I think all that is really needed is higher prices for more processed cargo items in order to make the production chains lead to something more rewarding. But even without cargo having any real affect on town growth, there is still the enjoyment and satisfaction of setting up the chain and satisfying the demand.

You could look at it another way; growing the cities by way of passenger services is simply a means to add more demand to your industrial production chains.

As for why it would take you 20 years to make a good profit from an industrial chain, I'm not sure. It certainly does not take me that long. I rely on my cargo routes in the early game for the bulk of my income. I am usually making a nice profit no later than 5 years from my cargo lines in the beginning of the game.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

I agree that it would be nice if the cargo items had a more significant bearing on the towns. However I think all that is really needed is higher prices for more processed cargo items in order to make the production chains lead to something more rewarding. But even without cargo having any real affect on town growth, there is still the enjoyment and satisfaction of setting up the chain and satisfying the demand.

You could look at it another way; growing the cities by way of passenger services is simply a means to add more demand to your industrial production chains.

As for why it would take you 20 years to make a good profit from an industrial chain, I'm not sure. It certainly does not take me that long. I rely on my cargo routes in the early game for the bulk of my income. I am usually making a nice profit no later than 5 years from my cargo lines in the beginning of the game.

Good points. Tried them all.

*One small caveat: If you leave this game on anything close to Vanilla time scales....your train is obsolete before it makes the 3rd trip(OK, slight exageration, but you get the point. NOT an exageration in the later years.). So, again, in order to use most vehicles for more than one or two trips, before an upgrade comes along, I've had to resort to slowing the game down to the maximum allowed.

At this new speed...(And I suspect this is why the games timing is so conveluted. I believe the timing was artificially adjusted due to a lack of content, and their insistance that production stop if nothing happens in 30 secs.), 5 years is a life-time. Even worse if you sit back and try to enjoy it at normal speed. God help you if you are waiting on something powerfull to get you up that hill. 5 years would be a dream. Once you double that, its a borefest, and you just hit the fast-forward button and wait till 1910 or whatever.

I suspect a serious lack of models, and the rediculous production model, in the early game is the main reason nothing really happens for such a looooong time. *Cough* ...Rushed_job, *Cough*...Un-finnished

So maybe its a self-imposed nightmare....but, I'm not entirely sure its self-imposed. *See earlier remarks on timing, and availablity, and the "polished state" of this released game.

Don't get me wrong. I know how to make money in this game, however using/working around all the issues this game has, makes paying down that loan in the early years, about as enjoyable as watching paint dry. *I know I don't have to pay it down, but again...emersion/realism vs pin-ball.

[clixor]

Originally posted by Vimpster:

You can use the supply of materials to make commercial or industrial favor an area in the city. But they certainly do not need materials for growth in general. Commercial and industrial are always going to try to keep pace with the residential more or less, whether you supply them anything or not.

If you supply the right cargo to the right districts the buildings will develop. If you don't supply the cargo, they still will develop, but at a slower pace, but as the industrial/commercial areas more or less keep up with population growth, you will see more of them plopping up in other places. So with or withouth supply or cargo will determine if you get a 'tall' or a 'wide' city.

Having a very developed ind/comm area will also house more workers and customers, so this will have an impact on your public transport network. At the same time, it can be easier to supply a single area with trucks (or train station) as you have to cover less area, but when such a district gets VERY developed it can get pretty hard to move all those goods.

In short, developing a city will challenge you into setting up a very efficient bus/tram/truck/train network. Which can be fun, but in my game i'm limiting such cities to a few on a large map otherwise it's just to much work to keep finetuning it.

[SBGaming]

The effect on Cargo isn't on population, it's on the commercial or industrial that they supply. Population Growth is the job of Passenger travel.

If you were to supply one town with just industrial goods (for example ConMat and Fuel), what you should find is that over time the town will favor building industrial buildings over commercial buildings (relative to it's population of course), whereas a town supplied with just commercial goods (Food and Goods) will favor building commercial buildings over industrial buildings.

If you want to encourage passenger travel, one option is to just supply different towns with just commercial or industrial goods, but not both, and this will create an interest in people to travel to the nearby town to work, or go to shop.

Atleast that's been my observation in the game.

As to the question as to why the cities build the "wrong" types of buildings in the wrong places, the answer is cities don't build the wrong types of buildings in the wrong places. Until we're given the option to zone specififc areas like you can in Sim City or Cities Skylines, you don't get to decide how a city develops, thus there is NEVER a situation where a wrong building was built in the wrong place. The best you can do is influence how it develops. The city decides what it will build based on the local building conditions, and from my experience, they like to build around passenger hubs and freight stations.

I had an entire town migrate away from it's starting location to build around the freight and passenger stations that were on the outskirts of the town, entirely abandoning a truck station and bus stops I had originally placed to supply cargo to the industrial and commercial buildings, and I had a commercial district grow up in an area that wasn't covered by my Freight catchment area. Towns don't care whether they are being supplied with goods, it's merely a way for you to make money with cargo.

One way you can influence how a town develops is through the expensive process I call trimming, which you've done. Pulling out those lone industrial and commercial buildings so you can create districts. The key to it though is for every building of one type you remove, you want to remove one of each of the others, because what will happen is that the town will want to replace those, and since buildings tend to build near others of it's type, the gaps left by one type will be filled by a type nearby, while the building that was there previously, is more likely to pop up somewhere else.

It's a process that you'll have to do multiple times, but over time you'll be able to shape the area of coverage. I usually do it every 20-30 in game years, spending anywhere from $50-100Million, but when you have hundreds of millions (or a couple Billion at this point in my Freeplay series), that is a drop in the bucket.

[6000 Chipmunks]

Thanks again, everyone for your imput. I shall endevor to follow this advice, and return should any further questions arise.