Fix for low or no RCI zone demand

This guide will show and explain to you how to fix low or no demand for RCI (residential, commercial, industry zones) in Cities: Skylines. Not only will you learn simple fixes for particular problems but also how to avoid getting into such problems in the future.

How to fix low or no residential demand

Hello,

My name is Peter and welcome to my guide about fixing low or no demand for RCI zones.


In my previous guides I wrote about
Traffic management:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1831101257

Not enough goods, Buyers and Customers:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1884687120

How to fix Death waves and Cims dying at the same time
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2001650191

and Not Enough (Educated) Workers Solutions
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2429141845

In case you prefer to listen than to read here is a video form of this guide:

Now let's start this guide with the simplest fix for low or no residential demand, and that is to reduce your Cims unemployment percentage.


You do this by making sure you have a lot of open jobs in your industries, commercial or office zones. Your target unemployment percentage should be 8% because only at that point will the game allow more cims to move into your city.


You can find out what your current unemployment percentage is by going into the population info view. Now you might start asking but how do I zone more commercial , industries and offices to get more open jobs if I don’t have any demand for commercial or industrial zones? Well that is something I will explain in more depth during this guide.

How to fix low or no commercial demand

Now I am going to show and tell you about other solutions for low or no RCI demand as well as some not so obvious ones but I am also going to explain the causes for this problem so you will have an easier time implementing these solutions and even finding your own ones.


Each RCI bar can be low at times and even all three can be almost non existent if your city hits a few specific conditions. I have already briefly explained the problem and solution for low residential demand as this is something I see most players struggle with, and now I will address low or no demand for both commercial and industrial which are heavily intertwined and codependent as you will soon discover.


What you must understand is that in this game a lot of the simulation is not realistic or driven by real world rules. This is something a lot of players have a hard time understanding and it’s why they struggle with the game. Cities: Skylines functions by its own rules and if you understand those rules and apply them to your cities you can’t fail.


First of these rules is that an empty city has only the demand for residential zones for the simple reason that Cims want to move into your city so that the game can begin. In this the game is breaking from reality at step one because real people don’t move to an empty field in the middle of nowhere with no utilities or services if they want to live in a civilized manner, which you Cims obviously do want, as they don’t like not having water, power or garbage collection.


Naturally this is so you could start a city in this game and as soon as your Cims move in they will start expressing needs. Besides the basic ones I just mentioned they have the need to work somewhere, earn money and spend it somewhere buying goods.


This is where your first demand for industrial zones comes from. Newly moved in Cims need a place to work and earn their paycheck. This is directly tied into the employment / unemployment game mechanic, as unemployed Cims create a need for jobs and you get a demand for open jobs which you fill by zoning industrial or later office zones.


Now that your cims have basic utilities, and a job at which they earn money, they need a place to spend it. This is why you slowly start seeing a rise in the commercial demand of a new city. Because industrial and commercial zones are liked by the production and sale of goods they each set off a chain of demands, to be profitable industrial buildings have to have somewhere to sell goods and for commercial buildings to have goods to sell they have to get deliveries. The demand and subsequent filling of the demand for one of these directly causes the increase in demand for the other.


And so for a Cim to spend his paycheck a building in the commercial zones has to have goods on sale, and for it to have those goods it needs a delivery from a goods producing generic industry buildings. This is something you can see using the outside connection info view, where goods produced, imported and exported are shown in purple.


This demand triangle, of residential for industry and commercial, commercial for industry and residential, and industry for commercial and residential is what keeps a healthy RCI demand system going.


So why am I explaining all of this when the point of the video is a fix for low or no demand for RCI? Well it’s for you to be able to understand how you are wrecking this in game system I just outlined and creating this problem in the first place.

How to fix low or no industrial demand

As previously explained, an unemployment percentage above 8% will prevent new Cims from moving into the city as they have nowhere to work at, and the simplest solution is opening up new workplaces to have more room for new Cims to come to your city and work there.


But what you are facing are empty demand bars for commercial and industry and you don’t know how to open up more jobs.


In most cases this is caused by the players themselves as they have zoned too much commercial, industrial or offices and whacked the mentioned in game system out of balance.


One hidden thing which is really easy to miss but will ruin your city and game is the fact that Cims can live with much fewer commercial zones in the city than the commercial demand shows. And it’s this overbuilding of commercial zones to satisfy an unnecessarily high commercial demand is to blame for knocking the RCI system out of balance, in most cases anyway.


Now since this is not the subject of this video I won’t go more in depth as to why there is more demand for commercial zones then it’s necessary and I will leave it for another video. But it’s there and to prevent creating problems for your city just try to play with this simple rule in mind: leave the commercial demand bar at 50% all the time.
So back to the city you built before you learned this. It has an excess of commercial zones which is about twice as much as it’s population really needs. This puts a major strain on your cities demand for goods deliveries diffusing the amount of goods which are produced or imported across a lot more shops than necessary and preventing them from operating with normal profit margins.


Cims don’t enter all shops as there are too many, and each they enter doesn’t actually have enough goods most of the time. This leads directly to low or even no demand for C zones.

So what is happening to industrial zones during all this? They are busy trying to produce massive quantities of goods and keep failing as there are just too many delivery requests. They order up massive amounts of products from the region or local specialized industry but the game can handle only so much and even in this city of Bedrock with a population of a million cims the actual quantities of products imported are really minimal compared to the number of Industrial and commercial zones. This is the reason I had a lot of trouble balancing RCI in this city.

City of Bedrock at over 1 million Cims Steam workshop save file:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1999109245

And since these industrial buildings are also not working properly as they are unable to produce all the needed goods since the game is unable to supply so many products, locally or from import, they are not operating profitably, can’t upgrade and start to go abandoned, and you lose jobs.


With a loss of jobs your unemployment goes up, residential demand goes down and your over built shops in commercial zones lose even more profit as there aren’t as many shoppers as before. This is the final nail in the commercial zone demand as without buyers or suppliers of goods they can’t operate.

This is the point when everything starts to break down and the entire RCI demand flatlines.

How to prevent such problems in the future

You can do similar damage to your cities RCI balance by having too many specialized industry buildings and exporting your products out of the city, depriving the game of vehicles and agents to import enough goods to keep your commercial zones working.


Similarly, concentrating on office zones to open new jobs instead of generic or specialized industry forces the game to bring in goods for commercial zones from outside, removing one keystone of commercial demand and that is providing a place for local generic industry to sell goods at. Since offices and the industry share one demand bar your loss of demand for commercial zones reduces the need for industry to sell them goods and in turn that means you can build fewer offices.

Your takeaway from all I have said and shown should be that the fix for low or no demand is to find out which RCI you overbuilt and bring it down and into balance with other zones. When balance is restored and each zone starts to influence the other two in the way the game was designed, your RCI demand will once more be optimal and work in its intended cycle. New Cims move in, more jobs are demanded, more industry is built and opens up for Cims to work, demand for shops is created, new shops open up to let Cims shop for goods they produced in factories creating more need for industry which creates more open jobs which lets new Cims move in.


And that is how you fix low or no demand for RCI in your cities. I hope you have both found this guide helpful don’t forget to hit that favorite button to recommend it to more fellow city majors. Thank you for reading and happy gaming.

[Spector]

@Goose
My guess her would be be workers education level is a better fit for open jobs. As jobs have prefered workers.

[Goose]

I have a question, How does your unemployment rate go down with fewer jobs? I have 85k pop but only 37k jobs.

[Spector]

Hi @SH@KE^^

The problem with that is that once you send your RCI balance out of wack far enough things start to brake down even with you having RCI god powers. You can't prevent C zones going out of business no matter how much demand you set.

[SH@KE^^]

Just user Super Demand mode. This whole demand thing is a gimmick.

[rally]

i know, i know i was just joking

[Spector]

@Unknown

That is actually the worst thing you can do. As once you use that mod and play with it you will never be able to fix the game when the mod stops being able to deal with the broken balance of RCI.

[rally]

step one: get infinite demand mod

[Spector]

@crazyalink
Hey! Great to have your feedback. Good to know your city is working out well.

[crazyalink]

i tried it and it works good knowing now not to put in so much, even got high RCI with 1% unemployment

[crazyalink]

thanks for that info