Thanks for that - the per-population figure is exactly the same as for the base game; the difference being (obviously) the larger workforces with this mod.

The base game does scale commercial visit counts quite aggressively with level and density (level 3 high-density has 4 times the visit count as level 2 low-density, for example). The legacy mod calculations (actually the vanilla game calculations) are based solely on building plot size, which causes city imbalance issues when building size (and hence workforce) vary significantly from the lot size (and even apart from that, the disparity in scaling between lot size and population can really throw a city out of whack when buildings get taller).

My current thinking, based on your and other feedback, is that it's on the right path, but does need to be scaled back overall, and high-density commercial in particular. I'm going to include the ability to apply a multiplier (well, technically a divider) to the visitor counts in the next update (which does not absolve me of the need to find a good default setting, for which purposes observations and experiences are still actively sought).

And there is a bug, a black bar on top of left, when you swicth camera you will see that in-game, in main screen, after you click some option you will see it named "Tooltip" and can't drag and can't be moved.

This black bar from beta 9. And I'm sure it is this mod, because I unsubscrible it for test.

Hmm, yes, you're right, it *is* this mod. I've added custom tooltips for this mod (because the game's in-built ones don't work properly in this case); I hadn't noticed that happening. Will fix!

Originally posted by algernon:

The base game does scale commercial visit counts quite aggressively with level and density (level 3 high-density has 4 times the visit count as level 2 low-density, for example). The legacy mod calculations (actually the vanilla game calculations) are based solely on building plot size, which causes city imbalance issues when building size (and hence workforce) vary significantly from the lot size (and even apart from that, the disparity in scaling between lot size and population can really throw a city out of whack when buildings get taller).

That makes sense.

So it sounds like the legacy calculation has 1 "static" factor that doesn't scale with level (plot size) and one factor that scales with level/density. I assume the aggressive scaling with level and density is the base game's simple proxy for workers/size as a given building "grows".

With the new calculations, it sounds like we have 2 scaling factors that, generally, increase with density and level: the workforce and the base game scaling. With two scaling factors that grow with density/level rather than one, it sounds like we have (very roughly) exponential growth rather than linear.

My current thinking, based on your and other feedback, is that it's on the right path, but does need to be scaled back overall, and high-density commercial in particular. I'm going to include the ability to apply a multiplier (well, technically a divider) to the visitor counts in the next update (which does not absolve me of the need to find a good default setting, for which purposes observations and experiences are still actively sought).

My thoughts precisely, including adding a multipler/divider. If possible, I'd suggest reducing (or even eliminating) the base game's scaling factor, especially for high level high density commercial. The mod's workplace calcs are going to be more realistic, but having two aggressive scaling factors doesn't seem ideal or especially realistic.

Originally posted by algernon:

Hmm, yes, you're right, it *is* this mod. I've added custom tooltips for this mod (because the game's in-built ones don't work properly in this case); I hadn't noticed that happening. Will fix!

Aha! So that's where that came from. Glad to hear it's now a known issue and I can avoid debugging.

Thank you again for all the awesome work!

Originally posted by Rehwyn:

So it sounds like the legacy calculation has 1 "static" factor that doesn't scale with level (plot size) and one factor that scales with level/density. I assume the aggressive scaling with level and density is the base game's simple proxy for workers/size as a given building "grows".

Yes, that's right.

Originally posted by Rehwyn:

With the new calculations, it sounds like we have 2 scaling factors that, generally, increase with density and level: the workforce and the base game scaling. With two scaling factors that grow with density/level rather than one, it sounds like we have (very roughly) exponential growth rather than linear.

A different way of looking at is is in dimensions.

The base game calculates all 'factors' like this - population, commercial visit count, and production - on what is essentially lot width * lot depth * scaling factor (based on service, subservice and level). This means that the relationship between population, commercial visits, and production capacity is all linear and varies only by the scaling factor involved.

Note that there is no 'height' involved in *any* of these calculations. According to the base game, a single-storey building is exactly the same as a towering skyscraper (it's this fundamental issue that causes the problems the base game has in representing downtown/CBD areas).

Realistic Population, of course, effectively adds the 'height' dimension into that population calculation (disregarding differences between lot and building size, and other complicating factors, for simplicity of explanation), as the fundamental population count now becomes width * depth * HEIGHT. But this means that unless the commercial visits (and production) figures are also scaled with this factor, there's now a multiplicative disassociation with the other factors.

For a long time, some players were reporting commercial and/or industrial/office imbalances with the mod that I could never quite work out. After a lot of experimentation and repetitive testing, it became apparent that the issues that these players were experiencing were due to this disassociation.

If the base game calculations for visitor count (for example) were left untouched, then effectively that means that there was now a 'sliding scale' of visitor counts. The visitor count per employee of a 20-storey skyscraper was effectively 1/20th that of an equivalent single-storey building. Which means that the whole balance of overall population to commercial capacity would vary not only from city to city, but even *within* the same city as the city developed. In some cases, this would be a *significant* imbalance, which required significant over-building of commercial to rectify (which might 'solve' this
issue but of course comes with its own issues....)

It's worth noting here that this issue goes all the way back to the original WG mod, and probably Kundan's as well. It's been so fundamental to the behaviour of Realistic Population mods that most people just took it for granted (including myself!), but this doesn't mean it wasn't causing (sometimes significant) issues.

So, the solution is to go back to the implicit base-game relationship: overall commercial visits should scale linearly with population. What was attempted with BETA 10 (after much internal testing) was to replicate that factor exactly: the base-game ratio of workplaces to visits for that service/subservice/level. It's *theoretically* the "correct" solution, and worked fine in closed testing, but hasn't stood up so well in public testing due to the strain it puts on other game mechanisms.

It's probably worth noting here that the base game isn't that well balanced in many mechanisms, the visit counts being one of them - but they work 'well enough' in an unmodded game for the issues to be usually unapparent, and are only exposed when mods like this scale things up. So a compensation for this base game imbalance also needs to be factored in for cases like this.

Hence, keeping the approach but changing the overall multipler to reduce total impact seems the way to go - with the additional caveat that high-density commercial may need to be tweaked downwards as well.

The same issue exists with production as well. It's not normally a materially relevant issue with industrial buildings due to their typically low floor counts, but is a lot more visible with offices. Again, I only pinned this down comparatively recently, and production (especially office production) is what I want to revisit next (with a similar model).

Thank you for taking the time to explain that!

Ah, good point. Cubic rate of growth in building capacity versus square rate of growth in area for streets causes gridlock whan capacity grows. This seems realistic and then the question becomes how to deal with this limiting factor as a player, rather than whether the calculation should be adjusted. Public transportation and heavy hauling cargo with trains and ships come to mind.
PS Great work bringing real life challenge to the game.

I should've probably placed my comments here and not hijacked the main thread. I have read through these comments and I have adjusted back to the default legacy values for commercial properties. For ones that will not correct themselves, I'm just turning them to dummys for now. I believe my issues come down to how I play this game. I plop most of my buildings. And I think with they way I've grown the city, I'm causing more harm than good using this mod. However, I'm not unsubbing.

Can you maybe provide some feedback as to why the following occurs:

1. A plopped commercial building abandons due to no goods.
2. Demolish and replop with the legacy calcs enabled.
3. Rico settings have been applied to the building so my worker counts are set by me.
4. No workers will come to the building. All zeroes across the board and the building abandons again.

The 'New method' make goods consuming too fast, even set 'Customer count multiplier' to 0.1 and with "Adjustable Business Consumption" mod to set low consuming rate.
And this situation you will got lots of truck to send to even ONE large commercial building and look like forever no stop, and make huge trafic problem.

And when start or load a game with 'New method' to in-game, it can't be switched to 'Old method' after click 'Save and apply'.

That's horrifying, because for example if you got 10 large commercial buildings, whole city will down by trucks trucks and trucks.

But, this situation will be very obvious in the event of "Real Time" mod. When event of "Real Time" pass, situation will be much better.

So, I'm thinking about if player don't use "Real Time" mod, this situation will be forever or not?

I've now spent some time with the new calculations at the default 0.4x multiplier. After rezoning a decent bit to account for the new calculations, I've gotten my commercial demand back up to ~50%.

Overall, I feel like the amount of commercial I'm using feels pretty good. None of my commercial buildings are having major supply chain issues, and I can have clusters of 4x8 or 8x8 high density spread around without too much problem. Test city population is about 70k.

It's worth noting that I'm not using any large ploppable commercial assets and am on a European region map (so my high density commercial is a bit smaller). I also spend a lot of time on traffic management, so have 85% flow, which probably helps with deliveries.

If I could make one possible suggestion for further improvement, it would be to have a different slider for Low and High density commercial. That would allow people to dial things back for High density if they use larger assets that become troublesome, without dropping Low density commercial too far at the same time.

Thank you again for the hard work and awesome mods!

@breed4me22 As mentioned in the main thread, if you're having issues with workers then it's just that your city doesn't have the spare employment capacity (unemployment) in the relevant worker levels, and it does sound as though you're over-building commercial. Make sure you've got unemployment in the relevant demographics; if existing commercial buildings can't fill all their workspaces, then adding more is not the right thing to do.

As also mentioned in the main thread, if you really want those buildings to be functional, try reducing the population counts.

@M.S.Referee Can you please provide some specific visitor count figures for the buildings you're having issues with, with both new and old calculations?

The calculation switch does take place in the game, but there is a glitch in the calculations panel menu that will display the current default instead of the current setting (about to push hotfix that will fix that).

@Rehwyn Thanks for that feedback - I think the two different sliders is a good idea, but at this point I'll extend that to all commercial subsets, not just 'high' and 'low', and might as well make them individually selectable between old and new as well.

And as a recent revelation - it turns outthat most of my testers are using the Rebalanced Industries mod to better balance goods transport and reduce the amount of truck traffic. Even with full multipliers, commercial cargo traffic hasn't been an issue with that mod in operation.

I highly recommend using that mod anyway, as it does a very good job of fixing base-game imbalances.