Balance among RCI and general simulation questions?

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citysimplayer

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I apologize if this is already discussed in another thread(s) but couldn't find any.

1) I would like to know how each R,C, and I influences each other. So, as an example - could I create a city that only has R in it? If I did, what would the simulation do? If I put more C or I than is demanded (or less) - what happens? I'm not making a request but merely trying to understand how the game simulation works.

2) I think I read somewhere that one day is 5 seconds and there is no rush hour. I think I'm ok with that but raises questions about how exactly the simulation works. When will citizens drive to work, shop or entertainment? How will that impact traffic - will the streets always be crowded?

3) Are fires, crimes and health emergencies simulated with firetrucks, police cars and ambulances going to an actual point on the map with an event or do the placement of these items just influence happiness?

4) Will be interested to understand how education is simulated (types of schools, transportation to schools, who goes to school, is education specific to a citizen similar to job, house and car)...

5) Understand citizens will have specific age, jobs, house, car and possibly kids. I like that - makes more sense than Sim5 first come first serve model. Will the citizens age and die like in Banished or are they a permanent fixture?

6) Goods - what happens to a business if it can not sell its goods (industry or commercial)?

7) How are the production and sale of goods simulated? Are goods physically represented on the map? In other words - does a specific factory have to receive raw materials via a truck before it can produce any goods? Does a specific retail store have to receive goods before making a sale? Or is it simulated in total and presented as data?

8) If citizens aren't happy (can't find work, etc) do they leave the city?

Thanks
 

avyensie

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I can answer 5 and 6 for you here.
5) Citizens will be born, then grow up and eventually die. It was said somewhere (although I fear I will not be able to find you the source here) that there will be cemeteries for the people that die of old age.
6) If there is no demand for goods in your city the industries will sell them to the outside world. Same goes for the other way around, if your industry is not providing enough goods your city will import the rest from the outside world.
 

citysimplayer

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I can answer 5 and 6 for you here.
6) If there is no demand for goods in your city the industries will sell them to the outside world. Same goes for the other way around, if your industry is not providing enough goods your city will import the rest from the outside world.

So this implies that an industry can never go bankrupt as a result of no customers, correct?

That leads me to another question - can Industry get workers from outside the city? If they can then in theory you could make a city of only Industry that gets its labor and materials from the outside and sells its goods to the outside.
 

medopu

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I can answer 1 and 7 and 8 for you here.

1) Building up only residential will be impossible unless you somehow cheat also. These people need jobs and places to shop so desirability will go down as soon as you build too much residence areas and not enough industry/commercial. Although you can build different far-away districts completely seperate from each other, so since you have a very big map (6×6 km), you could build residential area in one corner of the map, industry in another corner of the map and commercial in yet another corner of the map. Connect them with public transport and citizents will travel to come to work/shop. This has been confirmed by the devs

7) Yes trucks or freight trains deliver materials and goods to factories and from factories to ouside market or commercial buildings, and if this chain gets broken for example, trucks can no longer deliver to commercial zones, which is when these commercial buildings start buying goods from the outside world in order to function.

8) Happy cims stay in the city until they die :) But making them happy will have to mean they're employed and have other city facilities that they need for normal life (hospitals, fire departments...)
 

citysimplayer

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1) Building up only residential will be impossible
Great! I hope that is the case but what causes this? Will no one move in or they start to leave? What will the simulation do under that circumstance?

which is when these commercial buildings start buying goods from the outside world in order to function.
Ok great. However, what that imply's is you don't need industrial as your commercial can get goods from the outside world, correct?

Happy cims stay in the city until they die

Got it (and I like the whole life cycle element - that sounds really cool) but what do they do if they are not happy and you do not satisfy them? What do they do?
 
Last edited:

KyleJ

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3) Are fires, crimes and health emergencies simulated with firetrucks, police cars and ambulances going to an actual point on the map with an event or do the placement of these items just influence happiness?

As shown in the video posted by Jeruntje, ambulances, fire trucks, police cars all respond to actual locations in the city, rushing around with their lights and sirens, animations will play such as when the fire truck arrives at the building on fire, firemen with hoses start dousing the flames.

Its not only emergency services, much like SC2013 almost every building that does a task in the city is actually represented doing that task: Garbage trucks drive to buildings with garbage (actual garbage cans are outside these buildings when garbage is produced by that building), trucks and tractors will drive produce and goods to shops and stores of your city if the shop needs them, if they don't they are driven out of the city or to the train station or cargo dock where the cargo train(s) or cargo boat(s) will ship them out of the city, buses follow a route which picks up and drops off people along the way, among hundreds of other visually simulated things.

A monumental amount is simulated visually, which is what will make the city feel incredibly alive, giving you a purpose to keep building (Unlike a certain other game).

Reference: A lot of stream watching and preview reading.
 
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charlesnew

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Got it (and I like the whole life cycle element - that sounds really cool) but what do they do if they are not happy and you do not satisfy them? What do they do?

They just leave, and I guess their house gets abandoned and you population goes down.
 

citysimplayer

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They just leave, and I guess their house gets abandoned and you population goes down.

Good. Does the general unhappiness of citizens impede new ones coming in? One problem SC5 had was no matter what decisions you made, people always wanted to move in. The overall objective should be how to attract citizens and keep them. If you are a poor manager your city should go broke (think Detroit).

I was so disappointed with SC5 (like most of us) that I'm cautiously optimistic about this game. I probably won't buy it right away and wait to hear the reviews. EA was preselling similar capabilities but we all know how that ended. Fingers crossed.
 

charlesnew

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Good. Does the general unhappiness of citizens impede new ones coming in? One problem SC5 had was no matter what decisions you made, people always wanted to move in. The overall objective should be how to attract citizens and keep them. If you are a poor manager your city should go broke (think Detroit).

Well, I found ONE way to stop them from moving in.

Raise the taxes to 20%.
 

medopu

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Great! I hope that is the case but what causes this? Will no one move in or they start to leave? What will the simulation do under that circumstance?

Pretty simple. Just like in Simcity 4, there's an algorithm in place that adjusts the demand of commercial, residential and industrial zones in accordance to each other. A city with no industry and lots of residential areas for example, the demand for industry would be higher than the demand for residentials, which kind of makes sense.


Ok great. However, what that imply's is you don't need industrial as your commercial can get goods from the outside world, correct?

Having no industry was easily done on any scale in simcity 4, not exactly sure about CSL. Yes,i imagine that your commercial zones can survive no industry, though the game is probably designed so that you need at least some industry, or else you would get no demand for commercial and residentials to develop any further anyway.

Got it (and I like the whole life cycle element - that sounds really cool) but what do they do if they are not happy and you do not satisfy them? What do they do?

In simcity 4 they leave. Probably the same in C:SL.
 

TrentW

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Good. Does the general unhappiness of citizens impede new ones coming in? One problem SC5 had was no matter what decisions you made, people always wanted to move in. The overall objective should be how to attract citizens and keep them. If you are a poor manager your city should go broke (think Detroit).

The Detroit references there poses another question - if your city loses population, do houses go into foreclosure or abandon? If this happens I'd like to see overgrown lawns and boarded up windows on houses so that it has the feeling of a ghost town.
 

medopu

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The Detroit references there poses another question - if your city loses population, do houses go into foreclosure or abandon? If this happens I'd like to see overgrown lawns and boarded up windows on houses so that it has the feeling of a ghost town.

That'd be great. Making your own Cleveland and Detroit! Could the same be done to industrial buildings?
 

citysimplayer

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Having no industry was easily done on any scale in simcity 4, not exactly sure about CSL. Yes,i imagine that your commercial zones can survive no industry, though the game is probably designed so that you need at least some industry, or else you would get no demand for commercial and residentials to develop any further anyway.

I hope they are careful to balance the game with this. For me its a balancing act between harsh consequences for poor planning and help from the outside world. Help from the outside world is realistic but IMO it reduces the challenge of the game. If the outside world can mop up all of your mistakes then its not all that challenging of a game. The flipside is if there is no outside connection then perhaps it wouldn't feel realistic (stuck on an island with no connection to world). There needs to be a balance as to how much the outside world can do for you (it shouldn't be able to meet all your cities needs for workers, goods or raw materials). I think that limit is realistic as well (again, my Detroit reference). The game needs to be challenging or it will be SC5 with bigger maps. Perhaps an option in the game where you can scale up or down the impact of outside help. If you want an easy relaxing game, crank up the outside ability, and for more challenging game you turn it down (or off) and you are on your own with no outside world.
 

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Pretty simple. Just like in Simcity 4, there's an algorithm in place that adjusts the demand of commercial, residential and industrial zones in accordance to each other. A city with no industry and lots of residential areas for example, the demand for industry would be higher than the demand for residentials, which kind of makes sense.

I get that the RCI indicator under this situation would show a big increase for industrial but the real question is so what? What if you ignore the RCI indicators?
 

medopu

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I get that the RCI indicator under this situation would show a big increase for industrial but the real question is so what? What if you ignore the RCI indicators?

what do you mean ignore RCI indicators? I don't understand you

If you zone industry, and have no industry demand, no industry gets build. Same for commercial and residential. You can't ignore the indicators. Things get built only ONLY if there is demand for them.
 

citysimplayer

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what do you mean ignore RCI indicators? I don't understand you

If you zone industry, and have no industry demand, no industry gets build. Same for commercial and residential. You can't ignore the indicators. Things get built only ONLY if there is demand for them.

Okay, let me ask another way. The challenge to this type of game (IMO) should be to balance RCI (as well as keep citizens happy) while creating a functioning city (income exceeds expenses). However, do the decisions you make in the game really matter? In the example regarding the Industry indicator being high - This simply means you have demand for goods that outstrips your city's capacity to make. However, it doesn't mean you have to build up Industry if the outside world will take care of it for you. So by default you can ignore the RCI indicators if you want and still have a functioning city. I'm not saying that is how it will or should work - I'm asking if that is how it will work. IMO if you can ignore RCI because needs can be met elsewhere, it makes the game less of a challenge and more of a city painting game.

I'm trying to get to the robustness of the simulator and how punishing (or not) it will be. IMO any game should be challenging, otherwise its not really a game.
 

charlesnew

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The Detroit references there poses another question - if your city loses population, do houses go into foreclosure or abandon? If this happens I'd like to see overgrown lawns and boarded up windows on houses so that it has the feeling of a ghost town.

I'm just imagining building a ghost town. That would be cool. Instead of building a normal town, I can build a ghost town..

woo!