How to get beyond 350k pop without mods? :)

[FireFlowerist]

Alright I have problem... I builded my 4th city, plenty of room to grow, goal set to 400-600k population. BAM! Traffic problems at 350k and I thought those were problem why my city refused to get demand / population growth. BAM! all traffic problems solved, including commuter problem, still no demand / population growth...

Average land value: 146€/m2
Happiness: 99 / 69 / 96 / 88
Unemployment: 5-25% (Starts to sine wave and population sine waves at same frequency)

Import: 6000
Export: 800

I tried also to increase my export rates meaning farming / ore / oil / forestry but didn't help. Had 2000 import and 10000 export. Population was still same...

City: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=420701698

So planning to do my 5th one, how do I get beyond 350k?

• Less offices?
• Dumber work force?
• District car connections?
• Less high density areas?
• Build slower even though you have money to build 1 district at time?

 

[Puuh]

You could try and build more Offices and force demand for workers

 

[FireFlowerist]

force demand for workers

You mean use mods? That is cheating!

 

[Puuh]

Did I mention mods? I said to build more offices. Offices create demand for workers, workers are generated by more inhabitants... Create a demand and the RCI bars will rise again. You could also build more Commercials and they will demand for more goods to sell and you industrial demand will rise...

 

[FireFlowerist]

Sadly I have a ton of unbuilded area for offices, industrial, commercial and residential. Problem is no demand and population death / birth rate is +- 0 and influx is +-0 in long run. I seem to get somewhat demand when my work force unemployment rate sine waves to 5% then it disappears automatically and unemployment rate goes up again.

 

[Bavarian Steve]

Out of curiosity, what is the health of your citizens? I have made 2 cities, and one of them has like a 88-92% health rate, the other is 78-84%. The sine wave for unemployment and population is much lower in the higher health rate, and it was easier to out pace the death rate with the births and influx. Another way to get the sine wave to a smaller range is to bulldoze buildings more frequently. The reason I keep mentioning your sine wave is because it is hard for demand to increase if there is a lot of flux in those stats. Also, do small blocks of residential zoning. If unemployment is in flux a lot, then the business sectors do not know what the available workforce is and do not expand as fast, if population is in flux a lot, then new citizens just fill up your suddenly vacant homes and do not require new residential zoning. Cities as large as you have, could have a lot of different things be the origin of the problem, these are just a few suggestions to look at, and probably are not relevant to your city at all. But in the statistics section keep an eye on influx+birth rate compared to death rates.

 

[IVIaarten]

did you level up your generic industries to level 3? it makes it easier for them to find workers (requires university workers) and seems to increase demand for me.

 

[Puuh]

Did you use policies to lure people into districts? Also I found that prezoning large areas does mess up the demandsystem. Try to zone small areas and wait until they are inhabited...

 

[FireFlowerist]

Out of curiosity, what is the health of your citizens?

99%

did you level up your generic industries to level 3? it makes it easier for them to find workers (requires university workers) and seems to increase demand for me.

I had level 3, now I mixed some forestry and agriculture but no demand... I don't have even fps problems, simulation speed at max ain't that high anymore but it doesn't lag yet either... Well it probably is easier to download my save from workshop but I have run to my witness end. I had traffic problems at 250k population and when I fixed them I got +1k population growth and demand but now I have no problems anywhere so I don't know what to do to get demand up without mods. So I plan to do my 5th city but I plan not to ever make any of the demand bars to "no demand" level so I can control demand but I still wonder where I went wrong.

 

[IVIaarten]

Just throwing something else in here that just popped into my mind. Are you only using high density or low density?

I think I read somewhere that family like households prefer low density, while the more yuppy type households prefer high density. If you're going for mainly high density, then maybe the lack of children is somehow slowing your demand down?

Just throwing it out there as something you could test, I haven't got a clue if it actually works like this.

 

[Morwynd]

What are your taxes set to?

I had mine set to 12% because I had read on the forums that was perfectly fine and wouldn't affect RCI demand.

Well that's completely false, my city had stalled out (at around 90k) and wouldn't grow no matter what I did. Then I reduced taxes to ~9% and instantly started seeing growth again.

 

[Bavarian Steve]

I had forgot to unlock the observatory (i think that is the one that requires 1,000 abandoned buildings), so I let them pile up, on a 90% full map. So as the abandonment increased, demand went down. This was also the first time in either of my cities that the unemployment sine wave appeared. After getting the observatory, it took me about 5 hours of bulldozing to get the unemployment level under 10%. It wasn't only a one time bulldoze that was needed, it was repeated bulldozing. Eventually the rate of abandonment slowed down, unemployment went from 60% down to 3% with many valleys peaks between those two numbers. But once I got my unemployment level stable (no massive variance between my high and low levels), my demand for residential kicked in, followed by Industrial and finally commercial. This lead me to think that there is a consequence for a massive fluctuation in unemployment. Consistently low unemployment will lead to a demand for residential, which in turn kicks in the demand for commercial and industrial.

 

[Puuh]

I took a look into your savegame and you didn't pay any attention to your policies or taxrates.

 

[FireFlowerist]

Alright, I will try lower tax rates and set up policies better even though they have worked nicely so far.

 

[Person012345]

Sadly I have a ton of unbuilded area for offices, industrial, commercial and residential. Problem is no demand and population death / birth rate is +- 0 and influx is +-0 in long run. I seem to get somewhat demand when my work force unemployment rate sine waves to 5% then it disappears automatically and unemployment rate goes up again.

That might be your problem. Having lots of already zoned areas mean every tiny shred of demand gets met as soon as it appears. This might be creating a bad growth situation.