Is tourism still broken?

[Burnonator]

I'm having difficulty wrapping my head around the tourism mechanics, so I looked online and found a bunch of posts from closer to when the game released that tourism is basically broken. By broken, it is a two part problem.

1. No matter what, very few tourists will visit your city.
2. Tourists will never generate enough revenue to break even the cost of attracting them to the city, never mind turn a profit (mostly because of the upkeep cost of unique buildings).

So, for part one, attracting tourists. I have a tourist area with the following:

• Almost every unique building available to me.
• A few park areas
• A few tourism and leisure buildings along the shoreline (under "Parks & Plazas")
• The empty space filled in with commercial zoning specialized for tourism.

I also have every bonus I can find in place to bring in more tourism. This includes, policies, intercity bus station, and things to keep land value high across the city.

In total, I currently have 67% City Attractiveness and 557 Tourists (12% Exchange Students)


As for part two, the budget.

Weekly tourism related expenses:

• Weekly Unique Buildings and Sport Arenas expenses: $18,232.00
• Parks, plazas, and Landscaping Expenses: $3,261.43
• Tourist Related Policy Expenses: $11,000.00+
• Total: $32,493.43

Weekly tourism related Income:

• Commercial Zones: $405.41
• Public Transportation: $1,677.66
• Park Areas: $321.30
• Total: $2,404.37

Balance: ($30,089.06)

I'm not hurting for money, but just on a matter of principle I like to see everything in the book roughly balance out (and preferably earn a bit of income). It seems crazy that this is so far negative.

And on another note, what are my tourists doing? Their #1 expense is public transportation. That doesn't make much sense; especially considering I have free public transportation policy enabled. It should be $0 (Well, I guess a bit for the sightseeing bus tours).

So, what's going on? Any way to balance this out more? The only thing I can think of is to flood the city full of small parks (because they cap out attractiveness value, so you need a lot of little ones), which doesn't really seem ideal/realistic.

Thanks for any pointers.

 

[Burnonator]

So, a bit more of what I'm having trouble understanding is Leisure, Entertainment, Attractiveness, and Appeal. The game gives basically no explanation of any of it, and the wiki isn't a lot of help. I've looked around online quite a bit, but its not very clear. This is what I have gathered so far.

Leisure: This doesn't really seem to be anything but the title for the panel that actually shows entertainment. The wiki makes it sound like there is some attractiveness value tied to leisure for cims to go when they're not working, but I don't see anything about this in game, so I suspect it is just conjecture (actually, this is entertainment I think).

Entertainment: This seems to be appealing areas to cims. They will go to entertainment places when not working like parks, libraries, sports arenas. It also increases land value. Is there any actual drawback to not having entertainment available? It seems to cost money and upkeep and draw traffic just for a bit of higher surrounding land value (no monetary benefit). I guess the increased land value boosts taxes a little bit? This is different from tourist attractiveness, as some buildings provide entertainment, but no attractiveness (Japanese Gardens).

Attractiveness (Tourism Panel):

Basically how much tourists want to visit this building. Doesn't seem to be very useful except to plan out tours. From what I've read, all this is, is that the attractiveness values are added up together, and the result is how many tourists the city gets. It has nothing to do with tourists actually going anywhere. The problem is that there is no actual Attractiveness value (number) shown in the game from what I can see. So to get more tourists... you just plop buildings down and hope they are attractive, I guess. Its extremely misleading if that's the case, as the tourists don't find it appealing entertaining to visit all attractiveness buildings (like hotels).

EDIT: The crossed out part doesn't seem right, because Japanese Gardens have no (low) attractiveness, but still have tourists visiting (more than some buildings in my amusement park with high attractiveness). Maybe Attractiveness is only to calculate bringing more tourists to the city. But still, a number value is missing, and seeing even at least the "low/high scale" BEFORE the building is constructed should be mandatory.

Appeal (Tours Panel):

Basically how much tourists want to visit this building/area. Literally how good this area is for a tour stop. This seems to be a very small radius around buildings that provide entertainment, as well as some terrain (lakes, forest etc). Based on this, I'm not sure the entertainment radius really works properly. Maybe it is really just a land value increase radius? It doesn't seem to reflect actual entertainment zones (which I think is what really makes cims/tourists "go here"), but just highlights the sources. So, I'm not really sure how the tourists spending extra money in commercial zone thing works, as the commercial buildings are not appealing to them no matter what I do. Appeal isn't really appeal, entertainment is (I think), meaning tourists go to entertainment areas, which can be filled with commercial buildings, which are not appealing (good stops on a tour route), but are entertaining (where they want to go). Which begs the question, why is where they want to go not a good place for their tour to take them, but HEY, maybe its just a poor implementation).

Do I have any of this right?

Wow, it really shouldn't be so hard to figure out how the game mechanics actually work. I read all the Park Life Dev Diaries and they didn't go over any of this. Paradox really needs to hire a more technical-based writer for this stuff.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Wow, it really shouldn't be so hard to figure out how the game mechanics actually work. I read all the Park Life Dev Diaries and they didn't go over any of this. Paradox really needs to hire a more technical-based writer for this stuff.

It would be nice to hear from someone who knows how all that works.

 

[Joe Stud]

Having tourists adds cosmetic benefits to your city. After your city grows to a certain size, you don't have money trouble to your city anyway. My main concern is them adding to the vehicle count, but they don't seem to add to the vehicle count significant as very few of them use pocket vehicles. So the presence of tourists don't bother me.

 

[Promethian]

The problem here is the info on tourist economic activity is sparsely recorded. I think parks say how many tourists passed through in the last time increment. Their visits to your commercial buildings are not individually recorded so a big part of their impact is hidden there. They use public transport but nowhere are the ticket fees recorded so its hard though technically possible to calculate their specific impact there. There is no econ panel that collates all this as well.

I will say this much though. Based on my experience unique buildings do pay for themselves. The Space Elevator beyond a doubt does. I did 5 year (in game year) average income tests on this and came out a bit ahead for placing a large number of uniques. The Space Elevator was a rather large bump.

I will say this much though. If you are one of the "don't need commercial so don't make it" types then uniques might not work for you. Tourists beyond a doubt visit your commercial and you do make money from commercial visits.

 

[Burnonator]

The problem here is the info on tourist economic activity is sparsely recorded. I think parks say how many tourists passed through in the last time increment. Their visits to your commercial buildings are not individually recorded so a big part of their impact is hidden there. They use public transport but nowhere are the ticket fees recorded so its hard though technically possible to calculate their specific impact there. There is no econ panel that collates all this as well.

I will say this much though. Based on my experience unique buildings do pay for themselves. The Space Elevator beyond a doubt does. I did 5 year (in game year) average income tests on this and came out a bit ahead for placing a large number of uniques. The Space Elevator was a rather large bump.

I will say this much though. If you are one of the "don't need commercial so don't make it" types then uniques might not work for you. Tourists beyond a doubt visit your commercial and you do make money from commercial visits.

Well, tourist economic activity is recorded on the tourism tab of the budget panel, which I included in my post above. Maybe its unlocked by a DLC you don't have?

Of course, it fluctuates, but each tourist spends about $1/week in commercial zones, which is absurd. I tried 1 unique building with a lot of commercial, and a lot of unique buildings with a bit of commercial, but the amount the tourists spent barely changed. With these kinds of numbers, I find it impossible to believe that unique buildings pay for themselves, although I will see what happens with the space elevator when I unlock it.

About commercial zones, I guess I am a "don't need commercial so don't make it" type, but like I said, I tried zoning more and it didn't help tourist sales, so I don't see a point. Cims aren't complaining about lack of goods, so I don't see the need for it, and it has massive traffic complications. EDIT: I zoned a big leisure district beside a park, so it has high entertainment on top of being a commercial zone. Commercial demand is now satisfied completely, with zoned room to grow, yet tourists are still spending under $2/week on average.

I'm also not sure yet, but I don't think the meter is very accurate. It seems like it just looks at overall exports (unfinished products from Industry DLC) and wants more commercial to reduce the exports. Of course, you can't sell unfinished products in commercial zones, so you just end up creating imports trying to satisfy the demand. I guess I should test that next. Guess not, I cut my exports by about 75% and the commercial meter didn't move.

I'm not entirely sure what commercial demand is (like how industry demand is actually a measure of unemployment, and has nothing to do with industry). It must be more than just commercial demand, or the cims would complain of lack of goods, right? I wonder if it has entertainment demand included in it, given how cims spend their free time, when not entertained, at commercial zones. Yet again, I really wish Paradox explained how their products worked in more detail.

 

[Promethian]

Nah I have all the DLC. I'm just one of those old timey types that sometimes doesn't notice new things added. Like a tab on the econ panel. My tests were done before Parklife. I assumed since Parklife parks are so freaking profitable per visitor they just made the tourism calculation more favorable. Nothing I have seen proves that wrong.

Don't forget that unique buildings don't draw only tourists. They just are tied to the attraction mechanic that determines how many tourists come. Your citizens visit them too and there is some kind of ticket fee or something involved with them. This is why you can't only look at tourist income for them.

As for commercial demand. I know its partly tied to employment. You can in fact reduce your industry demand by employing people with commercial. You likely have hit on another factor of commercial demand in the count of people seeking entertainment. I think the game looks at potential customers every time increment and the demand bar adjusts based on customers available vs can be serviced. This is just my best guess though.

 

[Joe Stud]

I have noticed that I make gobs of money when my city is flooded with tourists.

But if you understand the land value mechanics, tourists are superfluous and they clog the traffic and pocket cars add to the vehicle limit.

If you are near the vehicle limit which you should run into when your population is about 100k ~ 150k, you should stop tourists from coming in. Also they slow down the game if your rig is not powerful enough.

 

[ristosal]

If you are near the vehicle limit which you should run into when your population is about 100k ~ 150k, you should stop tourists from coming in.

You will not be close to the vehicle limit at that population range in the vanilla game, unless you completely trash your urban design. Keep in mind some scenarios in the Natural Disasters DLC have a population goal of 250k or more.