Some details into the mechanics of Green Cities

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Promethian

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Feb 2, 2016
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So much of the Green Cities mechanics function very differently from normal. More than the tooltips imply. I'll list what I have discovered after playing for a while now. Please feel free to add to or correct in replies. You will be credited in the edits.


Residential specialization: As far as I can tell this spec is exactly as it appears in the tooltip. No extra or hidden mechanics. If anybody has found anything please chime in.

Commercial specialization: The 50% goods in the tooltip. This spec sells goods at the same rate as normal light commercial but only needs half as much of the goods delivery. Not sure the exact method it calculates it. Could be it doubles delivery amounts. Could be it only consumes half as many goods per sale. Either way it works.

Edit: Credit to Voeille. The 50% self goods production is sufficient to prevent the commercial from being abandoned due to no goods delivery.

The next big thing about this spec is that unlike normal commercial this spec doesn't only work off final product goods (purple). It also needs agriculture (orange). I figured this out through checking my imports and exports. I was importing a ton of agri (I normally export loads of it). All the orange buildings in the import infoview were my commercial. As far as I can tell agri counts as part of normal goods deliveries for the commercial spec. It uses agriculture more than normal industry does. If you go heavy green and make most of your commercial this spec you don't need normal industry at all. You can get all the goods you need from agri, recycling and possibly IT spec office. (side note: there are a bunch of new agri spec buildings with the DLC)

Edit: Credit to Voeille. The green commercial spec also produces no sound pollution.

Office specialization: The IT. So first thing to note is the tooltip doesn't lie. These buildings don't employ many people. So don't mass zone them thinking you're solving a jobs problem. A big upside is the buildings only have one level. So you can get the benefit of high income offices without having to invest in services.

Next is the goods mechanic. IT spec produces goods that commercial takes. It doesn't send trucks. I don't know if the goods count towards the commercial's stock. The buildings will light up purple in the export infoview. I can confirm if no commercial buys its "goods" it'll become abandoned. I am pretty sure normal and leisure commercial do pull more goods from the IT spec. It is unfortunately hard to work out the exact function of IT goods mechanic since it doesn't spawn trucks.

Edit: It appears IT does produce goods that are used by commercial and counts towards the goods need of the commercial but abandons if forced to export. Still not absolutely confirmed but likely enough at this point I'm confident its the case.

Recycling: In relation to garbage it functions just like an Incinerator but sends out fewer trucks. The fewer trucks matters but not that much. Incinerators you can stay at close to the minimum burn capacity as is needed for your city. The lack of trucks means you need to stay further above processing capacity with Recycling than with Incinerators. Its still far cheaper.

Based on my export infoview Recycling produces every kind of goods. I only have agri specialization but am exporting everything. It produces purple goods but its hard to tell how much. I am exporting a good chunk of purple but its hard to tell how that number is interacting with the IT spec. An interesting aspect is when a recycling truck finishes picking up garbage it gets flagged as carrying goods and changes from a service vehicle to a goods truck (purple to brown in the routing infoview). So the goods are effectively produced before the Recycling plant processes the garbage.


Recycling monument: Completely useless. Money wise its less efficient than just using normal recycling. Additionally as of this edit it doesn't send out enough trucks to actually pick up all the garbage of a city large enough to house a monument.
 
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The commercial specialisation doesn’t generate noise pollution unlike regular commercial zone, so you can keep it right next to residential.

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The only noise in that area is from other sources, such as blimp stops.
 
I haven't got anything substantial to add, but did want to say thank you. I also did notice the massive amount of agriculture imports despite having a relatively big zone with agriculture and double production and almost no other imports. I was confused for a bit, but this post does give a good explanation for this.

Edit:
Next is the goods mechanic. IT spec produces goods that commercial takes. It doesn't send trucks. I don't know if the goods count towards the commercial's stock. The buildings will light up purple in the export infoview. I can confirm if no commercial buys its "goods" it'll become abandoned. I am pretty sure normal and leisure commercial do pull more goods from the IT spec. It is unfortunately hard to work out the exact function of IT goods mechanic since it doesn't spawn trucks.

Well, I can add one small thing now. Thanks to your information, I got curious if you could cut out most delivery trucks by using IT offices and normal commercial (because they only require goods as far as I know, which IT produces plenty of).

I used one of my awful cities to test it out. I removed all industry on the map, and replaced it with offices with IT. I did use the new commercial specialization but reverted this.

My imports are now 8 total and my export 2157 in a city of almost 17000. Most of the export is goods. I have tried for a while both ingame and in the view where you can see the trucks, and there are none in the city. I spent more than a year with this, and commercial hasn't gotten out of business yet because there weren't any goods. My employment percentage has dropped a lot, but is slowly recovering.

Although I didn't test it thoroughly enough to say for sure, it seems like if you are willing to deal with some other problems like unemployment, you can basically solve a lot of traffic problems.
 
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I have noticed quite an interesting thing about the commercial specialisation. It says in the description that it produces 50% goods locally, and we know that the rest is supplied by farming industry. I had some of my commercial without access to the rest to the city and any outside connections. I would expect them to start complaining about no goods to sell (they weren’t supplied by anything, no trucks at all because they were inaccessible), but apparently that 50% they produce themselves is enough for them to function properly, because they never complained about that. They only thing they complain about is no workers when I zone more, but that gets solved after some time like it does for other businesses with that issue. I decided to build a cargo station there (still no road access to anywhere) to see what happens, and my farming district went absolutely crazy about using their cargo stations, creating huge traffic jams. I’m trying to solve the problem, but I’m not sure if I can manage based on the absolutely insane amount of tractors, and might destroy the cargo station if it gets too bad (I won’t give up easily though, I like dealing with traffic). I did expect they would try to supply that area, but I didn’t expect such craziness.
 
I have noticed quite an interesting thing about the commercial specialisation. It says in the description that it produces 50% goods locally, and we know that the rest is supplied by farming industry. I had some of my commercial without access to the rest to the city and any outside connections. I would expect them to start complaining about no goods to sell (they weren’t supplied by anything, no trucks at all because they were inaccessible), but apparently that 50% they produce themselves is enough for them to function properly, because they never complained about that. They only thing they complain about is no workers when I zone more, but that gets solved after some time like it does for other businesses with that issue. I decided to build a cargo station there (still no road access to anywhere) to see what happens, and my farming district went absolutely crazy about using their cargo stations, creating huge traffic jams. I’m trying to solve the problem, but I’m not sure if I can manage based on the absolutely insane amount of tractors, and might destroy the cargo station if it gets too bad (I won’t give up easily though, I like dealing with traffic). I did expect they would try to supply that area, but I didn’t expect such craziness.

They can survive on their own goods production. That is useful to know. Thank you for contributing.

As for your cargo stations. Part of it is the initial rush because you just created a ton of demand so it'll even out a bit over time. But when designing cargo terminals there are some rules I follow.

1: One way in, one way out. This is pretty obvious what I mean. There is another consideration though. Note the location where trucks enter and leave the building. Make sure the trucks don't get a chance to get in each other's way.

2: Make the entrance road as long as possible. Queues will happen. Even the best flow will get build ups.

3: Use tunnels or raised roads to create direct routes to and from the far sides of your goods using zones to and from the in/out roads of your cargo. This will prevent trucks from blocking up the roads around the cargo terminal. Plus when the queues form they will partially form in the tunnels which won't interfere with other traffic.
 
2: Make the entrance road as long as possible. Queues will happen. Even the best flow will get build ups.

This can apply to the outgoing traffic as well, depending on how well they can navigate your intersections on the way out, so in most cases you should give some room on that end too.
 
Yes I use one way roads and pretty long convoluted ways to prevent them from clogging up other roads. I need to be careful though and make sure the lengths are pretty much even for all the stations. At some point I forgot I also had a cargo hub quite far away with an underground connection, and all the tractors were heading there because the route was straight and it made it the shortest from all the stations. I removed the connection temporarily and I’ll wait for the trucks to calm down a bit before making the hub available again.
 
Is it clear whether or not the IT producing goods is an intended mechanic? It would seem so, but I gotta ask because it doesn't seem like anything in-game mentions this mechanic. They can entirely replace generic industries to sustain commercial in a city without generating a single truck, which to me seems a bit odd. What kind of goods are they providing to commercial exactly? Data? That said through I am not saying I don't like it. I kind of do, actually.
 
I actually wonder if my inaccessible commercial not complaining is the result of having IT cluster specialisation in my city. It’s in a different part than the aforementioned commercial, but given that it doesn’t generate trucks, that’s not a problem. On one hand I would say it shouldn’t affect it because local produce wants agricultural products instead of regular goods (and basically all my import is agricultural despite having quite a large farming area, however it might also be caused by processing factories using up the products), but on the other the more I grow the city, the more IT cluster I can zone before it starts complaining about not enough buyers.
 
I actually wonder if my inaccessible commercial not complaining is the result of having IT cluster specialisation in my city. It’s in a different part than the aforementioned commercial, but given that it doesn’t generate trucks, that’s not a problem. On one hand I would say it shouldn’t affect it because local produce wants agricultural products instead of regular goods (and basically all my import is agricultural despite having quite a large farming area, however it might also be caused by processing factories using up the products), but on the other the more I grow the city, the more IT cluster I can zone before it starts complaining about not enough buyers.
I'm not certain IT office actually produces generic good that contribute. I suspect its a hidden product that commercial buys but isn't part of the normal chain. It just exists as a way of limiting how much IT you have.
 
I'm not certain IT office actually produces generic good that contribute. I suspect its a hidden product that commercial buys but isn't part of the normal chain. It just exists as a way of limiting how much IT you have.

I've already verified that IT can replace all generic industries in a large city with a fair bit of commercial in it. In my city of about 100K people, I've zoned a lot of IT, and deleted every bit of industrial to see if the commercial would start complaining about lacking goods to sell. I've let the simulation run a fair amount of time, and they didn't complain. Maybe they would eventually start complaining, maybe there is a limit to how much IT can sustain commercial, but I think this is interesting to note nonetheless.
 
While I'm glad that the IT offices DO provide some sort of goods (I wish that behavior can transfer to normal offices, as well), I don't think it should be possible for commercial stores to completely survive off of their goods. The IT office goods are obviously immaterial (since they don't need trucks to be delivered), so what are those stores selling? Stores (especially higher level ones) should require both immaterial IT office goods AND physical industrial goods. Otherwise, it wouldn't make any sense.
 
in an industrial-free city commercial buildings are probably relying on imported goods, supplemented by IT cluster goods.
 
While I'm glad that the IT offices DO provide some sort of goods (I wish that behavior can transfer to normal offices, as well), I don't think it should be possible for commercial stores to completely survive off of their goods.
I agree, but a lot of things don't make sense in this game. How come residents can survive with only offices and nothing else? It's just as bad, really.

in an industrial-free city commercial buildings are probably relying on imported goods, supplemented by IT cluster goods.

I don't think that's likely because after I got rid of my industrial, commercial weren't importing more goods than before. I don't see any reason to believe that they need to import alongside what the IT provide them.

Looks to me that IT offices are very powerful in their current state. Allowing for the removal of industrial traffic while still sustaining commercial. I guess their only downsides is that they take more space while providing a very little amount of jobs.
 
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It feels a bit weird that such large skyscrapers provide job for just a few people each, most I’ve seen is 9. There should be a low density option; for everything really, I should be able to have all available specialisations in my city if I feel like it, and without a single skyscraper. But if I want IT cluster or tourism, or even general offices I’ll end up with tall buildings. Does European style work for specialisations? I know it works for regular offices, so maybe it does for IT cluster too, I’ve never tried.
 
Residential specialization: As far as I can tell this spec is exactly as it appears in the tooltip. No extra or hidden mechanics. If anybody has found anything please chime in.

From my experience so far - such as comparing a green zone with a normal zone of similar population - a green/self-sufficient zone will spawn far less "workers" - perhaps by 50% - so not good for a quick labour fix.

Makes sense, as they are all working on their allotments/farms.

Also, going "green" residentially seems to upset the birth/death ratio - almost like having high education (via Hadron or policy) - with many seniors (up to 29%) - then dying off (down to 18%) - but this eases over time - by adding more "normal zones".

Be interesting to know how a pure self-sufficient city works - but there's not time to try everything!
 
I had a pure self-sufficient city, now it’s almost as I created a district that pretends to be a village, and it has normal housing. But it’s a small percentage of my population, about 1000 cims in a city of ~130k. It does seem like my population fluctuates and changes by a few thousands every now and then, and the birth/death ratio fluctuates too (I’ll post charts tomorrow). I can’t say anything about workers – newly zoned farms and commercial do complain about the lack of workers, but I blame education for that. After some time they get their workers, however it always involves a few abandoned buildings. It is like that in a regular city too, but I don’t remember to what extent.

I also wonder about the IT cluster. At some point I zoned slightly more (it probably wasn’t even enough for 10 buildings for all I remember) and for a long time it was fine, but at some point they suddenly started complaining about not enough buyers and I had to reduce the zone again. No idea what caused that, I didn’t reduce my commercial or anything.

Edit: I forgot to mention taxes. I keep them high (12-13%) as I get less than I normally would because of 99% of my population being self-sufficient (30% less tax income). At some point I wanted to get a bit more money and increased it to 13% for low density residential (as that is what gives me most income). I didn’t look at my regular residential village and was focused on building something, and at some point someone on chirper mentioned abandoned buildings – I zoomed out and it turned out it was my village almost completely abandoned because of the taxes. Self-sufficient residential didn’t complain, which is probably because they give less by default.
 
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I also wonder about the IT cluster. At some point I zoned slightly more (it probably wasn’t even enough for 10 buildings for all I remember) and for a long time it was fine, but at some point they suddenly started complaining about not enough buyers and I had to reduce the zone again. No idea what caused that, I didn’t reduce my commercial or anything.

Did you make regular industry? I have gotten some indications that IT does actually make regular goods but abandons if they have to export.
 
Good post. This is my experience with "Green Cities" so far:
-Monument "Ultimate Recycling" works for a large area (not enough for the entire city). But if there are incinerators, trucks of "Ultimate Recycling" will not go.
Of course monument is very expensive, and does not seem to compensate.
It happens the same with "recycling plant": if there are incinerators, trucks of "recycling plant" will not go.
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-"IT Offices" produce many goods. Supply to "commercial zone", and substitute "goods industries". And without generating traffic.
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Even get to see this:
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-Except "farming industry" (by eco commercial), "goods industry" (and with it forest, ore and oil industry), practically do not need to put.

In short, "Green Cities" invites to eliminate incinerators ( putting recycling plant) , and do not put industries of all kinds, except farming. And causes a drop in traffic.
I do not see badly the idea of "IT Offices" produce goods for shops, and not have to fill the city areas of industries on all 4 sides.
However, why there is not vans from offices to shops transporting goods? Teleportation? :confused:
 
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