Vanishing Income ?

[oogle]

I seem to experience vanishing income ?

I have a city made without mods that I downloaded from the workshop and even when I run no mods that income has major issues.

Population fluctuates between 175k and 190k

Starts with Residential Taxes approx. 350k, Commercial 160k, industry 20k offices 60k (Happiness 100, 78, 98 98 respectively) That's with Industrial Space Planning and High Tech Housing on and Small/Big Business Benefactor off. City makes 15k per week

I turn on Big Business Benefactor - this boosts commercial income from 160k to 475k and a weekly income of 307k

As the game runs all this extra income just slowly vanishes. 10 minutes later and

Population has dropped by about 7k, happiness remains the same

residential is down to 268k, commercial to 367k, industry to 17k and officers to 46k - weekly income is down to 100k and still dropping.

a while later population is down 13k and weekly income down to 52k

bit later and population is going back up.. but weekly income is still going down.

take off big business benefactor and city drops to 163k in the red...and starts slowly the weekly loss amount starts to drop again...

 

[oogle]

Try the same with adjusting tax rates from original 9% to 11% - taxes go from 14k to 138k and happiness goes from 100, 78, 98 98 to 100,77,96,96 - weekly income slowy drops back down to 15k even as the population going back up...

 

[oogle]

different map.. same thing occurs....

 

[oogle]

turn tax up from 9-12%, turn big business benefactor on .... income has dropped to 15k again when I wake up.

made the city bigger, happiness still the same but the amount of tax they are paying is now less even though the population is 100,000 higher... still averaging 15k

So this game has 283,910 residents all high density with 100% happiness and they pay 110k per week in residential taxes at 9%

(when I downloaded it there were 189,612 residents all high density with 100% happiness and they paid 357k per week in residential taxes at 9%

a game I started myself goes the same way

19k 100% 12% they pay 32k
With pop at 42k all high density 100% happy 12% tax they pay 54k
86k 100% 12% they pay 85k
122k 100% 12% they pay 84k...

 

[oogle]

tried again, as soon as city started making positive income, all forms of income started to decrease until income when back into red, at which point it started increasing again

 

[oogle]

still happening

 

[Spun]

I have had similar experience with the budget and income in this game, the income fluctuates heavily and there is no real indicator that your doing something wrong or right. I have done several experiences and my conclusion is that your income is mostly dependant on your expenses. Simple as that. (Did an experiment where I put down a piece of road far away from the city and just went batshit crazy with uniques, hospitals, firestations etc. and look and behold my income adjusted to match my expenses)

Ive played several cities and one experiment that is just weird as shit is I kick out everyone from the city (raise taxes). Then lower them to 9% again and about at the time half the population has moved back in they have exceeded the income of the previous population. The dispersion between kids/workers/seniors is roughly the same. This makes no sense at all and you cant make out a real budget from this wildly pending income. Which is sad.

I firmly believe that they dont really have a budgetsystem (other than being directly linked to expense) and if they do the information to what its based on is shit.

 

[Herr_Bert]

Same here. My city income stabilizes around +10k, no matter how large it is or how efficient I build. Tax increase results in a temporary boost but after a while, the income stabilizes to +10k again. Same for Small/Big Business Benefactor. And if I turn them off later, my income goes negative for a while until it goes back to ... +10k. Always around +10k (+/-5k) no matter what I do. I believe there is some underlying "hack" that always stabilizes income. It's very frustrating and kills any motivation to continue this game.

Cities Skylines is mainly about aesthetics, but the underlying mechanic seems to be broken in so many ways.