What am I doing wrong?

[JuliusAlexander]

Why does my commercial demand always outstrip my industrial demand, and to a lesser extent, my residential demand? I know of no city in the world with more shops than houses, and if I attempt to get even close to the amount of factories required to supply goods to my commercial zones if I fill that demand, those factories can't get the resources required to function. I genuinely don't understand this. Surely residential demand should always be the highest, not commercial? No one opens a shop and then hopes a property developer builds the houses for people to move into who may or may not become your employees, that's daft. I just don't get it. Even if I just go with the flow of how the game's been built, how do I meet the demand for materials for my factories to produce goods with?

And please don't ask me to upload a save game, 99% of my buildings are workshop assets, it would take you half a day to down load everything you need just to load the save up. I'm asking a generalised question. I know we're all waiting for Cities 2 but some of us are still learning Cities 1 so taking the time to help would be appreciated.

 

[MrDaaark]

It's hard to answer without seeing what your city looks like. Screenshots go a long way.

if you have lots of high density housing units, then you need a lot more commercial to cover those units then you would with low density units. Try converting some of your low density commercial into higher density to serve more customers.

Commercial serves 2 purposes. They purchase goods from industrial, and they sell those goods to residents. They also provide jobs. All your factories will need a commercial business to buy their goods, and all the residents need commercial units to purchase them from and work. You need to balance out your supply and demand.

Also not that the unique buildings that claim to be commercial spaces do not actually factor into that supply or demand. They add to the entertainment score and attract tourist.

 

[ASGeek2012]

The commercial demand indicator I find always overestimates how much commercial areas your city needs once the city starts to become big. I've discovered that if I put in enough commercial to completely flatline that indicator, one of two things will happen:

1) Traffic will become horrible
2) Commercial areas will start complaining about not enough customers.

I generally always leave some amount of demand on the bar and my cities seem to work out okay.

 

[JuliusAlexander]

The commercial demand indicator I find always overestimates how much commercial areas your city needs once the city starts to become big. I've discovered that if I put in enough commercial to completely flatline that indicator, one of two things will happen:

1) Traffic will become horrible
2) Commercial areas will start complaining about not enough customers.

I generally always leave some amount of demand on the bar and my cities seem to work out okay.

It does but I'm using the mod that recalculates it, which has significantly reduced the demand, but perhaps I didn't frame the question correctly, let me try again. When I talk about demand I'm not referring to the indicators, I'm referring to the fact that I can never meet their demand for goods because over a certain amount of industrial required to make the goods the factories start going out of business due to lack of materials. Demand - as in demand for goods - is persistently, and across maps, outstripping supply - i.e. my ability to supply them with goods. This has been plaguing me since day 1 of playing the game. Even adding a Cargo Terminal and/or hub does not meet the industrial thirst for materials.

On a side note, another thing I've been having persistent issues with lately is moaning about land value in the highest land value areas on the map (2nd tier highest). Is this a bug?

 

[ASGeek2012]

In general, if industry is complaining about lack of materials, the solution is to zone more specialized industry so that you can generate those materials locally. There is a limit to how much you can import. Once the imports start to reach 10,000 or so, you're going to have issues where you cannot bring in materials from outside fast enough to meet the need.

At the same time, though, I've never had to zone so much industry that they run out of materials regardless of how little or how much I'm making locally. Are you quite sure you need as much industry as you think you do? Are you sure the mod is not making you zone too much commercial? I know you said you can't share a save game, but could you post some screenshots of your city from the zoning view so we can see what pattern of zoning you've been using? It would really help visualize the problem.

As for the land value issue, that would also benefit from some screen shots. Generally when a buildings starts complaining about land value, it means that the value was high and then something happened to reduce it. This can even happen in the case where the land value is in the second tier. if the building had reached first tier, then as soon as the land value drops to second tier, they will complain.

One gotcha I discovered with land value has to do with the water. Land near the water always has high land value, so buildings there will often upgrade to their highest level even if lacking in other amenities. However, if you have too many water pumps clustered together, they will suck up so much water that it will lower the water level and hence the land value. Not saying that's the case here, just one example of how land value can drop.

 

[foamyesque]

Land value drops are generally due to relocating services or noise/pollution encroaching. Or by plopping assets that're higher level than the area can support, if you're doing Find It / RICO stuff.


As for the goods: You don't need a *lot* of industry necessarily, but you can't rely on the RCI indicators at all to tell you how much you need in order to supply goods for your commercial spaces; the industrial bar is essentially an unemployment meter, and the commercial one lies to you about how much commercial zoning you actually need.

Instead, check your outside connection screen. If you're importing significant amounts of something, try to zone for local production of it. Generic goods manufacture (other than the magic IT Cluster materials) requires either specialized industrial products from specialized zoned industry processor buildings, or the processed products produced from the industry DLC processor buildings. So if you're getting 'not enough raw materials' from your industrial buildings, it's because they're missing those items.

If you've zoned to 0 on the commercial RCI, you'll have more commercial zoning than you ought, which will result in disproportionately large industrial demand, which becomes difficult both to manage the traffic of and supply workers to. In general you should keep commercial demand moderately positive and build out your industrial areas based on your import/export and employment status.

If you want to generate more production on the same number of buildings, there's also the Industrial Space Planning and Industry 4.0 policies. Both of these dramatically increase the output (and demanded inputs) of industrial buildings, and Industry 4.0 also reduces the employment requirement (and makes it for educated cims to boot), so you can get way more production out of a smaller space and fewer people, which frees up workers.

 

[JuliusAlexander]

In general, if industry is complaining about lack of materials, the solution is to zone more specialized industry so that you can generate those materials locally. There is a limit to how much you can import. Once the imports start to reach 10,000 or so, you're going to have issues where you cannot bring in materials from outside fast enough to meet the need.

At the same time, though, I've never had to zone so much industry that they run out of materials regardless of how little or how much I'm making locally. Are you quite sure you need as much industry as you think you do? Are you sure the mod is not making you zone too much commercial? I know you said you can't share a save game, but could you post some screenshots of your city from the zoning view so we can see what pattern of zoning you've been using? It would really help visualize the problem.

As for the land value issue, that would also benefit from some screen shots. Generally when a buildings starts complaining about land value, it means that the value was high and then something happened to reduce it. This can even happen in the case where the land value is in the second tier. if the building had reached first tier, then as soon as the land value drops to second tier, they will complain.

One gotcha I discovered with land value has to do with the water. Land near the water always has high land value, so buildings there will often upgrade to their highest level even if lacking in other amenities. However, if you have too many water pumps clustered together, they will suck up so much water that it will lower the water level and hence the land value. Not saying that's the case here, just one example of how land value can drop.

I already have every specialised industry set up in a centralised area. Perhaps I should just ignore the commercial zone bar altogether this deep into the game (Megalopolis) and just focus on providing employment through entertainment, services and offices, etc. I can't hope to meet the supply demand for goods.

But I want to ask another question. Riddle me this. How do I go from an income of +35K with a population of ~35K to -70K with a population roughly double? I redesigned a housing area and changed the style from low density to high density and my income has dropped almost 100K. There are aspects of this game that make absolutely no logical sense, aspects such as a tidal wave appearing in the middle of my city despite the fact I have disasters turned off and engaged in no landscaping of the coast. Utterly baffling. Since most of my tax comes from residential logically my income should have risen, not plummeted.

 

[ASGeek2012]

I already have every specialised industry set up in a centralised area. Perhaps I should just ignore the commercial zone bar altogether this deep into the game (Megalopolis) and just focus on providing employment through entertainment, services and offices, etc. I can't hope to meet the supply demand for goods.

Okay, so can you take a look at something for me? Please take a look at the outside connections panel, where it shows your import and export. Are goods showing up on either one (it's the purple color I think)? If you're still importing, then yeah, you probably need to produce more internally. But if you are exporting a significant amount, then you do NOT need more industry. You are making so much that your commercial areas cannot consume it all.

Also, where specifically are you seeing that your commercial areas are demanding more goods? I had talked about the RCI meters but you said it didn't have to do with that. What is specifically telling you that you need to produce more goods? You also said something about a mod that was recalculating something for you. Which mod is this?

But I want to ask another question. Riddle me this. How do I go from an income of +35K with a population of ~35K to -70K with a population roughly double? I redesigned a housing area and changed the style from low density to high density and my income has dropped almost 100K. There are aspects of this game that make absolutely no logical sense, aspects such as a tidal wave appearing in the middle of my city despite the fact I have disasters turned off and engaged in no landscaping of the coast. Utterly baffling. Since most of my tax comes from residential logically my income should have risen, not plummeted.

Do you use the industries DLC by any chance? I know that income from that can fluctuate quite a bit.

As for the tidal wave, only thing I know that could cause that without disasters is if some landscaping was done near a water source. Modifying the terrain height near or in the water can disturb it enough that it needs time to settle down. Note that you don't have to be near the coast for this to happen. If you have a lake or even a small pond, it can happen there, too. Any body of water you see in the game has a water source in it.

And again, it would really help us help you if you posted some screenshots of what you are seeing.

 

[Ragga Muffin]

I already have every specialised industry set up in a centralised area. Perhaps I should just ignore the commercial zone bar altogether this deep into the game (Megalopolis) and just focus on providing employment through entertainment, services and offices, etc. I can't hope to meet the supply demand for goods.

But I want to ask another question. Riddle me this. How do I go from an income of +35K with a population of ~35K to -70K with a population roughly double? I redesigned a housing area and changed the style from low density to high density and my income has dropped almost 100K. There are aspects of this game that make absolutely no logical sense, aspects such as a tidal wave appearing in the middle of my city despite the fact I have disasters turned off and engaged in no landscaping of the coast. Utterly baffling. Since most of my tax comes from residential logically my income should have risen, not plummeted.

There is a switch over with higher populations.
The switch is making goods for employing people and exporting for money
To a more service base economy which will services your people but demands the goods you sell

But if your commercial zones are not fully developed or high land value then the return is not quite as high or easy as the investment you had to put into indy early game
Your income should be coming from your commerse or indy, your res cost you double what they give you in taxes
There is also a delay between more resources needed and more money made, and more money made will happen when commerce levels

Try placing a 15x15 park, with at least 7-8 atttractions, putting paths through sides and corners, then zone a shed ton of dark blue 4x4 upto the road. Pull the park boundry right upto the road. So some building wont quite be 4x4 due to paths. Now make park free. Now go kill a bit of that under leveled blue. Now watch that area go mental with level ups.

Not being able to make money with indy dlc, sorry dude - skill issue

 

[JuliusAlexander]

Okay, so can you take a look at something for me? Please take a look at the outside connections panel, where it shows your import and export. Are goods showing up on either one (it's the purple color I think)? If you're still importing, then yeah, you probably need to produce more internally. But if you are exporting a significant amount, then you do NOT need more industry. You are making so much that your commercial areas cannot consume it all.

Also, where specifically are you seeing that your commercial areas are demanding more goods? I had talked about the RCI meters but you said it didn't have to do with that. What is specifically telling you that you need to produce more goods? You also said something about a mod that was recalculating something for you. Which mod is this?


Do you use the industries DLC by any chance? I know that income from that can fluctuate quite a bit.

As for the tidal wave, only thing I know that could cause that without disasters is if some landscaping was done near a water source. Modifying the terrain height near or in the water can disturb it enough that it needs time to settle down. Note that you don't have to be near the coast for this to happen. If you have a lake or even a small pond, it can happen there, too. Any body of water you see in the game has a water source in it.

And again, it would really help us help you if you posted some screenshots of what you are seeing.

OK this thread is branching out to multiple topics so I'll address each in turn, but before I do I want to make something clear. I'm inexperienced, not a raw noob. I have a decent grasp of the game mechanics at this point, it's the experience with the game mechanics I lack, the little tricks more experienced builders use to keep things ticking over nicely. Keep that when you approach this, please.

So Industry, yes I use Industries DLC (I have all purchasable content for this game). I'm importing around twice as much as I'm exporting and by some ridiculous margin, Goods is the highest percentage of imports. Ten times as many Goods are imported as I export. After that everything else is fairly balanced because my specialised industries are set up in a way to only service my unique factories and not export their wares which, before the problem started, allowed me to engage in a minimalist approach which massively increased profits.



Here is a before and after of my loss of income. The change is the addition of a new downtown area that is comprised mostly of offices with a few residential thrown in, and some commercial around the fringes. The redesign of my low density residential area occurred prior to this screenshot but I was still in profit at the time of this save.



As you can see in the before shot, I'm in profit. I then proceeded to address my huge industrial demand by creating a downtown area mainly comprised of office space, with a little bit of high rise residential and a smattering of commercial around the fringes. The balance sheet in the after pic tells its own story. The biggest loss I'm making is on my metro, but I only made two changes to it between pictures, one was the addition of an underground plaza as the centrepiece of the downtown area, and the creation of two new lines. All lines are operating a single, High Capacity train.



As you can see with the 'After' shot, there has been a minor drop in income but a massive increase in expenditure. To be clear, I do not have the free public transport policy active anywhere in the city. The other change was that this new downtown area was built exclusively with trams and monorail in mind and all roads operate tram lines now. As with the metro, all tram and monorail routes operate a single vehicle. With the tram I have one going clockwise around the city, the other anti-clockwise, so two new trams. To offset this I upgraded some existing tram routes to a larger capacity tram and reduced the number of vehicles in operation. I also meticulously went through my bus routes, deleting lines no longer needed, and removing stops with little to no demand for them. I try to keep everything streamlined when I can.

Here was what my Public transport looked like before the changes:



And after:



Honestly I'd love to just throw up comparative saves for you but this city has been built with so many workshop assets it would never load for you (I detest the vanilla skyscraper assets) but I'm providing screenshots as best I can. I need to get to the bottom of this, because I can't see where I'm loosing 75K just through the addition of a new area., and a redesign of a low density area into a high density for aesthetic reasons, despite the redesigned area having 4.5x the population.

Moving on to the industry, I'll post screenshots when it happens, however, I've much reduced my commercial for now to prevent it from happening, but all it is is simply the icon above most generic factories such as you can see in the screenshots saying insufficient materials, factories that are right next to a cargo terminal, as in the PT Before screenshot. It might help if I got an answer finally to my thrice asked question as to why my Cargo Hub isn't receiving ships? Neither do my cargo ports, and no it's not because I haven't lined them up properly, I have. The train works, freight ships just don't spawn.

Thanks for the ongoing help and advice and let me know if you need screenshots of anything else.

There is a switch over with higher populations.
The switch is making goods for employing people and exporting for money
To a more service base economy which will services your people but demands the goods you sell

But if your commercial zones are not fully developed or high land value then the return is not quite as high or easy as the investment you had to put into indy early game
Your income should be coming from your commerse or indy, your res cost you double what they give you in taxes
There is also a delay between more resources needed and more money made, and more money made will happen when commerce levels

Try placing a 15x15 park, with at least 7-8 atttractions, putting paths through sides and corners, then zone a shed ton of dark blue 4x4 upto the road. Pull the park boundry right upto the road. So some building wont quite be 4x4 due to paths. Now make park free. Now go kill a bit of that under leveled blue. Now watch that area go mental with level ups.

Not being able to make money with indy dlc, sorry dude - skill issue

I am aware, but a decade of in-game time has passed since the changes were made. Land value in the area is amongst the highest, it has all available services but the park I'm building is incomplete and so hasn't been districted yet. My industry is spread across four areas, three of which have a cargo terminal next to them, and all but one being very close to a residential area. The one that isn't is the largest and is in my main services area for the entire city. In total my genetic industry comprises of over 100 factories, I also have oil, ore, forestry, and farming with a Lemonade Factory and a furniture factory and a toy factory. I have got this to the point of consistent, uninterrupted output.

The new downtown area was originally built with more residential and commercial, dropping the commercial demand from its current 3/4 filled bar to 1/2 filled. I had so many problems with factories unable to meet the supply of goods that I redesigned it to be primarily office space which has brought the factories back under control. I'm aware of the weird way in which Colossal decided to calculate Commercial demand and I use the rebalancing mod to address that. Before I did the demand bar was maxed out.

 

[ASGeek2012]

So concerning the lack of resources, I assume you mean your generic industry and not the DLC industry? If so, I don't see an immediate reason for why you're not getting enough resources for your industry. Your imports are substantial, but well short of the cap (which is about 12,000 I think).

Generally when there's an issue getting resources or goods and there's no immediate supply problem, the other most common cause is traffic. How is the traffic in your city? I try to aim for a traffic flow between 80 and 85 (that's with the TMPE mod active, which skews the traffic readings about 5 points lower than vanilla). Are you sure your ports have an uninterrupted path via roads to your industrial area? Are there any one-way roads that may be preventing a round trip? if you're running the TMPE mod, one trick you can try is turning off despawning and letting the game run. If your traffic quickly goes to hell, this could mean you have traffic issues causing your industry vehicles to despawn.

(You said you were not a noob, but I don't know your experience level, so I'll explain what I mean by despawning: In the vanilla game, when a vehicle sets out, it has a timer. If the timer expires -- say the vehicle gets stuck in traffic -- it will despawn. If that vehicle was a truck delivering resources to your industry, then those resources go POOF and the industry has to send out a new call for that resource. If you have traffic issues, this can lead to a vicious cycle of repeated despawning and calling for the same resource over and over).

More importantly though, are you getting any inbound traffic to those ports? If not, I would try to take a look at the edges of the map to see if there are ships stuck there (it helps to have the mod that lets you see outside your tiles and lifts the edge fog).

If none of these are potential solutions to your import issues, then the only thing I can think of is a broken or incompatible mod. Here's a good resource for checking if you're running any broken mods:

[Cities Skylines] Broken & Incompatible Mods - Patch 1.16.1-f2 - Google Drive

docs.google.com

The overall loss of income you mentioned is a bit of a mystery. A temporary loss of income could be explained by the conversion of that residential area from low to high density, as you're effectively kicking everyone of their {presumably leveled up) homes and forcing the neighborhood to repopulate (into non-leveled up, albeit high-density, homes). As I mentioned before, income from DLC industry can fluctuate quite a bit. You could also check your DLC industry areas and see if they are importing a significant amount of materials.

 

[Ragga Muffin]

100 generic factories? Horrible dirty things. Ive got about 40 full size ones. At about 77k.
You have also dropped your power budget, go kill those spares until your usage is about 80% and the budget is 100%
Coal is by far best bang for buck, but your city prob needs 2 solar updrafts and an ocean generator for whole city. With incinerators/wtc giving rest

You have doubled your indy budget, why? Use the individual bars on each factory if you want, personally i just build extra secondaries and increase the bar on the uniques.
I know not everybody builds there city inside a 5 star park but my WHOLE city except for the edge of my airport is dark blue land value.
Even my filthy generic and my night club district under on an island under a floating stack. Are silly LV

So milk that indy dlc, murder that generic., you have a lemonade factory, wow shut the front door. Now go get your oil refinery, (your cash machine)
To put things into perspective, i play slow speed, ive got 0.47 billion in the bank
I spend about 30k per tick on trams, (traffic elimination), 3700 ridership. More frieght yards than you can find in cities twice the size. 85% flow (vanilla)
My healthcare and deathcare is double what i need, i skimp fire and police. (i have ZERO crime, many fires),
Ive spent half a billion terraforming, (under estimation)
Ive also got 1 resort area that has never made me money due to it being under water for the last 100years game time
I have 1 building somewhere not heated and cant find it so also have 15 boilers AND 15 geothermal, (unlocks)
My income always displays -35k (crude imports), but my income has only gone up until i was shoe horning a plaza area in limited space. Its now developed and stable.

The city above is Frozenfalls, from someone that got bored of building sensible things quite some time back.
Go see it at twitch if you want, it is as mental as it sounds, it is worth a look

 

[JuliusAlexander]

So concerning the lack of resources, I assume you mean your generic industry and not the DLC industry? If so, I don't see an immediate reason for why you're not getting enough resources for your industry. Your imports are substantial, but well short of the cap (which is about 12,000 I think).

Generally when there's an issue getting resources or goods and there's no immediate supply problem, the other most common cause is traffic. How is the traffic in your city? I try to aim for a traffic flow between 80 and 85 (that's with the TMPE mod active, which skews the traffic readings about 5 points lower than vanilla). Are you sure your ports have an uninterrupted path via roads to your industrial area? Are there any one-way roads that may be preventing a round trip? if you're running the TMPE mod, one trick you can try is turning off despawning and letting the game run. If your traffic quickly goes to hell, this could mean you have traffic issues causing your industry vehicles to despawn.

(You said you were not a noob, but I don't know your experience level, so I'll explain what I mean by despawning: In the vanilla game, when a vehicle sets out, it has a timer. If the timer expires -- say the vehicle gets stuck in traffic -- it will despawn. If that vehicle was a truck delivering resources to your industry, then those resources go POOF and the industry has to send out a new call for that resource. If you have traffic issues, this can lead to a vicious cycle of repeated despawning and calling for the same resource over and over).

More importantly though, are you getting any inbound traffic to those ports? If not, I would try to take a look at the edges of the map to see if there are ships stuck there (it helps to have the mod that lets you see outside your tiles and lifts the edge fog).

If none of these are potential solutions to your import issues, then the only thing I can think of is a broken or incompatible mod. Here's a good resource for checking if you're running any broken mods:

[Cities Skylines] Broken & Incompatible Mods - Patch 1.16.1-f2 - Google Drive

docs.google.com

The overall loss of income you mentioned is a bit of a mystery. A temporary loss of income could be explained by the conversion of that residential area from low to high density, as you're effectively kicking everyone of their {presumably leveled up) homes and forcing the neighborhood to repopulate (into non-leveled up, albeit high-density, homes). As I mentioned before, income from DLC industry can fluctuate quite a bit. You could also check your DLC industry areas and see if they are importing a significant amount of materials.

I said materials, not resources, they're different things. One can be produced through a specialised industry, the other appears to be imported and is required by generic industry. All references to materials is the latter.

Cities Skylines Icons Meaning - Cities Skylines Tips

All Cities Skylines icons in one table

citiesskylinestips.com

Top one. That's the message that hovers above generic industry buildings.

Am I getting inbound traffic to them? Yes I am, and trains. I know there's a mod that removes the fog but I can't remember the name of it. Anyone know it?

I've tracked down what's causing the radical drop, but I have absolutely not the first clue why it happened. For some reason there has been a dramatic increase in public transport. You see in the after shot, the profit is -32K? It's now -38K and I have changed nothing. By some considerable distance PT is my biggest expenditure, nothing even comes close, and I don't know why it's going up either.

 

[JuliusAlexander]

100 generic factories? Horrible dirty things. Ive got about 40 full size ones. At about 77k.
You have also dropped your power budget, go kill those spares until your usage is about 80% and the budget is 100%
Coal is by far best bang for buck, but your city prob needs 2 solar updrafts and an ocean generator for whole city. With incinerators/wtc giving rest

You have doubled your indy budget, why? Use the individual bars on each factory if you want, personally i just build extra secondaries and increase the bar on the uniques.
I know not everybody builds there city inside a 5 star park but my WHOLE city except for the edge of my airport is dark blue land value.
Even my filthy generic and my night club district under on an island under a floating stack. Are silly LV

So milk that indy dlc, murder that generic., you have a lemonade factory, wow shut the front door. Now go get your oil refinery, (your cash machine)
To put things into perspective, i play slow speed, ive got 0.47 billion in the bank
I spend about 30k per tick on trams, (traffic elimination), 3700 ridership. More frieght yards than you can find in cities twice the size. 85% flow (vanilla)
My healthcare and deathcare is double what i need, i skimp fire and police. (i have ZERO crime, many fires),
Ive spent half a billion terraforming, (under estimation)
Ive also got 1 resort area that has never made me money due to it being under water for the last 100years game time
I have 1 building somewhere not heated and cant find it so also have 15 boilers AND 15 geothermal, (unlocks)
My income always displays -35k (crude imports), but my income has only gone up until i was shoe horning a plaza area in limited space. Its now developed and stable.

The city above is Frozenfalls, from someone that got bored of building sensible things quite some time back.
Go see it at twitch if you want, it is as mental as it sounds, it is worth a look

I'll read this tomorrow but I also have a fish factory. I've also not doubled any budget, I've increased allocated workers. As I've said a couple of times now I have all specialised industries. That includes oil. City above where?

 

[Ragga Muffin]

I'll read this tomorrow but I also have a fish factory. I've also not doubled any budget, I've increased allocated workers. As I've said a couple of times now I have all specialised industries. That includes oil. City above where?

The city i describe above
twitch.tv/SupaStalkA to go see it

 

[MarkJohnson]

Why does my commercial demand always outstrip my industrial demand, and to a lesser extent, my residential demand?

First, residential. Roughly two workers are needed for each job. Commerce has multiple requirements. It needs freight, workers, tourists, and jobs. It is always in high demand. Industry only makes freight. so it doesn't have as much demand.

Secondly, commerce is optional, Since tourists and shoppers are optional.

Third, your Industries DLC doesn't affect your yellow, zoned Generic Industry.

And please don't ask me to upload a save game.

I waited almost 3-fulldays before asking for a saved game. It is just too hard to guess your great many issues without seeing your city in action.

On a side note, another thing I've been having persistent issues with lately is moaning about land value in the highest land value areas on the map (2nd tier highest). Is this a bug?

Try to keep your post on-topic. This is just going to add confusion and complicate diagnosis. Solve your problems one at a time.

If you feel you need help now, then start a second thread.

 

[foamyesque]

@JuliusAlexander: What does your pie-chart breakdown of your zoning types look like? (Or, if you go into your city stats, what are the raw number of zoned RICO squares)? How many unique factories/fish factories do you have going on?

 

[JuliusAlexander]

100 generic factories? Horrible dirty things. Ive got about 40 full size ones. At about 77k.
You have also dropped your power budget, go kill those spares until your usage is about 80% and the budget is 100%
Coal is by far best bang for buck, but your city prob needs 2 solar updrafts and an ocean generator for whole city. With incinerators/wtc giving rest

You have doubled your indy budget, why? Use the individual bars on each factory if you want, personally i just build extra secondaries and increase the bar on the uniques.
I know not everybody builds there city inside a 5 star park but my WHOLE city except for the edge of my airport is dark blue land value.
Even my filthy generic and my night club district under on an island under a floating stack. Are silly LV

So milk that indy dlc, murder that generic., you have a lemonade factory, wow shut the front door. Now go get your oil refinery, (your cash machine)
To put things into perspective, i play slow speed, ive got 0.47 billion in the bank
I spend about 30k per tick on trams, (traffic elimination), 3700 ridership. More frieght yards than you can find in cities twice the size. 85% flow (vanilla)
My healthcare and deathcare is double what i need, i skimp fire and police. (i have ZERO crime, many fires),
Ive spent half a billion terraforming, (under estimation)
Ive also got 1 resort area that has never made me money due to it being under water for the last 100years game time
I have 1 building somewhere not heated and cant find it so also have 15 boilers AND 15 geothermal, (unlocks)
My income always displays -35k (crude imports), but my income has only gone up until i was shoe horning a plaza area in limited space. Its now developed and stable.

The city above is Frozenfalls, from someone that got bored of building sensible things quite some time back.
Go see it at twitch if you want, it is as mental as it sounds, it is worth a look

OK Sorry about that last night, your reply dropped just as I was going to bed. The 100 generic goes to the heart of the original question, those 100 generic are powering 80 commercial, which means the ratio of factory to commercial is higher than 1:1 which is utter nonsense, it's not I know for an absolutely 100% fact it's not because I did testing and one factory can supply several commercial but for some reason not in my game. And it's not just 100 generic, I have a fish factory doing the same thing, and unique industry doing the same thing, so all in all the ratio is ridiculously high yet I cannot increase my commercial without them all begging for more goods to sell which I can never provide because I can never get enough materials to my factories to keep up and I don't understand why. For now I'm ignoring commercial demand altogether and I'm more concerned with the catastrophic drop in income.

For power I use a Fusion plant which is the same price as a Nuclear, but clean and generates more power. I know the coal plant is widely considered to give you the best bang for your buck but it doesn't, the Fusion plant does by a wide margin. Coal costs 17.5 per MW as opposed to the Fusion costing 0.62 per MW coupled with what is in effect infinite energy, more than offsets its giant footprint and huge outlay and ongoing cost.

Anyway, I have reduced my allocation of workers to Industry back to 100%, and reduced all my public transport to 50%, dropped my education worker budget back to 100%, increased by oil production by 33% (i.e. added another three oil wells), reduced all public transport budgets to 50%, added a warehouse/storage facility as the next building along directly on the path of headed traffic so the journey is as short as it can possible be. I also increased all Unique Factory production to 150%, and added a few more fishing routes to keep the factory online. The result of this cost cutting? My income dropped a further 46K. This is insanity. Real world economics do not work this way, businesses do not undertake cost cutting measures and see their profitability drop by 200%, something is wonky somewhere because this is literally impossible mathematics. 2-1 does not equal 4.5.

 

[JuliusAlexander]

@JuliusAlexander: What does your pie-chart breakdown of your zoning types look like? (Or, if you go into your city stats, what are the raw number of zoned RICO squares)? How many unique factories/fish factories do you have going on?

Predominately residential.

 

[foamyesque]

Huh, that *is* odd. You've got what ought to be entirely ample industrial zoning for the amount of commercial you have, even without using Industrial Space Planning or Industry 4.0.

That suggests your issue lies in the transport infrastructure.

Do you have a zoning map you could share? Have you tried placing goods warehouses? You'd want ones on empty by your producers, and ones on full by your commercial area(s). Have you check the buildings that say they're not getting enough goods to see if anything is *attempting* to route there, but not arriving in time? Have you applied the Heavy Traffic Ban or Old Town policies anywhere?

Another option would be to take that office zoning, which is pretty hefty IMO, and flip a bunch of it to IT Cluster. Because IT goods teleport, they will simply *appear* in stores, which may help. They also don't require any material inputs.