Where's the middle class? Where's the 99%?

[Dab42]

I could never get "City Life" to actually work on my computer all that well, but one concept it had that at least sounded cool was the idea of having to satisfy different social groups, with a slightly more complex class structure than the §-level system in SimCity-- "elites," "suits," "blue collars," "have-nots," "fringes," and "radical chics." (Here's a fuller description: http://citybuildinggames.wikia.com/wiki/City_Life.) It would be quite interesting to have the exact same building have different props depending on what kind of family lives there. This could then tie in interesting ways with the district system-- a district where the majority of people are suits will likely demand very different things on Chipper than one that is "radical chic," even though they have the same income level.

Tropico also has a mechanic similar to that, but focused towards political groups. Militarists, Environmentalists, Nationalists etc.

 

[RebelBinary]

Have the devs made any statements on this topic? Are they willing to change the 'pleasantville-kind-of-state' the game is in? If so, are they able to do this within a reasonable time frame?

Not really, but CO Karoliina did apologize for the game being too easy for some people, so they are aware of things. I'm sure they have more pressing issues they are working on.

Personally it's not that it's too easy, it's that things level up to quickly and there's no more challenge left in getting your city to the 'next' level because it maxes out too early. I have no problem with growing large average looking cities at a very easy pace. It's just the maxing them out and making a 'skyscraperfest' should be more of a challenge.

 

[Denz123]

I'd love to see some things with the policies, district-wise, similar to the schools-out policy (which i haven't tried. Does it work?)

for example "Residents growing up in this area are more likely to engage in criminal activity"
"This area is designed for housing alot of students"
"This area takes pride in their working class history"

Or something similar.

 

[Grapplehoeker]

Currently, the Cims have no income.
They don't own any property.
They have their magical pockets with their own built-in Unlimited Wealth mod allows them to be able to afford to go shopping, pay for transportation and pay their rent (yes, rent, since that is effectively what residential tax is).

So, for any social model to be implemented, that would all have to change.
Cims would have to have an income, based on their occupation. Businesses would have to start paying their employees.
There would have to be a Welfare system implemented to pay benefit to unemployed Cims. This Welfare system would have to be paid from the City budget.
There would have to be prices for commodities for sale in shops. These would be affected by availability and demand.
There may have to be a method to purchase homes rather than provide rented accommodation as it is now.
Vehicles could no longer be magically produced from their pockets, but actually bought and owned.

You can see how much work and complexity making these sort of changes would entail and that's not even going into the extra burden on the performance for having to crunch those individual calculations for every Cim in the city. This is why CO avoided the whole social model in the first place.

 

[C4st1gator]

Well, this simulator runs on a simplified behaviour.
Citizen wealth seems based on services provided to them as well as their education.
A Citizen, who has just moved into the City can climb to the top ot the social ladder, provided he's good in school, so he can get one of the many well paying high educated jobs.

My theory is, that the world of Cities:Skylines is moving towards a post scarcity future, with generally honest citizens, who have excellent work ethic.
These people seem to emphasize the positive traits of humans.

I have tried to speculate on their system of government too. Maybe they are subjects of a fatherly king and serve their monarch with undying loyalty.
I mean, the Citizens seem so enthusiastic about life, like little puppies, or kittens.

I didn't get the mismanagement achievements, because you have to force them into misery. You want to get the crime achievement? Your upstanding citizens will respect the law, even without enforcers, until circumstances force them into crime.
Want to get the Lazaret Plaza? You'd have to pollute the city water, because your Citizens eat healthy food, excercise regularly and maintain their positive outlook on life. These people are not religious, they are religion itself, possessing the seven virtues.

Castitas: The citizens will not overpopulate my city. If there are not enough houses available. If there are no more houses available, they move out of your city to find education elsewhere. Their parents will limit reproduction to sustainable levels, if you don't build additional houses. (Sometimes, they drop below, and your city experiences a temporary dip in population.)

Temperantia: The citizens excercise incredible self control. They will abstain from unhealthy food, stay out of trouble, finish their education. Unless you expose them to hazardous materials, they will continue to be healhy, even during old age.

Industria: After they finish their education, your citizens will quickly find employment and enrich your city even further. Even freshly migrated citizens can reach a level 5 dwelling through hard work and their unwavering dedication. If a good job is available, they will to all the necessary preparations to fullfill that position.

Patientia: My citizes seem to play the long game. They don't get mad, if my little village doesn't offer all the amenities a metropolis has, instead they will build one with me. Even if they may not see the day, the city reaches 1.000.000 inhabitants, their happy little families will continue to strive for all the time it takes to get there.

Caritas: Your citizens don't seem greedy. In fact they even provide all the public funding you could ever desire, without objection. Your citizens will not evade taxation, as it would hurt them in the form of underfunded city services in the end.

Humanitas: Your citizens seem kind to other living beings and especially their fellow citizens. Plus, they don't engage in chirp wars.

Humilitas: The citizens don't mind working at a less prestigious position, as long as it's appropriate to their level of education. In fact, they seem to always occupy the positions in the garbage services, as they know, it's for the benefit of everyone if the garbage is collected.

 

[AmpsterMan]

So I'm going to bring up that dreaded game...

SimCity 2013 did low, mid, high wealth MUCH better. Because wealth was attached to land value, and not education, i could control the wealth of my citizens much more minutely. Furthermore, since every building featured a combination of the three classes, you needed to have all three for optimum capacity. High tech was generally favorable, but building a university in every town that had some industry was expensive. Most cities ended up with Medium or Dirty industry etc. The balancing act was part of the challenge of that game; one which is non-existent here.

 

[C4st1gator]

So I'm going to bring up that dreaded game...

SimCity 2013 did low, mid, high wealth MUCH better. Because wealth was attached to land value, and not education, i could control the wealth of my citizens much more minutely. Furthermore, since every building featured a combination of the three classes, you needed to have all three for optimum capacity. High tech was generally favorable, but building a university in every town that had some industry was expensive. Most cities ended up with Medium or Dirty industry etc. The balancing act was part of the challenge of that game; one which is non-existent here.

I don't know about that. Sim City doesn't believe in social progression. A poor citizen will always be poor in that game, becuase his parents were poor. No matter how much you invest in education, you just raise land value, the poor citizens are pushed out and the rich move in. Talk about american dream on that one.
I take Skylines idealism over Sim City's cynicism any day.
Otherwise I'll play Crusader Kings, and crush another peasant revolt.

So, for any social model to be implemented, that would all have to change.
Cims would have to have an income, based on their occupation. Businesses would have to start paying their employees.
There would have to be a Welfare system implemented to pay benefit to unemployed Cims. This Welfare system would have to be paid from the City budget.
There would have to be prices for commodities for sale in shops. These would be affected by availability and demand.
There may have to be a method to purchase homes rather than provide rented accommodation as it is now.
Vehicles could no longer be magically produced from their pockets, but actually bought and owned.

You can see how much work and complexity making these sort of changes would entail and that's not even going into the extra burden on the performance for having to crunch those individual calculations for every Cim in the city. This is why CO avoided the whole social model in the first place.

If you want a simulation, that actually simulates the wealth of your citizens, the game will take much more memory and processing power. Too much to support the scale of this game. Too much for even the scale of SC2013. I remember the game "Die Gilde" (The Guild), which simulated tiny medieval cities from 1400 onwards. It did simulate the wealth of the cities dynasties and even the citizens, to some extent. There were some simulatory simplifications too, as markets had infinite demand and other nice things, that prevented the economy from running out of money, or raw materials.

 

[Simcity5]

I think some people must have played a different version to SC4 than the one that was released, or used mods or something.

Wealth in that game was linked to the jobs available and desirability, you needed to slowly grow your industry and desirabiltity, so you ended up with a mix or wealths whether you like it or not, you can have all the services and land value in the world if the only jobs were low wealth you would only have low wealth citizens. Its all about creating high wealth demand, that is completely missing from this game as theres no seperate demand for wealth class, its all bundled into one, Same with indusrty its all too basic, and demand for industry is what ever you want, farm or office, whatever, If SC4 if you only had demand for farms or low wealth industry you couldnt just build high tech and a high wealth office. It was all linked and that link is entirely missing fromthis game.

You created demand for low medium and high wealth sims by creating the jobs. Where this game lacks is there is no link to jobs, its all land value and there is no seperate wealth classes so all res demand is what ever wealth you want. Raising land value turns poor sims into rich ones where SC4 that would just make the slums have services you probably couldnt afford to have..

I still play SC4, I went back to it, cos none of the other city builders have the same level of sim, they are overly simplistic. This game is far to basic in all the important areas.

 

[mslangen777]

I still play SC4, I went back to it, cos none of the other city builders have the same level of sim, they are overly simplistic. This game is far to basic in all the important areas.

This is also my reason why I haven't played this game for a long time. Don't get me wrong. I like Cities Skylines very much in how it looks, the map size, the creating of public transport lines and seeing that people actualy use it. There are just two very important issues to me why I stopped playing this game and this is one of them. The other one is the inability to set or paint the desired area for services. Its all about how realistic the game feels.
In my opinion it should not be to dificult to fix these issues.
1. To fix the issue we are talking about can be done in many ways, some are complex, others are very simple. One simple way to fix it should be setting an x percentage of people who will go to college and university. All people will go to elimentary and highschool, if available (see my second issue). Most of them will become educated people. An x percentage will remain uneducated. After highschool an x percentage will go to college or university and become well educated. This percentage should be low from the start. And should be based on the available job positions that require well educated workers. People will only become rich if they have been to college or university.
To prevent farms and other uneducated worplaces from abondement, it should be possible that farms etc. become more efficient and produce more crops, just because there are enough educated workers. I mean workers on a farm do also need education to do their job. Simply put, an uneducated cim can pick cotton by hand, an educated one can do it by a machine, which is faster.
2. My second issue with this game is how services are organised in this game. Here I'm talking about all services that require transportation, and there are a lot of these services. The most important ones are waste management and deathcare, followed by ambulances, fire trucks and police cars. As it is now, all services will service the whole map. That is fine, but I would like to paint areas where a designated service would provide service. If I build a hospital, I want that the ambulances only service the area that I want them to, not the whole city.
Now I think of it, this should also be usefull for elementary schools and highschools. I should be able to paint the service area for these schools. If this were possible you could create areas without access to highschools for example. The area still have an elementary school, but the childeren are not be able to become fully educated. If they desire that, they must move to another area of the map. In this way this area will stay mostly uneducated and will not have many if any rich houses.

So far my imput. Still enjoying playing SC4 deluxe version with NAM from time to time. For me that is still more rewarding then City Skylines at this moment. Also I don't care for the disasters DLC. Those disasters could be nice but are not that important to me. And for realism. Setting bus lines to evacuate people. Come on...

 

[Grapplehoeker]

1. To fix the issue we are talking about can be done in many ways, some are complex, others are very simple. One simple way to fix it should be setting an x percentage of people who will go to college and university. All people will go to elimentary and highschool, if available (see my second issue). Most of them will become educated people. An x percentage will remain uneducated. After highschool an x percentage will go to college or university and become well educated. This percentage should be low from the start. And should be based on the available job positions that require well educated workers. People will only become rich if they have been to college or university.
To prevent farms and other uneducated worplaces from abondement, it should be possible that farms etc. become more efficient and produce more crops, just because there are enough educated workers. I mean workers on a farm do also need education to do their job. Simply put, an uneducated cim can pick cotton by hand, an educated one can do it by a machine, which is faster.

This isn't quite the issue we are discussing. We are discussing the complete lack of a social simulation.
This is not limited to job vacancy educational requirements.
This incidentally, is not an issue. You should always strive to provide the best education for all of your Cims. The benefits from a well educated city far outweigh any concerns for vacancy filling in the specialised industries. These vacancies can be filled in any case by simply ensuring that you maintain an unemployment level of around 10% or more. This will force well educated cims to work anywhere once their preferred vacancies have been filled.

2. My second issue with this game is how services are organised in this game. Here I'm talking about all services that require transportation, and there are a lot of these services. The most important ones are waste management and deathcare, followed by ambulances, fire trucks and police cars. As it is now, all services will service the whole map. That is fine, but I would like to paint areas where a designated service would provide service. If I build a hospital, I want that the ambulances only service the area that I want them to, not the whole city.

This is also not really related to the topic. It may well be what you desire and if that is the case, then there is a mod which will allow you to restrict services (that use vehicles) to a district.

District Service Limit
A Workshop Item for Cities: Skylines
By: gsteigert
Restricts some services to serve only the surrounding district Motivation No matter where you plop service buildings, the spawned vehicles will eventually travel long distances to fulfill the cims'...

 

[Person012345]

"I wish my places would have more poor people, that's why I'm going to place down all these parks and plazas, have them covered by great city services so that everything is very safe and clean and price out all the poor people".

If your place is very desirable and expensive to live in, it's not going to be full of poor people. Demographics isn't magic, the government can't just dictate where poor people should live and rich people should live. If you want policies that encourage more poor people to live in areas it should be things like rent control and subsidized housing (which would of course cost money).

This post isn't about the core simulation, perhaps that could do with tweaking, this is addressing the notion of some absolute cap on how rich you can be in certain sectors.

 

[Simcity5]

Theres plenty of places in the world near hospitals, parks, fire police, all services, the garbage man comes round on regular basis, and you wouldnt want to walk around there alone at night, having parks and services and being happy does not make you rich, the only thing that makes you rich is what you earn, this is why in any decent city builder a link between job and wealth is essential. Happiness is not a factor,

Most places have access to this stuff, doesnt make them mansions. A high wealth skyscraper wouldnt just appear from nowhere just because you stuck a park next to it, there needs to be demand.

I dont live in a masion but over the road is a school, theres a firestation on the same street and parks everywhere, and buses, the streets are clean,

The main problem is the RCI, its too simplistic to work. Theres no seperate demand for low medium and high wealth, they are all classed as the same. and are turned into what ever class you want by how happy you make them.

 

[Grapplehoeker]

Theres plenty of places in the world near hospitals, parks, fire police, all services, the garbage man comes round on regular basis, and you wouldnt want to walk around there alone at night, having parks and services and being happy does not make you rich, the only thing that makes you rich is what you earn, this is why in any decent city builder a link between job and wealth is essential. Happiness is not a factor,
Most places have access to this stuff, doesnt make them mansions. A high wealth skyscraper wouldnt just appear from nowhere just because you stuck a park next to it, there needs to be demand.
I dont live in a masion but over the road is a school, theres a firestation on the same street and parks everywhere, and buses, the streets are clean,

I'm not sure you understand the concept the game is based on.
There is your 'real' world and then there is the world the Cims live in. Try not to confuse the two.
There is no wealth in CS, since there is no income and there is no class system. There is no social structure at all.
Happiness is a factor for general population contentment and good service coverage is a major influence of that.

The main problem is the RCI, its too simplistic to work. Theres no seperate demand for low medium and high wealth, they are all classed as the same. and are turned into what ever class you want by how happy you make them.

There is no seperate demand for low/high wealth because there is no wealth.
They aren't turned into any class - there are no classes.

 

[Simcity5]

Yep, and thats the problem. Its far too simplistic.

 

[KeanoManu]

I can only agree with everyone saying that the game lacks a middle class, and that's sad. It was said by several posters, including myself, even before the game was released that we feared this when it seemed that many of the services would be tied to the wealth/class of the citizens. It's completely unrealistic in a developed society that access to schools are tied to wealth. Neither should access to a hospital or fire station make any difference. Even police should actually not be tied to it. A lack of police service doesn't make areas low wealth. Low wealth makes the need for police higher when criminal elements appear in the area.

And for those who wondered how this was solved in SC4. It was not a perfect solution but you could influence it alot with taxes. If you wanted a city with full access to services but with only low income homes you just raised the tax to maximum for medium and high income residents.

I somehow think this problem in part are tied to the decision to leave out medium density. It's a pattern. CO went for two extremes. We have the poor and we have the rich. We have low density and we have high density. Unfortunately it's hard to keep the poor poor and the low density low in the game...

After three rather boring DLCs focused mainly on adding graphics and game mechanics that would be harder to implement as time went on they should make one focusing on solving this problem (and then one focusing on transportation!).

 

[ByLeven]

So, my first city, aptly called Trialtown, is doing pretty dang well for itself. Ten hours in, I have 21k citizens, almost all of whom are apparently living in luxury. Even in my low residential areas, almost all buildings are luxury villas or quickly upgrading to become luxury villas.

I'm also rolling in money (2.5 million and growing) and the biggest challenge for me so far is to actually get - and keep - the middle class and poorer classes! Don't get me wrong, I like seeing some nice villas, but my whole city?

I've said this before in other threads, but I'd like this issue to have it's own now: I'd very much like to ask for a more reasonable division in classes (poor, middle class, rich)! I want to be able to create certain areas that do NOT level up all the way and I want to be able to have areas where citizens don't keep getting more and more educated. In other words: I'd like to ask for it to be possible to have a more balanced city, without having to starve my citizens from the basic services.

Please?

View attachment 125729
Everyone's rich and educated, no one works for the farms

There is a mod called "Dropout" (I think). Combined with the district policy "School's out", it seems to curb Cim's enthusiasm for schooling very well. Most Cims go through elementary school, but after that more and more start to loose interest. I have a very mature city, where 96% have finished elementary, approx. 80% have finished high school, whereas only 60% have bothered to get higher education. I only managed to reach 60% after enabling "Education boost" in certain districts I wanted wealthy. Before that, it stabilized at just above 40%.

I also have a mod that allows me to limit building levels within a district, but I can't remember what it is called (But, I think it is a mod that let's me do this). I don't use it much, mainly on industry, because I prefer the looks of level 1 industry. It can also lock individual buildings at certain levels, or allow them to ignore district-wide level restrictions. That's great tool if you sometimes want a few highrises outside a highrise district, or keep a cool lower level building inside a highrise district.

For my poorest areas I sometimes throw in a little industry here and there, usually some custom warehouses and such. In terms of services I usually spoil them with excellent inner city garbage coverage.

Most areas in my cities though, remain between level 3 and 4, unless I make an effort to develop them. It is not particularly hard to develop them, but it does require some care.

There is also a mod that slow down Cim aging. That mod also it much slower to educate citizens.

 

[Daxfog]

You really think that the game is too easy? More easy than Sims City? I bougth the game a few days ago and your comment make me question me why i didn't read more about it. I mean, steam got a panel where you can see the quality of the game from the gamers reviews, and let me tell you that the % is tooo high.
And don't come with a "the difficulty of the game don't show its quality" cause in this case, yes. The simulations games are thinking for take a realistic focus on the things. If is not realistic in building and growing a city you mean the game itself is not realistic and trying to be a simulation it didn't make it right. And telling it the reviews from Steam (90% positive) are wrong.
(sorry for mh English)

This is because the game is easy. It's not realistic in terms of challenges of actually building and growing a city

I specifically mentioned this a month ago and no one seemed to give a hoot. I guess the majority of people are fine the way the game is.

 

[Valeriosavio]

I tried to say this few times... well actually I said that there is no real crime/bad neighborhood etc simulations.
CS is very easy and the disaster DLC brought some movement here and there to shake us from the adorable utopistic perfection of this game.
Don't get me wrong, I love this game so much but I remember SimCity 4 and its disgraced neighborhood (along with graffiti/car crashes/trash on the streets etc) vibe !
Adding some more competition and getting more real in these terms, could make this game almost perfect.

Hopefully we'll get this on some future DLC

 

[medopu]

The problem is that Cities skylines is a game and not a simulation of real life. It would be absolutely fantastic, if it could model the intricate structural complexity of real life economy and city management, but with an agent-based system on a big scale 12k+ agents, they already are pushing the limits of todays CPU power and they have to make money somehow. No point in making a game that can only run on supercomputers.
C:SL has horrible flaws, but for all it's shortcommings, I still prefer it to other city builders, who might approximate wealth modeling more accordingly to real world (SC4, SC13, CXL), but fall short in areas that intuitively work better in C:SL.

What CSL could do perhaps is, to limit growth and levelling mechanically. On higher difficulties. By severely reducing the positive impact of parks and services on land value while increasing their maintenance expenses. (the SC4 way), where you can obviously still have most buildings on medium/high levels (R$$$ and CO$$$),but it would require more sacrifices due to budget considerations.

 

[cRAGGLE]

CO have something against anything "middle". No medium zoning, no middle class, no cars travelling in the middle lanes etc.