Why are tourists not spending in my commercial, within my city? (And discussion of Space Elevator )

[28rommel]

... or you attach them to this thread. You can find them where your saves are (in C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines\Addons\Assets) Just to give you the list:

Unknown prefab: Cheap Hwy Tunnel.Highway Tunnel0 [Serialization]
Unknown prefab: Four Lane Road CCL.Medium Road Slope0 [Serialization]
Unknown prefab: Four Lane Road CCL.Medium Road Tunnel0 [Serialization]
Unknown prefab: Four Lane Road CCL.Four Lane Road CCL_Data [Serialization]
Unknown prefab: Four Lane Road Trees CCL.Four Lane Road Trees CCL_Data [Serialization]
Unknown prefab: Four Lane Tram Tracks CCL.Four Lane Tram Tracks CCL_Data [Serialization]

Post 2 of 2.
Ok here are the links to the 4 custom road assets that you have described in your listing above (they are item number 1, 4, 5 & 6 in your list).
I am uploading them here, but I did NOT also upload them to Steam Workshop (if anyone needs me to also upload them to the Workshop, just tell me and I will do so).
Find the links below ...

Edit to add: Links to the custom assets no longer available.

 

[28rommel]

Turjan,
You might find my saved game 55 (versus number 54) better suited for your testing and liking. That map includes all the UB's and Landmarks.
But feel free to test/play with both of them.
Just remember to please let the game play for 15/20 minutes or so, without you doing much to the game (and if you can increase the speed of the game, do so). Do only minor adjustments to keep the game running properly (like adjusting the electric or water budget up, if you need more of that service). I want to know if just you loading the game and letting "it ride," will turn my weekly loss into profit for you on "your system" (since you own all the DLC's, etc). Maybe you can use your secret mod and also tell me how my "City Value" looks and changes.

If my/your game magically starts to show a profit somewhere-down-the-line, please write-down the in-game date and approx weekly profit you are seeing. You can then post these notes in your future comment, or alternatively you can take a screen shot with those details. This way later, I can let my game play to match your date, and I can see if my profit (or loss) matches with your experience.

PS: If you can save your progress, please do so. That way if I have specific questions later, all you need to do is re-load your game, and easily gather the information from your save.

Thank you!

 

[Turjan]

Well, I had this running quite a while, and I'm still not completely there yet, but that may have to do with what I did.

I'm not sure whether that's what you wanted, but you hardly spent anything on the citizens. I may have squandered most of your savings by now, but you can do a few things differently. I did the following:

1. Set all taxes to default, which is 9% (down from your 12-13%)
2. Set all budget sliders to default (100%)
3. Plopped lots of services, and I mean pretty much everything, from fire stations, healthcare, crematoriums, police stations, etc. You had one clinic (the small one) for a 100k city. That may be sufficient for the number of sick you typically see, but it isn't enough to upgrade buildings, and only high level buildings pay high taxes.
4. Plopped lots of electricity buildings. I'm not sure why, but the city had an enormous deficit when I opened it. Maybe, CO tinkered with this in one of the DLC's.
5. Added some water utilities because I also had to add some residential areas as the city had a considerable worker shortage.

Things that are probably not necessary for you:

6. Had to add a prison. With After Dark, crime mechanics changed, and your city had a 9% crime rate and no jails. This building should disappear again when you load the city. No idea where the crime rate will end up at.
7. Added the Match Day stadium from the free DLC, because I was bored. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, the budget looks scary in the month where you give all your citizens a free ride. However, if your team wins, it's a nice sum of cash you get.
8. Added a metro line. That wasn't strictly necessary, and it's not the most useful one, but see point 7.

You city will always be a bit expensive, because it's cul-de-sac heaven. That's nice and quiet for the residents, but services have to run very long ways back and forth, which means you need more of them than usual. Also, as the influence radius is determined by road length, you waste a lot of upgrading influence that way. The third drawback is that it's difficult to run bus lines through the neighborhood, should you want to, and sometimes you want to, just for upgrading reasons.

I'm not sure how long this city will still take to get to a new baseline. Maybe it's already done, but the graph still doesn't quite look like it.

That graph you see there is behind the City Statistics button in the game's pause menu. I only say this as I'm not sure whether I understood you right that you don't know where to see that. If you do, forget what I just said.

Without further ado, here' the save.

Edit: I forgot to mention, as you wanted me to do nothing in the beginning: after the first day/night cycle, the daylight income was positive. However, as the city ran into problems for me, I could not really wait very long to see what happens without doing anything. The overall income was definitely still negative at that point.

 

[28rommel]

Hi Turjan,
In this first post, I want to thank you for your dedication to assisting me. You went beyond the norm and I very, very much appreciate all the help.
It takes patience, and you had tons of it. Your comments and posts included "baby steps" (will maybe not quite "baby," but more like "child") in your instructions for me to upload the game and the required custom assets. I have some computer knowledge, but I sometimes get stuck with specifics like this. Without some of your notes, it would have been difficult to impossible for me to get the details you need to even load my game.
Thank you a million !

 

[28rommel]

I'm not sure whether that's what you wanted, but you hardly spent anything on the citizens.
.... 3. Plopped lots of services, and I mean pretty much everything, from fire stations, healthcare, crematoriums, police stations, etc. You had one clinic (the small one) for a 100k city. That may be sufficient for the number of sick you typically see, but it isn't enough to upgrade buildings, and only high level buildings pay high taxes.

I add new service structures, only as needed. If I see too many of one specific notification/trouble icon in my city, then I add. I do this too keep my overall ongoing upkeep expenses down, but I do understand that fewer means less influence to nearby growables to help them upgrade.
It's a give and take situation, so it's hard to sometimes decide when and how much to add.

1. Set all taxes to default, which is 9% (down from your 12-13%)

That will increase happiness and also help to upgrade growables, but of course less revenue. Again, I don't know which is better for my budget.

2. Set all budget sliders to default (100%)

Most were at or near 100%, but you are right the Bus, Tram, Metro and Airplane budgets were at 50%. Again, I was trying to save dollars, and 3 of 4 of these items have their own individual slider to add more of that particular vehicle to the city.

4. Plopped lots of electricity buildings. I'm not sure why, but the city had an enormous deficit when I opened it. Maybe, CO tinkered with this in one of the DLC's.

Probably, but some of why you had to add more was because I forgot to mention that I play with the day/night cycle set to Off. I don't like playing with the night feature, because it's hard for me to see and build at night. So with the vast majority of my electricity coming from Solar Power Plants, you were forced to add more structures, to cover the fact that solar produces less electricity at night.

You city will always be a bit expensive, because it's cul-de-sac heaven. That's nice and quiet for the residents, but services have to run very long ways back and forth, which means you need more of them than usual. Also, as the influence radius is determined by road length, you waste a lot of upgrading influence that way. The third drawback is that it's difficult to run bus lines through the neighborhood, should you want to, and sometimes you want to, just for upgrading reasons.

All very good points, and I do/did consider what you are saying when designing my roads. But the cul-de-sac method I use, allows for better traffic flow, as I can separate my major intersections from one another. If have seen forum members refer to some cities as "communist blocks" to describe where players just make continuous squares with roads. And when I see images or video of this, I notice major traffic jams where one intersection gets so backed-up, that it domino affects other nearby intersections (because they are too close to one another).

That graph you see there is behind the City Statistics button in the game's pause menu. I only say this as I'm not sure whether I understood you right that you don't know where to see that. If you do, forget what I just said.

Oh wow. I must have hit the pause button a million times and never noticed it. You are the only forum user that I have seen posting the image of these graphs, and I assumed it was a mod you were using. LOL. Thank you for pointing this out. I have no idea how I didn't see it before. I recently added SnowFall, so now I'm wondering if it was always there with the base game, or did it appear only after adding SnowFall.

 

[28rommel]

Well, I had this running quite a while, and I'm still not completely there yet ....
I'm not sure how long this city will still take to get to a new baseline. Maybe it's already done, but the graph still doesn't quite look like it.

Without further ado, here' the save.

So of course I uploaded your game, and I spent about 45 minutes just reviewing everything you did. "I love what you did to the place."
I highly recommend to everyone, that you allow someone else to just play your game/city for a while, and then ask them to send it back to you at a later date. You learn so much from seeing what others do, adjust and build. It gives you insight into things that you oversee or would never think of. Consider everything, and implement the things you like.

But back to the save ....
Turjan, I noticed that you played my game for a full 10 years and 3 months of in-game time. That is a very long time!
Why in the world is my city not turning to a more positive state?
I'm not sure if you noticed, but if you look at my "City Value" in the City Statistics graphs, it is dropping and continues to drop. This is very strange, because I remember seeing when you placed all your Unique Buildings (UB's) in one of your own cities, you posted that the City Value soared upwards very sharply on the graph. Why is mine going down.

I went back to the very start of the upload game you used (55 all UBs), and the downward spiral to City Value started before you even began to test play the upload. So in other words, the downward curve must have started when I added the last of 2 UB's necessary to build the Space Elevator and then also building the Space Elevator itself.

Here is a copy of the City Value graph after your played game "55 all UBs" for 10 years and 3 months. The severe decline seems to never end.
If City Value seems to be a source or indicator of increasing taxation over your expenses, then maybe this is the issue.
But what is going on?

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Finally got to try it. Runs fine with the addition of the assets.

I let it run for over one year (in-game time obviously), and it never became profitable.
I didn't do anything to it except add an advanced wind turbine adjacent to the sewer outfalls.
I forgot I had dynamic weather on, and it rained, and the solar plant production went down. The sewer was so far away, it went into blackout, and then everything backed up. I turned off the rain, but the solar plants were complaining about sewage. So it wasn't fixing itself.

It's 03:17, going to bed, I'll post other thoughts later, though Turjan pretty much summed it all up already.

 

[Turjan]

So of course I uploaded your game, and I spent about 45 minutes just reviewing everything you did. "I love what you did to the place."
I highly recommend to everyone, that you allow someone else to just play your game/city for a while, and then ask them to send it back to you at a later date. You learn so much from seeing what others do, adjust and build. It gives you insight into things that you oversee or would never think of. Consider everything, and implement the things you like.

I didn't really change much about your place, other than add services. I only connected a few roads where services visibly struggled to get to the last corner. The small new quarter I placed is just standard grid stuff, so nothing fancy. I thought you would remove it anyway in case you decided to continue playing this version of the city. I think the new metro is the least profitable, so I guess it's mostly superfluous.

But back to the save ....
Turjan, I noticed that you played my game for a full 10 years and 3 months of in-game time. That is a very long time!
Why in the world is my city not turning to a more positive state?
I'm not sure if you noticed, but if you look at my "City Value" in the City Statistics graphs, it is dropping and continues to drop. This is very strange, because I remember seeing when you placed all your Unique Buildings (UB's) in one of your own cities, you posted that the City Value soared upwards very sharply on the graph. Why is mine going down.

"City value" includes your cash reserves. I lost and/or spent more than 10 millions of those, so this looks about right. Building and deleting metro tunnels to get them right doesn't come cheap either. Also, the city had a loss every day from the start, which adds to it. I didn't really attend to the city during the whole time. Once I had a death wave when I came back to the computer, had to build lots of cemeteries, which I removed later. I only left the new crematoriums in the city. I didn't want to just delete all your cemeteries. As I have the ND expansion, another time I came back some lightning had destroyed the only electricity connection between both sides of the river and left half the city without electricity and water. Oops. I just let the city run in both cases, which probably adds to the overall loss.

As I didn't really grow the city much - I only added a rather small quarter - there isn't much growth expected anyway. But look at the overall picture:

• Population went up by about 19%. This is mostly due to upgraded buildings by the way, only partly from the small new quarter.
• Don't forget that I set he tax rates down from your 12-13% to only 9%, so I asked for 27% less taxes. That's more of a difference than the population increase. You can always set them slightly up if you think it isn't enough.
• I increased spending by putting all your budget items that were at 50% to 100%. I didn't calculate the percentage increase in spending here.
  
• Despite this, actual tax income roughly tripled (+200%), and it seems to be still growing! Of course, spending roughly tripled, too.

I went back to the very start of the upload game you used (55 all UBs), and the downward spiral to City Value started before you even began to test play the upload. So in other words, the downward curve must have started when I added the last of 2 UB's necessary to build the Space Elevator and then also building the Space Elevator itself.

Well, I didn't try deleting the Space Elevator... My city didn't have any monuments by the way. My city was an overall mostly upgraded city though, which makes for a huge difference in tax income (your city was mostly levels 2 and 3). Green Cities makes a few services cheaper, too, like garbage, which costs only a fraction of the vanilla game. However, the Space Elevator is otherwise the only obvious difference. By the way, if you really want to "cheat" your tax income, place the Eden Project. That's easy mode of the game for you. This works via increasing the land value. Which leads me to...

Here is a copy of the City Value graph after your played game "55 all UBs" for 10 years and 3 months. The severe decline seems to never end.
If City Value seems to be a source or indicator of increasing taxation over your expenses, then maybe this is the issue.
But what is going on?

I had the taxation and expense graph in my last post. As I said, city value is a sum, including cash, and I used that or just let the city lose money. The cash portion of your city value doesn't give any returns. Your taxes come from the value of the buildings (building level* x area occupied by each building level x some factor (*probably not direct building level, but who knows)). If you want tax income, maximize building levels as good as you can. This means spending by building services and public transport.

My task here looks worse than it could because I made it more difficult than I could have by setting taxes down and expenses up at the same time, although the city was already incurring losses. You can fiddle around with the taxes again if the city never levels out. I would just try to maximize levels further though. Try to make some connections and lead bus lines through some parts, which usually helps. If you don't build new depots (you only need one per city anyway), additional buses cost hardly anything at all.

By the way, just try and take your original city before I touched it and place the Eden Project.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

One thing I noticed, other than losing money, the city works. Traffic was good. There was a fire, and although fire coverage was poor (as far as service coverage is concerned), a fire truck arrived from across the river in plenty of time to put it out. Good work.

Most of what I have to say (if not all) is pretty much what @Turjan already said.

It might not be realistic, but you do kind of need to spam services. And 100% budget is the most cost effective setting (Except for stuff like water, if you have enough, you have enough, so a lower budget setting is more cost effective. Same with power if you have the fusion plant.) Everywhere I looked, coverage was poor, and building level ups said more land value via parks and services. Park coverage was pretty good, so that leaves services. Or you could kind of cheat and do what Turjan said:

By the way, if you really want to "cheat" your tax income, place the Eden Project. That's easy mode of the game for you. This works via increasing the land value.

Criminals detained was very close to max, but if you are spamming a few more police stations, that will give you more cells.

I add new service structures, only as needed. If I see too many of one specific notification/trouble icon in my city, then I add. I do this too keep my overall ongoing upkeep expenses down, but I do understand that fewer means less influence to nearby growables to help them upgrade.
It's a give and take situation, so it's hard to sometimes decide when and how much to add.

It does seem expensive to keep adding them, but if they cause a lot of buildings to level up, you'll get your money back.

Just before bed, I noticed that the garbage production was a lot higher than you could process. No buildings were yet complaining. I don't know if they would start soon, of if garbage was just disappearing. (I've heard that can happen.) I needed to quit and go to bed, so I don't know.

I've never liked putting taxes above 9% if I could avoid it. It always seemed that if I bumped it up, it would put me in the green for a bit, but then somehow get consumed. I'd have to bump it up again, and repeat. Soon I'd have taxes too high, and still not be breaking even, or be just above break even. I remember setting them down again, and went into the red, but after a bit got back in the green.

 

[Turjan]

I agree pretty much with everything you said, @Fox_NS_CAN . I had lots of crime in the savegame though (icons everywhere). I also placed many incinerators because I noticed the garbage issue.

My suggestion to place the Eden Project was only half serious. It will for sure help you out of that budget hole (I tried it and it converted the loss to about 30k profit per week). However, this is basically a cheat. It shows you how much money your city would give you if you put some effort into leveling your buildings up. That's why I suggested to at least look at what it does.

Anyway, I tried deleting the Space Elevator in both, the original savegame and the one I attached in last post. This will actually balance the budget. Deleting the Space Elevator has no negative impact as far as I could see. People just came via train, plane or ship. Traffic on the map is peachy anyway (87% traffic flow), and that didn't change. The number of tourists didn't change, either. It looks as if the Space Elevator is just a good-looking, but expensive waste of space (I guess they just dropped the "waste of" from the name ).

 

[28rommel]

Finally got to try it. Runs fine with the addition of the assets.

I let it run for over one year (in-game time obviously), and it never became profitable.
I didn't do anything to it except add an advanced wind turbine adjacent to the sewer outfalls.

Thanks for uploading and testing the game, Fox.
I was very curious that if someone else just loaded the game and played it with minimal changes, that somehow it would be different with their own unique set of DLC's, and thus maybe it could be a (Colossal Order) programming or coding issue that was at the root of my problem.
You allowing the game to play for 1 year of in-game time and showing the same lack of profitability, now puts my mind at ease that it's not a programming/coding issue.

 

[28rommel]

"City value" includes your cash reserves. I lost and/or spent more than 10 millions of those, so this looks about right.

Ah OK.
I didn't know that a player's bank account was included in "City Value."
Now it makes sense, because I used some money to construct Unique Buildings and the Space Elevator, and then you subsequently used money for all the construction you did.
Got it thank you.

 

[28rommel]

Don't forget that I set the tax rates down from your 12-13% to only 9% ...
... Your taxes come from the value of the buildings (building level* x area occupied by each building level x some factor (*probably not direct building level, but who knows)).

I've never liked putting taxes above 9% if I could avoid it. It always seemed that if I bumped it up, it would put me in the green for a bit, but then somehow get consumed. I'd have to bump it up again, and repeat. Soon I'd have taxes too high, and still not be breaking even, or be just above break even. I remember setting them down again, and went into the red, but after a bit got back in the green.

I am going to need to play with my taxes.
I do have them at the highest level, without each unique zone complaining.
But both of you bring-up an interesting scenario. Maybe leaving them lower (like around 9%) is best, so that it helps to level up those buildings, which in essence increases the taxes the city collects.
But again, it's a strange decision. Which is better? To have a larger, more expensive tax base but lower tax rate? Or a smaller, lower tax base with a higher tax rate?

 

[28rommel]

One thing I noticed, other than losing money, the city works. Traffic was good. There was a fire, and although fire coverage was poor (as far as service coverage is concerned), a fire truck arrived from across the river in plenty of time to put it out. Good work.

Traffic on the map is peachy anyway (87% traffic flow) ...

Thank you Fox for the kind words.
Yes, my traffic flow is one thing I am most proud of in my city. I once remember reading a comment some time ago, where an experienced member (I dont remember the name) said that the main aspect of Cities Skylines is traffic and proper road construction to avoid it. If you can master this in the game, then you remove the majority of the headaches and frustrations that many players experience and dread about gameplay.

 

[28rommel]

If you want tax income, maximize building levels as good as you can. This means spending by building services and public transport.

... You can fiddle around with the taxes again if the city never levels out. I would just try to maximize levels further though. Try to make some connections and lead bus lines through some parts, which usually helps. If you don't build new depots (you only need one per city anyway), additional buses cost hardly anything at all.

It might not be realistic, but you do kind of need to spam services. And 100% budget is the most cost effective setting (Except for stuff like water, if you have enough, you have enough, so a lower budget setting is more cost effective. Same with power if you have the fusion plant.) Everywhere I looked, coverage was poor, and building level ups said more land value via parks and services. Park coverage was pretty good, so that leaves services.

... It does seem expensive to keep adding them, but if they cause a lot of buildings to level up, you'll get your money back.

I'm going to need to place more service structures, as both of you are advising this (and look into routing my bus lines into better areas and corners of my city).
This will help to level-up structures and hopefully it not only barely makes-up for their ongoing upkeep expense, but maybe produces slightly more to make a profit on their existence.

Some services I know I don't need more of, especially medical. I have been so very, very careful to keep my residential buildings out of ground and noise pollution, that my city of over 90K still functions fine with just one tiny medical clinic. If I add more "medical" structures, maybe it will help my psyche to place saunas (since I own SnowFall) instead of more clinics and hospital. It's just that if feels that all the hard work (on keeping medical down) has gone out the window, or that it was just a big waste of time.

Criminals detained was very close to max, but if you are spamming a few more police stations, that will give you more cells.

Yes, Turjan also mentioned something about the crime rate. But you are both correct here. When I uploaded the game for you all to play, I did also notice that (at minimum) I needed to place one or two more police structures. So I probably should have done this, before uploading the games to you (sorry). As Fox has pointed to, the amount of criminals that all my police stations combined were holding, was very close to the maximum.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Thanks for uploading and testing the game, Fox.

No problem. I was a little slow... I can't be seen playing "Cities Skylines" by my kid... if he sees it I'll never get him off it. So I typically only play late at night.

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

Some services I know I don't need more of, especially medical. I have been so very, very careful to keep my residential buildings out of ground and noise pollution

You were getting a little close here:

Be careful!

 

[Fox_NS_CAN]

The garbage:

I wasn't seeing complaint icons for garbage, but maybe it was only a matter of time.

 

[28rommel]

Anyway, I tried deleting the Space Elevator in both, the original savegame and the one I attached in last post. This will actually balance the budget. Deleting the Space Elevator has no negative impact as far as I could see. People just came via train, plane or ship. Traffic on the map is peachy anyway (87% traffic flow), and that didn't change. The number of tourists didn't change, either.

If you remember from some of my early posts in this thread I pointed to ...

• Wiki says, "Tourism is a mechanic by which outside cims come to your city to visit unique buildings, monuments, decorations, and spend money in your commercial districts. Tourism can be a substantial source of tax income ...."
• The Space Elevator is all about "tourism" and "tourists." Wiki describes it as: "People near and far travel to the city to see the Space Elevator. This means a huge influx of tourists, who also like to spend money while visiting."

So now I'm starting to believe that the Space Elevator is NOT necessarily a mechanism of (or a "cheat" for) bringing additional profit ("substantial source of income") into your city. Think of the Space Elevator like this .... The Fusion Power Plant is a monument that gives you enough energy, where you don't need any further energy producing structures. Actually you can delete or turn-off (by hitting the on/off button) all previous energy producing structures that you already had on your map.

The Space Elevator is just a mechanism of bringing-in tourists (and cims, but in the context of our discussion here, we are just concentrating on tourists). But placing the Space Elevator will not drastically increase the amount of tourists further, if you already/previously have a Train Station/Harbor/Airport in your city. So, similar to the Fusion Power Plant, once you place the Space Elevator, you can technically delete or turn-off, all the Train Stations, Harbors and Airports. The Space Elevator might be handy though, if you are playing a map where it is difficult or impossible to place Train Stations, Harbors and/or Airports.

I may end-up deleting the Space Elevator in my city, at least at this point in time (actually because it was so expensive to construct, I will just turn it off by hitting the On/Off button). Maybe later, if I have a ton of weekly profit, I may re-purchase it (or turn it back on) for "eye candy." As Trujan is pointing to, it may not make a drastic difference since I have the other 3 forms of major transportation that are already bringing in tourists in mass. So you can have the neat view of seeing trains arrive, and having airplanes fly in and leave the airport, and see ships arriving at the harbors ... or instead, watch people suddenly appear via the Space Elevator like they were just "beamed-up by Scotty" on Star Trek. I think I like the trains, planes and ships better.

It looks as if the Space Elevator is just a good-looking, but expensive waste of space (I guess they just dropped the "waste of" from the name ).

This gave me a huge chuckle .... thank you for the laughs.

 

[28rommel]

You were getting a little close here:

View attachment 331373

Be careful!

LOL.
Yes I was. Thank you for the reminder about this area.
It's easy for some players to forget that you can NOT place water towers where there is ground pollution. If you do, it will pollute the water going to your city, and make your cims sick.