Balacing city issues :(

[Violins77]

Hi there. I've been playing SC4 since 2003, and I recently started a new city with Cam 2.1 and NAM after more or less 5 years away.

I play on normal difficulty, but I find I'm having a hard time balancing my city, which is weird because before I always could make a healthy profit and have things well balanced.

First off, my city has about 15 000 people in it.
Residential taxes are set to 15%, so I manage to make about 2000$ per month with that, and it doesn't seem to affect the R demand but the catch is that I also needed to lower my city beautification budget to half of what it should be, as it is unreasonable to pay 1000$ a month in city beautification for a city that size.

Second issue, which could be related to the first one, is that I tons of R$$$ houses that downgraded to R$$ or even R$, as well as negative R$$$ demand. I have way too much big houses for a city that size, which never happened to me before. Could it be because my school, health and park grade were so high that the simulator developed R$$$ that much?

Now third issue, and probably all related, is that I have no demand for C or O from any level at all. I do have neighboor connection, and a small airport, so I don't think it's a CAP relief issue. I have no idea how to boost the demand. Taxes for all C are set to 8.5%.

I do have some demand for HiTech industry, which I'm slowly developing, and it should provide jobs slowly so that these downgraded R$$$ could reupgrade, but other than that, I have no idea what to do. I have developedan industrial for D and M industry in a neighboor city, so that should be taken care of.

I know those are fairly small issues, and at least everyone does have jobs (no no job zot), but I remember I was better at developing my cities before. Could it be because the CAM really changes the dynamics of what I'm used to?

Thank you!

[twalsh102]

First, just in case anyone reading this isn't aware of how demand is created, we should discuss that. 

Residential demand is created when new buildings that provide jobs are plopped or grown.  Each building has a fixed number of jobs provided (or capacity), which is set in the Building Exemplar.  While each building has a set wealth level, the actual jobs provided are not all of the that same wealth level.  Each building actually distributes jobs among the 3 wealth levels based on fixed percentages which are dependent on developer type and wealth level of the building.  The resulting numbers (multiplied by 2 because only roughly half of Residential Sims are actually job-eligible) directly feed into Residential demand.  The percentages used can be found on page 9 of the CAM 2.1 documentation.

Commercial and Industrial demand is created by new residents moving into a city, or by existing residents looking for new jobs because of an increase in wealth and/or education level.  New jobs are demanded along fixed percentages across developer type and wealth levels based on the wealth and education levels of the Sims demanding jobs.  The resulting numbers directly feed Commercial and Industrial demand.  The percentages can be found on page 10 of the CAM 2.1 documentation.

Issue 1: City Beautification budget

This budget line item is the combined maintenance cost for all the parks and landmarks in your city.  If it's high, it's because you have large numbers of these types of lots in your city.  By lowering the budget as much as you have, you will cause these lots to start to decay.  As they decay, the amount these lots add to desirability gets lower and lower.  Funding below 60% causes Landmarks to look distressed.  This may be feeding into your next problem.

Issue 2:  Residential Buildings downgrading

By far the largest factor in causing a building to downgrade is local desirability. 

Before CAM 2.1, there was a large problem with the game growing high-wealth residential buildings, and then shortly thereafter having those building downgrade.  The problem was that both the desirability trigger for initially growing these buildings (Maxis default: 50), and the trigger for a downgrade (Maxis Default: 50) was the same number.  Because of this, even a minor negative change in local desirability would trigger a downgrade. 

CAM 2.1 changed this such that the desirability bar for initially growing R$$ and R$$$ buildings has changed to 90 and 120 respectively, while the downgrade trigger remains the same.  This would suggest that once one of these buildings does grow, something drastic is happening to local desirability to cause a downgrade.  Since you aren't seeing no-job zots (lack of jobs being the second leading cause of abandonment/downgrade), you need to check all the other factors that affect desirability in the areas where this downgrading is taking place.

Issue 3:  Lack of Commercial and Industrial demand

On the face of it, this sounds like a CAP issue, but with the size of your residential population (and remember that only about half of your residential population is job-eligible), you may be lacking new residents (even one neighbor connection should raise the demand CAP above what your current residential population should be able to fill).  Commercial and Industrial demand can only be created by bringing in new residents. 

While demand is shared across a region, budgets and taxes are local to each city.  Thus, you can increase or stifle demand for any particular developer type/wealth level in each city, by raising or lowering taxes for that developer type.  This also has the effect that each city's income is generated solely by taxes raised in that city, plus any Neighbor Deals and/or Business Deals that apply to that city.  This can be a downside to playing regionally if not paid attention to.

You mention the high Residential tax rate and then state "and it doesn't seem to affect the R demand", but don't mention what that really means.  Is Residential demand always high, in the middle someplace, or low, but still positive? 

If your Residential demand is low, it's because your Residential tax rate is too high.  Tax rates above the neutral tax rate for a given population of any developer type will decrease demand, sometimes dramatically (at the maximum tax rate (20%), demand will zero out).  The neutral rate for your population level is 9% (note that the neutral tax rate lowers as your population grows).  Your residential tax level is close to twice the neutral rate, probably stifling Residential growth to some extent.  Any lack of Residential demand (and thus growth) directly affects Commercial and Industrial demand.

[Violins77]

Hi! Thank you for you in depth explanation. I do remember what you are saying from reading the prima guide from cover to cover back in the day, and I also read the CAM manual.

What I meant by the 15% taxes not changing the R demand, is that it is still to the roof, no negative impact.

I think my mistake with this town has been to go overzealous with beautification, which caused too many R$$$ household (even though I understand the demand must have been there in the first place), but then it probably caused some R$ and R$$ to disappear, and things went unbalanced from there.

So now, either I'll accept this city and consider it done and move to the next one (as I kind of wanted a small town to start off), or I'll increase the R$ population by zoning with low desirability to increase tax revenu, lower taxes, and fund my parks appropriately.

I thank you very much for your explanations!