Regional Demand Issues

[showbiz]

G'day everyone.  I'm new here on the sc4d forums, though I have used much of the LEX custom content for a long time.  I mistakenly posted this is a different area of the forum, and just moved it here.

My issue with regional demand is this - It is very frustrating to me that the regional demand isn't coordinated more between cities so that groups of cities are treated like an actual region.  For example, lets say that I have a large commercial city with some residents in the center, with a purely residential city on one side, and a purely industrial city on the other, all connected by extensive mass-transit and monorail lines. 
If I play in the commercial city for a while, eventually it builds up and there's a large demand for residential.  Then, I play in the residential city for a bit, let that grow up some residents until it has a modest demand for residential left over.  Going back to the commercial city now shows residential demand through the floor while there's still a good amount of R$, $$, and $$$ demand in the resident city, and a huge residential demand in the industrial city.  Likewise, both the residential city and the industrial city show a huge demand for all types of commercial, while the commercial city only registers a slight demand for CS$, CS$$, and CO$$    Also, industrially speaking, the residential city has ID and some IM demand since it's a little lower education, the commercial city has a high IHT demand, yet demand for all types in the industrial city is basically zero.    It seems incredibly silly to me that a situation could even exist where on the map and highway, demand is a few tiles away, but since your technically playing in one city and not the one on the other side of the border, the demand doesn't count.

This has proven very frustrating to me, actually to the point where I completely stopped playing SC4 because of it for a year or two, and since I picked it back up a few months ago, the issue is frustrating me all over again.  I want to modify the demand simulator in the SimCity_1.dat file in order to better distribute demand throughout a region, but I am not sure how to go about it.  I use SC4 tools as an exemplar editor, but I am in the dark as to which values effect what in the game, or which values pertain to the region as opposed to the individual city.

Could anyone possibly help me out on this? E.g. let me know which exemplar values need to be modified or something?

In some research I've been doing, I did find this post: http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=6089.0  which explains better how the demand is calculated and distributed through a region.
RippleJet states: "inactive connected cities can satisfy this city's demand with their unused zone capacities,
but only to the tune of 10% of their existing populations and only if the demand cannot be satisfied in the city being played itself"
Is there a way to simply increase the value above 10%?

It seems like no one has really played with regional demand settings on here much before, and the only mods I found that address this simply turn demands up almost all the way, which I do not wish to do.  I just want to better distribute demand, so I would appreciate any and all help on this topic...

Thanks! 


**EDIT** Also, I'm using the Cam/Nam if that makes any difference.

[showbiz]

Update:

I increased all the values for maximum and minimum overall regional demand under CS, CO, Industrial and Residential, as well as the max and min for each specific CS$, CS$$, etc.  My reasoning behind this was that maybe since I was using the CAM, I know that max demand levels for everything except industry were raised to 24k, yet max and min Regional demand levels stayed the same.  So I figured that maybe the fact that the regional demand couldn't be higher than 6k for any given industry/comm/residential type was limiting the regional demand, and making it appear lower than it actually was.

I was partially right.  Upping the regional max and min demand allowed more of the demand from my cities to be spread around to a point, and it appeared to be a temporary fix to the problem, however now it seems that it has actually exacerbated the problem and made it worse.  Wherever a city had a slight demand for something before, now it has ridiculous demand for it, creating a situation where:

-my commercial city wants nothing but industrial (all others are negative)
-My residential city has skyrocketing demand for commercial and industry, even though there are thousands of jobs and zoned area available literally a few road tiles away in my commercial city
-and my industrial city has, of course skyrocketing demand for commercial and residents.

Both the residential AND industrial cities could have both their commercial needs EASILY FULFILLED by my commercial city!  Yet it refuses any and all commercial! WHY!

Census info showed that my highest Cap level for anything is 35%!!  Meaning there's no cap problems here! ughhh

Also, as I stated before, these cities are connected by TONS of mass transit including monorail, subway, highways, railroad, and Buses!

[showbiz]

 

[showbiz]

anyone?

[RippleJet]

anyone?

I'm sorry I've been too busy in RL to reply to this earlier.

**EDIT** Also, I'm using the Cam/Nam if that makes any difference.

Generally, regional specialized cities are somewhat more difficult to manage with CAM 1.0 than without it.
The reason for this is the bug that causes the simulator to think the regional residential capacity is doubled compared to what is actually is.

Whenever switching between cities in a region, also be sure that you do play long enough for any extrapolated demand to be fulfilled.
Otherwise the simulator will actually regard that demand to have been lost, and the regional demand would actually have been reduced.

For example, lets say that I have a large commercial city with some residents in the center, with a purely residential city on one side, and a purely industrial city on the other, all connected by extensive mass-transit and monorail lines.

You can always reduce desirabiliy for certain RCI types through taxation.
Raise residential taxes in your commercial city, and commercial taxes in your residential city.

I want to modify the demand simulator in the SimCity_1.dat file in order to better distribute demand throughout a region, but I am not sure how to go about it.

Since demand is the same all over the region, you cannot distribute it other than through desirability factors. Taxation is obviously the simpliest one to use for this.

RippleJet states: "inactive connected cities can satisfy this city's demand with their unused zone capacities,
but only to the tune of 10% of their existing populations and only if the demand cannot be satisfied in the city being played itself"
Is there a way to simply increase the value above 10%?

Not that I know of. The quote about 10% was taken from the Prima Guide, and I haven't been able to verify that through any other means.