Need a hand interpreting census data

[Forrester]

I've just started playing SC4 and have, as xxdita recommended, installed the census repository to help me see what's going on in my cities:
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=10127.0

The problem is that . . . maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm not sure what to do with it. Given I have so few cities, I thought I'd walk you through what I have and maybe y'all can help me out.

There are only three cities:
Hippieville (the first city I built, mostly pre-NAM, pre-CAM)
New Hippieville (the post-NAM redo, but added on CAM only recently, mostly, the city just grew like crazy afterwards)
DitchDiggerington (post-NAM, post-CAM)

The first two are meant to maximize health, education, minimize pollution, while the latter, almost no education, screw pollution, just give me lots of hardworkin' poor people.

The Region (New York):


DitchDiggerington:


And the DitchDiggerington Census:


Sadly, R$ demand has finally dropped, though for some reason R$$ demand is up. The weird thing is, I was really planning on DitchDiggerington to be like a Flint Michigan type, tons of Dirty and Manufacturing, but from the beginning, Commercial demand maxed out and stayed maxed out, so there's tons and tons of commercial. Budget-wise, DD is running a tremendous surplus. Not sure even what to do with the $$. I just want it to grow.


New Hippieville (a section):


And the New Hippieville Census:


New Hippieville is running a nice surplus as well. I'm a little stunned by the way it says that there are currently 360,000+ vacant jobs??!!

Finally, (Old) Hippieville. It is not doing well, it just scrapes by from decade to decade. I kind of want to tear it down and build it up from scratch at this point. It has tons and tons and tons of bus lines that are hardly being used at all at this point, because of NAM/CAM. I know that's a waste.



And the (Old) Hippieville Census:


Old Hippieville kind of sucks IMO and needs a big, big reboot.


So, based on what you see here . . . what stands out? What do these figures tell me about what I need to do to grow my next city, and/or max out population in DitchDiggerington and New Hippieville?

Thank you very much for any and all assistance . . . .

PS Can someone explain exactly what the "Drives" thing is about?

PPS Using Simulator-Z, Medium, no walking/biking encouragement, 5% R$$ for C$, I$, no other mods except Opera House fix, no cheats or multipliers

[xxdita]

There's a lot you can tell from just that one little pic.

In Diggerington, the EQ is 0, so you have no schools in the city. Your workforce is far less than half the city's population, which means you have no hospitals either. Basicly, you have a lot of disabled people because there is no healthcare in the city. Compare this to Old Hippieville, which has an EQ of 191, so plenty of schools. A Workforce of 57.36% of the total population, so a good healthcare system as well. New Hippieville's 196 EQ is also extremely high, so there's an excellent school system in place. And a 58.17% rate of workforce, which shows an even better healthcare system than Old Hippieville.

From the looks of things, you've also got a doubled Regional Residential Capacity, which tells me you have CAM in your plugins folder, instead of patched into simcity_1.dat. Take a look at this post from RippleJet for steps on how to do that.

Workforce drives are basicly the types of jobs that your residents are demanding, which is a key in how you need to zone next.

[Forrester]

There's a lot you can tell from just that one little pic.

In Diggerington, the EQ is 0, so you have no schools in the city. Your workforce is far less than half the city's population, which means you have no hospitals either. Basicly, you have a lot of disabled people because there is no healthcare in the city. Compare this to Old Hippieville, which has an EQ of 191, so plenty of schools. A Workforce of 57.36% of the total population, so a good healthcare system as well. New Hippieville's 196 EQ is also extremely high, so there's an excellent school system in place. And a 58.17% rate of workforce, which shows an even better healthcare system than Old Hippieville.

From the looks of things, you've also got a doubled Regional Residential Capacity, which tells me you have CAM in your plugins folder, instead of patched into simcity_1.dat. Take a look at this post from RippleJet for steps on how to do that.

Workforce drives are basicly the types of jobs that your residents are demanding, which is a key in how you need to zone next.

Well, I know that DDton has no health care or education, that was on purpose . Ditto with the Hippievilles having great health care & education.  Interesting that that effects the proportion of folks that are in the workforce, but not sure why that should matter to me -- why is having a high proportion of folks in the workforce 'good' from a city-building point of view, as long as everything else is running smoothly? The folks in DD can sit on their butts all day, as far as I am concerned, as long as they pack themselves into those high-rises.

Interesting about the residential caps being too high, though -- thank you for the link! I have a bad feeling about what is going to happen to my populations once I fix that . . . Hippieville's population started going through the roof after I installed CAM, wondering if it's going to crash hard now (even though I don't seem to be near the caps).

I don't need the census to know whether I'm keeping my education system/health care system up to snuff, I've got that annoying advisor to nag me about that. I guess the main thing I'm to get out of it is workforce drives -- what kind of jobs they are looking for?

Thanks for taking a look!


PS One other thing -- is there a way to increase a city's residential cap, other than parks and landmarks and rewards?

[Forrester]

EDIT: I got the merge to work (I messed it up earlier by copying the original version back in, and deleting the CAM mod) -- but after I did so, nothing changed at all. Maybe the latest update of CAM takes care of the problem? Demand caps and such are the same.

And they look reasonable -- take DDton -- it's at 56% for R$, and the starting cap is 50k, with 560k added in for the major league stadium and the minor league stadium and the repository. Why do you think they've been doubled?

[xxdita]

Caps are totally different than your Capacity.

Caps are the limits to which your city can grow. Plenty of things can add more room for growth, such as parks, sportsfields & stadiums for Residential; plazas and airports for Commercial; and seaports for Industry. So for DDton, your R$ CAP of 56% means that your R$ population will currently max out at about 668,332.

The Residential Capacity refers to the total amount of available housing. You'll notice in the pic of DDton's census report, there's 37,000 empty beds (Available Vacant Housing), compared to just 139 in Old Hippieville. This tells me that new residential growth is more likely to occur in OH, probably almost as soon as you zone for it. Looking at the Demand, it'll probably be R$$ growth.

Using CAM in your plugins as opposed to patching it into the simcity_1.dat creates a doubled Regional Residential Capacity, which explains why there are so many jobs needed, compared to the number of residents. It may be hard to tell by just looking at one picture, or one report, but seeing the totals of your Residential Capacity for the 3 cities is 1,000,545 yet the CR report shows a Regional Residential Capacity of... well, double that amount, it's noticeable.

If you're not too attatched to the cities just yet, you may want to start fresh in a new region, and put what you've learned to practice. Unfortunately the doubled regional residential capacity bug can't be erased. though now it can be minimized as the region grows more. If you are attatched to these cities, try playing each one for about 10 years, save & exit, then move on to the next one. This will make sure that all of the cities are able to grow as much as current demand calls for, so that no demand is wasted. It will also update the city's sav file with the changes you've made by patching CAM in. Also make sure you've removed CAM from your plugins once you've patched it in.

I imagine that you'll need to add in quite a bit of residential zoning, to counter the now halved residential capacity for the region, in order to balance everything back out.

I'd be interested in seenig pics of the Census Repository report as you go.

[Forrester]

Caps are totally different than your Capacity.

Caps are the limits to which your city can grow. Plenty of things can add more room for growth, such as parks, sportsfields & stadiums for Residential; plazas and airports for Commercial; and seaports for Industry. So for DDton, your R$ CAP of 56% means that your R$ population will currently max out at about 668,332.

The Residential Capacity refers to the total amount of available housing. You'll notice in the pic of DDton's census report, there's 37,000 empty beds (Available Vacant Housing), compared to just 139 in Old Hippieville. This tells me that new residential growth is more likely to occur in OH, probably almost as soon as you zone for it. Looking at the Demand, it'll probably be R$$ growth.

Using CAM in your plugins as opposed to patching it into the simcity_1.dat creates a doubled Regional Residential Capacity, which explains why there are so many jobs needed, compared to the number of residents. It may be hard to tell by just looking at one picture, or one report, but seeing the totals of your Residential Capacity for the 3 cities is 1,000,545 yet the CR report shows a Regional Residential Capacity of... well, double that amount, it's noticeable.

If you're not too attatched to the cities just yet, you may want to start fresh in a new region, and put what you've learned to practice. Unfortunately the doubled regional residential capacity bug can't be erased. though now it can be minimized as the region grows more. If you are attatched to these cities, try playing each one for about 10 years, save & exit, then move on to the next one. This will make sure that all of the cities are able to grow as much as current demand calls for, so that no demand is wasted. It will also update the city's sav file with the changes you've made by patching CAM in. Also make sure you've removed CAM from your plugins once you've patched it in.

I imagine that you'll need to add in quite a bit of residential zoning, to counter the now halved residential capacity for the region, in order to balance everything back out.

I'd be interested in seenig pics of the Census Repository report as you go.

I'm 100% sure that I merged the two files correctly, and that the updated version is in the right folder, and the old version is out of Plugins, so I'm not sure why the residential capacity hasn't changed. I do have pretty much everything zoned as high density, but not all of my buildings are skyscraper-types -- would that cause the regional residential capacity to seem much higher?

That's just odd . . . even if the old system doubled residential capacity, why would it make the regional capacity double that of the sum of the capacities in the individual cities?

I may start from scratch, as I think Old Hippieville sucks pretty bad now, but I'm tormented, because I'm quite attached to New Hippieville -- it worked out exactly as I wanted. But I ran New Hippieville for a few years, and nothing of import changed at all. When you say that the bug can't be erased -- doesn't deleting the CAM, etc., do exactly that? Or is the gist that the current buildings have double capacity, and newer ones won't . . . ?

Thanks for your help, and if I do hit the Reset button, I'll definitely post Census data as it comes in.

[xxdita]

The regional capacities are saved in the city's sav file, and there's no way to alter that data.
Actually... if you're up for a little experiment? Since you only have 3 cities going, this should be simple enough.

Start with DDton. Demolish all neighbor connections to the other cities. Rail, roads, highways, everything. Also demolish any airports or seaports you have going. Then save the city and move on to the next, doing the exact same, then to the third.

After all neighbor connections are destroyed, go back to DDton and snap a pic of the Census Repository query for me?

[Forrester]

The regional capacities are saved in the city's sav file, and there's no way to alter that data.
Actually... if you're up for a little experiment? Since you only have 3 cities going, this should be simple enough.

Start with DDton. Demolish all neighbor connections to the other cities. Rail, roads, highways, everything. Also demolish any airports or seaports you have going. Then save the city and move on to the next, doing the exact same, then to the third.

After all neighbor connections are destroyed, go back to DDton and snap a pic of the Census Repository query for me?

Definitely some changes . . . region capacity wasn't halved, but it dropped quite a bit. This means . . . ? The original was okay? No?

[xxdita]

If a city is not connected to the region, then you would expect the Regional Capacity to match the capacity of the city. In this case, it's still much higher, but has dropped considerably. Like I said, there's no way to erase the doubled Regional Residential Capacity, but it can be minimized. At this point, you've got about 1million phantom Sims in the region, which is a lot, but at least that number won't be growing as your region develops more.

Go ahead and reconnect the cities, but make sure you keep an eye on your Residential Regional Capacity after you do.

[Forrester]

If a city is not connected to the region, then you would expect the Regional Capacity to match the capacity of the city. In this case, it's still much higher, but has dropped considerably. Like I said, there's no way to erase the doubled Regional Residential Capacity, but it can be minimized. At this point, you've got about 1million phantom Sims in the region, which is a lot, but at least that number won't be growing as your region develops more.

Go ahead and reconnect the cities, but make sure you keep an eye on your Residential Regional Capacity after you do.

Thanks -- is the (almost?) doubled regional capacity affecting gameplay in any way, or at this point is it just a glitch in the census report? If CAM operates as though residential capacity is doubled (I thought I read that somewhere), then will it affect anything to just have that number misreported? I don't want to be a big ole cheater . . .

[xxdita]

It does have an effect on gameplay, by adding otherwise unnecessary Commercial & Industrial demand, to replace the jobs the simulator thinks are occupied already. Notice you have a negative Regional Vacant Jobs, even though there should be enough to take care of the workforce.

But now you've limited that to 1million phantom Sims, as opposed to doubling the number as you grow your region larger.

[Forrester]

I'd be interested in seenig pics of the Census Repository report as you go.

I decided on a full reboot -- old Hippieville sucked pretty bad, after all.

Here's the starting zoning:


I started with a school, library, etc. right off the bat, as well as a natural gas plant -- goal was to minimize pollution all the way through (natural gas until I hit solar, then hydrogen). And, of course, parks parks parks. 18% tax on Dirty and didn't really go agricultural either (stupid water pollution). Went for manufacturing, and after I got my EQ up, high-tech, phasing out manufacturing gradually.

I churned it for 120 years -- probably longer than I should have, I guess I should have built up other cities first -- but I wanted to see if I could make Hippieville self-sufficient. I also wanted to generate enough garbage to power the new DitchDiggerington's waste-to-power plant and get enough demand for low-incoming workers to have DDton really take off at the beginning. (Also -- get Hippieville's subway system going so that DD'ers can subway in when they're ready.)

A city snapshot -- focusing on my stupid ole brown boxes. I guess I'm missing a prop pack somewhere. I ran cleanitol, it said I had all necessary dependencies . . . but maybe I need an updated file or somesuch. (working on it now, fixed all but one)



Jobs-wise, budget-wise, I got to where I wanted -- running a nice profit, and have more rich folks than poor folks in town:





And finally, what you were waiting for -- the census repository report. Demand is through the roof for R$ (which I may raise taxes to discourage) but also for R$$ and R$$$. Before I expand, I'm just bumping all of my residential to high density, putting in a very complete subway system, trying to max out that area -- though I will probably start up DDton before I do more.


Actually, first thing I want to do is figure out what I need to download to get rid of those boxes . . . Buildings are Europa, a few Cobbs, MarinaResidence, and Fortune Serene.

Anyway, pls let me know how you think I'm doing now . . . 'm sure you agree that it's time to build up a nearby city . . .

[xxdita]

Hve you tried the Cleanitol found here?

With a large tile, I expect you could go all the way up to Stage 15 without any neighbors, but what fun would that be? 

You should try some custom utilities. SimGoober has some great ones on the LEX. His water tower requires that you have a certain number of SG water towers before placing it, so it's nothing like a cheat, just better technology. 

SG's also got some CAM-friendly larger hospitals & schools that are definitely worth a look as well.