How to fix local demand in the negative?

[MrMeowPuss]

So my city has had no local demand for commercial for quite some time now. My unemployment is decent (according the game), my education is okay (but could be better in terms of elementary) and taxes are around 5-7%.

Does anyone know how to improve/increase local demand? Is it related to my production?

 

[VentureIndustries]

I’ve only ever see this problem due to over-zoning. Unfortunately, the only way I got demand to come back was to demolish and de-zone a lot of the existing commercial zones in my city, wait a bit (demand coming back will be slow at first, then a lot of it all at once), then demand will go back to normal.

 

[Arararamba]

You have unoccupied residentials witch could be a hint why you don't have commercial demand. If you have mixed use buildings that don't have residents then this building will count as unoccupied commercial. It's a bug.

When I hade this problem, I bulldozed all my mixed use buildings that haven't residents or companies. Then demand came back and I zoned/plopped slowly.

 

[pdx_peanut]

It's worth noting that if you have 'over-zoned' those empty cells/buildings do get filled up slowly as required, but your demand bar won't go up until they are all filled, as there is no demand for you to zone more when there is already some available.

In this instance, it's a waiting game - for them to fill up - and remember, not having demand does not mean you're not doing the right thing, it just means there's no need to zone right now.

 

[TOMMIVS]

The commercial demand is not more related to supply and demand of goods, but is only a function of population. And this function is capped at 100k people. Once past that point, no more commercial demand can be generated no matter what you do.

 

[MrMeowPuss]

It's worth noting that if you have 'over-zoned' those empty cells/buildings do get filled up slowly as required, but your demand bar won't go up until they are all filled, as there is no demand for you to zone more when there is already some available.

In this instance, it's a waiting game - for them to fill up - and remember, not having demand does not mean you're not doing the right thing, it just means there's no need to zone right now.

Thanks for that. I installed a city stats mod and found the following:

So am I correct to assume by this that I possible have too much industrial or not enough residents hence why I’m way over capacity? I know I have a significant amount of empty buildings as well but they don’t seem to be filling up in game.

 

[MrMeowPuss]

I’m at 215k so that would make sense then.

The commercial demand is not more related to supply and demand of goods, but is only a function of population. And this function is capped at 100k people. Once past that point, no more commercial demand can be generated no matter what you do.

 

[pdx_peanut]

The commercial demand is not more related to supply and demand of goods, but is only a function of population. And this function is capped at 100k people. Once past that point, no more commercial demand can be generated no matter what you do.

I don't think that's true, but I can check with the devs when they are back!

 

[pdx_peanut]

Thanks for that. I installed a city stats mod and found the following:

View attachment 1336652
View attachment 1336653

So am I correct to assume by this that I possible have too much industrial or not enough residents hence why I’m way over capacity? I know I have a significant amount of empty buildings as well but they don’t seem to be filling up in game.

Well you have 237 buildings that are empty without a company - which is why you have no demand to zone more commercial. Those empty buildings will slowly fill up as commercial companies move in over time as needed by your city, and once all 237 are filled then you're going to have some demand.

I'm not entirely sure how accurate the mod statistics will be, if the mod has been designed incorrectly if could report the wrong information. (Not saying it is wrong, but it's a possibility to keep in mind)

 

[MrMeowPuss]

Well you have 237 buildings that are empty without a company - which is why you have no demand to zone more commercial. Those empty buildings will slowly fill up as commercial companies move in over time as needed by your city, and once all 237 are filled then you're going to have some demand.

I'm not entirely sure how accurate the mod statistics will be, if the mod has been designed incorrectly if could report the wrong information. (Not saying it is wrong, but it's a possibility to keep in mind)

I don’t feel like 237 is accurate as it was only after this recent update I stopped getting commercial demand but it’s not feasible to go and count every building yet. I’ll monitor stats and let the game keep simulating for now to see if that number goes down at all.

Thanks again!

 

[hello box]

No, this is not due to over-partitioning. Instead, the official team secretly made significant modifications to the business demand function in previous versions, leading to a substantial decrease in business demand. This may be a countermeasure they adopted to cope with performance pressure, but I have to say it's really too perfunctory. I strongly urge them to revert the changes.

 

[VentureIndustries]

No, this is not due to over-partitioning. Instead, the official team secretly made significant modifications to the business demand function in previous versions, leading to a substantial decrease in business demand. This may be a countermeasure they adopted to cope with performance pressure, but I have to say it's really too perfunctory. I strongly urge them to revert the changes.

Based on the information I’ve seen in the game going through this situation: demand for commercial in previous versions before the latest patches were calculated differently and seemed to be basically unending. With the latest patches, the commercial demand calculations are done differently and in such a way that cities made before these patches tend to have too many commercial buildings and the commercial demand zeros-out due to an overwhelming amount of unneeded and oversupplied commercial buildings.

I did some investigating and found that in addition to the “bulldoze and delete” approach to the commercial oversupply I mentioned earlier, you could also try zoning a lot more residential. The new residents seem to kickstart the commercial demand into working again. In my game, it took about 20K new residents for sustainable commercial demand to come back.