I have done everything possible to supply goods to commercial and demand for generic industry. I have balanced the amount of commercial with the amount of industry, I have cargo train terminals everywhere and two ports for ships to bring raw materials and goods. I have also developed the oil, ore, forestry and farming industries. Finally, I have a perfect road system. Yet, when my cities reach a population over 300,000, commerce states "not enough goods" and industry states "not enough raw materials" or "not enough purchasers." Then both sectors go into a death spiral of abandoned buildings. One thing I have done recently, since I got a super computer, is buy 25 tiles of land. I have heard the game is designed for only 9 tiles. So, what is causing my problem with commerce and generic industry?
Cities Skylines – Not enough goods and not enough purchasers
cities-skylines
Related Solutions
You need to have enough water being pumped, as well as sewage. Note the consumption is less than capacity in both water and sewage, seen here:
You also need to make sure your pipes are connected to the buildings, denoted by a darker blue coloring in the water view, seen here:
If either of these are not true, you will see the No Water notification pop up on a building.
I haven't found any (official) evidence to prove my hypothesis following now, so be aware that it might be wrong.
You say that you have no industrial zones at all. So, let's check this chart first:
You see that there's a production chain which requires specialized and generic industry to create goods for your commercial buildings. If you had that, you could easily lower the import rate. However, you don't have those buildings or zones so basically you import everything. You can read here too that offices are a clean alternative to industry, nevertheless they don't produce any goods.
- First off, there could be an unknown import cap. Really unlikely, but possible.
- As stated here, import trucks, ships or trains don't use the nearest entrance to your city. They spawn wherever they want to. So some trucks could be already on their way, however, they're taking ages since they have to drive through your whole city. That, too, would explain why some ships just have cargo of 50%. Maybe there are still boats on the sea coming from the bottom end of your map to your upper end. In the meanwhile, other ships spawned recognized that they don't need 100% cargo because other ships already have the cargo.
- Also, do your commercial buildings import at all? Stated here again, some buildings not connected to any industrial area nearby do most likely not import stuff.
I guess the whole problem is that you miss industrial areas. Your problem isn't well documented nor reported because it doesn't occur that often. Most cities have industrial areas, you and few others don't have them and are suddenly facing the problems of too less goods. As you can also see here, offices have some downsides:
- Fewer jobs.
- No goods.
- Less commercial tax income.
As a fellow city builder, I can just recommend you to build up some industry. The flow will be way better and less troublesome. Yes, you have pollution. Just be a dirty (real life) mayor and hide anything negative from your citizens by placing it far away from them and covering it up.
As said in the beginning, I don't have any official evidence supporting my hypothesis, but I hope I could still help you with it.
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Best Answer
Possible cause: Caps.
You state that the problem only occurs after a certain population. Cities Skylines limits the amount of agents that can be active transporting goods and people in a city at the same time. If you reach this limit, there just may not be enough vehicles available for you to get your production chains working.
To work around this limitation, you can either reduce transportation distance or time, by building highways, cargo rail, or putting the zones closer together. Supplying better mass transit will also help, as the agent pool is shared. You can also look for mods that raise these limits.
Another possible cause: Resource depletion
This is caused by the natural tendency of certain resources (oil and ore) to deplete over time. You will need to install a mod to prevent this.