Mod Idea - Cost of Living (& Urban Density)

Thankfully it doesn’t look like my mods don’t have any conflict with the new Voting Systems DLC. I did another test run - this time on South Korea, where I added +15% Urban Density modifier. There also have been some changes but mostly balancing so that Australia or other countries don’t start with serious situations. AUS will now have only 5 law & order problems at turn 0!

Findings & Thoughts:

  • S.Korea started with Urban Decay. actually, only some countries like US, UK, ES, FR don’t have it on turn 0. (might differ for other players as I use all my mods including Labor Income Share, which can’t be published on workshop)
  • It already had kinda high Urban Density thanks to the modifier & despite having Urban Decay in effect. So it didn’t take long (30s turns) for UD to reach 100% from 56%. I didn’t even put much efforts to boost it. Just kept GDP high and nurtured high-tech sectors. I assume that +15% modifier is actually quite huge but it could make sense as SK has high pop density and very strong anti-sprawl green belt on its metropolitan area.
  • This time I had activated most anti-bubble measure in advance to see if I can actually prevent it while maintaining urbanization trend. The result was very safe & strong 2%p/turn growth in density without bubble. But I got some warnings about it.
  • Density growth without anti-car policies gave me occasional congestion spikes. This is since high density doesn’t really contribute to lower congestion. I don’t think this to be punishing though.

I guess I could push an update tomorrow? no glaring issue on my eyes.