My tiny city of 16500 just had a serious death spike, due to the bad demographic system of the game of everyone dying at the same time. But seriously, it is a small city, mostly low density residential and my 5 cemetaries are completely unable to service it. How many do you want me to plug down? 70 deaths per week, not too bad a situation, but those hearses do not want to do it. Now i did hit 17k with a new neighbourhood (that will make the next wave even worse) and thought, at least i wil now get crematoriums. That might fix things. Crematoriums have even less hearses? Are you kidding me? The "upgrade" has the same service radius as the cemtary, just with 2/3rds of the throughput? Putting down 6 of em and the game tells me, yes you are certainly good, completely green, no problems can arise whatsoever. Next time a few residential zones die, my city will look like the plague just hit it. Can the game at least tell me how many of those i need to realistically have? It feels like currently i would need around 20. And yes, i am aware that there are mods that will flatten the curve of the death spikes, but that should not have been necessary.
Why is deathcare not implemented better yet?
- Thread starter Broetchenholer
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To me the demographic or deathcare system doesn't seem to be the problem here. 70 deaths per week sounds like a normal rate for a city of that size, so 2 cemeteries (assuming not full) and a couple of crematoriums should be able to handle that just fine. You're assuming things just based on what you've read on the internet.
Does the vehicles in use counter of any of your deathcare buildings flicker between two numbers, for example 0 and 1? This would suggest inaccessible buildings due to a road network issue.
Does the vehicles in use counter of any of your deathcare buildings flicker between two numbers, for example 0 and 1? This would suggest inaccessible buildings due to a road network issue.
The best way to prevent the spikes is to gradually designate residential areas. Maybe a 4x4 block in a month, the next block in the month after that, etc.
To the hearse, you can only operate at the location and gradually leave it if the existing ones have sufficient coverage.
To the hearse, you can only operate at the location and gradually leave it if the existing ones have sufficient coverage.
They never die at the same time unless you have a disaster of some sort. If they are slow at collecting, then it will seem like all at once, but it takes a very long time for them to die. It is almost always lack of collection from misunderstandings of how the GAME works.
Yes, that is very low coverage. 5 cemeteries are inadequate. iirc, the AI shifts gears arounf 15k and can cause sudden shortages from services sending out only 2-3 vehicles at a time, unless it is a disaster.
70 deaths per week is roughly 70 deaths per minute at x1 speed, 70 deaths, per 20 seconds at x3 speed. It can take a while to collect, if not an optimal layout nor clear traffic.
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Yes, crematoriums have no maintenance. Are any of your cemeteries full, or being emptied? This will stop collection or interfere with other cemeteries/crematoriums and slow collection down.
The meter may say green, but in no way accurate. Especially as the city grows. There are too many factors to determine, but even at optimal layouts, I doubt it is adequate. I end up up with 4 times the coverage with all services. The game loves over provisioning. If you shoot for minimal coverage, you will fail epically in this game. The more services, the more the game loves you for it.
Some major things to remember, never clump services together, spread them out around your city, so when you get a call for a service, it will be within reach immediately in all directions. Everything is on a timer and bad things happen when they're late.
Realize, when you finish with one district and start making a new one, that the old one is still growing and maturing and making more demands on your services, which may become inadequate over time.
Also, realize high density residential (HDR) has up to four times the cims as low density residential (LDR). So when your residential keep leveling up to level 5, they can double or more your demand again. That's up to 8x the demand after you leave to a new district!
Thanks for taking the time, but that's exactly the point I am making. The game gives you no indicator of how much you need death care. May I have too little? Sure. How would I know though? Even while the dead were piling up, the crematorium told me they can cope. The fire services at least give a color indicator and a percentage.
Add to that the ridiculous demand and deathcare becomes the most frequent need of your city. My city has around 6 tier 1 medical builings and nobody wants more. But the same amount of deathcare and that's insufficient? From a logical standpoint, this makes no sense. Of course, it is just a game and I could simply build more after I learned my lesson after the first wave. But the game should try to make thjat clearer in the firtst place, especially if the system is so counter intuitive.
Add to that the ridiculous demand and deathcare becomes the most frequent need of your city. My city has around 6 tier 1 medical builings and nobody wants more. But the same amount of deathcare and that's insufficient? From a logical standpoint, this makes no sense. Of course, it is just a game and I could simply build more after I learned my lesson after the first wave. But the game should try to make thjat clearer in the firtst place, especially if the system is so counter intuitive.
The city in the attached screenshot is the same size as that of the OP, and has no problems with 2 cemeteries and 2 crematoriums. No, the AI has not "switched gears" either, the amount of vehicles in use is low because there's simply not enough calls for service to have most of them out. I've found that each building sending out only 2-3 vehicles instead of local emphasis is a sign that you've built more of them than your city really needs.
The game is quite straightforward in how much is needed. You just need to give all residential and commercial areas their local crematorium or cemetery, and make sure they're not full and that the crematorium availability meter (see attached screenshot) is safely in the green. If you're still having issues with dead bodies not being picked up, hearses are either getting stuck in traffic or they can't access buildings (you didn't answer my question about this previously).
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I really can't follow you. Attachhed is my current city, with now no more problems, as the death wave is over. Cemetaries are emptying into crematoriums. As you can see, especially the low density area has huge problems, as the game really can't handle services for non grid based road networks very well. But the real problem is, that the service need comes in waves and these waves are getting worse and worse. If i keep this setup, once those people that moved in after the last death wave will all die at the same time and all those crematoriums will not be able to service it again.
And to clarify, my traffic is in the 90s, all residential areas have their deathcare, there is one area that is not serviced very well due to one way streets, i fixed this. The rest should not have problems. Yet the low density zone in the south got completely hammered all over the place.
And to clarify, my traffic is in the 90s, all residential areas have their deathcare, there is one area that is not serviced very well due to one way streets, i fixed this. The rest should not have problems. Yet the low density zone in the south got completely hammered all over the place.
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Okay, so the problem is that the hearses are stupid as bricks. i tracked one of them. They are literally driving past corpses to pick up corpses. They have absolutlely no efficiency. In my screenshot above, i watched a hearse from the middle go to the big residential area in the top, pick up 2 there. Then drive to the industrial area on the left side of the screen, okay, somebody got to do that. Then drive down to the low density residential in the bottom, back to the top to high density, then in a fit of genius, the last 4 customers where all in the central block. So, the more efficent second half of the trip still took the hearse 5 1/2 ingame minutes, or 5 weeks of game time. That's a speed of one corpse each month. So, with my current 63 deaths a week, i would need 30 crematoriums. Yeah, sure, makes sense. I already have 10 of them. There was no delay in traffic. In that time, 23 buildings were ruined because they were not serviced in time.
It can seem a bit annoying.
They will drive by because they are already on their way to pick up the other one. Another hearse may already be on the way for the one that it drove by, or it might be the same hearse just got the call for that one after the first one.
Its true that a strictly cul-de-sac approach is problematic for service efficiency. You would achieve better results by having a bit more dense network of arterial and collector roads, and also a less spread out city that's not necessarily a simple grid. That city's layout is just too specifically one thing for the game's liking right now.
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Traffic may be in the 90's, but if services have to use slow inefficient road layouts there can be problems.
Sadly the game does not implement local services for local areas. There is a mod that does that, though I prefer just improving accessibility.
I make sure all my services are on or close to fast roads. So no delays at the start or end of their run to slow things down.
I'm also seeing too many large areas of cul-de-sacs. They are fine and nice to look at in small areas, but services have a lot of driving to do to get around them. You could make them smaller with shorter routes to fast roads, or put in some link roads.
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I could do that, but it would just delay the inevitable. As long as hearses start their trip by driving past 5 corpses in their district to pick up one on the other side of the map, in times of high stress the system will fail. I have installed a mod to keep them in their district and now the problem is at least localized and I can see which areas need improvements. It's not that I don't value your input, should I keep building, I will try to manipulate the game better to emulate what I want. I just don't understand why after so much time and so many dlcs the game still has the same broken core. All they seem to have done is to increase the amount of money the player can make so that he can overspend on services he should not need. And then let the modding community figure out the rest. Implementing hearses to check for the nearest corpse is an easy first step that should be vanilla.
As you're not averse to using mods, you might also try:
Better Cemetary AI
Once reaching 2/3 full, cemeteries will start dynamically emptying into crematoriums avoiding the cemetery from becoming full. They will continue to pick up bodies as they dynamically empty.
Lifestyle Rebalance Revisited 1.5.3
In the vanilla game, cims all die at the same age. This makes many changes including altering the age at which they die.
I've grown cities up to nearly 300k with these mods, hope they help
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The game isn't broken just because you're having problems. You say hearses should check for the nearest corpse? Guess what... they already do. The claim that the game doesn't prioritize local service is simply not true.
I attached another screenshot from the same city I showed earlier, this time the statistics of birth and death rate trends. There are no signs of clear cyclical patterns. I don't know why your city has that, but mine haven't had them since Colossal Order made a change to the citizen lifecycle system. Colossal Order didn't include this in the patch notes of 1.13.0, and I don't know why. I hope it was just an oversight rather than complacency.
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Speaking of mods I recommend the Senior Citizen Care Home one.
Having some senior citizen care homes about the place means it's more likely the oldies will drop in one location (ideally near a crematorium) and it also frees up houses for young families who'll work and bolster the economy.
Having some senior citizen care homes about the place means it's more likely the oldies will drop in one location (ideally near a crematorium) and it also frees up houses for young families who'll work and bolster the economy.
Not quite true. If you zone a large swathe of residential at one time, many of the residents who move in are of the same age and thus die at roughly the same time, leading to the so-called "death wave". This is why such death waves disappear when you use a mod like Lifecycle Rebalance which randomly varies the age of the cims as they move in.
Yes, they die relative near the same age, but not all are the same age. It take a long time to fill in all of the houses, then as they level up, they have more and more cims move in. And it can take a long time for houses to be built. and way longer to level up.
But the simple solution is overprovisioning like all of the service demand in this game. After my first couple of cities, I have had literally zero mass=death wave of abandonment, The small cycle of life death wave is very small, especially as your city gets mid sized. I religiously zone full 1km x 1km distracts all of the time. it has no ill effects as long as you have adequate service coverage, in fact the game seems to reward you for overprovisioning services, especially when the game starts capping your income.
My main point the cims dying all at one time, just isn't true. And it doesn't seem to be too much residential zoning. But as long as you have the coverage, cims will be picked up on time without a complaint. If you have complaints, the first thing I would check is healthcare. I find most death waves I have helped fix always comes from noise pollution finally getting so high, it starts killing cims and adds to the death wave.
I'm sure if you remove the lifecycle rebalance, I'm sure you will see that you will not have death waves anymore.
But the simple solution is overprovisioning like all of the service demand in this game. After my first couple of cities, I have had literally zero mass=death wave of abandonment, The small cycle of life death wave is very small, especially as your city gets mid sized. I religiously zone full 1km x 1km distracts all of the time. it has no ill effects as long as you have adequate service coverage, in fact the game seems to reward you for overprovisioning services, especially when the game starts capping your income.
My main point the cims dying all at one time, just isn't true. And it doesn't seem to be too much residential zoning. But as long as you have the coverage, cims will be picked up on time without a complaint. If you have complaints, the first thing I would check is healthcare. I find most death waves I have helped fix always comes from noise pollution finally getting so high, it starts killing cims and adds to the death wave.
I'm sure if you remove the lifecycle rebalance, I'm sure you will see that you will not have death waves anymore.
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The current game version has a lifecycle system that's likely inspired by the original lifecycle rebalance mod. Since version 1.13.0 the age of citizens moving in is more random already in the vanilla game, so the Lifecycle Rebalance Revisited mod had to adjust to this change. The oscillating death rate patterns I had before Sunset Harbor came out have almost completely disappeared even without using the mod.
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I was unware that the vanilla game has been (FINALLY) updated to address this issue. I'll give this a shot next time I play.