Something odd is going on with my cities......
Once I almost reach 100,000 Cims, suddenly my Global Happiness drops dramatically (from around +300 down to -500!!), and then Cims begin to rapidly leave my city. Interestingly, even though my Global Happiness drops, the individual zone happiness levels do not (which are over 90% for all zone types except commercial, which usually hovers between 75-79).
When enough Cims leave, my industrial areas begin to flash "Not enough workers" and the buildings are abandoned.
I eventually lose about 20,000 Cims, then the Global Happiness begins to rise, people begin moving back in, and eventually I regain my population and then some. This has happened three times now with the same city; just prior to my reaching 100,000 population, again when I attained a population of roughly 115,000, and the third time when my population reached around 123,000.
What I find odd about this (and what makes me think it may be a bug), is that the individual zone happiness levels do not change either before, during, or after these events. Also, the "Not enough workers" only affects my industrial zones - never my office or commercial zones. Additionally, despite losing such a big percentage of my population, none of my residential buildings ever become abandoned. It just doesn't make any sense for only my industrial workers to just up and leave town (and for that never to affect any residential buildings).
All three times this has occured nothing obvious has "gone wrong," in that everyone has enough of the basic services - water, electricity, garbage, body disposal, schools, transportation, leisure, etc. and this has never happened during (or shortly thereafter) my making any major changes to my city.
When I see the population begin to drop dramatically, since I now know what's about to happen, I immediately start dezoning a large portion of my industrial zones (so that I won't have dozens of abandoned buildings to bulldoze). However, even before I do this (and people are leaving and industries are beginning to flash the "Not enough workers" warning), the game is STILL requesting more industrial areas!!! Once the population begins to grow again, I slowly begin to rezone those industrial areas, until I'm back to the same population I had when the event began.
This also happened with the first two cities I created, but in both cases I thought it was something I had done that caused the problem (because I was still so new and inexeperienced with the game). But now I know it isn't something I did the Cims didn't like OR because I failed to do something the Cims wanted. Generally, when Cims do begin to leave, there is some indication of a problem somewhere, but in my case, they move out and then move back in with no problems identified (they wouldn't turn around and move right back in if there was a problem I hadn't identified and corrected, right?)
This is a very weird situation.....and very perplexing! Frankly, it's taking a lot of fun out of playing the game, because it takes a good hour /hour and a half for so for the "cycle" of moving out - dezoning - moving back in - rezoning to complete before I can get back to building my city....
BTW, I used different maps for all three cities, and all three were maps supplied with the game, so if this is a bug, it's not specific to a certain map.....
Once I almost reach 100,000 Cims, suddenly my Global Happiness drops dramatically (from around +300 down to -500!!), and then Cims begin to rapidly leave my city. Interestingly, even though my Global Happiness drops, the individual zone happiness levels do not (which are over 90% for all zone types except commercial, which usually hovers between 75-79).
When enough Cims leave, my industrial areas begin to flash "Not enough workers" and the buildings are abandoned.
I eventually lose about 20,000 Cims, then the Global Happiness begins to rise, people begin moving back in, and eventually I regain my population and then some. This has happened three times now with the same city; just prior to my reaching 100,000 population, again when I attained a population of roughly 115,000, and the third time when my population reached around 123,000.
What I find odd about this (and what makes me think it may be a bug), is that the individual zone happiness levels do not change either before, during, or after these events. Also, the "Not enough workers" only affects my industrial zones - never my office or commercial zones. Additionally, despite losing such a big percentage of my population, none of my residential buildings ever become abandoned. It just doesn't make any sense for only my industrial workers to just up and leave town (and for that never to affect any residential buildings).
All three times this has occured nothing obvious has "gone wrong," in that everyone has enough of the basic services - water, electricity, garbage, body disposal, schools, transportation, leisure, etc. and this has never happened during (or shortly thereafter) my making any major changes to my city.
When I see the population begin to drop dramatically, since I now know what's about to happen, I immediately start dezoning a large portion of my industrial zones (so that I won't have dozens of abandoned buildings to bulldoze). However, even before I do this (and people are leaving and industries are beginning to flash the "Not enough workers" warning), the game is STILL requesting more industrial areas!!! Once the population begins to grow again, I slowly begin to rezone those industrial areas, until I'm back to the same population I had when the event began.
This also happened with the first two cities I created, but in both cases I thought it was something I had done that caused the problem (because I was still so new and inexeperienced with the game). But now I know it isn't something I did the Cims didn't like OR because I failed to do something the Cims wanted. Generally, when Cims do begin to leave, there is some indication of a problem somewhere, but in my case, they move out and then move back in with no problems identified (they wouldn't turn around and move right back in if there was a problem I hadn't identified and corrected, right?)
This is a very weird situation.....and very perplexing! Frankly, it's taking a lot of fun out of playing the game, because it takes a good hour /hour and a half for so for the "cycle" of moving out - dezoning - moving back in - rezoning to complete before I can get back to building my city....
BTW, I used different maps for all three cities, and all three were maps supplied with the game, so if this is a bug, it's not specific to a certain map.....
