Cities: Skylines (Steam) - Landscaping / terraforming - extreme lag / stuttering/slow simulation on most of the unlocked tiles

[Pinco_Pallino]

Describe your issue
Landscaping / terraforming - extreme lag / stuttering on most of the unlocked tiles

What is your game version?
2022.14

What expansions do you have installed?
After Dark, Snowfall, Natural Disasters, Mass Transit, Green Cities, Parklife, Industries, Campus, Sunset Harbor, Airports

What mods are you using?
Relight and some other visual mods. All have been disabled and uninstalled but problem persists

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
I'm playing on Tropical Pass with 6-7 tiles unlocked and population is ~40k.
Whenever I start terraforming somewhere on the map, the simulation slows down to a crawl. This behavior is a bit inconsistent though, as I'm able to terraform properly without lag in one of the tiles (it has some oil industry and quite a bustling community of around 13k sims and plenty of lovely trees) but none of the others. I've tested terraforming in undeveloped areas but it lags painfully as well.

Can you replicate the issue? If yes, please explain how you did it.
Terraform anywhere in the city, try along the highway or over at the ore industry. By the oil industry it works fine

Attachments File(s) attached

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

Just to add some more info - I opened up another save file and tried terraforming all over the place and there were no hickups at all. That save file was created using the same set of mods as the one above and is housing 120k digital beings and *a lot* of trees across the9 available tiles. Filled to the brim almost

 

[Lucododosor]

Just to add some more info - I opened up another save file and tried terraforming all over the place and there were no hickups at all. That save file was created using the same set of mods as the one above and is housing 120k digital beings and *a lot* of trees across the9 available tiles. Filled to the brim almost

any custom asset with high tris you're using in the save with problems but not in this one?

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

No custom assets at all, plain vanilla. No game altering mods either. I am using more of the MrMaison trees in this save file though and they are probably a bit heavier on the tris.

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

I tried removing all trees from the unlocked tiles, saved the game, quit the game, restarted and loaded the save without trees, terraforming is still borked.
Ran the "detect broken nodes" tool and found no issues
Loading screen mod with safe mode enabled - no difference

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

Sorry for going on and on about this.. Opened another 100% vanilla save with 80k pop. I forest brushed the entire map with MrMaison Live Oaks until i hit the tree count limit. Terraforming still works like a charm. Framerate didn't drop at all.

My specs are these:

Intel i7 11800 @2.3Ghz (16 cores)
Geforce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU
32gb RAM
2 tb SSD

 

[Lucododosor]

I'll have time later to load your save and see if I can replicate the issue - it all points out to an specific problem with this save in particular

 

[Lucododosor]

Yeah, I can confirm that this save not only lags when terraforming, but the entire simulation is running really slow. Does it happen with you too?
I tried using FPS Booster but to no avail. Also as soon as I pressed play, the city had a ~4k population drop, and I couldn't put my finger on what's causing it - or if it's even related to all the lagging. It recovered after some time, but the lag continued.
Your other saves you said are fine, are they on this same map?

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

Yeah i've noticed the overall lag but i thought i was just paranoid. Even on 3 speed - Buildings are levelling up really slowly, traffic moves more like 1 speed and so on.
I spend quite a lot of time waiting for the correct models to spawn so i'm used to waiting for the final result, but the last few days it's been really crazy long waiting. I think i've spent like 2-300 in-game years since I started this a few months ago. Could that be it, the in-game years? I've seen people with cities that are like 500 years old..

The other saves are on other maps, Green Peaks is the 120k one and the 80k one is on Mountain Meadows (unlockage.crp). Green Peaks is also quite old in in-game years.

 

[Lucododosor]

No lag whatsoever in both of those saves - a little bit slow in the 120k city, but nothing out of the ordinary for a city of that size.

I don't know if it's a problem with the map itself - don't even know if that's possible - or with how the mods interacted with it. I don't think in-game years might really be an issue. Hopefully someone more experienced might help you with this.

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

Thanks for looking into this. It's tempting to start a new game but it would suck if this is something i will get with the next one as well. It would be super sweet to find the root cause so i might be able to avoid this in the future.

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

Another thing, i have to stop the game through Steam. Just clicking Quit to desktop gives a never ending spinning chirper.

 

[AndrewT]

Another thing, i have to stop the game through Steam. Just clicking Quit to desktop gives a never ending spinning chirper.

In your Steam Library right-click on this game and choose Properties. Click on Set Launch Options, and paste this in there:

-noWorkshop -disableMods

Then start and play a new test city, then exit. Does this still happen?

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

It doesn't happen on any other save files. I've started a new one and it closes down just fine
It's just that Taumathawaka thingy that's messing with me. I've uninstalled all mods (not just unsubscribed) as well

 

[MarkJohnson]

Yeah, I played the city from the first post and it is laggy and slow. It looks like mods were added and then removed as it said there were no workshop tied to the saved game.

If you unsubscribed all workshop, then maybe it has caused a glitch in your city, as some mods need to be present in your city for it to function properly.

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

I tried the launch options above and it didn't help with the simulation lag but i was able to close the game. I checked the output file and there are a lot of exceptions being thrown when running the simulation. Nothing that gets surfaced to the UI, except for the slow simulation

Int16 out of bounds: 49071
at System.Environment.get_StackTrace()
at ColossalFramework.IO.DataSerializer.WriteInt16(Int32 value)
at BuildingManager+Data.Serialize(ColossalFramework.IO.DataSerializer s)
at ColossalFramework.IO.DataSerializer.Serialize(System.IO.Stream stream, Mode mode, UInt32 version, IDataContainer data)
at LoadingManager+<SaveSimulationData>c__IteratorC.MoveNext()
at AsyncTask.Execute()
at SimulationManager.SimulationStep()
at SimulationManager.SimulationThread() [Serialization - Internal]

 

[CheedaScwerl]

I have the same or very similar problem.

I recently came back to the game after many years of not playing. I started a city using the Northwood Hills map from the Campus DLC. At around 20k population, I noticed the landscaping tool became very slow to respond. Like 1fps while trying to landscape. The slowness persisted even after disabling/uninstalling all mods, and opening the save on a different, much more powerful computer. I have other cities on other maps/saves with populations up to 200k that work fine.

To try and diagnose my problem I used Move It to delete everything on the map, this cleared the slowness. I then reloaded and started deleting portions of the city using bifurcation strategy to figure out what might be causing the slowdown. I narrowed it down to one residential district on a slope that seemed to be causing the problem. I deleted the entire neighborhood, smoothed the terrain as best I could and rebuilt using a more slope friendly road layout. Everything seemed fine but after a some time, the slowness returns. I even tried replacing the entire district with the large central park unique building, but when I connected the road I again got the slowdown. I've also tried using TM: PE to delete all traffic to clear a slowdown to no effect.

I've used some mods while building my city like Move It and Network Multitool, but have tried to be careful to not use anything that would break if all mods were disabled, and have tried to avoid putting nodes too close together with anarchy.

I've attached a save file that when loaded works fine, and landscaping will be fine, but will reliably slowdown within a few minutes of loading.

Any help would be great. I was really hoping to just relax and build my city over Christmas break, but programmer brain noticed a bug and now I'm just spending all my time trying to debug it instead.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Subscribe to the compatibility report mod. It will get most of the workshop in alignment.

Steam Workshop::Compatibility Report v2.3.2 (Catalogue 7.18)

steamcommunity.com

Do the ones in red first then exit game and restart and try to load the saved game.

If t fails, then do the same for orange ones.

Hopefully it works by then or keep going through the list.

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

I have the same or very similar problem.

I recently came back to the game after many years of not playing. I started a city using the Northwood Hills map from the Campus DLC. At around 20k population, I noticed the landscaping tool became very slow to respond. Like 1fps while trying to landscape. The slowness persisted even after disabling/uninstalling all mods, and opening the save on a different, much more powerful computer. I have other cities on other maps/saves with populations up to 200k that work fine.

To try and diagnose my problem I used Move It to delete everything on the map, this cleared the slowness. I then reloaded and started deleting portions of the city using bifurcation strategy to figure out what might be causing the slowdown. I narrowed it down to one residential district on a slope that seemed to be causing the problem. I deleted the entire neighborhood, smoothed the terrain as best I could and rebuilt using a more slope friendly road layout. Everything seemed fine but after a some time, the slowness returns. I even tried replacing the entire district with the large central park unique building, but when I connected the road I again got the slowdown. I've also tried using TM: PE to delete all traffic to clear a slowdown to no effect.

I've used some mods while building my city like Move It and Network Multitool, but have tried to be careful to not use anything that would break if all mods were disabled, and have tried to avoid putting nodes too close together with anarchy.

I've attached a save file that when loaded works fine, and landscaping will be fine, but will reliably slowdown within a few minutes of loading.

Any help would be great. I was really hoping to just relax and build my city over Christmas break, but programmer brain noticed a bug and now I'm just spending all my time trying to debug it instead.

You're having the exact same issue as me (both the programmer brain and the laggy city). I just loaded your save and tried landscaping and it slows down immediately.
Any idea which of you neighborhoods is causing this? I have quite a few sloped districts on my map (my first two proper districts were terraced with quay walls etc) and i . and I was able to complete at least 4-5 districts with significant terrain craziness before it all started. I noticed the issue when i was building on a flat piece of land that was connected to a district on a hill..

At that time i didn't notice the landscaping stutter, but simulation speed overall was really slow. I had to spend an embarrasing amount of time to get buildings to level up

I also noticed that when this issue occurs i can't close the game without stopping it with the Steam Launcher and this is consistent with your save as well. Almost like a task deadlock somewhere (the blue spinning chirper keeps spinning, which it doesn't do at all when it closes down properly. The UI seems totally disconnected from the background workers.. )

 

[Pinco_Pallino]

Am I out of luck with this one? Can i help debug this in some way? I'm fluent in c++/c#...
Or should i mainly keep my fingers crossed this doesn't happen on my next save?