City stopped growing. No RCI demand anymore.

[MarkJohnson]

For some reason the game has stopped growing. All new roads won't build no matter what I zone them for.

This all started when I decided to upgrade my roads as traffic is getting horrendous. Now all those upgraded roads won't respawn buildings and I have to plop wires across town.

I haven't placed many ploppables as they were killing my budget.

I thought maybe it was my education at first as the offices want a university for growth. I ploped a university, but only a tiny office section matured from early play. I thought maybe all of the schools had to be maxed on education, so I started plopping a bunch of grade/high schools. still no go and now I'm in the negative on my budget.

I've restarted the computer twice since trying to figure this out, hoping it was just some glitch.


Anyone else have this issue and hopefully figured out the cure?

Thanks for any help
-=Mark=-

 

[perafilozof]

Patience young padawan, you need to learn patience.

It will work it's self out.

 

[JimmiG]

I've had periods of time where all three bars bottomed out too. It does seem to sort itself out over time, but it would be nice if the game gave you some feedback as to what is hindering growth.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Maybe it's traffic. It is currently horrible. Maybe I'll try anothe highway connection or two. It is in the green now at least.

 

[asgersikker]

When you remove roads to build new roads often the zoning disappears so you need to lay the zoning again.

 

[jcitron]

I noticed that the cities become saturated, meaning there is no growth because there is no increase in industry or influx of residents. This in turn causes everything from stop growing. You might want to check your education and health levels. Increase the number of schools, perhaps add in a high school or university (if you can) and see if this helps.

John

 

[NorthStars]

I've been wondering if this variation is deliberate, as a way to simulate strong and weak economic periods. Zero demand is just the times when economic growth is weak, and your city has to ride it out without getting into economic trouble.

Either that, or it's a bug.

 

[Einbein]

I've got the same problem in one game at 60k population and in one with 26k. In the 26k game the happiness of the "townsfolk" was at 88% more than 60% of them highly educated, excellent healthcare... I even dropped the tax to 5% for them, but they didn't care. Nearly every service is at max and i make 40k/month (at 9% tax). I'm helpless what the reason is.

 

[nafeasonto]

This is happening to me too.

Everything is good in my city, traffic, noise etc etc. It's not making any sense why my city isn't growing. I am stuck at 38K. And just fluctuating there.

 

[Syrential]

I have the same problem in two cities now, it both happened when the population reached 40k. Funnily enough, it now shows demand for residence but the population keeps decreasing, from 40k down to 33k. Not exactly sure what's happening.

 

[Black_Shade]

Have you guys tried plopping down parks and things to increase the land value of the surrounding area? Maybe making the area more attractive will jumpstart growth. Or maybe it will just cause migrations from one area of the city to another without actually changing demand levels.

 

[Mithkabob]

I'm at 82k population right now.

My demand bars are almost always flat at the bottom while I'm waiting for new areas to fill in and level up and settle out. It mostly just takes lots of time. Sometimes when it gets stagnant for a period of time I think it has something to do with the population demographics. If there are lots of children/teens/seniors, it seems to have a negative impact on growth.

Also, at this point, the new people in my city seem to be entirely based on births, and more people are moving out than moving in. There is also something weird with high density residential buildings only filling up to about 80% of the max households. Not sure if it is related to the demand problems or what, but it sure annoys me.

Edit: Also, my people are at 95% happiness, there are 0 sick people ever, 0 crime, perfect coverage of everything, high land value, and no traffic problems. It's a utopia and people are moving out. Dropped down to 80k while typing this out.

 

[jcitron]

It's just as I said along with economics. If you think about it, there are just so many people in the city and there's just a certain amount of goods and industry that can support them. If there's too much of anything, the economy will go from boom to bust. A bust is just that with no growth and perhaps a loss in the budget.

I agree there needs to be some better feedback on this. Perhaps a message regarding an economic slowdown which could happen on a global scale. A slowdown such as this will also affect our ability to export goods and for workers to commute to jobs outside the city.

Right now my residential growth has slowed down along with commercial, which explains why I'm seeing a lot of abandoned commercial goods. In fact there are some symbols over the businesses regarding lack of customers. In addition, my industries are now having trouble selling even with some cargo ports, however, there is still some growth in that area, albeit, not much. My taxes have not increased since I started this city. I could lower the taxes and see what happens...

John

 

[perafilozof]

It may be connected to building upgrades.

One thing I noticed in my city was that when some of my C shops went up a level my C demand went down and stayed there for about a hour. While I was building more R and I in the mean time it finally went up again and some new shops opened up.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Well, after a few hours of whack-a-mole, the thing's in balance again and growing slowly.

I had been ignoring abandonment as the pop-up says they move back in. Well, there were over a hundred. They were repoping as fast as I could 'doze them. Then I noticed my buildings were upgrading. The abandonment was lower my land value and stopped them from reaching higher densities. Strangely I'm still at 30k population.

I hope they add more info the the game. All of abandon building has nothing as to why they went abandoned. One said it was from multiple issues. But that showed up only once.

I'd be nice to color code the abandoned building when in bulldozer mode as it is hard to tell which one is abandoned.

The whole game needs a lot more tooltips and info in general.

I'm sure they're doing a lot of fine tuning as we speak.

-=Mark=-

 

[Dnote]

I'm at 70k pop in my city now and go long periods of time with no growth. The stagnation can be frustrating but I just the time to clean things up and top up happiness/service coverage.

 

[Syrential]

I figured my people were too educated, the industry however doesn't like educated people. After I placed a new residential area without any schools my population increased again.

Unfortunately there's no direct feedback, you can only see it by clicking on an industrial building, it will actually say that the people hired are over educated if they don't fit the job.

It also seems like "dumb" people are getting more babies than educated ones. Before death rate was above birth rate, now it's vice versa again.

 

[jcitron]

I figured my people were too educated, the industry however doesn't like educated people. After I placed a new residential area without any schools my population increased again.

Unfortunately there's no direct feedback, you can only see it by clicking on an industrial building, it will actually say that the people hired are over educated if they don't fit the job.

It also seems like "dumb" people are getting more babies than educated ones. Before death rate was above birth rate, now it's vice versa again.

I had the same thing happen as well, but at 1/2 that population. Another thing too is don't build just "industry" instead start building offices. Offices are for the more educated workers. As soon as I started building offices instead of factories, my population started to climb, although the commercial area is stagnant, but I think that will change eventually.

John

 

[IIWW]

Where are the Oromo when You need them?!
Having simmilar issue, the RCI demand is flat, but it's weird. The town is growing, when I zone new area they will become popoulus. Few cities, the same thing, everythings perfect, positive groth of population, but 0 demand. From what I managed to do the best thing is increasing the possibility to import/export thus increasing (but very, very slightly) the demand for Industry, which later increasez (also slighly) demand for residential. Since commercial is a mere fraction of residential it's rarely neccessery.
Generally: once I hit stable bottom of RCI I stop caring about it. New zones are become popoulus, even though the demand is 0. So who cares?

 

[InfidelKiller]

Question for the devs: what drives residential demand?
When the RCI bars are flat, what triggers for residential?