I wish my city wasn't self-destructing.

[variegatus]

It's 9 squares, no mods. Population veers between 190K and 230K (those darn death waves). Relative newbie to computer games, basically still working on my original city, 500+ hours. Achieved all the buildings. Easily the best game of my life.

The current problem is that the commercial areas and the general industrial areas are basically self destructing. Approx.75% of each are abandoning themselves. The commercial areas say that more generalized industrial is needed because they don't have enough goods to sell. The industry says that more commercial outlets are needed to sell their manufactured goods. The demand bar at the bottom of the screen says that there is no need for housing, commercial or industry/offices. In fact, when I now zone new areas, the buildings won't spawn. The game won't allow me to build more industrial/commercial and I don't think there's any actual reason for it anyway, relative to housing and population. Strangely, the largely-intact housing areas seem to be fine, as are the offices. Even weirder, the specialized industries, in my case farming and forestry, are operating better than they have for the whole game. Really trouble-free. I'd say this situation has been the same for the last 30 to 40 hours.

I should also say that it doesn't seem to make any difference whether I bulldoze the abandoned buildings or not. Actually glad of that because it's boring to bulldoze hundreds and hundreds. A few abandoned commercial/industry buildings actually will re-spawn, but only a tiny percentage of the whole.

I was surprised my computer can handle the game with few problems, save with some brief freezes, though those have actually decreased as I've played. I just hit my first limit. No more trees/shrubs. Landscaping is a special pleasure and that's what I've been focusing on since the current problems started. I may download my first mod (unlimited trees) to continue to have some fun.

I was hoping for the developers to tweak the gameplay so the city functions properly. Does this situation sound familiar to anyone? Or maybe I've just pushed this city as far as it can go with the current technology so it's turning on itself. Thanks so much.

 

[MarkJohnson]

All of your problems seem to stem from traffic. Remember, this is an agent based simulator and cims need to get from point A to point B in a timely manner or things start breaking down.

All you need to do is get freight from commerce to generic industry better (highway, train, etc).

Also, get cims to work better. Death wave are started mostly from bad traffic and dead cims can't get picked up in time and cause the whole building to abandon.

I find lots of highways work best on larger cities. I find you need at least one highway running through each tile so allow cims to make it to their destinations on time and move traffic around better.

also, watch your import/export menu. You don't want to import goods as generic industry will create them. You don't want to export any goods as that just causes more unneeded traffic slowing everything down.

watch your traffic overlay map to get an idea of where the problem spots are located.

 

[variegatus]

All of your problems seem to stem from traffic. Remember, this is an agent based simulator and cims need to get from point A to point B in a timely manner or things start breaking down.

All you need to do is get freight from commerce to generic industry better (highway, train, etc).

Also, get cims to work better. Death wave are started mostly from bad traffic and dead cims can't get picked up in time and cause the whole building to abandon.

I find lots of highways work best on larger cities. I find you need at least one highway running through each tile so allow cims to make it to their destinations on time and move traffic around better.

also, watch your import/export menu. You don't want to import goods as generic industry will create them. You don't want to export any goods as that just causes more unneeded traffic slowing everything down.

watch your traffic overlay map to get an idea of where the problem spots are located.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. What's strange is that the abandonment seems to have nothing to do with location or proximity to a highway ramp. In fact, the general industry/commercial properties directly adjacent to highway ramps abandon themselves just the same as locations that are further away. There is no pattern I can figure out.

I just looked and my current imports are 193: 99% oil and ore. My exports are 9,248: 99% forestry and farming. I virtually never get the symbol for dead bodies. Plenty of ambulances and incimerators, apparently.

As for the traffic, I'd say it's always been in pretty good shape (that is, after spending hundreds of hours redesigning and tweaking some poor design choices I made). I think I actually overdid the highways and ramps to accommodate the heavy industrial traffic and the demands of industry and it seemed to work well. Plus many roundabouts, tunnels and overpasses. Though some spots had heavy traffic, the traffic moved and there wasn't gridlock anywhere. I say some spots "were" heavy because with so much industrial now missing, the traffic is extremely light everywhere. No more heavy traffic, alas, but what's there moves exceedingly quickly.

Again, I'm no expert at computer games but playing this one for so long I have some feelings about the game mechanics. I think that some of the 'problems', like factories saying "Not enough raw materials!" is not necessarily based on anything except a random percentage. I think the game has some inevitable 'problems' meant to increase gameplay and excitement. Same with "Not enough employees!". I've had this come up when I've had over 20 percent unemployment and excellent public transportation with residences nearby. Still, a small percentage of newly zoned commercial/industrial will always abandon themselves for lack of employees. I think it's just built into the game for the sake of gameplay and drama and you often can't do anything about it. I've learned to expect and ignore it. The built in gameplay drama also seems to go through phases. As I originally said, in the past I had real problems with the forestry and farming (especially the farming) with the "Not enough materials!" thing. Then at one point, without changing roads, trains, shipping or the location of the forestry/farms, this problem just went away. Weird and doesn't seem to follow the games interior 'logic'.

To digress for one moment, it always struck me as silly that commercial/industrial/offices level up before they've acquired enough employees to sustain themselves. I'm happy I've usually been able to provide a good business climate, but demolishing your building and reconstructing it before you have enough employees to sustain your business is beyond absurd, right? Especially when you then have to abandon your new building because you don't have enough employees. Frankly, if business people were this dumb in the real world I doubt we'd have evolved past the bronze age!

On the other hand, I've found many other aspects of the game follow logical, cause-and-effect rules. For example, buildings burning down. It is initially deceptive when you build a fire station and place it on a green-colored street that signifies 'good coverage' for the service. In fact, you learn that buildings do burn down in a good coverage location but it's due to something logical, like very slow traffic or one-way streets in the wrong direction between the fire house and the fire. Or your firehouse is too busy and doesn't have spare trucks. If you take some time you can figure out the problem and make a solution. Fair enough.

I saved the current game on Steam and am now trying to figure out where Steam keeps it in my account so I can provide a link. Thanks again.

 

[MarkJohnson]

You can share your saved game in the workshop by going to the content manager and in the savegames section and choose to share your saved game. Then they will show up in the workshop and you can copy the link and post it here. please list all mods and assets if possible in the description.

I'd be interested to look at it, much better than looking at just pictures or descriptions of issues.

In the mean time, your exports are very high and will contribute to traffic issues. Remember, this game despawns traffic to give you the illusion traffic is fine when it is actually in bad shape. Also, even if traffic is flowing fine, it can have issues with their not being enough highways thus causing delays from having to use streets that are very slow causing deliveries and such to fail.

So your traffic can be great, but you still have issues from deliveries not making it on time.

 

[variegatus]

You can share your saved game in the workshop by going to the content manager and in the savegames section and choose to share your saved game. Then they will show up in the workshop and you can copy the link and post it here. please list all mods and assets if possible in the description.

I'd be interested to look at it, much better than looking at just pictures or descriptions of issues.

In the mean time, your exports are very high and will contribute to traffic issues. Remember, this game despawns traffic to give you the illusion traffic is fine when it is actually in bad shape. Also, even if traffic is flowing fine, it can have issues with their not being enough highways thus causing delays from having to use streets that are very slow causing deliveries and such to fail.

So your traffic can be great, but you still have issues from deliveries not making it on time.

Fingers crossed, hopefully this works:

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198196931798/myworkshopfiles/?appid=255710

Once again, thanks so much for taking the time. I am trying hard to see the difference between what's logical to me versus what's logical to the game. Kim.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Bummer, it didn't show anything. It took me to your account, but it said your workshop was empty.

Did you select share within CSL under gamecontent-->savedgames?

 

[variegatus]

It's sitting there, but when I saved it it seemed to only give the option to share with friends/administrators. I have no problem with it being public so I'll try to figure out how to do that.

 

[variegatus]

I think I've been able to solve the problem. The save should be visible to you now. Problem was that I was a 'limited Steam user' without knowing it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=509473488

Thanks again.

 

[MarkJohnson]

I think I've been able to solve the problem. The save should be visible to you now. Problem was that I was a 'limited Steam user' without knowing it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=509473488

Thanks again.

This link is wrong, but the above one now works.

I'll give it a shot this afternoon.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Okay, good news and really, really, really bad news.

First, I got your city in balance and things seem to flow smoothly. I dezoned 75% of your specialized industry. I added small zones of generic industry in its place so it would keep generic industry going with fewer demands.

I added some specialized industry in your other generic zones. You seem to have too large of each zones. try to mix them up a little better, especially generic and specialized industry.

You have not created ore and oil speciazlized industry at all and is probably why you get demand for it.

way too many 2 lane roads. more 6 lanes are needed. or just upgrade a lot of your 2lane roads to 6 lanes.

You definitely need to add a highway or 5 in various places, especially in the lower region near the oil fields you are not using.

For the really, really, really bad news. The city won't seem to grow. it seems maxed out, upon further looking you are mostly overzoned RCI every where (remember that offices count as industry, not commerce) . But the nasty thing is when zoneing more foresty I need to add more trees manually before tree farms will work properly, but the dreaded unable to create objects of this type, and it may have broke your whole city.

If you have a previous save before you got this tree unable to plop error, you can continue. Unfortunately, once you get this error it is un-reversible.

Edit:

Did this start falling apart shortly after you started receiving this tree plopping error? or do you remember about how far along you were on this map before getting this error?

 

[variegatus]

Your analysis is incredibly interesting. I will enjoy looking at your fixes and appreciate the good advice. I had oil and ore at least a couple hundred hours ago. The zone called Blacktop was originally ore, but it depleted so quickly I didn't zone more ore and oil. Seemed like a losing proposition. Changed the oil elsewhere to forestry. No, the tree limit was reached only within the last three hours or so. The wacky started happening way before then (about 20 hours ago) and included the zone demand bars going dead. Again, what's weird is that until the meltdown the roads seemed to serve the existing general industry and commercial fine. Very few problems with them or complaints by them. Also it never occurred to me that all the trees in the forestry industry areas counted in the total game tree count. And as you say there is a lot of forestry. Doh!

Thank you once again.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Can you post a new save without the tree bug to see if it is causing any issues? Make sure you don't have the tree mod enabled in case it overrides anything. Give it a new name so it doesn't become updated after you share it.

But so far, all I've really done is dezone everything. I completely removed all of the offices as they count as industry and dezoned a ton of forestry and agriculture special industry. now it is under a 1,000 for both import/export of freight. I also dezoned all commercial that doesn't have anything built so demand doesn't get filled up before it is posted in the RCI chart. I now have C and I demand, but still no R and unemployment is over 30% again. it was down to 14% before I over dezoned to force R and C demand.

I think all that is needed now is more highway so R can get to work and stop being unemployed. The whole bottom section is all streets and needs a highway or 5 to get it flowing smoothly.

 

[variegatus]

I checked my saves and unfortunately they're up to date, except one from three months ago when the city was about one tenth the size it is now. I don't think this will help since most of it isn't there. But let me know.

I didn't realize highways were so critical to gameplay. I won't forget that in future.

Would you also be kind enough to tell me how I can open up the game with your changes? The save I put in my Steam workshop looks unedited. On the other hand, your points are very clear so I could implement them myself.

It's pretty interesting about having too much industry/offices relative to residential. I think for almost of it I only built it when there was a demand for it. Though I very recently pushed it to get that Eiffel Tower! After I got it I changed the massive general industrial in Six Corners to residential cause I knew I was being bad. Same thing for the Arc de Triomphe. Pushed the population up to get 15K kids in school or whatever the nonsense was. I think so many of these achievements lead you astray. I actually never wanted the city to get so big! I'll probably ignore most of the achievements if I make another city. You've been great to take the time on this.

 

[MarkJohnson]

I checked my saves and unfortunately they're up to date, except one from three months ago when the city was about one tenth the size it is now. I don't think this will help since most of it isn't there. But let me know.

I don't need that old of a saved game. I was just hoping you saved it before you added mods. btw... Did that tree mod let you continue to plop trees? or does it still say you are at your limit?

Check your saved games for autosave if you have it enabled. You can enable it from the gamecontent menu under savedgames. You can adjust the autosave times. I think every 120 minutes is default. I set mine to 45 minutes I think.

I didn't realize highways were so critical to gameplay. I won't forget that in future.

yeah, I find one highway through each tile is minimum and past 9-tiles you may need 2 per tile in some cases. as you city grows it puts demands in all directions so you need lots of highways since the game is designed for 9-tiles. Maybe they'll make a dificul;ty level for 25-tiles as the AI will need altering tremendously.

Would you also be kind enough to tell me how I can open up the game with your changes? The save I put in my Steam workshop looks unedited. On the other hand, your points are very clear so I could implement them myself.

There's not much there, but I posted it for you.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=510239873

It's pretty interesting about having too much industry/offices relative to residential. I think for almost of it I only built it when there was a demand for it. Though I very recently pushed it to get that Eiffel Tower! After I got it I changed the massive general industrial in Six Corners to residential cause I knew I was being bad. Same thing for the Arc de Triomphe. Pushed the population up to get 15K kids in school or whatever the nonsense was. I think so many of these achievements lead you astray. I actually never wanted the city to get so big! I'll probably ignore most of the achievements if I make another city. You've been great to take the time on this.

There's a mod to let you plop the monuments without the achievements. I forget the name.

Also, you can install the, "Infinite Ore and Oil" mod to keep the resources from dwindling away. I find it mandatory as they deplete so fast.

 

[variegatus]

Wow. It's so great to be able to play this city again.

I plan on adding highways and widening roads as you suggest. But I haven't yet gotten the mods for trees, ore and oil. When I do, I'll let you know if the trees work.

It's so interesting to see the changes you made, and where. I see now it's important not to make industrial too big, and when things look hopeless, de-zone.

As for the game itself, I hope some improvements are made. It's obvious that the game mechanics are very touchy and tend towards going out of balance. I guess especially when a city gets really big. There's a real need for more information as you go along so you can correct it. For example, the demand bars could be more sophisticated. They should you know where the demand is needed because location seems to be critical. Also, for example, what type of industry is demanded. And where highway coverage is adequate/inadequate. Players shouldn't have to impose on the time and generosity of a person like you to learn things the game itself should be communicating.

Communication problems aside, this remains the best game I've ever played. I can't begin to list all the amazing things about it, but I really should make a post about how wonderful it is. Thank you.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Wow. It's so great to be able to play this city again.

I plan on adding highways and widening roads as you suggest. But I haven't yet gotten the mods for trees, ore and oil. When I do, I'll let you know if the trees work.

It's so interesting to see the changes you made, and where. I see now it's important not to make industrial too big, and when things look hopeless, de-zone.

Be careful playing this city. You've already hit your tree limit and it is forever locked. I'm not sure what other side effects are happening because of this.

As for the game itself, I hope some improvements are made. It's obvious that the game mechanics are very touchy and tend towards going out of balance. I guess especially when a city gets really big. There's a real need for more information as you go along so you can correct it. For example, the demand bars could be more sophisticated. They should you know where the demand is needed because location seems to be critical. Also, for example, what type of industry is demanded. And where highway coverage is adequate/inadequate. Players shouldn't have to impose on the time and generosity of a person like you to learn things the game itself should be communicating.

Information is lacking in the game, for instance it doesn't reveal where unemployment exists, so you can see where to add employment options. You just have to guess by traffic and where cims are traveling.

Industry is a little easier to decipher. If you go to the import/export/tourism menu, it will show you which buildings are importing, so you can provide for them, same with exporting, it will show you which buildings are exporting goods so you can dezone. or zone more places that use the exported items so they'll be put to use.

Be on the lookout for informative, game unaltering mods to provide more details.

Communication problems aside, this remains the best game I've ever played. I can't begin to list all the amazing things about it, but I really should make a post about how wonderful it is. Thank you.

I'm glad you are enjoying the game again.

Have fun
-=Mark=-

 

[variegatus]

A quick update, Mark. The unlimited trees mod works just fine. What a great mod!