No city growth and everything is dying.

[MarkJohnson]

My city all of a sudden started dying really fast. C and I are demanding workers and freight, R has an unemployment rate of almost 50%. I have a minor demand for C and I, but nothing for R. No C is rebuilding after installing the auto-bulldoze mod as there were literally thousands of abandoned buildings. Every C and I zone had half abandoned buildings.

I've spent two days trying to fix this, but it just gets worse. This has happened in some fashion several times the whole game. I've been able to recover before, but this time it seems stuck.

I have or had a pop of 375k and about three-fourths of the map filled. Most everything is high density.

My problem started on the far West end when I tried to create more residential to supply jobs, Then commerce had a huge demand. So I zoned half Commerce, then frieght shortage and a small demand for I. and then bam! My commerce went AWOL. Then after circling my city bulldozing the C I notice my I is all abandoned now, and all of my C is abandoned again.

I think I may have hit a limit or something. Nothing seems to grow. it is just stagnant. I have all kinds of RCI unzoned so they should be growing, but they are not.

Here's a recent save of my city if anyone wants to load in in.

I have the 25-tile unlock installed, so you may need it before loading, or it may crash or something.

I know I have poor road designs, but I keep changing the freeways, and nothing seems to change. It was much worse before I changed all of the roads the past of couple days.

Thanks for any help
-=Mark=-

PS, I can't seem to upload save games here. I added to dropbox. I hope I did it right.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dus1oowhwsdrszo/NoGrowth.zip?dl=0

 

[ShilkaLive]

Your story is very hard to understand. Why would you create residential areas to supply jobs? Residential doesn't supply jobs, commerce and industry supplies jobs. Or do you mean workers where you type jobs?

If I have to conclude anything from your story, it is probably your traffic problems that are a cause though, if you have demand for workers, yet 50% unemployment at the same time, people are not getting to work for some reason.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Your story is very hard to understand. Why would you create residential areas to supply jobs? Residential doesn't supply jobs, commerce and industry supplies jobs. Or do you mean workers where you type jobs?

Ooops, I meant I built residential to fill jobs from worker shortages. so, yes, I meant workers instead of jobs.

If I have to conclude anything from your story, it is probably your traffic problems that are a cause though, if you have demand for workers, yet 50% unemployment at the same time, people are not getting to work for some reason.

I thought this to, but every single C and I area has abandoned building, but no abandoned buildings in R. You would think that the abandonment from unemployment would be isolated to certain areas. Not all areas evenly.

I'm still trying to sort out my traffic, but it seems to not have much affect.

I think since the game is designed for 9-tiles, maybe there is either:

A) Hard coded limits in the game.
B) The AI isn't smart enough to handle 25-tiles, since the game design is for 25-tiles.

25-tiles is a huge difference. Almost three times the load. I had the same issues with SC2013 and the 3k boundary mod which more than doubled the land mass and the AI behaved differently and you needed to create new workarounds to make your city self-sustaining.

I'm still hard at work with roads, but it seems to just jumble the traffic to a different area.

I also have a huge import/export demand. But I'm afraid of dezoning industry as I'm already in low suppiy of freight.

Thanks for the advice.
-=Mark=-

 

[ShilkaLive]

I had a good look at your save game, and I must say, I'm much more convinced now that it is traffic that is your problem. Some of your traffic needs to struggle through dozens of intersections to get where they want to, and has no fast ways available to get where it wants. The highways you have barely have any connections to your city. In a quick attempt to fix things I made on and off ramps at -every- overpass you made over the highway (so dozens of extra connections to the highway), and that already halved the speed of your population downfall (from -450 to -150/-225). My guess would be you need at least 3 times the amount of highways you have now, and way, way more connections to and from it. I don't have a lot experience with cities this size though, but it seems traffic just takes way to long to get where it wants. Perhaps other people can shed more light on this that are more experienced with big cities though.

 

[ReginaRC]

Oh goodness, this is like a dream come true! I love taking cities with horrid problems and fixing them (I used to do this all the time with SC2000). I'm downloading now and can't wait to take a look at it which might help make sense of your post because a lot of that was very confusing.

 

[ShilkaLive]

After more study of your map I think another effect has happend:

All your oil and ore fields have depleted, so now all that industry has changed from pumps and mines to industry that imports oil and ore and processes it, effectively more then doubling the traffic problems for your industry. before it would locally dig up oil and ore and just had to deliver the goods to your commercial, but now it needs to import all that oil and ore from the outside, and twice as much too, because all your pumps and mines have turned to processors too now. Your problem is definately goods and rough ore/oil traffic problems.

@ReginaRC , you have your work cut out for you XD

 

[NZSimplicity]

well if his oil and ore fields have run out, one real quick way of seeing if it is indeed the problem is to get the mod that makes them never run out.. (only guessing here)

 

[MarkJohnson]

After more study of your map I think another effect has happend:

All your oil and ore fields have depleted, so now all that industry has changed from pumps and mines to industry that imports oil and ore and processes it, effectively more then doubling the traffic problems for your industry. before it would locally dig up oil and ore and just had to deliver the goods to your commercial, but now it needs to import all that oil and ore from the outside, and twice as much too, because all your pumps and mines have turned to processors too now. Your problem is definately goods and rough ore/oil traffic problems.

@ReginaRC, you have your work cut out for you XD

Okay, I figured that the dried up oil and ore field were an issue. But when I rezoned one of them my imports went down, but my exports went up. I undid the double the industry freight, or whatever it's called, but that didn't seem to make a difference.

anyway, I'll try experimenting on removing the ore/oil. or maybe try the endless oil, ore mod. not sure if it brings back the dead fields again though. Still working on the freeways. I never used round about much. my first one I made caused traffic to worsen, or at least stay the same. It's hard to tell sometimes as this traffic disappearing throws me off big time. It makes traffic looks okay, when it's not.

This thing is so big it make take me a while to sort it all out. It's a chain reaction now. fix one thig ans cause another somewhere else. lol

also, is it a bad idea to remove oil and ore fields? or will it increase my imports a lot. not sure what oil and ore is used for, beside oil power plants. but I am all solar power. oh, wait. I have the nuclear one that provides power to all of the city.

anyways, thanks everyone for your help.
-=Mark=-

 

[ReginaRC]

Ooh boy yeah. Loaded up the map and nearly passed out from the excitement! LOL

Then I remembered I hadn't had lunch so had a bowl of chili accompany me on my tour.

The first thing I see here is unemployment rate of 41% and 13,000 jobs available.

You currently are going in the hole about 2,000 a month so it's a good thing there's about 9 million in the bank to work with. You don't have any surprises like loans, do you?

The second thing I see are industries not getting their goods out and commercial not receiving shipments of supplies, and honest to Pete, imports are coming in at roughly HALF the rate of the exports! In my city (which isn't nearly as large but has almost as much industrial capacity percentage-wise) imports are roughly 10% of the exports. Bear in mind, though, I only recently started with oil and ore and I am using the no depletion mod but even before the oil and ore my imports were still only about 25% of the exports.

I'm also seeing a very messed up mass transit system (at first I wasn't seeing it at all then went back and took another look), with way too many bus depots. I'm also not seeing nearly enough cargo and rail distribution. As linearly as everything is laid out you could easily run a railroad from every industrial section to every commercial sector and plop down cargo depots. I totally laid waste to both the bus and metro systems (the metro was a disaster). Of course there are going to be some offices downgrade themselves shortly because they lost bus access but the most important thing right now is getting the industrial moving.

Since Cims don't actually have to reach a job to be employed by it I'll work on employee transportation later. My first plan of attack is going to be to improve the rail system and get the goods flowing. Yes, those depots are going to cost some to run BUT since the goods will start moving to where they need to go the tax income should turn around and start turning a profit shortly.

I'll also work on the bus lines. I see you have a bunch of bus stations that are turned off. Even a large city doesn't need more than a couple of bus depots, just needs well placed bus lines. Depending on how money is going after that I will probably work on a metro system.

In my limited experience I've found the transport infrastructure to be the most important thing in this game. Now let's see if I can take what I've learned in my little bitty city of 25,000 Cims and apply it here and make it work.

As to your question with the oil and ore fields, since you're not using the mod so they don't run out have you tried moving those around to new supplies? I read that it's much better to only put in small sections of oil and ore at a time, just enough to keep your city supplied, then move them as necessary.

ETA: I haven't used roundabouts in my city and I don't think they're necessary at all but a personal choice. The only time I put one in it made the congestion on that intersection so much worse I couldn't believe it. I'm not saying they'll do that in ever case, they most likely won't, but it sure wasn't the solution for that particular spot.

ETA Again: Another problem I see are a bunch of those four-lane avenue-type roads in the Commercial districts. Those seriously impede goods being delivered to stores since no vehicle can cross the medium and has to make loops around the blocks to get headed in the right direction to get to the store. Also with these really big blocks, foot paths are really handy. Cims can't path-find without a path under their feet.

So I'll just keep editing this until the cows come home, I guess. :lol:

Another issue I'm seeing is the use of the one-way "highway" roads going between industrial and other areas, and those roads are way far apart. This is really going to slow things down a lot.

 

[ReginaRC]

Okay, so it's been a while since I made the other post. I don't know why I didn't check for it first but I think I found the true culprit behind your problematic city: The Hadron Collider! I've read before where that thing will in effect stop a city in its path from making any headway. I'm turning it off to see what will happen.

It's not like there aren't a whole lot of other problems, all the ones I mentioned above but this thing will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

I'm going to call it for now on your city. The more I look at it the more I realize it needs torn down brick by brick and rebuilt.

Oh, about that depleted oil? Yeah, it's gone. There's no bringing it back. There is a small area across the river that has some more oil. It takes a little doing but some roads can be added and some zoning put in.

Also, I'm going to make this suggestion. If you're going to build a city on a grid then at least make the roads and grids straight.

 

[IVIaarten]

From what I read here the main problem is the supply lines between imports/exports and industry/commercial.

I think that (due to traffic issues) the commercial zones had no way of actually getting goods (when a cargo delivery takes too long, the truck despawns and gets re-ordered). If this goes on for long enough, the commercials will go out of business. When this happens there will be a lack of buyers for the the goods the industry are producing. They'll try exporting, but likely ran into the same traffic issues the commercial sectors did. Too many goods produced; industry goes out of business as well.

The only way to fix it would be to make sure that industry has good off-map connections, and commercial has good connections with the industry. Without seeing the city, I would suggest a strong back-bone of inner-city cargo rail, with cargo stations in all big industrial sectors, and very close to commercial sectors. Don't connect this internal cargo network to the outside world to make sure the system doesn't overload itself with 5% loaded trains from outside. Try defunding the rail network to 50% until you see trains consistently hauling 100% load. Give the industry dedicated cargo stations connecting to the outside world.

Hope this helps.

 

[ReginaRC]

@IVIaarten, I'm in total agreement with you. There's the starting of a decent rail system but everything is laid out very poorly. I'm not planning on giving up on the map but it was more than my brain wanted to deal with earlier.

@MarkJohnson, I'd imagine my criticism comes across pretty harshly but I don't mean it that way. I just want to be truthful and let you know where your problems are.

I'd suggest at this point just starting over on a new map and this time take it slow and easy. Try to build the city organically and don't build those huge blocks. I wanted to move one of your cargo depots closer to the industrial area it needed to serve but I couldn't because the land there is too hilly so it'll have to be moved farther away than I had hoped. It will, however, save what little oil you have left. If you build organically you're not going to be zoning rectangles over hills. Instead you're going to work around the landscape features of your map. Let those kind of areas be for pretty, not for hiding away underneath a bunch of roads and buildings. Transit is your absolute best friend in this game. Build out on section of your city and fix any issues with it before moving on to the next section. Once you start working on the next area you're going to have to go back and make sure it all jives with the first area.

When you are working with flat areas zoning straight-up blocks is okay. However, you'd do well to get a keen hold on building straight roads for that. There's a bit of a knack to it--I fought with it for a while at first then I finally got it figured out. Now my block zones are blocks of solid zoning instead of blocks with broken zoning everywhere. If you zone some blocks in one area and want to zone more blocks in another area and the roads aren't going to match up perfectly don't connect them until you have the roads for the block in and squared. Then run a road between them all willy-nilly if necessary. If you have trouble seeing the zoning squares and really can't get the roads straight download road blocks from the Workshop. I've seen several that are designed for heavy industry areas.

Anywho, that's it for me for the night. I just hope we've been a bit of help to you. Like I said, I think I'll mess around some more with this save and try to give it a renovating but it'll probably take me a while.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Thanks for everyone's advice.

I decided to dezone the large industrial area in the SE as the frieght had nowhere to go but North. It has mellowed oit a great deal, plus it put less stress on my industrial. I've been placing Ofiices with my new industry demand as I seem to have too much freight exporting.

I've been adding a ton of freeway connections all over the place to alleviate traffic elsewhere.

Things are starting to become more manageable, but still no residential demand yet. It bounces between 350k - 380k. Right now it's at 367k and may stay there for a while until I balance C and I so it makes more residential demand.

Earlier I was dezoning a ton of Offices as I was lacking in workers. I read office do nothing but supply jobs so I thought it may help in my C and I demand.

Now, I'm rezoning Industry back again in hopes of getting my unemployment back down without creating more exports that I seem to have too much of.

I'll repost later and let everyone know how I'm doing.

Thanks again for everyone's help. It is much appreciated.
-=Mark=-

 

[MarkJohnson]

I have a few questions.

1st, Under industry I have goods, ore, oil, etc. But what makes goods? Is it plain industry? How are others used? What is oil used for if you don't have an oil plant? What does ore make period?

2nd, how many bus lines are allowed for each bus station? What is the range of these lines? I had actually bulldozed a bunch of bus stations as I had buses everywhere clogging my roads even more.

3rd, do I need cargo stations in the middle of my commerce as well? I assumed it was for industry only.

4th, doh, forgot the other questions. lol This should be enough for now anyways.

You weren't coming off too harsh. I know you're trying to be constructive.

I appreciate all of your guys help on this. Things are slowly coming back together.
-=Mark=-

 

[IVIaarten]

I have a few questions.

1st, Under industry I have goods, ore, oil, etc. But what makes goods? Is it plain industry? How are others used? What is oil used for if you don't have an oil plant? What does ore make period?

specialized industry does 2 things;
- produce raw products (oil, ore etc.)
- convert raw products into processed products

Generic industry converts processed products into goods.

There is no way to differentiate between these two in the import/export tab graphs. It does show the one type of building as coloured in the overview, the other one is white.

2nd, how many bus lines are allowed for each bus station? What is the range of these lines? I had actually bulldozed a bunch of bus stations as I had buses everywhere clogging my roads even more.

I think there's no limit to the amount of buses that can be supplied by a depot. It might be smart to have a couple spread around for when you change/add lines.

If you were talking about amount of stops per line; there no real limit I think, but try to keep it sensible (maybe between 6 and 10?). I found that when I make longer lines, the bus just fills up (since everyone wants to get to the metro stop / train station) and will not pick up anymore people. Just look at your buses and see which lines are causing trouble.

If you see too many buses, I think you're better off just lowering the budget on the bus lines rather than removing lines.

3rd, do I need cargo stations in the middle of my commerce as well? I assumed it was for industry only.

As was mentioned above; Industry needs links to other industry and to the outside, commercial needs links to the industry. So yes, it might be very smart to add a cargo station close to your big commercial sectors (if the roads can't handle it.

4th, doh, forgot the other questions. lol This should be enough for now anyways.

You weren't coming off too harsh. I know you're trying to be constructive.

I appreciate all of your guys help on this. Things are slowly coming back together.
-=Mark=-

I'd like to add one thing; PEDESTRIAN PATHS ARE AWESOME!

Use them. If cims CAN walk, they most likely will. Some pedestrian overpasses over a highway can easily remove hundreds of cars from your roads.
Cims crossing level crossing can also seriously hamper traffic flow on intersections, since cars will try to avoid pedestrians. An overpass here can help out loads as well.

 

[MarkJohnson]

I've been having similar problems. Population 250,000 + or - 10,000, lots of industry, commercial and residential, the only negative impact being noise pollution in commercial areas. All Happiness at 90%+ except commercial which never moves from around 80%. Roads and rail running clear no jams. yet the commercial/industrial demand is minuscule, and there is no residential demand at all, and there is a regular boom and bust cycle... My demand for commercial goes up so I zone just enough to edge it down a little, then Industry wants more so I do the same there... then suddenly commercial says not enough goods to sell and industry says not enough buyers?!?! I have built the two types near to one another to try to reduce travel time but still it happens... The population slowly drops by about 10,000, a load of commercial and industrial gets abandoned... until it slowly stabilises again... Then the whole pattern repeats... over and over again!!!! Argghhhhh!!! My City has sort of stagnated at this level and won't move on!

For me it's mostly traffic issues. I didn't think it was that bad, but this game makes traffic disappear, so it gives you a false sense that things are fine.

Watch the imports and exports. I was having way too much export and import. Once I got them to 10k and less traffic smoothed out as well.

Just go over al the advice given. Most all of it helps a little anmd with using all of them it should come out to be a lot of help.

Good luck
-=Mark=-

 

[MarkJohnson]

@IVIaarten

1st, I see now. specialized industry sends products to generic industry to make goods. So I do need specialization. This sux as you will eventually run out of resources and need to import everything. Without mods of course. Do you know of any kind of ratio of special vs generic industry? This should keep imports down drastically. Or do we just need to go all agriculture/forestry as they replenish their resources? or will there still be demand for oil/ore which will still trigger importing?

2nd, So buses are more about the buses themselves. I guess that makes sense.

3rd, Cargo should go near commerce then. I figured as much, but I tried t once and didn't get much goods and commerce was still complaining of not enough goods. I'll try the segregated cargo rail system and see if that helps. Then I can use the cargo harbors gor import/export, with a few trains connected to the region.

4th, yes, pedestrians were on my mind as well. So do sidewalk come with roads? or do I need to add them everywhere? I assumed you meant sidewalks to cut through the long blocks so they didn't have to walk around the block.

I'll definitely look into the pedestrian overpasses as well. and bus capacity.

Thanks again
-=Mark=-

 

[ReginaRC]

I'm glad you're starting to see some improvement! As for increasing your residential demand, don't even worry about that right now. Just focus on bringing that unemployment rate down. When I loaded the game you had 41% unemployment, the last thing you need right now is more people.

I've had a little experience with bus lines, not a lot, but a few things I know are: the longer the bus route the more buses will be produced for it. There's no limit to the number of buses a depot can spawn. Bus lines don't need to be started near the bus depot.

When arranging mine I like to start one bus line near the bus depot then have it loop around with a purpose in mind, like take it through a particular group of residential, then take it to somewhere else that seems like a good destination. When I go to place the second I want it to run in a different area but have at least one stop near a stop on the first line so Cims can change bus lines if they want. Some of my bus lines loop around, others are more straight forward, as in they go to an industrial area and pretty much back again. I doubt what I've done so far in my city is optimal but it works pretty well because most of the buses are full and at almost every stop some Cims get off and others get on. Also, remember you can always add and/or move stops on an already existing line later if you need to.

I know I posted yesterday but I'll type it again just in case. Where you have so many large blocks in residential and commercial districts footpaths will help your Cims get places. They seem to prefer to walk when at all possible and will trek quite a distance but they do like to follow "the shortest path", as in remember the shortest distance between two spots is a straight line. As a general rule the largest blocks I build are 4x8 and those are in the industrial areas. Everywhere else gets smaller blocks.

 

[TrentW]

My city all of a sudden started dying really fast. C and I are demanding workers and freight, R has an unemployment rate of almost 50%. I have a minor demand for C and I, but nothing for R. No C is rebuilding after installing the auto-bulldoze mod as there were literally thousands of abandoned buildings. Every C and I zone had half abandoned buildings.

I've spent two days trying to fix this, but it just gets worse. This has happened in some fashion several times the whole game. I've been able to recover before, but this time it seems stuck.

I have or had a pop of 375k and about three-fourths of the map filled. Most everything is high density.

My problem started on the far West end when I tried to create more residential to supply jobs, Then commerce had a huge demand. So I zoned half Commerce, then frieght shortage and a small demand for I. and then bam! My commerce went AWOL. Then after circling my city bulldozing the C I notice my I is all abandoned now, and all of my C is abandoned again.

Sounds like you successfully made Detroit!

 

[ReginaRC]

Over the last day or so I've read a few things which could also be your problem. I had read about a million-Cim limit in a city but the other day someone posted that the limit is one million AGENTS, not one million Cims. Agents are Cims (both resident and tourists) and all vehicles (does this include the dogs?). It's entirely possible your city has reached the million agent limit.