"No goods to seel" persists and expands (again)

[grumpy-smurf]

It seems that although temporarily the problem looked like it was improving, lately it is coming back with a momentum.

Below, are some actions I took in order to resolve the problem and improvements were made both in traffic (got up to 72% from 67%) and commercials stopped closing down.

1. Starting from the top ("no goods north" screenshot), where the "no goods to sell" and "no buyers" were shutting most of my commercial and my industrial, I experimented with a 6 lane, one-way road going North, passing front of the cargo train station and crossing the whole big farming district. I then created another 6 lane, one-way road going from North to South (cargo station screenshot). It worked a bit, but when I turned them both to 2-direction 3 lane roads, it worked much better.
2. I widened some roads going East-West or the other way round, in that same area. So, it helped the flow of traffic on all directions, although it looked like North-to-South was much worse, as south is the main core of my city.
3. The issue of "no goods to sell" had affected my city's southern part (straight below the initially affected area in the North), so I took the bulldozer and started demolishing buildings and small patches of road, in order to make space for avenues or 6 lane 2-directions roads. Again, I made sure I raced them mainly across the worse affected areas, towards all the 4 directions (North, South, East, West). Here, the improvement was even faster, as the problems caused were the result of narrow roads and bad traffic further North.
4. No other parts of the city have much of these issues. After my interventions, things started going smoothly till recently, where the same issue is rising again.

I even had cases where the commercial zone and the indy were litterally 5 tiles away from each other, without any traffic, but "no goods to sell" was an issue there too. I know that my traffic is not the best at 70-72%, but it's the best I ever achieved and these changes were a benefit to logistics.

Some of the worse cases, are next to the cargo stations (I've got 4), or cargo ports (I've got 3)!

Since I made those changes, I haven't really expanded my city and as you can see in the screenshots, traffic is much smoother than before (bottleneck traffic, older view).

I am currently only improving it, so it can expand later at a more solid basis.

The only thing I need to review is bus lines, as they are in ruins after I made all these changes described above.

I also need to review train lines, simply because I have added a couple of stations and they are not well connected yet.

Any feedback is welcome.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Your freight system is still overloaded. You are importing almost all of the your GOODS to sell, which means they are coming into your city from off the map, so the smallest delays will prevent GOODS making it to commerce to sell.

Out of the +15,000 imports, the majority of it is all GOODS.

You either need more train stations or generic industry to get the freight closer to commerce. Otherwise, dezone large amounts of High Density Commerce to eliminate the need for freight and replace with offices or other job sink so you don't lose any workers.

 

[grumpy-smurf]

Your freight system is still overloaded. You are importing almost all of the your GOODS to sell, which means they are coming into your city from off the map, so the smallest delays will prevent GOODS making it to commerce to sell.

I not only import loads of goods, but even the raw materials I'm producing (ore and oil), don't seem to be used in my city, nor to be exported. I haven't understood what they are used for.
I only have seen farming goods being exported, this is why I am preserving large farming zones (still smaller than when I had ~140k cims).

Out of the +15,000 imports, the majority of it is all GOODS.

Could you see these numbers under the import/export icon?

You either need more train stations or generic industry to get the freight closer to commerce.

It is strange that whenever I get this issue, demand for indy is very close to zero, or zero and commercial is high. I was zoning generic indy anyway and it took absolute ages to spawn. In between, I zoned some ore and oil, in small amounts.

Otherwise, dezone large amounts of High Density Commerce to eliminate the need for freight and replace with offices or other job sink so you don't lose any workers.

I could see the pattern in the game, asking for more commercial, zero indy, despite the issue of "no goods to sell" having already popped.
Even now, there is demand for commercial, while the current shops seem to be failing.
I'll start zoning generic indy more, along with converting some zones to offices.
By the way, there is a pattern on the map of shops closing, it is either in a loop around a block, or along a road/avenue and despite how many improvements I made to the traffic, there are no results.
So, less commercial, more indy and offices and a few bulldozers to flaten parts of the city in order to pass some cargo railway and see what happens.

 

[MarkJohnson]

I not only import loads of goods, but even the raw materials I'm producing (ore and oil), don't seem to be used in my city, nor to be exported. I haven't understood what they are used for.
I only have seen farming goods being exported, this is why I am preserving large farming zones (still smaller than when I had ~140k cims).

Industry is a two step process:

Step 1 is to harvest ore, oil, forestry, and agriculture through specialized industry.

Then Specialized industry process the raw resources and sends them to Generic Industry, so they can make GOODS to deliver to commerce to sell to your cims.

Here's the wiki on Cities Skylines supply chain and how it works.

Supply chain - Cities: Skylines Wiki

skylines.paradoxwikis.com

Could you see these numbers under the import/export icon?

These are under the outside connections section of your info views.

It is strange that whenever I get this issue, demand for indy is very close to zero, or zero and commercial is high. I was zoning generic indy anyway and it took absolute ages to spawn. In between, I zoned some ore and oil, in small amounts.

That is because you are loosing supply, so it takes away from your demand bars from then not making it on time. It is a penalty so you don't get flooded with freight when you are having problems. In other words, it takes away from industry demand, so you don't keep making it more and more then it gets even worse.

I could see the pattern in the game, asking for more commercial, zero indy, despite the issue of "no goods to sell" having already popped.
Even now, there is demand for commercial, while the current shops seem to be failing.

I find commerce a red herring. It is always in demand, but not needed. Cims are happy to have no place to go shopping. If you try to satisfy your commerce demands, your city will collapse from freight issues. This is why I was suggesting rezoning some high density commerce with offices.

I'll start zoning generic indy more, along with converting some zones to offices.

Like I said, convert high density commerce to office instead.

By the way, there is a pattern on the map of shops closing, it is either in a loop around a block, or along a road/avenue and despite how many improvements I made to the traffic, there are no results.
So, less commercial, more indy and offices and a few bulldozers to flatten parts of the city in order to pass some cargo railway and see what happens.

I think things will start to get more smooth after you read the supply chain article. Especially Zoned Industry.

 

[grumpy-smurf]

I think things will start to get more smooth after you read the supply chain article. Especially Zoned Industry.

I've read it and indeed, I realised what I got big time wrong.

Cargo ports and train stations is one small part of the solution.

Another big thing I missed after I demolished lot of indy, re-zoned them and spreaded them more evenly around the map, I forgot a crucial element:
Create specialised indy, off the areas of high resources, so that they use my city's resources to produce GOODS.

By placing 4 more cargo stations, the problem seemed to start limiting itself, but not entirely.
So, the solution was there, but my execution was destructive!

I thought to turn around 50% of the existing generic indy which was not on resourceful soil, into specialised, as the demand for new indy was zero at that point.
What I didn't know was, that they wouldn't convert one-by-one, but the generic zones actually vanished in a few rounds, before they start their very, very slow conversion.

The result of this stupid move was, to loose a lot of income from indy tax as well as around half of my GOODS production. So, after a few rounds, commercial starting shutting even faster than before and my city income plunged.

I lost around $1m from my balance and I'm loosing around $300k per round!

My population also went down by around 10 thousands, which means I also lost tax from residential.

The demand for zoning is zero for indy and commercial and barely a bit for residential.

It feels like I just used the nucs on my city.

I started cutting down 5-10% of my services budget and redesigning all the railway and bus routes that were messed about from my previous roads re-design.

I'm hoping that this is going to help the economy to survive, till the GOODS production catches up!

My generic industry is recovering at a record slow pace, so I am hoping I haven't just destroyed my city.

 

[MarkJohnson]

It sounds like you're making too many changes at once. Just deal with one small district at a time.

Your biggest issue is shortages of goods at commerce. So, the easiest solution is eliminating some commerce until you get it in balance, then adding cargo stations to supplement the area. High density commerce is selling a ton of goods all at once. Way more than low density commerce.

 

[grumpy-smurf]

Your biggest issue is shortages of goods at commerce. So, the easiest solution is eliminating some commerce until you get it in balance, then adding cargo stations to supplement the area.

I did that, there has been a quite good improvement and then I blew it all up.

Off with the bulldozer again then

 

[grumpy-smurf]

I am back (nearly) to square one.

After I resettled some industrial areas, I built new railway network and connected new cargo railway stations, which I surrounded with factories, I still get "No raw materials" as a reason for shutting down!
Some factories are also close to a highway.
I also produce locally oil and ores, so am I supposed to expand my networks again?
Why were they OK for a while now and suddenly the "hit red"?

 

[MarkJohnson]

I think you're just growing too quickly. You seem to want to keep expanding larger and larger. but each building you place is making more traffic.

Maybe try the 1-tile map and see how big of population you can get with one tile. it does help a lot to learn the balancing at this point.

 

[grumpy-smurf]

I think you're just growing too quickly. You seem to want to keep expanding larger and larger. but each building you place is making more traffic.

Maybe try the 1-tile map and see how big of population you can get with one tile. it does help a lot to learn the balancing at this point.

It feels like every time these issues appear, like "not enough goods to sell", or "not enough raw materials", an expansion of city space, as we;; as network is necessary.
Do you suggest to leave them areas die down till I make local improvements, instead of expanding?

 

[MarkJohnson]

It feels like every time these issues appear, like "not enough goods to sell", or "not enough raw materials", an expansion of city space, as we;; as network is necessary.
Do you suggest to leave them areas die down till I make local improvements, instead of expanding?

Correct, if you keep building you will draw more traffic. Just level up your areas with services. Residential areas love schools and schools determine your residential levels. add other services as well to give happiness bonuses to get them to level 5. Just remember, that education takes a long time, so it could take in-game years to get your residential to level up. The outer few blocks of your edges won't max out, but that will be fine.

So, you basically just need to let it mature to get traffic low, then fix the other issues that will crop up, such as noise pollution from mixed zoning. Residential hates any pollution, so the nnoise pollution from nearby commerce will make cims unhappy. Residential needs a half block or so, from commerce to keep from being sick. Same with unique buildings that you plop, most of them have a lot of noise pollution, same with transportation, they are very noisy.

 

[antrachton]

Do you place your buildings manually using Move It mod or let them grow? Especially in specialised industries, how do you do it in there? What way?

 

[Ragga Muffin]

What happened was, you fixed traffic, so stuff got leveled up. So you got more traffic were you didnt expect.
It depends, what you are making local.
Nice pretty farming (and wood) doesnt really suppy big commerse, its more of an organic and local supplier
A lot of those shops will want manufactured goods, ie Generic indy
So the result is you are still importing and its a long way,

Solutions
Frieght station 1 screen away with outside connection and good link between makes problem go away, but its treating simtoms
Generic indy 1 screen away actually solves proplem but that has the issues that come with
Are you still using big business?? Turn it off in that district
Swap some shop out for office?? Raises your commercial demand to go else where


Bottle neck,,
pull that left most wide road, out further left, and Dont pester 6 line roads with small stuff and never do cross roads on trunks
You should really over pass a trunk like that, treat it like a poor mans highway, so dont put all of it through the round about

You could use move it and TM to, "flower" the island, thats a roundabout with straight through side bits linking on the apex

I personally settle for just spliting the ends of 4/6 Lanes with 2 x 2Lane 1ways, and then messing with lane numbers and stuff
i get close ish to a proper flower but im making nukes with bronze tools on XB

And save building inside roundabouts for dead ends for trams and a bit of pretty in res zones, not a trunk

 

[Ragga Muffin]

Just read your other posts
Omg dude, you deleted a whole zone, that will give you 5% flow lol
Just slash budget and crawl out

GG, and fair play for the 5% you did get

 

[grumpy-smurf]

Do you place your buildings manually using Move It mod or let them grow? Especially in specialised industries, how do you do it in there? What way?

Manually, I don't use this MOD

 

[grumpy-smurf]

What happened was, you fixed traffic, so stuff got leveled up. So you got more traffic were you didnt expect.
It depends, what you are making local.
Nice pretty farming (and wood) doesnt really suppy big commerse, its more of an organic and local supplier
A lot of those shops will want manufactured goods, ie Generic indy
So the result is you are still importing and its a long way,

Solutions
Frieght station 1 screen away with outside connection and good link between makes problem go away, but its treating simtoms
Generic indy 1 screen away actually solves proplem but that has the issues that come with
Are you still using big business?? Turn it off in that district
Swap some shop out for office?? Raises your commercial demand to go else where


Bottle neck,,
pull that left most wide road, out further left, and Dont pester 6 line roads with small stuff and never do cross roads on trunks
You should really over pass a trunk like that, treat it like a poor mans highway, so dont put all of it through the round about

You could use move it and TM to, "flower" the island, thats a roundabout with straight through side bits linking on the apex

I personally settle for just spliting the ends of 4/6 Lanes with 2 x 2Lane 1ways, and then messing with lane numbers and stuff
i get close ish to a proper flower but im making nukes with bronze tools on XB

And save building inside roundabouts for dead ends for trams and a bit of pretty in res zones, not a trunk

Can you make a screenshot about which area of the city we are talking about?

 

[Ragga Muffin]

Can you make a screenshot about which area of the city we are talking about?

Nay dude, im on XB, its beyond my Hard Ware
So RE; your 4th pic,

The 2 wide roads coming out of madison, both going south
Why???
1 well built wide road should be enough

So use the left most road as a collector, and the straight through 6ln to overpass the roundabout south of madison
"collectors" collect from small stuff and then deliver/"feed" the bulk to "arterial" (your 6ln)
The artierial should not have buildings or many junctions
Less is more with junctions towards "arts"

Also read this
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ions-and-how-to-fix-my-traffic.1529995/unread

 

[antrachton]

Manually, I don't use this MOD

ermm that's the only mod to use to place buildings manually.
if you do place them manually and you are using buildings downloaded from the workshop , you are probably falling into a trap that assets creators fell into - they didn't realised that level 1 buildings (in vanilla specialised industries only) is for processors and not extractors, therefore there is plenty of farming land assets that are actually working as processors and they only import stuff (as they can't access raw materials locally) only to export them immediately.
the best example was with one of the best assets creators on here - they created an ore mine that was not extracting any ore because it was at level 1 and not 2. that's what always bugged me that i had to plenty of imports when i was trying to produce something locally only. when they corrected it, it all started to work. (i did that first in asset editor to check that)

only way to check which is asset at what level is using Find It mod and its filters.

So maybe that's this thing you need to be carefull about - but only if you are placing production buildings manually.

 

[grumpy-smurf]

Nay dude, im on XB, its beyond my Hard Ware
So RE; your 4th pic,

The 2 wide roads coming out of madison, both going south
Why???
1 well built wide road should be enough

So use the left most road as a collector, and the straight through 6ln to overpass the roundabout south of madison
"collectors" collect from small stuff and then deliver/"feed" the bulk to "arterial" (your 6ln)

I had made one one-way 6 lane road going north and the other one south.
The traffic coming out of this hexagon area (with another wide road half the way Westbound-to-Eastbound) is mainly from farmlands, so the roundabut south as well as the junction before that, were at a standstill.
Now, they are both converted to 2 ways and the ground-railways have turned to bridges, making the traffic a bit better and the problems of low customes, or no raw materials don't appear often in this area.
Bare in mind the screenshots are 2 months old, so the same problems appeared again but far south and east from there.

 

[grumpy-smurf]

ermm that's the only mod to use to place buildings manually.
if you do place them manually and you are using buildings downloaded from the workshop , you are probably falling into a trap that assets creators fell into - they didn't realised that level 1 buildings (in vanilla specialised industries only) is for processors and not extractors, therefore there is plenty of farming land assets that are actually working as processors and they only import stuff (as they can't access raw materials locally) only to export them immediately.
the best example was with one of the best assets creators on here - they created an ore mine that was not extracting any ore because it was at level 1 and not 2. that's what always bugged me that i had to plenty of imports when i was trying to produce something locally only. when they corrected it, it all started to work. (i did that first in asset editor to check that)

only way to check which is asset at what level is using Find It mod and its filters.

So maybe that's this thing you need to be carefull about - but only if you are placing production buildings manually.

No, I am just zoning.
So, if for example I press the resources button and I can see that oil rich areas seem to be depleated, I will demolish the drills and release the area for further build.