so frustrating...my city broke down

[Greyhead]

I had a city basically collapse in on itself yesterday because of a combination of issues.
The tipping point seems to be around 100k citizens; up to this point, no real problems. Then I hit a major traffic issue: I had two cargo ports with long roads leading to the terminal and they were both completely jammed. Once that queue hit the freeways it cascaded all around the city. I'm using the 25 tiles mod, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that the queue extended from one end of the map to the other, and also on another parallel highway. I've dealt with such problems before, but no matter what I did with junction layouts, the ports kept clogging up. The result was a mass of uncollected dead. The population plummeted from 100k to around 60k. MY budget also took a massive hit; I was about 1m in the black, but at one point was losing 60k per week with the result that very soon I was in the red. I tried to recover by slashing non-essential services such as education (!), parks, etc. and whacking up taxes. The budget kept swinging from around 6k in the black to 2k in the red. Population recovered to around 75k, but the traffic issues kept reappearing. One thing which really caused a problem was a big area of farmland I placed at the opposite end of the map from the ports; the amount of traffic that spawned was utterly incredible.
I've pretty well abandoned that city now and look for maps that allow ports to be placed on rivers as well as by a coast!

 

[Cropper]

You simply grew too fast. If all the cims move in at the same time, they tend to die at the same time as well.

Try to zone smaller chunks and letting time pass before you zone the next chunk.

Although you are correct in that what you say "fixes" the death wave bug, its silly that people have to do this. Just make it so every Cim doesnt live to the same exact age as each other (just like in real life btw). Workarounds are not solutions. Fix the root cause, not the effect.

 

[Metropolitan]

Although you are correct in that what you say "fixes" the death wave bug, its silly that people have to do this. Just make it so every Cim doesnt live to the same exact age as each other (just like in real life btw). Workarounds are not solutions. Fix the root cause, not the effect.

The problem isn't necessarily that people die at the same age, but rather that they move in at the same age!

That's what doesn't feel as realistic to me. When people move in, they should come at a random age. This would totally annihilate the process about a wave of arrivals generating few years later a correlated wave of deaths.

The only bad effect from that would be to have to create a cemetary right from start... but hey, quite frankly it doesn't bother me.

 

[ReginaRC]

I did have to create a cemetery right from the start in one city. I just posted in another thread about it, I had just barely started that city and someone died in the store on Main Street. It was the weirdest thing. However, I'm in agreement that they should be different ages when they move in, although it wouldn't be too great to get a bunch of senior citizens moving in right off the bat. :lol:

 

[Myquandro]

I had a city basically collapse in on itself yesterday because of a combination of issues.
The tipping point seems to be around 100k citizens; up to this point, no real problems. Then I hit a major traffic issue: I had two cargo ports with long roads leading to the terminal and they were both completely jammed. Once that queue hit the freeways it cascaded all around the city. I'm using the 25 tiles mod, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that the queue extended from one end of the map to the other, and also on another parallel highway. I've dealt with such problems before, but no matter what I did with junction layouts, the ports kept clogging up. The result was a mass of uncollected dead. The population plummeted from 100k to around 60k. MY budget also took a massive hit; I was about 1m in the black, but at one point was losing 60k per week with the result that very soon I was in the red. I tried to recover by slashing non-essential services such as education (!), parks, etc. and whacking up taxes. The budget kept swinging from around 6k in the black to 2k in the red. Population recovered to around 75k, but the traffic issues kept reappearing. One thing which really caused a problem was a big area of farmland I placed at the opposite end of the map from the ports; the amount of traffic that spawned was utterly incredible.
I've pretty well abandoned that city now and look for maps that allow ports to be placed on rivers as well as by a coast!

A few things to note on traffic is that it seems the importing and exporting seems to effect traffic a lot more then goods and such that are both produced and used in the city. The worst situation is that a company both has to import and export. This happens for example when a oil company is build on ground without oil. It then has to import oil and export the goods it has created with it. If you want to lower traffic you should try to balance import and export and build industry only on the right type of ground (fertile land for farming, forest for forestry, etc.). So, when a city is importing a lot of goods you should build regular industry, when it imports oil build oil industry and so on. This seems to work for me.

 

[MarkJohnson]

IMO, this is a bug in the game. Hope they address the issue sooner! Thats not how it works in real-life. You dont see waves of death happening. It happens randomly and consistently. And also I dont want to be troubled because of this aspect in the city. I'd like to have more transport issues like better roadways and public transportation! I do not see any effects of traffic problems in the functioning of ind./commerce, which should be happening.

I don't think it's really a bug in the game, but an issue of traffic. I used to have this issue all of the time. First it was me raising taxes and everyone complaining and moving out. Then a bunch of new people moved in all at once. Then they all died at once. Then traffic got bad so dead people weren't getting picked up in a timely manner.

I figured out it was mainly my traffic. I raised my budget to 130% to get the already dead off the streets asap before the whole building went abandoned.

I'd fix traffic and slowly the death spike reduced to a manageable level after a few cycles. Then traffic would get bad again and BAM! huge death spike across the map. raised health budget back to 130% and improved traffic flow. then everything evened itself back out again.

Now I just leave the health budget at 130% and it keeps them from abandoning when traffic gets bad. It's when the dead don't get picked up, then the whole building goes abandoned. so you don't just lose the 1 dead man, but the whole 50ish or whatever that lived in the building.

For some reason the default 100% just doesn't cut it. You need 130ish% for those stupid hearses. It seems the only service with this issue. I get a lot of garbage notices, but nothing game breaking like the dead.

 

[MarkJohnson]

A few things to note on traffic is that it seems the importing and exporting seems to effect traffic a lot more then goods and such that are both produced and used in the city.

Yes, you need to watch the import/export amounts that are listed under the region connection overlay.

The worst situation is that a company both has to import and export. This happens for example when a oil company is build on ground without oil. It then has to import oil and export the goods it has created with it. If you want to lower traffic you should try to balance import and export and build industry only on the right type of ground (fertile land for farming, forest for forestry, etc.). So, when a city is importing a lot of goods you should build regular industry, when it imports oil build oil industry and so on. This seems to work for me.

Actually, the way it works is that there are two types of industry. There is the specialized industry (oil, ore, agriculture, and forestry) and then the genric industry.

What happens, is the specialized industry sends it's products to the generic industry to make goods. (all goods come from generic industry only. Specialized industry doesn't make goods)

Generic industry has 4 building types (You guessed it: oil, ore, agriculture, and forestry)

So, if your oil field runs out of oil, then you automatically start importing oil to the oil fields, and industry will start importing the oil products from the industry until the oil field catches up, or you may have them both going at the same time if there is too much oil demand.

unfortunately, there is no designation to the oil that is imported to the oil field for making oil products, from the oil the generic factories import to make goods.

But in reality, it is much easier to just import all goods and make no industry, as you wsill eventually run out of resources and you'll be importing goods anyway.

Or worse, you'll be importing raw goods (oil, ore, agriculture, and forestry) and sending the product to the generic industry, then creating goods to send to commerce to sell. It will be easier to cut out the middlemen and just import goods straight to commerce.

Here's a link from iviaarten with a picture on how goods flow.
No city growth and everything is dying.

Here's the map if it works by itself.
http://i.stack.imgur.com/bKW39.png

 

[JerkyJerry]

Workarounds are not solutions. Fix the root cause, not the effect.

Perfectly stated!

 

[JerkyJerry]

IMHO this game places far too much emphasis on death and not nearly enough on happiness & health.