Now THIS is strange

[MasterDNA 0]

Now, I must say, this is one of the strangest problems I've ever seen with this game, and was wondering if someone could explain it to me:<br /><br /><br /><br />As you can see from the picture, the city's Resident Average Income suddenly dropped by HALF. Yes, that was instantaneous, although I didn't notice immeditately. Does anyone know of a possible trigger or glitch that causes this? I can understand a gradual decline but my guess is that this instant drop in RAI is caused by some type of regional play bug (I have a total of 5 cities in the region: 4 cities and 1 utility city.<br /><br />My problem with this incident is that at one point I started noticing a massive depreciation in commercial demand, and quite a large amount of abandoned Co$$$ buildings, so that probably had something to do with it as well. That persists to be the main problem (or so it seems) as well, since that the Resident Average Income seems to be causing a stagnant economy, and either a part of my city has no job, or my commercial demand (almost all) are usually in the negative, and the large number of abandoned Co$$$ aren't being reoccupied.<br /><br />Anyone got a clue of what may have happened? Even if I did bulldoze a mass of... anything, which I didn't, the chart should still have been an gradual decline.

Image size changed to conform to board reqirements 800 x 600 max.  NOB

[MasterDNA 0]

Actually I just found out something in my mass bulldozing spree. After narrowing it down, it seems that this... er... "glitch" is caused solely by the DISEASE RESEARCH CENTER. Still, why would it do something like that? It makes no sense.<br /><br />EDIT: I went back and ran a few more trials and this time, I used de-zone instead of bulldoze on a large sector of the city and I got the same result, that being the Resident Average Income doubling back to normal ALTHOUGH if my memory serves me correct, I did NOT drastically reduce my city size when I bulldozed my Disease Research Center when I first got the results. I think this could mean one of two things:<br /><br />1. The Resident Average Income simply spikes down when the city reaches above a certain size.<br /><br />-or-<br /><br />2. The above only applies in the presence of a Disease Research Center.<br /><br />But I'm still at a loss of why something like this should happen in the first place.

[tungston 19]

I use the Disease Research Center in all of my cities, and don't have a problem, I have several cities over 500K. I would bet it is a radical mod, or radical lot. You know it has mild radiation polution, so you need to isolate it somewhat. Acutally it adds to the health of the city.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Actually, I cannot confirm that, tungston. I have experienced a similar effect, let me show you a picture:

As you can see, the graph didn't drop by 50 %, but it exhibited spikes of about 20,000 in absolute numbers - both downwards and upwards.

This happened without any visible cause in a city that grew slowly and peacefully from ~350,000 to ~380,000. And neither do I have any radical mods or lots installed, nor did I plop anything particular at the times those spikes occurred. I just placed some default police and fire departments, laid out transit networks and zones, and watched my city grow - nothing spectacular at all. No radical bulldozing, no substantial population fluctuations, no brownouts, nothing.

As for the Disease Control Center: I do have it, but I don't remember if the first downturn occurred when I plopped it. The Center has alwayws been funded sufficiently, and it is far, faaaar away from any population, located on the opposite bank of a wide river, and surrounded by a huge, thick forest. Thus, the radiation or any NIMBY effect it may cause cannot influence the city in any way.

[owenluby 1]

That looks very weird....

I wish i could help but im clueless..

Oh, nice city by the way!

[longwannaplayshort? 0]

Originally posted by: T Wrecks<br /><br />Actually, I cannot confirm that, tungston. I have experienced a similar effect, let me show you a picture:<br /><br /><img ilo-full-src="http://img330.imageshack.us/img330/6681/einnahmen7zq.png" src="http://img330.imageshack.us/img330/6681/einnahmen7zq.png" alt="" />As you can see, the graph didn't drop by 50 %, but it exhibited spikes of about 20,000 in absolute numbers - both downwards and upwards.<br /><br />This happened without any visible cause in a city that grew slowly and peacefully from ~350,000 to ~380,000. And neither do I have any radical mods or lots installed, nor did I plop anything particular at the times those spikes occurred. I just placed some default police and fire departments, laid out transit networks and zones, and watched my city grow - nothing spectacular at all. No radical bulldozing, no substantial population fluctuations, no brownouts, nothing.<br /><br />As for the Disease Control Center: I do have it, but I don't remember if the first downturn occurred when I plopped it. The Center has alwayws been funded sufficiently, and it is far, faaaar away from any population, located on the opposite bank of a wide river, and surrounded by a huge, thick forest. Thus, the radiation or any NIMBY effect it may cause cannot influence the city in any way.quote>

<br /><br /> This happend to me too. That graph looks like mine graph.Almost the same drop.

[SC4BOY 20]

I have had similar happen, usually when I add sections of a city.. but I notice you are also running at fastest speed and with that being a 50 yr chart, I'd say that seems to take place over 2 yrs or so.. not all that sudden.. Did other variables stay constant.. ie mayor ratings, population, RCI jobs, etc? When it happened to me I didn't give it much thought nor try to analyze it, so I can't add much I'm afraid..

[Indisguise 0]

• I get this all the time in cities in which I go big time (aka start zoning for the 4x4 stage 8's and using subways)
• basicly the graph shows the average income of all the citizens, if you building slowly and zone little by little this drop won't be so drastic, if you have an influx of a large amount of R$ sims...it drops the the Avg income (also the IQ and HQ levels as well) specially if you get a few bootstrap or project hopes growing at once
• region play can cause this depending on demand and tax rates (aka the rich sims flee this city to live in another leaving behind just the R$'s and R$$ sims)
• double check pollution stats (air water and garbage) a unussual spike in one or a combination of any one of the threee can cause mass abandoment of R$$$ and sometimes R$$ sims as well, check thier graphs for maybe a similar spike at about the sametime (specially with some custom content buildings)

what happens in my cities is ussually i dezone large blocks (ussually med or high wealth sims), this causes a high demand in RES the med wealth and high wealth come back in larger buildings, but this creates an even larger demand in R$'s , and most of the new buildings are R$ sims. Which you have to start all over again with schooling, also noticed it cause a drop in CO demannd and a drastic jump in CS...I ussually ride out the storm for about 20 yrs and let the sims go through the school system. thought the rise of IQ and average income is much slower with high populations and may take upwards of 30-50 yrs

if this drop was unexpected or you didn't have a large amount of R$ sims eneter the city at about that time...you might be looking at a lot that been mod incorrectly. I'm unaware of any lots or mods that would directly cause this situation myself though

I ussually ignore the average income graph myself...it's more of an eye candy graph

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Well yeah, I don't care much about this graph as it doesn't seem to affect anything. What's interesting is those mysterious spikes.

As I said, in this city I had no serious population fluctuation, it was growing with slight oscillation, but steadily... 350,000...353,000...351,000...355,000...354,000...358,000...357,000...358,000... nothing radical. I didn't bulldoze nor dezone anything except for individaul buildings once in a while, and mostly abandoned (not dilapidated) buildings at that. Mayor rating was constantly high, EQ and HQ were rising slowly and constantly; the city growth was slow enough to ensure that. Pollution stats didn't change dramatically, either. There were no R$$$ citizens fleeing the city, and no rush of new R$ citizens, either. The opposite is true: At a tax rate of ~ 9.5% for rich sims, I'm getting more R$$$ demand than I want.

All this leads me to believe the latter theory, i.e. that the drop might be related to a buggy lot. I have no idea which one, though.

[SC4BOY 20]

Originally posted by: T Wrecks Actually, I cannot confirm that, tungston. I have experienced a similar effect, let me show you a picture:quote>

Just for your info TW, the .png don't get resolved for me.. I have to "view source" or use "quote" or copy the shortcut (which also is hidden) and paste into another window... Makes your pic's a bit hard to decipher.. not impossible, but taking extra steps.. a .jpg would be far better.

Maybe it's just my setup.. dunno.

[RedImperator 16]

I had this happen to me once, too. In my case, it was triggered by a catastrophic economic collapse in a neighboring city. The neighbor city had a very large high tech sector and a small population, and was providing jobs to a substantial number of R$$ and R$$$ residents in the main city. When that industry collapsed, the entire south side of the main city was a sea of No Job Zots. I ended up losing about 1/3 of the population of the main city, leaving entire neighborhoods abandoned. A few game months later, a lot of R$ and a few R$$ residents repopulated those neighborhoods. The resident income graph took a nosedive almost exactly like MasterDNA's.

I suspect the cause of the crash was poor environmental management on my part. I had about half a medium sized city zoned industrial, which initially developed high tech. However, I didn't adjust the tax rates to discourage polluting industries, and a few I-M and I-D factories popped up in areas with lower than average I-HT desireability. All it took was a little nearby pollution to tip I-HD desireability in neighboring blocks off the precipice, and a chain reaction spread through the city and wiped it all out, taking thousands of $$ and $$$ jobs with it. Needless to say, I'm much more careful about managing and monitoring large areas of high tech development now.

[hackinosa 29]

I know this is quite the old topic, but this same thing just happened to me in my wealthiest city. I got rid of the lot I'm pretty sure caused the problem, but now I can't grow the RAI back up. It's been "years" and I would really like to get it climbing again. Any suggestions? Just to specify, I haven't had any large fluctuations in population, there has been no decrease in the population of R$$$, and no increase in the population of R$. The RAI just dropped drastically one year from around $250,000, to $30,000 and it's been hovering around there ever since. Quite frustrating, though I understand it's had no real impact on the city itself.