Neighbor Deals -- Water

[EgoTripper 0]

Hi all, this is my first post so I thought I'd play it safe and make it in the New Members room. I expect no less than a strongly worded letter if I should have posted elsewhere :-)

I've managed to set up a semi-functional region with lots of neighbor deals going in all directions. Ever After, my biggest city, was running a fair profit so I decided to install a big water pump and have it water the satellite cities around it (Oz, Dis and Neverland -- guess which one's the industrial hellhole?). I had no trouble setting up the neighbor deals and cheerfully demolished all of the water pumps in those cities that were now being fed from Ever After.

I thought my satellite cities were doing fine until I checked Dis' water graph. It had actual usage exactly equal to the max capacity. So I upped the amount of water I was buying from Ever After, and shortly thereafter saw the max water capacity jump up as one would expect.

A problem quickly became evident: The actual usage followed it exactly! I upped the neighbor deal again, and again, and again, and each time the actual usage tracked the max capacity exactly, so that at any given time my city was actually using ALL available water, with none to spare. My graph over time looks like an ascending staircase (each step representing an increase of the neighbor deal), with the max capacity and actual usage lines overlapping.

When I finally decided this wasn't right, I canceled the deal and reinstalled some water pumps. At this point, my max capacity (and actual usage) in Dis was something like 60,000 whatevers. When the neighbor deal was canceled, the actual usage fell to 15,000 whatevers (well within the two pumps I set up, happily separating the two lines on the graph for the first time since 1915). So for some reason, when I was using a neighbor deal to feed water to my city, the actual usage ballooned by over 45,000 whatevers. You can see why I might think this is a bug, and a very irritating one because I really don't want to waste space in my industrial cities buffering my pumps against pollution. The other two cities showed the same max capacity = actual usage, and I assumed they'd have the same problem so I replaced the neighbor deals with water pumps in them, too.

I'm running Sim City Deluxe with NAM and most of the popular mods listed in the various "Essential Mods to Get Started" threads in the Simtropolis forums.

(Note: I just spent three hours stranded on the New York subway, so it's driven me a little batty. I apologize for the longwindedness of what could probably have been a shorter post with a bit more effort ;-) )

[Sim_Air 2]

Well, a few water pumps in one city cannot feed entire towns and well...industries(they require a LOT of water). Therefore i suggest you keep a few water pumps in your major city and making neighbour deals, while you build one or perhaps 2 water pumps in each other town, so that the usage won't reach the maximal capacity usage. To deal with industries, i suggest you make a lot of deals going to them.

[EgoTripper 0]

Mmm, I'm not being clear. Here's the scenario:

Dis began with no neighbor deals: It supplied its own water and power. When supplying its own water, it used 15,000 units, total, of an available 25-30,000. As I started running out of real estate in Dis, I decided to bulldoze the water pumps and build Industry there instead (since keeping Industry away from my water pumps to avoid pollution took up a lot of space!). I bought 20,000 units of water from neighboring Ever After to keep Dis watered.

A few years passed, and I noticed that the Actual Usage in Dis was exactly equal to the Available Water Capacity (i.e. 20,000), so I upped the neighbor deal to 30,000 and saw that the Actual Usage immediately climbed up to 30,000. I upped the neighbor deal again, and again, and again, until it reached 60,000 -- FOUR TIMES where Dis was before, and I'd only added a few more squares of development (this is on one of the very small city maps of the Fairview region, btw). I figured this was wrong, so to test, I stopped the neighbor deal and bought a few water pumps. Dis' usage dropped to 20,000 or so, of a max capacity of 30,000 (so all was right with the world). Where did the extra 40,000 units of usage go to? I dunno.

Thanks for your help; I'm still agonizing over this because none of my cities are able to share water at the moment due to this bu.. err, undocumented feature. ;-)

I wanted to build Industry around the area I'd reserved for Dis' water pumps, so I decided to bulldoze them and have Ever After, a neighboring town, feed water to Dis.

[Sim_Air 2]

Don't be too furious....relax and answers will come....!

Anyway, i really don't understand the problem. I need to ask you: now that you have created water pumps in Dis, and capacity is 20,000, what is the maximun capacity that those pumps can hold for Dis?

[EgoTripper 0]

No fury here! Nothing but patience and appreciation for the help :-)

The maximum capacity that the pumps in Dis can hold is 40,000 (two pumps). The city is currently using 20,000.

If I use a neighbor deal instead of water pumps, then the city /actually uses/ whatever I set the neighbor deal at, no matter what. So if I bulldozed those pumps, then bought 100,000 from neighboring Ever After, I would EXPECT to see the dark blue line (water capacity) on the graph being very high (at 100,000) and the light blue line (actual use) staying at 20,000. Instead, the light blue line jumps up immediately to match the dark blue line at 100,000 (i.e. the city would suddenly and for no reason increase its water use by 80,000 up to using the 100,000 available).

I hope that makes sense?

[Sim_Air 2]

Actually no, i really don't get it brother, perhaps someone else will care to assist you?

Ohh, by the way, you can have a look in www.simcity4.com page, Tips & Tricks that is. Very helpful, trust me!

[locolobo 0]

I understand exactly what your saying, but sadly can offer you no help, as I have no idea why it would do that. Perhaps try deleting (or just temporarilly moving to a different folder) your downloaded mods and trying the game to see if one of them appears to be causing the bug.

And since this is a utility bug thread, anyone happen to know why I can no longer make neighbor deals for power? I think it happened after I downloaded the latest NAM.

[Sim_Air 2]

well, my hands are up

[rodent1989 9]

Neighbor deals are very touchy.  I've always had a hard time understanding their finer points. 

First off:  According to the Prima guide the following conditions must be met:

1.  The appropriate connection must exist"

2.  The selling party must have a surplus greater than the minimum deal amt of 1000 units.

3.  The initiator of the deal (buying party) must have enough cash to cover one year of the deal at the current price.

4.  The buying party must need the resourse.  i.e. demand > supply.  (The book says 120% current usage).

If any of these parameters are not met the deal will not happen.  If you currently have a deal, and one of these parameters changes to become unfufilled the deal will AUTOMATICALLY TERMINATE.  That's the important part.  Hopefully that will help you answer the power problem.

Now onto the water question.  Short answer?  I don't know.  I'd say if it was working just ignore the graph and keep playing.

Good luck!