New and awkward problem.

[Shadow_prophet 91]

Heh it feels so awkward asking for help again, but since it will serve no purpose being so nervous i think it would be better than aimlessly walking around in the dark.

before hand i had that problem with the missle launch problem, still not resolved but its a minor issue, so no big deal, however, this one here i find rather irritating.

The largest city I have has over 1 million + sims living in it, my most succesfull city to be sure but I just noticed something awkward going on in. The education funding in my city is set to te highest level in order to achieve optimum effect since i take education as a top priority every time, but i just noticed,  as the time goes by in a few in game days goes by, the funding for the education is gradually reduced AUTOMATICALLY!! As in the budget for the education section decreases by itself, and I have to constatnly manually increase the slider again....Is there something wrong with the game? A bug perhaps??Can anyone help me???

[tungston 19]

There was a topic on this recently, it can be caused by more than one thing. But mostly with some kind of civic funding issue.

I will see if I can get a link to that topic. 

Check this thread and see if any of the suggestions relate to your issue.  If not we can try something else.

[Shadow_prophet 91]

Okay here's my report:

I know its not a plugin problem since i tested it already, It can't be the Opera house  cause i have the fix and also 3 functioning opera houses in the city. And i tried to guess whether it was a custom upload with a bug.... no seeing that no educational lots I have are custom. And i tried experimenting with other cities in the whole region, and they work perfectly fine no bugs or issue presenting itself elsewhere.

Then i decided "hey since its a educational issue lets check the data view map. And what I saw made me go *****?!!!!!

Here it is:

Ignore the 3 million sims, I have only 1,610 ,479 sims, it corrected itself later on but if you noticed that the blue markers are where the educational structures are located.... notice anything funny? There is absolutely no radius And i guess this is why the damn slider is dropping...... Anyone please help. Why am I so desperate to save this city? because it's not only my most successfull city it is also my first city when I started playing Sim city 4 around a month ago and I would really hate to destroy it. So please any help would be most greatly appreciated.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, check the parameters of all your other civic buildings.  Do you have any plug-in fire stations?  police stations?  other civic buildings?  You might want to check them with SC4Tool to see if any of the parameters of them are out of line. 

A badly skewed lot with either too low a budget, or too big a radius of action can cause the game to do wile things.

Oh, and one more thing.  I see all your other lots education quotient is in the green.  Truly strange.  Don't you have any young Sims being educated?

[tungston 19]

Shadow: Did I understand that you have 3 Opera House's? As far as I know the Opera House is a one to a city reward.

Unless they are not the default game lots, are they? If they are, then backup your city, then bulldoze two of them.

[Shadow_prophet 91]

Originally posted by: tungston Shadow: Did I understand that you have 3 Opera House's? As far as I know the Opera House is a one to a city reward.

Unless they are not the default game lots, are they? If they are, then backup your city, then bulldoze two of them.quote>

No, no the other 2 opera houses are as follow,

BLaM Lyon Opera House

John F Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts

I highly doubt that these 2 are the problem since i did as what you suggested already. These lots were working fine before this ever happened. Right now I'm trying to trace back what plugin i downloaded that could have possibly done this.

And to N_O_Body, Does civic lots include Powerplants because I have a self made Power plant which has a monthly cost of 160,000 and a power output of 400,000 MW of power ( Something I am currently trying to make into a reward), the most outrageous lot I have. I have quite a few other Police civic lots, but I hardly use them since they have only a military theme to it (SNM) and hospitals would be just the Newman INC memorial hospital, Somy Consolidated hospital. But theses other civic lots have no problems with it. And yeah actually... all the EQ has always been that green before the game had any problems except for that one little spot on the map which i can't seem to see. I believe that is because of the Radical mod plugin i downloaded (Genius Accelerator)

[tungston 19]

It has been my experience that it usually happens when a radius/funding/capacity change has been made to an exsisting lot. You may have a duplicate civic but with a different name, i.e. two lots with the same ID number. I think I went into detail about that in the other thread.

With the Lot Editor, when you use the "save-as" function, the Lot Editor assigns an ID number [unique to your plugins ], but that number could be used by someone else. You could have gererated the same number, as say a BLaM lot.

[Shadow_prophet 91]

tungston: If what you say is true then is there any way I can locate lots with 2 of the Same ID numbers other than shifting around my now massive plugins folder.

[tungston 19]

Shadow: I personally wouldn't even attempt it, I can only suggest being very, very selective about the custom lots. Then, test them one at a time, don't load several new ones at one time.

It most likely a civic lot [power, fire, police, hospital, education, etc], and then the likely suspect is an education lot, that includes library, museum, Opera house. The thing is, once you have plopped a lot, those factors are saved in the city file, and the only solution is to bulldoze the offender. If you have just one lot with changed attributes, you will still have the problem.

Addendum:  I don't use any radical mods, so I don't know if any of them could cause the problem.  But there is a reason they are called "radical"

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Shadow:  A civic lot is anything that is paid for by tax money except a landmark.

[Shadow_prophet 91]

Thanks all for your help thus far, I'm checking back the thread that tungston recommended, since i found out that the radius all dissapeard after the radical ordincae mentioned was initialized, I unchecked the box and the radius reappeared again. However I am still experiencing this problem thus far only and only in this city, so i believe it might be due ... let me just post what tungston said on the other thread:

"A simplified explanation of what happens. When you plop a civic lot, the factors for the budget, capacity, and radius are entered into the calculator. If you plop a lot with the same ID number, i.e. the same lot with adjusted numbers, the game then has two numbers for the same calculation. So the game then takes the difference of the two numbers and then subtracts that amount from *whatever* each month. Therefore you have the decreasing item."

I'm going to erase all the schools in the city and plop several of them back but in fewer numbers. Hope that works.. I think this might be due after the introduction of the extra 2 opera houses and additional education lots... Not sure tough..

[IDS2 3,344]

Actually, judging by the picture, you have full sliders that have such a huge rasdius that it doesn't show in the city. Happens to me a lot.

[Shadow_prophet 91]

Originally posted by: IDS2 Actually, judging by the picture, you have full sliders that have such a huge rasdius that it doesn't show in the city. Happens to me a lot.quote>

Somehow I don't think that's the case, well actually yeah it happens to me in the smaller cities

take a look for yourself:

[tungston 19]

  I got a chuckle over the sheer number of education lots you have.  That may, or may not have anything to do with your problem.

You may not have been around when the "SpiroGraph" was the rage, but that data view reminded me of one. 

What lots make up the education program?  Are they mostly schools, or do you have a lot of libraries, and museums?

You'll want to remember to backup your city file, as you work on it, I would hate to see you lose all your hard work.

[Shadow_prophet 91]

Tungston: As much as I love to explain in great awesome details on the amount and type of educational buildings I have in my city, i'll once again let illustration do its job,

Okay here's what is missing from that pic,

3 primary schools

3 Secondary schools

The other 2 opera houses mentioned previously.

Other than tthe opera houses it's all maxis's original in this city thus far (going to change that soon)

and this next pic is for just viewing pleasure and to also answer N_O_Body's question which i had completely forgotten, sorry.

"Don't you have any young Sims being educated?"

....all the kids ran away..

[mencc1701 0]

Yikes! That population pyramid is more than a little unstable!  

[tungston 19]

I see Major Art Museum = 2, is one of those a custom lot also?

I don't know if thinning out the schools will solve the funding issue, but it will make it easier to keep a handle them. I don't use the education slider to control the schools funding, I do that on an individual basis, but I don't know what difference that would make.

I am also wondering about the 8 instances of the college [block], as default City College are a city wide lot [5800 meter radius].

[Shadow_prophet 91]

The art museum is not a custom lot, I used a cheat at first, to place the first one then i accidentally fullfilled the conditions to actually get an art museum and thus 2 major art museums. Another reason i'm thinning out the entire school system is also because as you can see from the poplulation graph, there aren't many kids using the primary schools and a majority of them are using the secondary schools and the college blocks. It's only happening in this city and no other parts of the region.

And concerning the college blocks themselves, i'm not quite understanding wat you're impying, do you mean that they might be the cause of the problem or is it just silly to put so many of them on at once XP

[tungston 19]

I just wondered why you had that many college blocks, no particular reason. No, I don't think the number of them would have any effect on funding. What version of the game are you using, my game [Deluxe] calls them "City College".

As developed as the city is, there probably aren't many using the elementary schools.

I have not used two Major Art Museums, so I don't know how they react. It's possible, but I doubt it would be any different than two anything else.

I haven't seen any thing yet that might cause the funding issue. Unless you find something while you do the reorganizing.

[Shadow_prophet 91]

Mine is the deluxe edition as well, but i used the UK localization Mod, to get a little more home feeling (I live in Malaysia so the education facilitie's names here are the same as the one in the UK).

I'm only half way through the process so it might take some time. I'll update when i have finished it. And thanks for your help thus far as well.