City is not Developing

[Dreamyr 0]

I recently pulled out my copy of SC4 again and after some browsing managed to discover this site among others. Interested in some of the plugins available i downloaded several to try out. They worked as advertised and i proceeded to set up my city with all the relevant infrastructure and hit play. Several minutes later of sitting at the next to highest speed setting I had one house with a sum total of 23 people. I set the speed to max and let it sit for several minutes with no change.

I set up my industrial city next door figuring that perhaps the lack of industry might be the problem. The same happened there as well. Most of the farmland developed and a few plots in the industry developed but that was it.

I honestly have no clue why this is happening, I've tried everything I can think of and have only come up with that it's most likely one of the plugins I'm using. If anybody has run into this problem before or knows the exact cause please let me know.

The plugins I am using are:

no radiation, Operahouse fix, Officestage caps, SimoleonRH, Industry quadrupler, Bridge height lower and tollbooth.

Any help is appreciated.

[Jezus53 18]

IT could be one of the plugins, I don't have any experience with any of those but the toll booth one and that wouldn't effect it. Did you put the game on hard mode? That could be a problem. Also, is the commute reasonable. Make sure it's an easy route to the industry and commerce areas. Uhm,... I'm pretty sure you have power and all basic infrastructure. Are you running SC4 Plain or with Rush Hour? A lot of mods require Rush Hour. I don't know wht the affects of puttinga rush hour mod in a plain copy of sc4 would do, but it could be a part of the problem.

[Dreamyr 0]

Yes, I do have Rush Hour. I have multiple low commercial zoning next to the residential areas and very good transportation to the main commercial district. I usually like to have my industry in a  separate city so that I don't have to deal with too much pollution and that has worked fine before this. There is currently also no industrial demand with the next door city having a good connection to it as well with both a train line and both cities have a small air strip.

My best guess on what is screwing it up is the Industry quadrupler plugin with multiplies the jobs each industry has by 4. Otherwise I have no plugins that manipulate anything to do with the population or development aside from the Officestage plugin which I can't really see as doing this from its effects.

[Livin in Sim 83]

Hi, Dreamyr,

Welcome to Simtropolis.  You haven't zoned 1x1 residential have you?  They won't develop in a new city because there are no stage one lots that are 1x1.

I use the industry quadrupler, and bridge height, and I haven't had that trouble.  The only other modd I've ever had to take out due to no early development was the Maxis Building Blocker; I think I have the one by Dusktrooper.  The game must need Maxis early on to have development.  But I put it back in after the city grows some.

Enjoy the game.

--Liv

[Dreamyr 0]

No, I have had the game for quite some time and had a few semi successful cities before. My blocks are all 5x5 or larger. The only other thing I can think of that might possibly be obstructing it is that I have no Industry in that city but considering that it is all in another city next door and there is no demand for it I don' t think that that is it either.

This really has me stumped and its rather frustrating as well. I'll try and play some more again in a bit and see if it fixes itself but I'm not very optimistic.

[antsel 842]

I don't know if it will help your situation, but when development is stagnated in my cities I grab the god mode tree and run that all over my residential areas. Keep holding the mouse down and drag it all over your residential areas, and soon enough you should see some growth. Be sure to do this when the simulator is running at full speed. That's how I "encourage" Sims to move into my cities. The god mod trees trick also works on commercial lots, but not on industrial lots.

[Dreamyr 0]

No go sorry. This is really frustrating me. It'd be different if I knew WHY it was doing it but from what I'm seeing no one else has had this problem before. The only other thing i can think of at the moment is a conflict between some of the plugins I'm using which doesn't seem very liked either.

[Jezus53 18]

Try playing the game without any mods installed. Then tell use if the problem is still there. If it's not, then add each mod/plugin in individually and play. Repeat till you find the culprit. If it doesn't work unmodded, then try a fresh install.

[Dreamyr 0]

It SHOULD work unmodded but it's been a while since i last played and I went straight to adding the plugins and playing this time around so i'll have to test the plugins. I'll do that all tomorrow, it's rather late and I'll be going to bed in a bit. Let you guys know then, hopefully somebody who knows a bit about coding and stuff will be able to point out where the problem is if that is what it turns out to be.

[Dreamyr 0]

Ok, found the problem and it's so simple that I'm about at the point where I'm beating my head against a particularly solid object. It's apparently been so long that i'd forgotten the hotkeys for certain things in SC4, such as the zoning without roads. I'd been holding down cntrl instead of shft and for some reason my game doesn't like that and any zones set down using cntrl will not get any inhabitants.

Sorry for wasting you guys' time and thanks for all the help despite the fact that it was my own stupidity at the heart of the problem.