NAM Traffic Simulator and Data View Support Thread

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: Indiana Joe

If there are 350k members of Simtropolis, and a good 5000 must be good at something involving SC4 programming, why doesn't somebody in the NAM try to do business with Maxis? Surely they would be happy to have 5000 people working on a SimCity 5 for nothing but a garunteed free copy of the finished game?quote>

Maxis no longer exists.  And if we had 5000 programmers we could call on, we could write our own game from scratch.

Oh, I guess this post doesn't belong on this topic, so I'll make it belong. z1, can you please post the exact stats and capacities for Simulator Z Classic? (Without just saying that they're similar to Maxis's?  )quote>

Roads: 1200

Streets: 100

Highways: 4000

RHW: 2700

One-way Roads: 1800

Avenue: 1400

Rails (all forms): 3000

All capacities are per tile.  All other properties are identical to the properties in the other capacity levels of Simulator Z.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

Oh, well. Worth a shot. And thanks for the chart.

[iller 0]

Greetings,  I'm not having any issues with this Mod as far as I'm aware atleast.  I just wanted to offer my findings so far incase feedback was being collected (hopefully my examples are of a proper scale to get something out of them) ...as well as give details to other prospective users as to what they could expect from it b/c when I read these threads before downloading it, I didn't find examples were yet available and it frankly left me feeling a bit lost.

Prior to this I was playing 100% vanilla(non-patched) 1.0 SC4 deluxe and all I really wanted was a boost to my "Sims"'s commuting range.   As this photoshopped image of my newly created region demonstrates, I had hit the proverbial wall on inter-city travel:

• I had bus-stops everywhere and 2 or 3 transport lines for every Suburb, and mayor ratings > 60 ... However:
• Larger buildings weren't continually developing, and when they did, they quickly became unemployed
• Upper-Wealth "Sims" simply stopped going to work b/c they refused to get on Busses/Trains/Monorails
• My southern-most and northern-most areas weren't developing at all.
• My main highway to the Commerce center was crowded over with roughly 4,000 cars and 12,000 bus-riders who looped all the way around and "stole" jobs from Sims on other networks
• ...while nearly all other transportation lines couldn't seem to get over 1,000 sims. 
• And even though R-C-I demand was kept balanced or even in favor of R & C throughout the region -- The actual travel simulations were adjusting so slowly that I was eventually UNABLE to make alterations to my infrastructure have any meaningful & timely effect which quickly lead to a downward spiral of "insatiable Industry demmand" and massive abandonment of 75% of my R & C zones.

The worst part was that I had already anticipated for this sort of situation and THOUGHT I had my zones partitioned up carefully enough to avoid it. Infact I  tried to keep each "class" of Sim traveling no more than 1 City's length to their respective "jobs".  This really made this brand new Concept-Region into something I was beginning to dread loading up each day.  ...like a really pretty painting with all the right colors, perfect composition, but your classic female subject in the foreground has a big ugly MUSTACHE.

Then I registered here to DL NAM and I un-checked all other addons in it that I could (no roundabouts or lightrails or anything else I might be tempted to use...) ...just "Simulator Z" set to "LOW" and Automata set to "Radical" (non_24).  The changes were incredibly dramatic:

• Instead of making traffic less-challenging to manage, all the bus-riders quickly spread out and overwhelmed nearly all of my Avenue Intersections so...
• I had to switch from LOW to SimulatorZ_MEDIUM ...as well bulldozing a whole string 4x4 low-income Tenements in my central city (Folley)
• It only took about 3-5 years to totally reverse the industry problems I was having earlier...
• ...and the faster pathing/tracking made it much easier to convert entire industrial blocks from "Dirty" industry into "Hi Tech" which meant a lot more High/$$$ residents started finding those jobs sooner.
• Zones in my southernmost city started developing so rapidly that it OCTUPLED in occupancy
• Even farm and power plants far beyond intended "reach" started finding workers
• Only a few tiny portions are still lacking employees which is likely due to a small housing shortage right now.
• Infact the R-C-I demand bar is having trouble just keeping up with the new Pathing now.
• I still can't seem to increase the density of my Central "Junction" city without fears of epic traffic congestion but that's okay because it fits with the concept of the region and that makes it more interesting.

  ---

• A totally unexpected and hard to explain side-effect to all of this is:
• ...Bizarrely --> the game actually seems to be crashing LESS now than the original Maxis 1.0 vanilla install was.
• Somewhat more expected:  a huge increase in Multithreading by my Dualcore despite my O.S. only being XP-pro instead of XP-x64
• For comparison, my water-cooled CPU usually runs at about 83°f but wouldn't go beyond 88° with Vanilla-SC4 on any of these cities.
• Last night it hit 101° which is only 2° below the highest temperature I've recorded from running TeamFortress2 at full graphics on a full 34-man Server.

From this, I can extrapolate that I was basically "cheating" in Vanilla SC4 by cramming so many sims onto Busses that funneled through a single series of Avenues.  This has forced me to think in new ways and eventually I hope to be able to build around the Lowest capacity settings ...but that will likely take a lot of trial and error with these new Pedestrian Widgets.   I think this also reveals that some users really would need a computer upgrade to run this Mod at its maximums.  My specs are as follows:  Mobo (includes 700mb ATI card), CPU, & RAM.  ...and at this rate I might actually need a Memory upgrade.

In closing, A HUGE THANK YOU to the creators of these algorithms... they rescued my concept from failure. ...Those who say it's the most crucial "Patch" available for this game, aren't embellishing one bit

The only thing I can think of that might improve this could be some sort of additional Mod that paths $$/$$$ Sims through airports to adjacent cities with airports, or for more challenge:   "utilizes" 2 spread-out Landing Strips in the same city (or other such flight centers) to in-effect... instantly "Teleport" Bussed & Railed sims from one side of a city to the other Airstrip and cancel out all the travel time in-between to simulate "shuttle flights" ...or in my case, allow me to bridge Via'_mass-transit,  parts of my city that are separated by huge Cliffs that a Monorail cannot be realistically built over.

[z1 566]

I'm glad that Simulator Z is working so well for you.  As for the creators of the algorithms,, the pathfinding algorithms are just slight variations on the standard A* pathfinding algorithms, and those variations and everything else were done by Maxis.

Why didn't you see this in the original simulator, then?  The Maxis simulator is actually a fairly well-built simulator, especially for its time, but it was dumbed down terribly in order to be able to run on the slower computers available at the time of its release.  (Specifically, it had to run on a Pentium III 500 MHz comuter with 128 MB of RAM.)  Simulator Z merely tunes the parameters of the Maxis simulator to bring out the best in what Maxis built.

The version of Simulator Z that you're using is actually fairly old (v1.1.1); I'd strongly recommend downloading the latest version (v2.2) here.  This is the version that will be appearing in the next NAM.  It has many improvements, including better pathfinding and a faster running speed.  There are too many changes to list here, though; you can read all about them in the Traffic Simulator Z Development thread, starting here.

Since Simulator Z releases tend to come out a lot more frequently than NAM releases, and since the simulator isn't tied to the NAM or dependent on it, in the near future there will be a download available on the STEX that always contains the latest version of Simulator Z, along with its associated data views.  It will also contain the customization tool illustrated at the end of the development thread.

Although many of your requested transportation mods do not exist, I would strongly suggest checking out the AC Functional Airports mod on the LEX.  (You need to register there to be able to download files.)  It contains many useful lots in addition to airports, including heliports and a number of shuttle services to take Sims to cities that contain airports.  This is especially useful if you don't want to put airports in every single city in your region.

[disp 1]

First of all, i would like to thank anyone who invested his/her time to Nam and Simulator Z. It's an incredible mod.

But! I think i'm having a problem with Simulator Z.

What my problem is, i removed all my previous cities, starting fresh. Since I love to keep my residential and work cities apart, I'm trying to run 3 cities at once. The problem is, whenever i create a neighbor connection, the residents leave the city fine. But when i switch over to the next city they do not arrive. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. For example the first connection i placed works just fine. It receives commuters on both sides. But when i place a second connection to between same cities, first it won't be used (even if it's a straight line between cities connecting work places to homes, which should be significantly shorter). And if it is used, the city that has the working places won't show any incoming commuters.

Now that is fine for me, i wouldn't mind it if it wouldn't mess up my city. When this happens my commute time starts to increase dramatically. To set an example when i place a second connection to same neighboring city, my commute time jumps from 2-4 to 60-100. Sometimes even when i create a new city, just to test it out, i create one subway station on one and one on the other, residents leave their city but they don't arrive on the industrial city. And none of my industrial buildings will have workers (since i'm connecting the city with only subway). Thus, my commute time spike from 0 to 200.

What i was able to figure out was this: Game's default mass transit stations work perfectly normal for the first connection. But even they fail in secondary or further connections. Any transit addon i have won't show the commuters in industrial or commercial cities. But if i create a connection between cities using default station, then demolish it and replace it with addons, this seems to fix the problem for the first connection. But i'm still having problems with second and further connections.

I tried reinstalling NAM and removing and reinstalling plug-ins (i have too few anyway and none of them are traffic related). I only use roundabout subway station as transit addon. Please help this poor fella :/

ps. : i am having no problems for commuting inside city, i tried a city with mixed residential and commercial zones. commute time was something like 0,2-1 with full medium city, medium density.

pps: sorry for the lengthy post.

[z1 566]

I'm glad you're enjoying Simulator Z!  My first question is, do you have the latest version?  The one that comes with the NAM is actually quite out of date now.  You can get the latest version (v2.2) here.

Originally posted by: disp

What my problem is, i removed all my previous cities, starting fresh. Since I love to keep my residential and work cities apart, I'm trying to run 3 cities at once. The problem is, whenever i create a neighbor connection, the residents leave the city fine. But when i switch over to the next city they do not arrive. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. For example the first connection i placed works just fine. It receives commuters on both sides. But when i place a second connection to between same cities, first it won't be used (even if it's a straight line between cities connecting work places to homes, which should be significantly shorter). And if it is used, the city that has the working places won't show any incoming commuters.quote>

One thing to keep in mind is that each city has no knowledge of the internal layout of its neighbor cities.  All it knows are a few basic citywide facts, such as demand for each RCI type, for its neighbors.

As to why workers leave one city but don't arrive in another, this normally resolves over time if you alternate play between the two cities.  (Be sure to play each city for at least a year before switching, though.)  A few cases have been seen where this doesn't resolve.  No one seems to know why this is the case, but it appears to be a bug in the underlying Maxis engine, which means we can't fix it.  If this problem occurs with the latest version of Simulator Z, the best thing to do would be to modify where your city crossings are; this seems to be a workaround for this fairly rare problem.

Now that is fine for me, i wouldn't mind it if it wouldn't mess up my city. When this happens my commute time starts to increase dramatically. To set an example when i place a second connection to same neighboring city, my commute time jumps from 2-4 to 60-100. Sometimes even when i create a new city, just to test it out, i create one subway station on one and one on the other, residents leave their city but they don't arrive on the industrial city. And none of my industrial buildings will have workers (since i'm connecting the city with only subway). Thus, my commute time spike from 0 to 200.quote>

Once again, when it comes to commute time, I will quote Tropod:

About the Commute Graph; ignore it. It serves no real purpose really, especially more so if you have neighbour connections.  The fact that there might be such a low [or high] Commute according to the Commute Graph, is pointless really, as it is by no means accurate nor indicative of the actual Commute Times undertaken by individual Sims. All it is, is a city average.  Also; Mass Transit will typically increase commute times, not decrease it.quote>

Notice the part about neighbor connections.  Traffic across neighbor connections increases commute time way more than it should.  The more traffic you have across neighbor connections, the higher your commute time will be.  This is a Maxis bug, plain and simple.  But it's an important reason why you shouldn't pay attention to the commute time graph.

Whether or not your industrial buildings have workers has nothing to do with the type of connection between cities.  Sims are perfectly happy to take the subway to industrial jobs.  What determines whether industrial buildings have jobs is demand and desirability, just like commercial buildings.

What i was able to figure out was this: Game's default mass transit stations work perfectly normal for the first connection. But even they fail in secondary or further connections. Any transit addon i have won't show the commuters in industrial or commercial cities. But if i create a connection between cities using default station, then demolish it and replace it with addons, this seems to fix the problem for the first connection. But i'm still having problems with second and further connections.quote>

You may be having problems with demand caps here.  What happens is that the first connection of a given type to a neighbor city increases the demand cap by a certain amount; each succeeding connection of that type increases the demand cap by a sucessively lesser amount.  The Prima Guide describes this process in detail.  If you hit your demand caps, you're going to have growth problems; demand just dries up.

ps. : i am having no problems for commuting inside city, i tried a city with mixed residential and commercial zones. commute time was something like 0,2-1 with full medium city, medium density.quote>

This would tend to confirm that the problems you're experiencing are due to what I described, and are not actually traffic simulator problems.  Intercity commuting is riddled with bugs and limitations, and it can be quite difficult to get it to work properly on a large scale.

[disp 1]

Thanks for the reply z1,

I'm downloading the newer version and i will test further to resolve this issue (hopefully i will).

One thing though, i don't it is a demand cap issue because i have the prima guide and i'm giving RCI zones everything to increase desirability. I never get negative or zero demand for any RCI unless i max out taxes.

Another quick note, the problem happens with any custom transit lot. It's not that i only tried with roundabout sub station. Anyways, i'll post more if i find anything. Trying with new version now.

ps: What is the euro version in the files? Park&Ride mode?

[disp 1]

I can't thank you enough z1!

Ver 2.2 solved all my issues. Now i have 3 connected cities with 5 connection points. My residential city shows a commute time of 10!

Thank you very, very, very much. You saved my cities

[Mike1814 0]

Well I didn't have too much success with 2.1, so I jsut dl'd 2.2 and replaced it. How long would it take effect? 

edit: I think I installed it wrong because no jbb zots are appearing like crazy. How do you properly install it into the game?

[z1 566]

Parts of the change take effect immediately; other parts may take up to eight years to take effect.  You should not get a lot of "no job" zots any time during this process, however.

I would recommend the following:

1. Delete the contents of your main NAM folder and the Plugins subfolder; you can leave any other subfolders (such as the ones for SAM or HSR) that you may have had.

2. Do a full installation of the NAM.  During this installation, choose the capacity level of Simulator Z that you want as your traffic simulator.  (Don't choose any of the Park & Ride versions.)

3. In your main NAM folder, replace the copy of Simulator Z with the identically named file from the Simulator Z v2.2 package.

Normally, the first two steps aren't necessary; I am including them here because of the problems you are having.

If this doesn't work, please describe in detail what problems you have.  (Something like "no job zots" is quite sufficient, but when you earlier said you "didn't have too much success with 2.1", I would need more detail than that to figure out what the problem is.)

[Mike1814 0]

Originally posted by: z1

Parts of the change take effect immediately; other parts may take up to eight years to take effect.  You should not get a lot of "no job" zots any time during this process, however.

I would recommend the following:

1. Delete the contents of your main NAM folder and the Plugins subfolder; you can leave any other subfolders (such as the ones for SAM or HSR) that you may have had.

2. Do a full installation of the NAM.  During this installation, choose the capacity level of Simulator Z that you want as your traffic simulator.  (Don't choose any of the Park & Ride versions.)

3. In your main NAM folder, replace the copy of Simulator Z with the identically named file from the Simulator Z v2.2 package.

Normally, the first two steps aren't necessary; I am including them here because of the problems you are having.

If this doesn't work, please describe in detail what problems you have.  (Something like "no job zots" is quite sufficient, but when you earlier said you "didn't have too much success with 2.1", I would need more detail than that to figure out what the problem is.)quote>

Well the problem with the other one was the it didnt 't really change from the default simulator z I had.

[z1 566]

In some cities, especially smaller ones or ones with highly intermixed zones, the changes may be too small to be noticeable. Generally, the changes are most visible in the Pop & Jobs graph, even when you can't see them in the city itself. So the lack of a perceptible difference in and of itself is not a problem, as long as the simulator appears to be operating properly. How perceptible the differences in different versions of the simulator are varies a huge amount from one city to another.

[Xerxers 0]

A few months ago I decided to try installing high speed rail after I read this thread "https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=124&threadid=106534&enterthread=y&STARTPAGE=1" which said it could make elevated monorail into high speed rail. Now it did work and I love the textures of the elevated rail lines. I also read in that thread that it was suggested to install Simulater Z (i think I got ver. 2.2) and I decided to reinstall NAM and this time increase the capacity of all transportation systems to the max option available.

Now the problem:

My high speed rail lines (monorail) and ground rail and basically any form of mass transit are super heavily used. However, my highways, roads, avenues have either no cars on them or only a few hundred cars on them. This is in a city of 500,000, and in case you are wondering before I downloaded these Sim Z and reinstalled NAM the highways were quite heavily used.

So I am wondering if you could tell me what happened and how can I make it so at least some people in my city use highways, roads and avenues? Was it SIM Z, the change I did to make monorails into High speed Rail or the newly updated NAM which I downloaded (i think I had the previous version and upgraded to the newest version and as I said while installing it selected for first time the option for highest capacity for transportation networks)?

Thank you for any help you can give me, love the stuff you guys do here in this website, it has made this game a million times more fun.

[z1 566]

First of all, make sure you're using Simulator Z v2.2.  If you're just using the version you got from the latest NAM, you're using v1.1.1.  Version 2.2 is specially tuned to increase highway usage, among other things.  You can get v2.2 here.

Nevertheless, even with version 2.2, it's possible to experience problems of the type you're describing.  Sims like to take the fastest route to work, and high speed rail is the fastest form of transport there is.  Subways and other rails are faster than standard roads.  So if you have a lot of these forms of transportation with easy access, that's what Sims will take.

If you want more road traffic, you don't have to tear up your mass transit, though.  Simply reduce the number of stations.  The Sims will then either have to walk farther or take more buses to your rapid transit, and they'll have to walk longer to get to the buses.  This will make many trips take longer than car trips, even if they use rapid transit, and Sims will shift back to using their cars.  By carefully adjusting the number of stations, you can fine tune the proportion of Sims who drive versus those who take mass transit.

Whether you use monorail or high speed rail has no effect here; they both work the same as far as the traffic simulator is concerned.

[Mike1814 0]

Well some of the problems are still persisting. I tend to use cheetah speed a lot (I really have no patience). So I don't know if that's that problem or not.  there is some highway use but only to a short extent.

[ultimatron 0]

Hi z1 this is my first post on simtropolis. Well I must say your simulator is rock solid. I downloaded v2.2, deleted the z_low.dat (I have low installed with NAM in the first place) and pasted in the z_classic.dat. I left all other files intact. Is that how I'm suppose to install simulator z classic? Just want to make sure the simulator will be working

[z1 566]

@Mike1814:  Choosing Cheetah speed has no effect on anything other than visual.  It's often hard to get a lot of traffic on highways; the Sims just don't use them as much as people do.  If you have high speed rapid transit, they'll tend to take that instead.  Please see my previous post for more pointers on increasing highway usage.

@Ultimatron:  Welcome to Simtropolis!  Yes, you have installed the Classic version of Simulator Z correctly.  When changing capacity levels, though, it's good to change the Volume Data View file as well, so that you'll get correct displays of those views.  Normally, those files don't change with every Simulator Z release, which is why I haven't put them in the zip file.  But the Classic version didn't exist when the last NAM was released, so instead of having you hunt it down, I'm including it as an attachment to this post.  The Classic version will be in the coming NAM release; there will also soon be a standing Simulator Z download on the STEX that will include the latest version of the simulator, its associated data views, and a customization program for those who want to customize the simulator and/or its data views.

NetworkAddonMod_Volume_Data_View_Z_Classic.zip

[ultimatron 0]

Thanks for the file! I remember reading somewhere in the simulator z development thread that the classic version allows for unlimited commute time. Would that increase the risk of eternal commute circles?

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: ultimatron

Thanks for the file!quote>

You're welcome!

I remember reading somewhere in the simulator z development thread that the classic version allows for unlimited commute time. Would that increase the risk of eternal commute circles?quote>

All versions of Simulator Z offer this feature.  The commute time isn't actually unlimited, but it's enough to always get Sims to the city border, where the game always resets the commute time.  So it's effectively unlimited.  But the latest versions of Simulator Z are also biased to look for jobs within the current city before they look for jobs outside the city.  Overall, the risk of eternal commute loops is no greater in Simulator Z than in other traffic simulators.  The best defense against these loops is either to create a route geometry where they cannot form, or to make your city connections in at least one of the cities only near the center of the city tile, and make sure that there are lots of jobs available there.

[Xerxers 0]

Yeah, I have tons of subways/bus combo transit stops. I guess I can do that. I have a question though, I believe I was reading another thread of yours where you were discussing how you were tinkering with Simulater Z so that sims would use highways more. Not sure if this was you or not, if it was were you able to make it so that Sims would use highways more?

[z1 566]

Originally posted by: Xerxers

I believe I was reading another thread of yours where you were discussing how you were tinkering with Simulater Z so that sims would use highways more. Not sure if this was you or not, if it was were you able to make it so that Sims would use highways more?quote>

You are correct; this change was the sole improvement in version 2.2, and both tests and user feedback indicates that it works rather well.  Highway usage is now at an optimum.  Theoretically, it could be increased even more, but that would have negative effects in other parts of the simulator.  Most importantly, it would draw Sims away from normal roads too much, reducing the traffic flow past businesses, which would ultimately result in fewer customers, fewer jobs, and lower growth.  (I have actually tested this out and seen this happen.)  For obvious reasons, I did not want to do that, especially since the solution I proposed to you is equally effective, and has no negative side effects.

[ultimatron 0]

Hey z after using your simulator I have zero abandonment that is really due to commute time (though congestion is everywhere, even certain parts of my highways). However when I zoned a new residential area this area suddenly had many no-job zots and then abandoned, repopulated and abandoned again lol. I'm not quite sure what reason cause the abandonment cycles (it seems to move from certain group of houses to other groups of houses in the area). 

My city is surrounded by 2 small tiles and 1 medium which are all pure industrial cities. My commercial jobs are more than half that of my residential population. ( I suppose the 'correct ratio' of jobs to residents is 1:2) 

[z1 566]

There are two possible causes for what you're experiencing.  Since this problem happened right after you zoned some new residential areas, it's very possible that you now have more Sims in your workforce than you have available jobs of the proper type.  If the Sims can't find approriate jobs, you get abandonment due to commute time.  Even though the little RCI display shows positive, it's an amalgamation of the five types of commercial demand, and some of those may be negative.

The second possibility involves the way the internal Maxis traffic simulator engine works.  It does some rather aggressive optimization, which often results in its deciding that Sims can't reach available jobs even when they can.  One of the main criteria it uses is how much rapid transit (i.e., rails) you have.  If you really have enough jobs available, then putting emough subways between your residences and businesses should be able to eliminate your problem completely.  (I use subways in this example because it's easy to put as many as you want in an existing city without having to tear up the city at all.)

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

I had a similar problem (which I outlined to you in that other thread) except for one major difference. My demand for commercial and industrial is dead, and hasn't been on the positive side for 150 years of game time. I detect something fishy. I have a neighboring industrial city where I've pretty much maxed out industrial demand too. (I don't think I need another neighbor job city; this city is still pretty small at 235,000). Since I don't think I have enough jobs, I can't make use of my high residential demand. Despite dozens of landmarks, parks, and international airport, certain ordinances, and taxes at 0%, commercial and industrial demand just won't go up and buildings just won't stay populated. I'm even using simulator Z and it isn't helping the least bit. Um, the only other thing is I have a somewhat patchy but highly used mass transit system made up of subway, buses, and even monorail.

I don't think it's simulator Z's fault (seeing all of the success of these other players), but more of personal error; I just wan't to know what I did wrong here!

[ultimatron 0]

Originally posted by: Indiana Joe

I had a similar problem (which I outlined to you in that other thread) except for one major difference. My demand for commercial and industrial is dead, and hasn't been on the positive side for 150 years of game time. I detect something fishy. I have a neighboring industrial city where I've pretty much maxed out industrial demand too. (I don't think I need another neighbor job city; this city is still pretty small at 235,000). Since I don't think I have enough jobs, I can't make use of my high residential demand. Despite dozens of landmarks, parks, and international airport, certain ordinances, and taxes at 0%, commercial and industrial demand just won't go up and buildings just won't stay populated. I'm even using simulator Z and it isn't helping the least bit. Um, the only other thing is I have a somewhat patchy but highly used mass transit system made up of subway, buses, and even monorail.

I don't think it's simulator Z's fault (seeing all of the success of these other players), but more of personal error; I just wan't to know what I did wrong here!

quote>

Well I would like to share my thought on this since my region layout is pretty similar to yours (neighbouring industrial cities). You might want to take a look at this first: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=963.0. Focus on the Workforce Drives (Demand of Occupation).

As you can see education places a major role on your industrial and commercial demand. As EQ increases across all wealth levels, your manafacturing and dirty industrial demand would drop and high tech will rise. Also, commercial (esp.office) demand will rise. If your residents are lowly educated then some of them will take up the industrial jobs AND when you zone new residential, the new residents (which starts with low EQ) cannot get the industrial jobs and they will abandon!

You should make sure all of your sims are well educated first, then try zoning residential. The thing is when your sims EQ keep rising, they will abandon the I-M and I-D jobs and your new residents can take them. Once the new residents EQ rise, they will start looking for office jobs and your commercial demand will rise! This way you will not worry that you dont have enough jobs for everyone.

The interesting thing is a city with an extremely educated population (all wealth levels with EQ 150-200) can depend solely on commercial jobs alone.

[z1 566]

I agree fully with ultimatron; this was going to be the next thing I was going to suggest.  Drives are complex, but they have a huge effect on the success or failure of a city.

[Indiana Joe 1,750]

My EQ ranges from 150 to 180. Mostly. However I had no idea that drives existed, so I'll go back and look into that. Thanks a ton.

[ultimatron 0]

Ok my problem was solved. Turned out that zoning more commercial didnt work, but allowing some high wealth sims to move in did the trick. There was a bit too much of medium wealth sims.

[jackreid 0]

Hey my question is less to do with Simulator Z in particular (although it seems the optimum set-up for what I want to do) but more to do with using the simulators at all. The installation instructions I've seen all tell you how to select the simulator you want to use in the NAM installer. Seeing as I'm on a mac I don't run the installer, I just have the files. Is it possible to use the simulators on a mac? If so, how are they activated?

[CaptCity 4,753]

Originally posted by: jackreid

...Seeing as I'm on a mac I don't run the installer, I just have the files. Is it possible to use the simulators on a mac? If so, how are they activated?quote>

Sure, just delete all the Simulators from the Traffic Controller folder except the one you want to use.