Pollution Levels

[SimBurger 0]

I did a thorough test of this and have officially confirmed that the "Wooded Park Area" does not do anything, even slightly, to reduce levels of pollution. 

I had a large red cloud from Industry which was gaining on my city.
 
Since my budget was 900 billion dollars (roughly) I placed enough parks to cover literally 1/4 of the entire map.

Surrounded the red cloud of pollution - but twice as thick.

Then I waited.

It took me nearly a half hour of "turns" to place all the parks, and I've continued game play for at least another hour.

Not even a tiny change.  And the alerts keep coming that pollution is choking everything to death.

Im going to assume this is a bug, or I am retarded.  The latter often occurs, so any input is appreciated.

SB

[mentarman 14]

Are you sure parks are supposed to reduce pollution? Or is the game just suggesting them like "hey, instead of more factories, how about some parks"?

(I don't have the game yet so I don't know if it is telling you that they will reduce pollution or not)

[Rakeesh 0]

I'm not sure they're meant to work on pollution. But I did notice that if I build an avatar park near a concentration of them, the green area produced suitable for holiday hotels expands much larger than just the avatar park alone.

[SimBurger 0]

The game provides an alert that says Pollution is Choking Everything. When you click on it to expand it, there is a sentence which says verbatim "You should build more Parks".

Doing so does not reduce pollution.

However if you notice - the ONLY item in the "Environment" tab is the "Avatar Park - a place where Avatars can meet and interact".  What?  What does that have to do with Environment?

So maybe the "Wooded Park" (which clearly implies pollution reduction via trees ala simcity4) is not the "Park" they refer to.  Maybe the extremely weird "Avatar Park where Avatars can (but never will) meet to talk" is the one that reduces pollution. 

SB

[gyzzzmo 0]

Read my post about pollution in the Hints and Tips thread, got it all explained there.

[jeremy12 0]

Originally posted by: gyzzzmo

Read my post about pollution in the Hints and Tips thread, got it all explained there. quote>

your expecting people to know where to look or care to... gota realize people are lazy, 

[TheJackalope 0]

They dont elliminate pollution but provide a positive environmental boost that helps offset pollution.

[gyzzzmo 0]

Originally posted by: jeremy12

Originally posted by: gyzzzmo

Read my post about pollution in the Hints and Tips thread, got it all explained there. quote>

your expecting people to know where to look or care to... gota realize people are lazy, https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=370&threadid=110884&enterthread=y#1633032

quote>

Well if theyre too lazy to read that topic, why would i bother to do extensive explaining here?

[hanskamp 1]

I was told as well to build parks, in order to reduce pollution. WIthout any success. So I try to build cities without any industry. I build a lot of offices and sell the Office Services. The extra money I use for buying Heavy Industry, Manufacturing, anything my city is asking for, or is demanding. I use Manufacturing for High Tech industry which does not cause pollution. It is possible, but you must do some heavy trading. At one side that is a challenge, at the other side I have no other choice.

[8elhaj 0]

They really have to work on pollution because it is ruining the whole game and parks dont help at all.

[Kredit 0]

As someone else explained above, parks don't remove polution, they "compensate" for it. So, the red cloud doesn't get smaller, but citizens loose less satisfaction to it when there are parks in the area.

[gyzzzmo 0]

Originally posted by: 8elhaj

They really have to work on pollution because it is ruining the whole game and parks dont help at all.quote>

Richer people dont want to live in polluted area's.... Sounds pretty logical to me

Also in games like Simcity you couldnt build residential near polluted areas either and i like the touch of MC that polluting buildings slightly add up pollution on the entire map so that you'll eventually will have to import goods.

Its a pity though that you cant realy build very large industry cities with high density, since executives and elites work in those buildings and wont live in those cities. Cant import them either

[SimBurger 0]

Hmmm. Not really satisfied with the last two responses.

Maybe you guys aren't dealing with Pollution on any large scale yet, so you're not seeing why reducing it is important.

I did a test, and Avatar parks do in fact create holiday zones. But they don't reduce pollution at all.

So for the game to say "Build more Parks" - its either a bug in the pollution system or its confusing, at least.

Avatar parks do create holiday zones however. Two of them side by side will create a tiny little green holiday zone which you can place a Holiday HOtel on and collect money.

However - most holiday hotels only generate between 600 and 900C per month.

Building two Avatar parks will cost you 600C per month.

So you basically decrease cash flow by 600 and then increase it by the difference - 300. 

Not much of a deal.

I was able to get creative though and squeezed the largest holiday hotel (1090C per month) up against a  smaller one with a smaller footprint (300C per month), which is generating 1390C per month for me.  At the cost of 600C per month for the two avatar parks.  So im up by the difference I suppose (690C).

But pollution does not change. No matter what you do. 

Demolishing your industry just further reduces your cashflow because you have to buy it for significantly more expensive somewhere else.  Demoloishing manufacturing (another big pollution cause) is even worse - nobody is selling Manufacturing on the trade screen, at all.  Execept Don Madolf and he's selling it for 150C !!!  per unit!  

[morriswalters 16]

Is something failing, because of pollution?  Or is it just the messages.  I get the messages but they don't seem to do anything. I think the idea of parks is not to reduce pollution but to keep satisfaction from dropping.  If pollution is too severe some businesses will fail, primarily offices and hotels.  But they will tell you.              

By the way , excellant heads up on how to build holiday hotels without a holiday map.  Cheaper than the open market.                                                       

[gyzzzmo 0]

Originally posted by: SimBurger

Demolishing your industry just further reduces your cashflow because you have to buy it for significantly more expensive somewhere else.  Demoloishing manufacturing (another big pollution cause) is even worse - nobody is selling Manufacturing on the trade screen, at all.  Execept Don Madolf and he's selling it for 150C !!!  per unit!  

quote>

It is indeed tricky to get slowly rid of all your industries. The best way is to build a second industrial city (or even 2 of them) and let it produce alot of heavy and manufacturing. At the start it will be hard because you'll lose quite some income from the industries, but it will DEFINITELY pay off.

You'll start getting alot of tax income from executives and elites, and also a huge amount of money from selling offices to Don Madalf (and some to your industry cities). Also if you get red of your industries, you can delete quite some of your fuel, waste and electricity buildings wich will also have a positive effect.

Example of how effective it is: I first had a 1 citizen city, with a positive income of around 100k a tick. After getting rid of the industry, pollution and utilities i could raise my citizen taxes to 30%, with the effect that i got 1million a tick!

So its a pain to get rid of it, but really worth it. Just make sure you have a decent amount of money to backup before you start deleting

Gyzzzmo

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Well, I think that the wooded parks should reduce air pollution at least a tad bit and that there should be small, non-avatar, parks under "Environment" that lower pollution more and also increase land value a lot. Trees should also lower air pollution a little bit (less than a wooded park unless really dense) and one should be able to plant them on any empty or zoned-park land.

[SimBurger 0]

Originally posted by: Ilikeseattle

Well, I think that the wooded parks should reduce air pollution at least a tad bit and that there should be small, non-avatar, parks under "Environment" that lower pollution more quote>

I agree that they should  But unfortunately they don't.

SB

[RegisterST2 0]

Parks offsetting pollution not by decreasing pollution, but increasing satisfaction makes perfect sense if you look at it from how the game is designed.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Trees absorb carbon dioxide and collect other pollutants as well. Furthermore, Particulates (soot, mostly carbon) cling to plants and plants can help sequester certain other gasses. Therefore, it would be logical that trees and green areas reduce air pollution a little bit.

[RegisterST2 0]

No one is disputing that. But from the view of this game's design, the way parks work regarding pollution makes sense. Schools don't educate people, hospitals don't prevent sickness, etc. They all just affect satisfaction. So for parks to help with pollution by affecting satisfaction makes perfect sense in the context of CXL's design.

[Sainty 0]

Parks and decorations are two different things, I belive. During beta you were able to place more than one park (not decoration) and it reduced pollution locally.

[zerosugar 0]

I personally dont have a problem with pollution since i build away from populated areas. Its quite easy to build a self sustaining city and not get smogged down by pollution. I do belive pollution is working as intended but i also think that the population slightly over react to the pollution. There should be no means of reducing pollution but there should be a better means of offsetting it.

[SimBurger 0]

The only reason I felt the pollution might be broken (or rather, that the parks are broken, as they don't fix pollution) was because of the Alert the game gives.

The alert which states pollution is killing everything, "BUILD MORE PARKS!"

I finally spoke to Philippe online, and he agreed that the alert was misleading.

I don't know if that means parks will never reduce pollution, or that they are going to change that alert to be more clear.

-SB-

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Knocks on door and runs.  --Liv

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Incoming thread...

[vannquish 0]

Help!

industry is currently at 30% and keeps telling me that high tech suffers from air polution.

I've moved all my high tech to a new area to keep it away from the polution but its still stuck at 30%.

is there anyway I can search for all my high tech zones to see if ive missed any out?

[Sainty 0]

There is something called global pollution in the game, you are probably suffering from that.

[EAGCE 2]

Pollution in this game is crazy.  It's impossible to have a balanced city because of it.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Ding!  

Thread transfer complete.

[SimBurger 0]

Okay so just an update on this.

Apparently the new FORD CAR DEALERSHIP

 

..... has a  -2  (thats negative two) % effect on Pollution. 

It's accessible in RETAIL under that "extra buildings" or special buildings button at the bottom.

Someone also said they found it in Landmarks.

You should place it near PASSENGER SERVICES (that means on the right sidebar menu, find the PASSENGERS menu and click on it.  Your greenest roads have the highest passenger services).

So there is now something that solidly improves pollution in this game, even if only by 2%

The electric cars they offer reduce auto emission pollution.

(we need to get Bentley to sponsor CitiesXL - oh well - its a good start)

By the way ABCS - you got tons of badges! You're a seasoned war veteran!!!

-SB-