Major population bug D:

[SirTiggerEsq 0]

So, I have a massive problem, and a majorly weird one at that. The population of a suburb I had been working on suddenly, and for no clear reason, jumped from 110,000 to around 5,000,000. It's clearly not due to population growth, as if you look at the town, there is no way five million people could fit in here.

However, if we look at the population counter...

D: D: D: WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!

After deciding it HAD to be a faulty plugin, I removed all my plugins and played the game. Nope, still five million people.

I deleted the entire city and waited a few months. There were still almost five million people. (Invisible people?)

I used a hex editor to force the population count back down to 110,000. As soon as I hit play, guess what, FIVE MILLION PEOPLE D:

Now, I am really at the end of my rope here. I have no idea what to do at this point, and this is one of my favourite cities, so deleting it really isn't an option I want to explore. I can't play the city because the health advisor won't shut up about the fact that there are now twelve thousand people trying to get into a medical clinic with funding for twelve hundred (see below). Crime is through the roof and I have to deal with constant strikes and riots caused by the population explosion.

And I can't play connected cities because demand for everything is through the floor D:

So I ask ye, oh great citizens of Simtropolis. Do you have any idea what the hell is going on?

____________________

Computer Specs:

Windows XP

2gb RAM

30gb on Windows partition

2.4GHz dual core processor

____________________

Game specs:

Rush Hour installed

NAM installed

Many, MANY plugins installed (but have been tested as mentioned)

[CyanideCloud 0]

I have no clue what the Problem is, but I would love to know how you got that Data Window for looking at the funding/capacity for every building at one time. What plugin is it (or is a standard option and I'm just an idiot)?

[JLAAPRTM 12]

@cyanideCloud: Click on the budget button and then the Health Buildings tab thing (I don't know exactly what it's called) and yes, it's a standard option.

Maybe its something that has to do with the region poulation. Before the pop. jumped up, did the region have 5,108,364 sims? Maybe it was a population plugin that couldn't be totally removed. By doing simple division, well not really simple... 5,108,364/110,000 is around 45. Does this sound framilliar? If not, you might want to contact someone more advanced than me, or tell this story to one of the moderaters. Hope this works (but it probably won't)

Anyways, that's a nice city picture! You should post that in one of those Show Us Your...... City! fourm thing or something like that.

[Yucan 0]

This reminds me of a problem/bug I had quite some time before:

(I know that it seems to be different and, in fact, might not be related at all, but still...)

I was in the middle of creating a large city when suddenly, out of nowhere, my Mayor Rating crashed and burned, meaning it went from "full green" to "full red" without any apparent reason (every other rating was fine, there was no reason for the decline whatsoever). This happend over the course of about 2-3 (ingame-)months - would be good to know, if yours jumped from one moment to the other or just over a short amount of time. Anyway, there was no way to fix this (even stuff like Radical Ordinance didn't stand a chance).

Well, what I wanted to say was: Even though SC4 seems to be without major bugs (apart from the plugin-caused CTDs), from time to time, one appears out of nowhere and does not seem to be fixable...

I never had any problems with my Mayor Ratings before and after that specific city. So, i guess, if you don't have a backup of that city (I'm doing that with all my "great" cities to be sure whatever might happen), it's lost - sorry mate.

Yucan

[CyanideCloud 0]

I might recommend copy/pasting your Region files that you have worked on to a backup folder and then reinstall SimCity 4. Then you can go to the STEX and go to my downloads and redownload all the plugins you had one at a time after each plugin install, go and check if everything is kosher.

[bigthing 35]

It is a bit of a pickle... I have never heared of it before. I dont think that it is a game bug or we would be hearing more of it. All i can say is to to take CyanideClouds advice and check back when you have finished. We will continue from there.

[Whisperedinthenight 1]

Have you installed all SC4 Deluxe/Rush Hour updates?

Try that, then follow CyanideCloud

Whispered

[CyanideCloud 0]

Well, have you tried to fix it? Please report back.

[Nuclear550 3]

You might've installed a multiplier that multiplies civics and pop.

[SirTiggerEsq 0]

Okay. I reinstalled the game, to no avail. In fact, reinstalling the game had no effect whatsoever on the city.

@ JLAAPRTM: Thanks, and yes, the region's population did jump, but only because of that one city. Hex-edit forcing it to stabilize at 110,000 just before exiting to the region sent the region population back to normal. The other cities in the region are unaffected by this bug, even the downtown area with around 500,000 people has never encountered it.

@Nuclear550: I did have some multipliers in my plugins folder, but only for industry, and this problem has not occurred in all the cities I have been playing, only this one, so it doesn't seem to be one of the multiplier plugins, especially since I've run the game without the plugins folder at all (brown boxes EVERYWHERE D: ) and the problem was still there.