The Dreaded R$$$ Bug

[Urbanator 7]

Hi all. The ole R$$$ but has struck in my latest region (16 large tiles) and has brought development to a shuddering halt. My current setup involves 5 RC cities around a single Industry city. At first everything seemed rosie until suddenly the industrial demand plummeted into the mid-negative whilst the residential demand couldn't be much higher - the commercial is negligable but that is probably quite reasonable for the region.

I tried for several days to kick-start some growth but I have come to realise that the problem is the R$$$ bug (most of the population is rich!!). So, I was wondering, what exactly are the initial conditions that cause this problem and is there any hope for my region?

Any help is appreciated.

[Tysons4 68]

You can't have all sims be elites. The middle class should make up the preponderance of your taxes. Remove parks and services so they can barely handle the load, also you need to offer more jobs, If you have 5 tiles around one industry that means that you have one tile of residents that have to travel through another residential city, which is not preferred. Maybe have Industrial tiles surrounding all your residential tiles, and replace the industrial city you have now with commercial. Commercial likes to have their own city tile also, and can give a place for all those r$$$s to work. Commercial likes to be next to commercial, so if you make the whole city commercail all that demand will be feeding back on it and will make it all much nicer than trying to mix it in with the residential city

It's also good to have regions be mixed large, medium and small tiles, as it will maximize the number of city to city connections you can make.

  Edited March 23, 2011 by Tysons4  

[Urbanator 7]

Thanks for the speedy reply Tyson4. An interesting proposition regarding the Commercial city - I normally mix RC and keep I seperate (which normally works quite well). As for offering more jobs... I would love to but apart from forcing civic jobs the CI demand means that there are no more potential jobs to be had. This is quite an odd situation as I have never had an entire region become infected by this bug though I have seen it in one or two cities before. I can't help but wonder what I have done differently in this particular region.

I've recently come across the technique for tweaking the tiles using Paint (et. al.) so I think I might experiment with that.

[huntingfire 15]

I use bones1's Less Abandonment Mod, together with high R$$$ tax.

R$$$ will take over all and drive away the less fortunate people, but when R$$$ leave, the building just dilapidated.

Have massive dilapidation appeared on your cities 'yet" ?

[Urbanator 7]

No dilapidation at all and only one single no-job zot in the entire region... I have yet to experiment with Tyson4's recommendations (should probably get a chance today) so I'm curious to see the response. Curiously, I have had cities with majority R$$$ sims before but its not been a such a major problem 'til this region.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I have serous doubts as to whether this is a bug at all. The program is designed for cities to be balanced. This includes a balance of Sim wealth levels. If you look at a Maxis CO$$$ building with the Reader, you will find the expected ratio for the game with few R$$$, more R$$, and even more R$ jobs. Not everyone can play in the first violins section of the orchestra. Some people get to push spit into reeds and brass instruments, and some get to pound on the skins.

Similarly, the zoning needs to be balanced in each city tile. You can get away with an all commerial or all industrial city, but you are like Sisyphus, forever pushing your rock uphill. I have given up trying to "outsmart the game". It is a program, a finite automaton, with a set of build-in rules and few, if any, heuristics. You will be most successful if you avoid these willful aberrations, and play the game as it is designed.

[Urbanator 7]

@Tysons4: We have lift-off! Wrecking the services and a little bit of cheetah-time seems to have done the trick. I've worked three of the cities and two of them have increased in population by more than 1000% and the other one is reacting more slowly. So, some very good advice there, thanks.

@A Nonny Moose: Having seen this issue from both sides I now understand it a lot more. The real problem I was having was that with R$$$ sims there needs to be a certain supply of appropriate jobs (CS$$$ and Hi-Tech) but without the critical mass of population size and hi EQ that would have proved impossible within the current regional setup - unless one of the cities could last for long enough to produce a high enough EQ, which given how they were bleeding cash rapidly seems unlikely...

What I'm not so sure about it why it happened in this particular region when it hasn't happened in others.

[Gringamuyloca 47]

Urbanator

Maybe Niloluiz's RCI Multi Mod thread might contain some helpful information...

* BUG: The game engine have a BUG that prevents the JOBS$ and JOBS$ for Industry Hi-tech for being created.

If you ever wonder why wealth sims ($) NEVER work on IHT building, now you know why. This bug occours when you try to use(when modding the game) similar % for each JOB type. Since the default game specs dictate 10% for BOTH JOBS$ and JOBS$ on IHT industry, the game engine will truncate theses values and will generate noone.

There is also some discussion here about the same thing...

Maybe there is something on one of these post that might help....

[Urbanator 7]

Hi Gringamuyloca. I'll have a look at the threads and see if they can shed more light on the situation.

[Urbanator 7]

@Gringamuyloca: Both topics were actually pretty revealing of the inner workings os SC4 but unfortunately I don't think it explains the seemingly random occurances of the R$$$ 'bug' - I've developed other cities in a fairly similar (?) way that didn't manifest the problem. I think I'll just have to try and be more cautious with my services.

[baertooth 330]

A Nonny Moose is right. The problem most players have is they want to have a nice city with parks everywhere and full coverage of services. The problem with that is it makes it possible for the buildings to advance into the $$$ realm. If you build a test city with no beautification or services, the cily will only spawn R$. Add a park and some R$$ show up around the park. Add a school and now some R$$$ show up. Never add these things or limit them and you can create neighborhoods of R$ and R$$.

One of the things I did to avoid this was to do high density housing, like a 4x4 block and let it spawn a R$ or R$$ building. Then I would open the properties of the building and make it historical. That way it suspends the building from advancing and gives the poorer sims a place to live. Also, I would bulldoze dilapitated R$$$ buildings which lowers the land value a little and the next building to spawn in it's place would eventually (if I had to do it more than once that is) spawn a lower value building that would stabilize there instead.

But as A Nonny Moose said, the game is meant to be played with keeping the balance of sim wealth levels in mind. Either make neighborhoods for the poorer sims by making poorer cities/areas or freeze buildings so they don't keep advancing.

[Urbanator 7]

I agree that the game likes balance (as it sees it) but the R$$$ trap (a more accurate term perhaps) doesn't always occur in my cities so I'm curious to know what other factors there might be...

[gamzdude 57]

yeah but the truth is well this http://lukeseti.blogspot.com/2010/01/solving-no-job-zot-in-sim-city-4.html

[EyeofMobius 27]

I personally find that having homogenus tiles of R C & I seldom develops as nicely as a mixed bag of things. The only main advantage I have really taken advantage of is RC cities selling clean water to D-I cities to pay for garbage and power. Even focusing on on particular density in a city tile is risky in my experience.

As far as educating sims goes I find that giving most R zones an elementary is good. Centralizing a high school on a tile is also good but I usually seem to make one tile a university college tile. Libraries are very helpful in any R zone the extent of slowing the decay of sim education. Muesums I use more sparingly than libraries because I don't mind letting older generations forget a little. Sims do move around so if you have one tile producing genius R$$$ sims they will feed demand for other areas of the region.

If you have some nasty areas that still have good R$ demand drop some residential in there and provide minimum service like a hospital for health and longer life span. and and some water for higher densities and you will also reduce congestion in other ares from feeding the workplaces from short ranges. I suppose I am a bit of a cruel mayor in some areas since I ignore education for a very long time and provide only enough service to keep sims alive and happy enough to avoid riots and go to work to feed my coffers.

[Urbanator 7]

@Gamzdude: I don't know if the commute-time issue really comes into it when considering the R$$$ trap - often the R$$$ residents will flood in regardless of whether there are any jobs for them and then complain that there are no jobs...

@EyeofMobius: The game certainly seems to prefer mixed tiles but that doesn't mean that cities can't be predominantly one type. I have many cities that have been quite successful as RCs with neighbouring I tiles with runaway demand. However, I normally can't resist mixing in some Industry in RC cities (Manufacturing or Hi-Tech only) because it gives the city a more modern look.

I do also find that when the R$$$ trap is closing on one of my cities that R$$$s will often move into an area even though there's only the bare minimum hospital coverage and not even any educational facilities.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I haven't noticed this phenomenon. Maybe it is because of my abandonment policy. If an R$$$ building abandons, I replace it with a C$$$ lot and let the chips fall where they may.

My general policy is mixed tiles, with only industrial pods that are really fixed. My RC tends to be mixed within themselves, along with a dedicated downtown, that may have an occasional R tower. I often have C$ segments in my R neighborhoods, because who ever heard of an R area that didn't have at least corner stores or little strip plazas?

After a while, you get over the idealizations of pure neighborhoods. Once you get to having mostly I-HT demand or have taxed the others out of building, you can have a small block of I$$$ in an R area. These industries are non-polluting, and they work best with short commutes.

What I would like to have is mixed buildings. Shops with apartments over, Hotels with apartments, etc. This would be a significant improvement to the program, but would need an EP from EA to accomplish it, to say nothing of fixing up the BAT. I would also like to see single occupancy I$ that were not farms. There are such things as industrial plazas, and they are not in the program.

[Urbanator 7]

It doesn't happen often - only really seems to occur if the R$$$ demand is exceptionally high combined with high desirability (from parks and the like), otherwise the R$s get a chance to move in.

I very much agree about the mixed buildings because that would make the cities far more realistic and would make RC placement more dynamic.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

It doesn't happen often - only really seems to occur if the R$$$ demand is exceptionally high combined with high desirability (from parks and the like), otherwise the R$s get a chance to move in.

I very much agree about the mixed buildings because that would make the cities far more realistic and would make RC placement more dynamic.

Had a case of tall R$$ abandonment yesterday, applied my policy and got some nice CS$$$ buildings. The game tells you when you have it wrong by downgrading or abandonment. It's not a problem, just a reminder that you've broken some program rule.

[Urbanator 7]

Very true... however, it is possible to break out of the R$$$ trap without demolishing the R$$$ buildings - let them develop and then trash the desirablity, which SHOULD lead to a shift to more sensible development. Its slightly annoying having to wreck a nice looking neighbourhood but at least allows for better development in the earlier life of a city.

[LivingInThePast 364]

Is it possible for a city to be composed of R$$$ and some R$$ going to work in a much larger but poorer city, like in real life? I sure think that'd be cool.

Also, 2000th post.

  Edited May 20, 2011 by LivingInThePast  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Is it possible for a city to be composed of R$$$ and some R$$ going to work in a much larger but poorer city, like in real life? I sure think that'd be cool.

Also, 2000th post.

Have you ever seen a "city" or suburb that didn't at least have a few corner stores or a pharmacy? All-R cities are not really possible. There are always convenience stores, take out food joints, etc. So there will be at least some CS$ if nothing else, which I find unlikely. The big CS### plaza may be on the road out of town, but it will be there. Man's cupidity is unquenchable.

Hmmm. Just a thought. Without searching, does anyone know of a pharmacy or drug store on the STEX? I don't think the game has one?

  Edited May 20, 2011 by A Nonny Moose