Abandonment/Commute time reduction?

[nellinator232 0]

To avoid any misconceptions, I don't really care about realism when I play this, only about being able to create the kind of city I dreamed about as a kid. Yeah, I know the people are stupid when they live less than five tiles away from a place suitable for their employment and they abandon due to commute time anyway. Is there any way (bug, download, cheat, etc.) to prevent this so that I can get this the way I've dreamed it?

I know it's stupid, but I'd like to know...

  Edited May 30, 2011 by CaptCity  
Merged posts.

[jacksunny 741]

The NAM (Network Addon Mod) is what you want. It also adds a bunch of extra transportation options to the game.

[nellinator232 0]

The NAM (Network Addon Mod) is what you want. It also adds a bunch of extra transportation options to the game.

Alright... What does it do to reduce commute time and, therefore, prevent abandonment?

[z1 566]

The NAM (Network Addon Mod) is what you want. It also adds a bunch of extra transportation options to the game.

Alright... What does it do to reduce commute time and, therefore, prevent abandonment?

The traffic simulator has been tuned so that Sims take the fastest route possible to their jobs; this combined with various other optimizations in the traffic simulator, including a large increase in the maximum commute time, make it possible to eliminate abandonment completely in almost all cities.

[nellinator232 0]

Awesome! Thank you so much! ^-^

So, is the version in the above link the most recent, or has another update to it been created yet?

  Edited June 1, 2011 by CaptCity  
Merged posts.

[jacksunny 741]

So, is the version in the above link the most recent, or has another update to it been created yet?

Yes it is most recent.

[nellinator232 0]

Thanks. It's helping.

[nellinator232 0]

Thanks. It's helping.

Scratch that... Things haven't improved much, even when I use the traffic setup thing to make everyone use mainly mass transit. I remember there being a mod that prevents dilapidation... Anyone have a link to that? Also, is there anything else I can do to shorten commute time other than surround residential areas with commercial areas?

[z1 566]

I remember there being a mod that prevents dilapidation...

There are dilapidation mods, but they generally just shift the problems to other areas. It works better in the long run to find out what the cause of your dilapidation is and fix it. The RCI Demand Graph is a good place to start, although it tells only a limited part of the story. Do you have enough commercial and industrial zones for your population? Do the buildings that grow there match the population in terms of wealth and education required for jobs?

Also, is there anything else I can do to shorten commute time other than surround residential areas with commercial areas?

If you're using the NAM traffic simulator, then these problems are not due to long commute times, and shortening the commute time will not help at all. However, one thing that may help is increased use of rapid transit, such as subways. If your jobs and population are in balance, then adding a lot of rapid transit with many stations usually helps.

[LuapYllier 8]

I read somewhere in the NAM documentation that if your applying it to an existing city or making simulator changesmidstream that it could take a great deal of time for the changes to fully take effect. There was a graph with the document that displayed the changes as they happened with the demands and wealth and desireabilty and it slowly made adjustments over like 20 to 30 years.

Basically don't expect it to change immediately.

[nellinator232 0]

Okay, so it's been a long time in the game since I applied this thing, and no matter what I do, including increasing the availability of mass transit, abandonment keeps increasing! I don't know what's going on, because desirability is high and the number of jobs is greater than the number of citizens. Isn't there any way, cheating or no, to stop this?

[jacksunny 741]

Would it be possible to see some images of the problem area?

EDIT: Before doing that, make sure you have a high enough amount of jobs available to employ all your Sims. This might be causing the abandonment.

  Edited June 4, 2011 by jacksunny  

[nellinator232 0]

I can't get images right now, but these areas (mid- and high-wealth residential) are surrounded by high-wealth commercial services and *mostly* offices, yet only the high-wealth buildings are abandoning. I have, as I said, more commercial jobs than residential occupants, so it just doesn't make sense. Never did.

[jacksunny 741]

What if you try zoning industry, preferably high-tech. Set the dirty industry and manufacturing rates to 20 % and the high-tech to something low like 3%.

[diamonddog_74 32]

What if you try zoning industry, preferably high-tech. Set the dirty industry and manufacturing rates to 20 % and the high-tech to something low like 3%.

That's some extreme tax changes! I generally use for Residential, 7% to 8%; for Commercial, 8% to 9%; and, for Industrial, 9% to 11 (9% being high tech and manufacturing). I tend to keep these all through the development of the city and I get very good development. DISCLOSURE: I use CAM and NAM, and I am interested in realistic aspects.

As Jacksunny suggested, it will help to see some images of the graphs and city to provide Nellinator with better advice.

Nellinator, I know you said you're not interested in realism, but even with the vanilla version of SC4 there is some aspect of realism to the way you should design your zoning. That's why it's a simulator: it simulates the real world (with some limitations).

Do you have neighbor connections to populated city tiles? Sometimes that causes commuting issues. When possible, please post images.

[nellinator232 0]

No neighbor connections yet; this is my first city in the region. I'd prefer not to zone industrial in these cities, due to the way I want it to look and feel. So, yeah. I figure I'm pretty much screwed, so I'll shut up and stop bothering all of you good people.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Awright, awright, open a neighbor city and fill it with dirty industry. Sprinkle some bus stations around, and see what happens. If it doesn't work, you can always obliterate it.

[nellinator232 0]

Ehh, I think I'll seriously just shut up and leave all of you alone. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that when I said I don't give a crap about realism, I meant the money and no mods bit. The entire region I want to be this huge, sprawling, multi-million person metropolis filled with mid-high wealth hi-rises and commercial offices. But yeah. I'm shutting up now; I'd delete this thread if I knew how! ._.

[nellinator232 0]

Ehh, I think I'll seriously just shut up and leave all of you alone. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that when I said I don't give a crap about realism, I meant the money and no mods bit. The entire region I want to be this huge, sprawling, multi-million person metropolis filled with mid-high wealth hi-rises and commercial offices. But yeah. I'm shutting up now; I'd delete this thread if I knew how! ._.

Sorry to have bothered you all; I'll keep trying for a solution on my own. Peace~

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Sorry to have bothered you all; I'll keep trying for a solution on my own. Peace~

Never, never, never give in. We are here to help. Is it possible something has corrupted your city?

[nellinator232 0]

Doubtful. The only mods I have are the super demand mod, the no dilapidation mod, and the simoleon tree mod (either adds 10k to treasury each month or 10 quadrillion, depending on which one you build). I've always had these problems anyway...

So, yeah. I have no idea what's being so stupid right now.

  Edited June 6, 2011 by nellinator232  

[nellinator232 0]

Doubtful. The only mods I have are the super demand mod, the no dilapidation mod, and the simoleon tree mod (either adds 10k to treasury each month or 10 quadrillion, depending on which one you build). I've always had these problems anyway...

So, yeah. I have no idea what's being so stupid right now.

It's so freakin' annoying. I should have upwards of 700,000 people, but it goes between ~470,000 to ~565,000. I tried using regular roads instead of one-way roads, but it didn't do anything for the abandonment issues. But yeah. I'm sorry for whining all the time about this, it's just stupid, y'know?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Aha! Take out the super demand mod, for openers. It skews the living daylights out of the game, and is totally unnecessary IMHO.

If you load up the extra cheats dll (see pinned thread above) you can drop your money tree and use the moolah command to set the treasury balance to anything you want. The format for that is:

CTRL+Xmoolah <number>RETURN

Note, like all commands, there is a space between the operator and the operands. Most you can set is 9999999999.

If you want to fix your traffic problems, get the NAM.

[Yuu Caa Sim 55]

When you are taking pictures of your city, please also take a picture of the RCI jobs and population graph (it will be found under the "graphs" button, close to the budget button and the datamaps button). This will allow us to see the proprotion of resident to jobs in your city, which is somewhat more useful than building counting (since all buildings have different capacities of residents and jobs).

As far as I recall, there are two reasons why buildings abandon due to commute time. The first is that there is too much congestion in your city. The second is that there is not enough jobs for that wealth type. Each commercial and industrial building, when built, will send out a call for a mix of residential wealths to take the jobs that are now being offered. The problem is that higher wealths, especially R$$$, take only a very small proportion of jobs in each commercial and industrial building. With entire buildings of R$$$ trying to fit into a small part of a commercial building, it is very easy to run out of jobs for R$$$. This is compounded by the fact that the game loves to redevelop lots into higher wealths if condition allow for it. Without active tending, the city will eventually have more R$$$ than jobs for them, and then they can't find work, and then they leave. Some people would recommend having a proportion of 100 R$ for every 10 R$$ for every 1 R$$$ to avoid this issue, but you almost certainly can skew it a bit and things should still work.

Solution Ideas:

The end result is that even though you have more commercial buildings than residential, you may still be running out of jobs for them. You will need to have more commercial skyscrapers to have enough jobs for the high wealth. The medium wealth might still be fine though, so you could also try filling you city with more R$$ buildings and restrict the number of R$$$ that grows (either through taxes or bulldozing). I've also heard people say that you don't need industrial to satisfy a resident's job demand, so you might be fine in not zoning industrial.

If you do decide to remove the super demand mod, you will probably need a lot of R$ sims to fill up their share of the jobs before you will get anymore commercial demand. You have, however, stated that you would like to have a very high wealth looking city, which would not entirely go well with needing low wealth skyscrapers. In this case, you would either need to look for higher wealth buildings that have been relotted into low wealth, or low wealth buildings that look nice irregardless. I would recommend going to the ST EXchange and looking up the HKABT team, especially Bixel, who has made some nice looking R$ buildings such as {this one}.

Another thing. While you can force your sims to take mass transit, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will stay around if you do that. Different wealths of sims have different levels of preferences on whether they would drive or take mass transit, with higher wealths being more steadfast in thier desire to drive a car. I don't know if forcing sims to take mass transit will cause them to leave the city, but it's one more thing you can try.

  Edited June 7, 2011 by yunxiang  

[z1 566]

If you want to fix your traffic problems, get the NAM.

He already has the NAM.

As far as I recall, there are two reasons why buildings abandon due to commute time. The first is that there is too much congestion in your city.

This would not apply in his case now that he has the NAM installed.

The second is that there is not enough jobs for that wealth type.

A match in education levels is also required.

Another thing. While you can force your sims to take mass transit, that doesn't necessarily mean that they will stay around if you do that. Different wealths of sims have different levels of preferences on whether they would drive or take mass transit, with higher wealths being more steadfast in thier desire to drive a car. I don't know if forcing sims to take mass transit will cause them to leave the city, but it's one more thing you can try.

You can't actually force the Sims to take mass transit - all you can do is specify a preference, which gives a somewhat higher weighting to mass transit for the traffic simulator. In effect, it makes mass transit look a little faster than it is when the traffic simulator decides whether to use mass transit or cars. Adjusting these preferences has no effect on building abandonment or dilapidation.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

IMHO, I still think he is being messed up by that super demand mod. He either doesn't understand it, or has applied it incorrectly.

[nellinator232 0]

How could the demand mod screw things up? I want the commercial office city with only med/high wealth residents. I have it so that med/high wealth residents, med/high wealth commercial services and offices, and high tech industry are desired. Kinda what I want, y'know?

[nellinator232 0]

If you do decide to remove the super demand mod, you will probably need a lot of R$ sims to fill up their share of the jobs before you will get anymore commercial demand. You have, however, stated that you would like to have a very high wealth looking city, which would not entirely go well with needing low wealth skyscrapers. In this case, you would either need to look for higher wealth buildings that have been relotted into low wealth, or low wealth buildings that look nice irregardless. I would recommend going to the ST EXchange and looking up the HKABT team, especially Bixel, who has made some nice looking R$ buildings such as {this one}.

No offense to anyone, but I do not want to use any BAT buildings this time around.

[nellinator232 0]

IMHO, I still think he is being messed up by that super demand mod. He either doesn't understand it, or has applied it incorrectly.

Could you possibly explain how this would screw things up, and how I would not understand it? 'Cause I'm not as stupid as some think I am.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

IMHO, I still think he is being messed up by that super demand mod. He either doesn't understand it, or has applied it incorrectly.

Could you possibly explain how this would screw things up, and how I would not understand it? 'Cause I'm not as stupid as some think I am.

Sure. Even CO$$ buildings have R$ workers. Who do you think sweeps floors and runs the copy machine and delivers internal mail? If your city doesn't have any lower level workers, then where will you get them? The various demand mods are built for people who have been running long enough to fully understand the game and its trick of wanting balance in everything. These mods deliberately upset the balance and you need to compensate by balancing things in neighbor cities.

If you have SC4Tool, you can look at some buildings and see how many of the jobs are allocated to each level. The idea of a rich city with no support is doomed to failure. The game is more real world than some would like, but that's the way it is.

You don't need demand mods to control your city. That's what taxes are for.

  Edited June 8, 2011 by A Nonny Moose