Frustrating abandonment issues/No job zots

[Lanlcot 1]

Firstly, let me say that I know this issue has been raised before, but I have been trying to fix this for MONTHS and I still have no idea what to do. The issue is this:

When I create a new region and begin playing on a new city tile, I begin to develop my town, ensuring I provide my sims with the best transportation options, this keeps the commute times to around 10mins.

Up until I reach a population of ~20,000 sims, there isn't a problem. When the populations hits ~20,000 sims, no job zots begin appearing above most of the R$$ and R$$$ buildings, leading to their abandonment. Using the query tool I discover the the reason for this is a long commute time. This is incredibly frustrating because I have done everything in my power to ensure commute times stay at a minimum. I also ensured that my sims have plenty of job opportunities also. I am not sure if this is a game glitch or a result of a mod that isn't functioning correctly, but any and all help will be GREATLY appreciated.

Before anyone asks I am using the NAM.

At this point I will even use some kind of cheat/mod that prevents this from happening as it is completely game breaking for me and is preventing me from playing the game at all, I am just so sick and tired of this.

[cityville2050 1]

Sometimes, Zots will not pop up if they have long commute, usually if there is no road access, water, electricity or if there are not enough jobs

[Lanlcot 1]

Yes, I know that no job zots will appear as a result of those reason which you had mentioned, however as I had stated in my first post, I believe that the appearance of these NJZ's has been the result of a glitch or malfunctioning mod.

Again, if ANYONE can help me I will be very appreciative.

[Merlin of Flyote 8]

Yes, I know that no job zots will appear as a result of those reason which you had mentioned, however as I had stated in my first post, I believe that the appearance of these NJZ's has been the result of a glitch or malfunctioning mod.

Again, if ANYONE can help me I will be very appreciative.

If you want to get rid of the zots you can press:- ctrl & shift & Alt & X type in Tasty Zots

There is a:- no abandonment mod, which you can set for x years.

[Lanlcot 1]

Yes, I know that no job zots will appear as a result of those reason which you had mentioned, however as I had stated in my first post, I believe that the appearance of these NJZ's has been the result of a glitch or malfunctioning mod.

Again, if ANYONE can help me I will be very appreciative.

If you want to get rid of the zots you can press:- ctrl & shift & Alt & X type in Tasty Zots

There is a:- no abandonment mod, which you can set for x years.

Would you happen to remember the name of that mod, as I don't really have many options. :/

Thanks for the reply.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Have you tried taxes to inhibit some classes somewhat? You need to keep your Sims in ratio of $:$$:$$$ = 30:55:15 more or less. You need to remember the maxim "the higher, the fewer". Grunts and middle management will really outnumber your bosses if you keep the game in balance. Don't let the R$$$ population run away with you. Try setting your R$$$ taxes to around 12% or slightly more to slow them down. At around 20,000 population, I'd change the bottom of the above to more like 60:25 then let things grow towards the final layout when you start getting stage 8 commercial buildings at around 80,000.

Another trick is to scatter your population on the tile instead of trying to concentrate in a single city. Build towns among your farms, and let them grow towards each other, eventually merging into a big city as you take over the farms with other zones. I currently have a large tile that started life as a railroad junction with farms around it. The population is now over 200,000. Slow and steady wins this race, and stay out of Cheetah mode to give yourself time to think and enjoy the animation. As it says in the song:

"Slow down, your goin' too fast

"Got to make this moment last."

Feelin' Groovy

[Lanlcot 1]

Have you tried taxes to inhibit some classes somewhat? You need to keep your Sims in ratio of $:$$:$$$ = 30:55:15 more or less. You need to remember the maxim "the higher, the fewer". Grunts and middle management will really outnumber your bosses if you keep the game in balance. Don't let the R$$$ population run away with you. Try setting your R$$$ taxes to around 12% or slightly more to slow them down. At around 20,000 population, I'd change the bottom of the above to more like 60:25 then let things grow towards the final layout when you start getting stage 8 commercial buildings at around 80,000.

Another trick is to scatter your population on the tile instead of trying to concentrate in a single city. Build towns among your farms, and let them grow towards each other, eventually merging into a big city as you take over the farms with other zones. I currently have a large tile that started life as a railroad junction with farms around it. The population is now over 200,000. Slow and steady wins this race, and stay out of Cheetah mode to give yourself time to think and enjoy the animation. As it says in the song:

"Slow down, your goin' too fast

"Got to make this moment last."

Feelin' Groovy

Unfortunately, I have tried taxing the R$$$ sims and even the R$$ ones out of town but the remaining ones still have the no job zot, as for spreading the population over several city tiles, I have tried to build two towns next to each other, but to no avail, the issue persists. I think I will make a new region and uninstall ALL of my plugins, except the NAM and try to play the game nice and slow, (Although I forgot to mention that I had reached 20,000 sims in ~23 years if that helps) I am fairly confident that the issue is a result of a malfunctioning mod of some sort.

Also, in my quest to solve the problem I had read that the NAM, when installed, overhauls the path-finding system, this upgraded system takes the game much longer to process. I am thinking that this may be related to my problem, as when I zone a new residential zone, I set the speed to cheetah for a month or two so the lots develop quicker, I believe this gives the game a much shorter, time to calculate/process the path-finding. This, in conjuction with the increased time taken to calculate path-finding MAY be the cause of the problem. Also when I first started my town, I slowly developed small patches of houses and left the simulation on turtle speed. As the town got larger, I began to zone progressively larger areas and set the simulation to run on cheetah, which, now that I think of it, is when the problem usually starts occurring in a city.

Although, I'm not certain on any of this, it's just what I had inferred from various sources.

Also: Sorry if my post was a little hard to read as it's kinda late here.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well, sounds fine. However, you need an abandonment policy not a no-abandonment mod.

When a residential building abandons on long commute, rezone it commercial at the same level. You don't need to bulldoze it first, the game will handle that just make sure you get the whole lot. An alternative is to downgrade the zoning one level unless it is level 1, then see previous sentence.

I generally have mixed neighborhoods. A low-level commercial lot on the corner, or sometimes a few in the middle of a residential block. Local corner stores and plazas. Makes for better realism. Also, don't be afraid to put narrow hi-tech stripes in the middle of commercial region. Little manufacturing plazas should grow there. Something about 8 x 3 or 8 x 2 should do the trick, only on one side of the street facing some commercial. Use level 3 industrial because you don't want any ID there. I generally tax ID out after SYR 4.

Oh, did I say I like long blocks? Something on the order of 10-15 grid squares or so. To kill the automatic streets just hold down the SHIFT key.

Here is what I mean by long street.

[Lanlcot 1]

I get what you saying, but I've already tried zoning commercial zones next to my residential ones. When and if they begin to develop, my sims refuse to walk next door and get a job, so their house abandons.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I get what you saying, but I've already tried zoning commercial zones next to my residential ones. When and if they begin to develop, my Sims refuse to walk next door and get a job, so their house abandons.

Implies the Sims wanted jobs not available in the commercial zone. How far to your nearest Farm/Industrial pod? Were the jobs in the commercial zone filled? You have to use the route query to find this out.

The snap above is a tourist trap with commercial along the street on the other side.

[Lanlcot 1]

I did have a small-medium IHT sector which had full employment and was a short (40-50 squares) away. I didn't have any farms or ID/IM in my town, although I have a neighbouring town next to mine with a small amount of ID/IM in it and no residential areas. This provided my sims with jobs early on in the town's development, although as of late there is no demand at all for ID/IM even with reduced taxes, so growth in that town has stopped, leading me to believe that the problem isn't related to that.

The jobs in my commercial zones were mostly full, around 70% full.

Thanks for the replies.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

The jobs in my commercial zones were mostly full, around 70% full.

Wait a second... did you query the building, and it said something like "CO§§: 70/100" in the query window?

If so, this is NOT an indicator of how many jobs are occupied. It merely indicates that the building offers 70 out of a theoretical maximum of 100 jobs. The missing portion is due to lacking desirability. In fact, a 30% desirability penalty is rather much. Have you checked for crime and garbage?

If you want to see how many of these 70 jobs are actually occupied, you should use the Route Query tool. It will tell you how many Sims actually commute to the building to work there. The Route Query is also very useful to see which way the Sims take and whch routes are used. It can help you design an efficient transit system, and this in turn helps fight unemployment due to long commutes.

Maybe some screenshots illustrating the problem could help.

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Sims love subways.

[Lanlcot 1]

The jobs in my commercial zones were mostly full, around 70% full.

Wait a second... did you query the building, and it said something like "CO§§: 70/100" in the query window?

If so, this is NOT an indicator of how many jobs are occupied. It merely indicates that the building offers 70 out of a theoretical maximum of 100 jobs. The missing portion is due to lacking desirability. In fact, a 30% desirability penalty is rather much. Have you checked for crime and garbage?

If you want to see how many of these 70 jobs are actually occupied, you should use the Route Query tool. It will tell you how many Sims actually commute to the building to work there. The Route Query is also very useful to see which way the Sims take and whch routes are used. It can help you design an efficient transit system, and this in turn helps fight unemployment due to long commutes.

Maybe some screenshots illustrating the problem could help.

OK, I just double checked and it turns out that my commercial buildings are almost completely "full" of sims. I recently queried a few of the buildings and I have discovered that they are saying things like: "CO§§: 124/130" and "CS§§§: 26/30". So pretty good there I think. As for other factors, such are the crime and garbage, I have done everything to make sure my town is a nice place for sims to live. Crime is very low, the power is supplied by solar power plants so no pollution except for minor amounts along major motorway, when laying the first infrastructure for the town in the beginning I also laid out a railway network that services all of the town, I ensured areas are desirable to live in my giving residents and abundance of trees and parks nears their house and placing plazas near commercial centres, I have also instated an educational system for sims of all ages, the result of which is an average EQ of ~140.

As for using the route query tool to see how many sims actually commute to and work at a particular place, I would think that almost all of the building are experiencing full employment.

I think I'm not doing something right, perhaps in the way I layout my cities, which tends to be in as a realistic a manner as possible. I believe it may be the cause of these difficulties. :/

I also have experienced this issue with around 3 or 4 different cities I have tried building, all of them were the first city in a region.

Also, I would upload a picture to help and illustrate my problems, but unfortunately I'm not sure how to do that.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

To upload an image:

1. Use the camera to take a shot of your city (CTRL+SHIFT+s)
2. Upload the image to an image service site (Photobucket, for example)
3. Leaving the image page open, open this site in a new tab in your browser and open a post in your list and position your cursor where you want your image.
4. Pick up the image's URL from your photo site (CTRL+C)
5. Open the Insert Image icon in the control panel
6. Paste the URL in the dialog box. (CTRL+V)
7. Close the dialog box.

All done.

If you have not run the basic tutorial, you should. Notice that the best thing to do for an initial city is to place commercial directly between the residential pod and the industrial pod.

Oh, and do not run any private city on Timbuktu. It can get reset.

[Lanlcot 1]

To upload an image:

1. Use the camera to take a shot of your city (CTRL+SHIFT+s)
2. Upload the image to an image service site (Photobucket, for example)
3. Leaving the image page open, open this site in a new tab in your browser and open a post in your list and position your cursor where you want your image.
4. Pick up the image's URL from your photo site (CTRL+C)
5. Open the Insert Image icon in the control panel
6. Paste the URL in the dialog box. (CTRL+V)
7. Close the dialog box.

All done.

If you have not run the basic tutorial, you should. Notice that the best thing to do for an initial city is to place commercial directly between the residential pod and the industrial pod.

Oh, and do not run any private city on Timbuktu. It can get reset.

Ok, thanks for the advice, I suppose there's a tutorial on how to post pictures somewhere on the site I guess I just didn't look hard enough.

Also, I don't know how to say this without sounding patronising but, I've been playing SC4 (Deluxe) for the better part of 3 years, as well as playing SC2000 when I was a kid and I think (at least I do) that I know the ropes pretty well. This isn't really a matter of experience with the game, because I've only had this problem recently after having many successful cities.

I'm sorry if I sound condescending at all in the previous paragraph, I just felt like I had to say it.

Anyway... I'm not convinced I'll fix the problems with my current set of plugins/mods, so what I did was start a new region with a different (much smaller) amount of mods. I'll post a picture when the population reaches ~20,000 sims.

I remember reading some of your posts in other threads recommending one should be very choosy with the mods they install, I think that from now on this would be good advice to follow.

Thanks for your advice, it's been quite helpful.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

^ Three years? Wow.

I've been running SC4 since it came out in 2003. One tends to learn a lot about a program in that time.