oscillating population

[halby 5]

doin some experimenting with a relatively small self-contained city (100k ish) with a little bit of everything, but only a very small number of residential buildings, maybe 20... so all 100,000 ppl are squeezed into 20 buildings, avg of 5,000 per building, some have 20,000 some don't... anyway, every 3-4 years literally half of my population moves out, then back into the city. it's crazy.

[Superbacon 380]

Probably due in part to the hilarious amount of pollution in town.

[LoonyMan 239]

I also see that the educational and safety funding are very low.

[Dewm 177]

Welcome to China!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Certainly interesting. What happens if you increase the EQ?

[Zukunftstraume 220]

I'm having a very hard time picturing 5,000 people living in one building... Let's see, if we say there's on average 3 people living in every household, that means there should be over 1500 residencies in one of these buildings. Well, I guess that corresponds with a Las Vegas sized hotel... Most of the bigger ones have 2000 or 3000 rooms, I think the MGM Grand has something over 6000 rooms (being the largest hotel in the United States), I guess something with 6.7 K rooms and 3 people on average inside each one can fit 20,000 people Wow, I guess I just learned something valuable today...

Okay, I'll retract that statement. However, I think the problem is that you ONLY have 20 buildings for housing... If you build a large sprawling city with the same population, I reckon you won't have these oscillations... You might have just stumbled across a slight problem in random population dynamics, which tends to be more likely to fluctuate wildly should your city only have 20 buildings for housing as opposed to having 20,000 buildings. That's just my assumption at least.

[halby 5]

So, I think the problem is related to EQ, basically my goal was to see how many people i could jam into a limited space on only dirty industry jobs, but dirty industry jobs require a low EQ, so i'd get max pop of happy hard working folks, then teh schools would inflate their EQ beyond the point at which they were employable in my city, so they'd bail, then a bunch of new stupid people would move in, work happily, get educated, and bail... repeat

pretty funny stuff.

[Jim14409 448]

A perfect example of the old axiom, Once they've been to the city it's hard to keep them down on the farm. (Or words to that effect.)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I think you are referring to the early 20th century novelty song:

"How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm

"After they've seen Paree-ee".

[Jim14409 448]

Probably did originate from the song but as a youngster I frequently heard comment from old folks (who probably never heard of the song) about young folks being lured into the cities and away from farm life by all the bright lights and "gaiety".

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The song is in Oklahoma! if I recall correctly, along with "Everything's up to Date in Kansas City". I'll bet your parents saw that as a movie sometime.

[Jim14409 448]

The song is in Oklahoma! if I recall correctly, along with "Everything's up to Date in Kansas City". I'll bet your parents saw that as a movie sometime.

You'd bet wrong. My Dad would not have been caught dead watching or listening to a musical. I said I heard it from "old folks" that means older than my parents who were "grown-ups" not "old". Anyway, back to the topic...residents come and they go according to provision and amenities. Always interesting to experiment in SC4.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

You should also keep your eye on your population by age graph and display. Sims do age out and die off. Chances are that any of them over 65 are not working.