Phantom slider bug, destroyer of cities

[nicholas.post86 8]

Hundreds of hours put into my metropolis. After watching the same boring Maxis buildings populate my cities over and over I figured I'd try modding the game like I do extensively in Rome Total War. Great idea at first. I have found some wonderful buildings and have downloaded happily for days now. Then that fateful moment, loaded up the game yesterday after a hard day at work wanting to unwind and all of the sudden I saw the scary, flashing, lightning bolt signs erupt all over my city. No matter how hard I tried, the funding slider for all of my power plants continually dropped to zero. I have browsed the internet for hours, attempted all duggested remedies and nothing helped. RIP Nicktropolis, I will never forget your lovely skyscrapers. Does anyone know of a fix for this so that no one else has to delete their cities as I have? I would never want anyone else to spend that much time creating something just to have it destroyed by a little bug.

SC4 Rush Hour Deluxe

Version: 1.1.640.0

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

There are several causes, all having to do with custom content except one Maxis building. Do you have the Opera House in your city? If so, do you have the This baby causes the phantom slider problem with education buildings, but I don't know if it affects others as well.

Apparently, some custom buildings with way out of range slider capability can also cause this problem. Others will have more information.

[Wiimeiser 444]

I think there are formulaic values involved, not absolute ones, note that you can never set funding to a specific value...

[nicholas.post86 8]

Actually Nonny Moose, the last mod I downloaded before the phantom slider attacked was the Opera House Fix. Even after removing the file and deleting all education buildings, then re-plopping, still no help. I just finished a reinstall about 30 minutes ago. Fortunately I had all my mod downloads backed-up so all I had to do was drop them in the correct folder. So far, no problems *knocking on wood*

[paeng 2,510]

All civic buildings (anything with a slider - schools, hospitals, police, fire, power etc.) will trigger the Phantom Slider Bug if you either uninstall an existing lot or modd the capacity or monthly costs of an existing lot without demolishing all instances of it first, because in the save file the percentual setting for the slider will never match the actual funding.

To fix this, you must bulldoze all lots of that type (e.g. if it is a power plant, bulldoze all power plants)... either all that you plopped after you modded something, or if you don't remember what you plopped when, radically destroy them all (which is probably better anyway).

Then save, exit and re-enter. Let the simulation run for a few game-months before re-plopping the lots!

[lotherius 16]

This is a good time to point out how important it is to use backups! File versions in Windows 7 (a bit complicated to set up) or File History in Windows 8 (very easy to set up), maybe Time Machine on a Mac..

The idea is, you have frequent backups and you can go "back in time" to find the uncorrupted version of a city.