Riddle me this (pollution from nowhere)

[perafilozof 143]

Check this screenshot out. Side by side air pollution and germs overlays:

 

 

Note: One single city, on a 2 city region nothing built in the other city. Industry build to the edge where the wind is to take the air pollution to the end of the map. Then I get a warning : Air pollution levels rising, I turn on the air pollution overlay and now I have huge clouds of polluted air floating over my residential area.

 

Anyone else had this problem? I would call it a bug, because I don't see any reason for it.

 

[flyer2359 92]

I've had the same problem a few times.  One time, I didn't have ANY polluting buildings and it was the only city in the region, had a crap load of pollution coming from nowhere.

[Inspyrd 0]

Yep this is puzzling me too. The only reason I can think for sudden clouds of air pollution appearing in my city is Cars exhasts. I have no industrial buildings at all and my dirty utilities are all on the downwind side of the map far away from everything. I tried increasing my bus services and it seemed to stop the random appearance of clouds of air pollution for a bit but then as I was watching a massive brown cloud just appeared out of nowhere over about 1/3 of my cities residental area. I'm not sure this game is playing fair, which confuses me because Maxis gave us all these cool tools to observe the behavior of our cities so if the cities are cheating there is a good chance we'll spot it. I'm reserving judgement until a few more peoples observations come in. I really hope it's not just using RNG to simulate the numbers. I wanted a city simulator based off logic not random number generation.

 

If anyone knows what to do to mitigate this early game air pollution can you please let me know?

Ta

[SomewhereSim 13]

I think low wealth sims generate air pollution more then mid-high wealth.  Perhaps to much flatuence in the neighborhoods from dining at Taco Bell vs. a Steakhouse?  I have seen this as well in my cities...

[McFluffy 4]

Well plant trees, lots and lots of trees, and when they die, replant. Trees are very efficient on ground pollution, not studied air pollution very carefully  yet.

 

I _like_ to *think* its region pollution in general, even if only one city that city is affecting the general pollution. Next time I start a region ill check if there is pollution before anything is placed.

Like the theory on exhaust, gonna look for that

[bylike 0]

Here is what happened. After you blowed a certain level of air pollution from your city to outside, the pollution for your whole region will raise (you can actually see a warning of saying that your region pollution has raised on the top of your screen). This will cause every city in this region start to see random air pollution blow inside. The more such warning you see, the more air pollution will be blown to your city (just generated from nowhere).

 

However, I haven't found a way to decrease this level in this game. But hope this can explain your question.

[Inspyrd 0]

Well plant trees, lots and lots of trees, and when they die, replant. Trees are very efficient on ground pollution, not studied air pollution very carefully  yet.

How? do you mean make parks? Cos I can't find a plant tree option. I think trees were an option in previous sim cities but maybe I'm being stupid and there is a plant tree option in the 2013 version that I haven't spotted.

[cnelson711 1]

I had the same problem, even though I had no industry in my city and was sending my garbage out of town.  I noticed things got a lot better with the 1.7 update (traffic fix).  So I'm curious how much has to do with traffic, how much has to do with letting pollution blow off the map.

[perafilozof 143]

Well plant trees, lots and lots of trees, and when they die, replant. Trees are very efficient on ground pollution, not studied air pollution very carefully  yet.

How? do you mean make parks? Cos I can't find a plant tree option. I think trees were an option in previous sim cities but maybe I'm being stupid and there is a plant tree option in the 2013 version that I haven't spotted.

First go to $$ parks, nature, then on the right most end you will have a button to expand the selection, then you will see the tree tool.

[Rhadamant5186 19]

Do you have any cities upwind of your city? Maybe it is somebody else's pollution blowing into your town? 

[perafilozof 143]

Do you have any cities upwind of your city? Maybe it is somebody else's pollution blowing into your town? 

 

It was a 2 city region, with only my single city in it.

[Rhadamant5186 19]

Do you have any cities upwind of your city? Maybe it is somebody else's pollution blowing into your town? 

 

It was a 2 city region, with only my single city in it.

Well either your population is eating way too many beans or, more likely, there's probably something wrong with the city/region/game. Maybe they secretly patched the way air pollution is generated?

[SockoJr53 51]

I have a similar situation with air pollution in a tourist/gambling city. There is NO industry and yet I have massive air pollution problems. The city is not downwind from any other cities, but there are 2 other cities further downwind that do pollute. Could these two other cities be dumping all their pollution into the region "sink" which then has it miraculously blow into mine, even though it's further upstream?

This is really driving me crazy, because what's the point of being up wind if you still get your downstream neighbors pollution? It's gotten so bad, just about every building has the "It's too germy..." complaint and I actually have mid-wealth towers completely abandoning due to pollution/germs.

[hym 358]

Out of curiosity, how do you know that you are upstream of your polluting cities?  If there is a region airflow indicator, I have yet to find one.

[hemavolftw 0]

Im having the same problem. Ive tried multiple different maps and i keep getting random clouds of pollution from no where. My current work in progress has 230 people, 6 commerical buildings, 1 industry building, and an entire crowd at my doorstep protesting about the high pollution that is showing up all over my small city out of the blue causing major germ problems.

 

Edit: Should note that im the only person on this map, so no other cities, and my 1 industry building is way away from everything else with the wind blowing everything away and off the map.

[bdeprez 4]

Same here - suddenly massive air pollution - I have a region with multiple cities and one of them has a number of high tech industry buildings - I always thought high tech was less polluting, but hell seems I'm badly mistaking!

 

My Casino city is going down drastically because of air pollution coming out of that city...

 

I'll try some parks & trees...

 

I'll keep you posted.

 

Update- bulldozed all my high tech industry, will let it run for a while and see what happens... but if a little bit of industry pollutes the entire region, this entire game is doomed... this is ridiculously ridiculous!

[AshTym 31]

Out of curiosity, how do you know that you are upstream of your polluting cities?  If there is a region airflow indicator, I have yet to find one.

 

 

I'm pretty sure that the wind direction in all city tiles is consistent, though now you ask I'm not entirely convinced that that is the case. I mean, logically it should be the case but this game doesn't seem that big on logic.

[perafilozof 143]

The wind that you see when you first claim a city can go right or left no more then 45 degrees when it changes direction. As for seeing what other cities your pollution is going to, well just turn on the wind overview, remember which direction it's on, and look at the region view.

 

But for now all I ever notice is when the games randomly spons air pollution, I have yet to actually witness air pollution from my factories from one city be carried on the wind and pass into another city the way it left the first one.

 

I am starting to think that what the game does is simply taking the air pollution carried by the wind out of one city, calculating how much of it came out then uses that number to divide some X number that represents the total air in the region and then just spons that much air pollution back into your city carried by the wind. It doesn't even mater that pollution can't travel up wind and back behind your city to come in again from the other side. Math and programming professors probably don't cover that subject.

[oldbrokenlink 43]

yeap

 

happened to me

 

ignore it you can have a city with nothing but r no other cities in region, no nothing and the place hits population of 10m

 

just give them parks to keep em happy

 

they dont need water, food, medical, fire fighters, police, sewage, trash, jobs, electricity, industries, retail, ect just a little park now and then will do

 

heck forget the parks, even if u try to kill them all u cant more come in all the time, faster then they die, if they die

 

and soon ull be rich top of the leaderboard with cities with nothing but residential and nothing but highways to get high density

 

and it dont matter the next day they'll roll back your cities or delete them or shut the servers down cause they have simcity 6