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[CorinaMarie 29,777]

@justforfun 

Yeah, it sounds very much like you've handled the propagation well.   (And I've later come to believe you don't even need to run time in the interspersed city tiles, but simply load, save, and exit to region, but I've never 100% tested that so I've not yet mentioned it.)

I wonder if it's similar to that Corindustry test I did where many jobs local to the new residential are taken by other long term employees and so the new Sims only get to see distant jobs and get discouraged? 

[justforfun 7,878]

11 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

@justforfun

Yeah, it sounds very much like you've handled the propagation well.   (And I've later come to believe you don't even need to run time in the interspersed city tiles, but simply load, save, and exit to region, but I've never 100% tested that so I've not yet mentioned it.)

I wonder if it's similar to that Corindustry test I did where many jobs local to the new residential are taken by other long term employees and so the new Sims only get to see distant jobs and get discouraged? 

The thing is, there are just so many spare jobs in the region. Look, this is the census repository snapshot for the tile I was trying to get to work:

[CorinaMarie 29,777]

@justforfun 

I've been thinking about you.  

Is your goal to create large population cities or is it more of painting the city so it looks nice with each type of building you want? If it's the latter, what about editing those residential before you plop them and set them to 1 Sim? Then it wouldn't be a frantic hassle trying to get a few hundred or thousand off their lazy sim butts.

[Propfam 2,294]

11 hours ago, justforfun said:

so many spare jobs in the region.

The problem is you have so many jobs in the region and almost none in the adjacent cities. Sims won't go to far cities. They only go what's the nearest. Unfortunately the city they go in has no vacant jobs (in fact, it needs vacant jobs). I ran into this problem so many times.

[justforfun 7,878]

@CorinaMarie OK, now I can't find the words to thank you enough.  Of course you asked the crucial question. My goal is to build a functional city which still looks the way I want -hence 100% plopped and growified + the Demand Mod.  I take inspiration from London, with most office jobs in the central tile, shopping high streets throughout, industrial zones scattered here and there, and medium-density row housing as the main residential type. As you can imagine I make large use of my own models, which I set to fairly realistic stats, with lower residents than Maxis standard.  In this way I have so far managed to obtain a region which approximates the population density of a city like London and is overall functional. 

Why do I prefer a functional city over looks only? Because I like my region to be alive, to see the traffic moving on the main thoroughfares and pedestrians on the streets. If I could obtain this with eye-candies only, I would. Unfortunately, "artificial" traffic generators only spawn random cars that move aimlessly all over the place, without any realistic pattern. 

I suspect (not sure) setting occupancy to 1 sim per building wouldn't even solve the commute issue. I'm saying this because sometimes I plop a random house with just 4 or 5 sims and they still can't find a job. 

Now, say what you will about my playing style, and we know that the game wasn't originally intended to build European-style regions, the fact remains that a few thousand sims are unable to find 2 million available jobs in my region. This is absurd, someone please fix it! 

[justforfun 7,878]

14 minutes ago, Propfam said:

The problem is you have so many jobs in the region and almost none in the adjacent cities. Sims won't go to far cities. They only go what's the nearest. Unfortunately the city they go in has no vacant jobs (in fact, it needs vacant jobs). I ran into this problem so many times.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one experiencing this problem. Please fellow mayors speak out so the modders will listen!  

The most absurd thing is that often my sims won't even find the available jobs in their own city! This happens after the population reaches 40-50,000 and is happening now in my central tile with 220,000 inhabitants. The tile in question has more jobs, museums, schools, parks and rewards than you can count. Surely there's something wrong in the way the game calculates commute?

[Null 45 3,064]

42 minutes ago, justforfun said:

Surely there's something wrong in the way the game calculates commute?

An article on SC4D speculates on some of the game's limitations with the traffic simulation/job finding based on the observable behavior, but only the original designers at Maxis would know for sure what the limits are.

Specifically it mentions that the game appears to have a hard coded commute time limit of 6 minutes in the path finder, and Maxis also appears to have dumbed down that system for the retail build of the game (likely due to the minimum requirements the game had to run on).

[justforfun 7,878]

3 hours ago, Null 45 said:

Specifically it mentions that the game appears to have a hard coded commute time limit of 6 minutes in the path finder

Extremely interesting, but then how did @CorinaMarie manage to have her sims travel vast distances over many tiles? The article says that Maxis apparently introduced a hidden x25 multiplier, so that 6 minutes effectively become 2.5 hours, did I get that right? 

But, but, what I am now mulling over is this: if the destination finder runs every 4 months, could that be the reason for the abandonment of some of the buildings I plop and growify? I mean, perhaps I just plop them at the wrong time? 

If so, can a mod be made to enable the destination finder to run on command?

 

[CorinaMarie 29,777]

4 hours ago, justforfun said:

Extremely interesting, but then how did @CorinaMarie manage to have her sims travel vast distances over many tiles?

I wonder if it matters for tile sizes? When I did the 22 tile loop it was with the hodge-podge sizes like the original Timbuktu.

Here's a pic I created to show the loop:

 

And that's from this post.

[justforfun 7,878]

37 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

And that's from this post.

Before I jump over there, let me report the results of my latest experiment.

1) Residentials plopped and growified in sim December, no-job zots showing up in February, residentials eventually abandoned in May.

2) Very same residentials re-plopped and growified in May, no-job zots showing up in July, residentials eventually abandoned in October. 

As you can see, in both trials the zots appeared two months after growification. Was that the moment when the destination finder kicked in? Between the two runs in February and July the interval would then be 5 months rather than 4.  In any case, 3 months were then spent each time to decide no jobs are reachable. What I'm wondering is whether it might be a matter of synchronising plopping with the destination finder runs, but maybe I'm not understanding this right. 

[CorinaMarie 29,777]

17 minutes ago, justforfun said:

What I'm wondering is whether it might be a matter of synchronising plopping with the destination finder, but maybe I'm not understanding this right. 

From a logic standpoint it certainly makes sense.

While it's never been highly recommended (compared to @Bones1's mod), I wonder if the Abandonment Dilapidation Modd 1.2 (which goes a different route and alters the Stay New Time)would be better for your play style? Note: You can't use both together off the shelf cause they alter the same exemplar, but since you are zoning and growing the Less Abandonment prolly isn't helping anyhow. (It works on preventing things from growing when the demand is marginal.)

[justforfun 7,878]

9 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I wonder if the Abandonment Dilapidation Modd 1.2 (which goes a different route and alters the Stay New Time would) be better for your play style?

I just checked what's in my plugins folder, turns out that's the one I'm already using. Which is puzzling, because my buildings can decay and be replaced by unwanted new developments well before 180 years, sometimes in a matter of just a few months.   I suspect the Demand Mod somehow nullifies the effects of this one. 

[CorinaMarie 29,777]

7 minutes ago, justforfun said:

I suspect the Demand Mod somehow nullifies the effects of this one. 

Quite possible. I never really explored the demand mods except when writing the Stretchy topic. You could peek inside and see if they have the same exemplar.

[justforfun 7,878]

3 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

You could peek inside and see if they have the same exemplar.

Just peeked, they actually don't at all. And yet the Demand Mod seems to be pushing development so hard that the limitations set by the Abandonment Mod are somehow overcome. 

In any case, even when the dilapidated buildings don't redevelop soon, they just sit there without ever coming to life. It's not that the destination finder finds any jobs for them in later runs. 

EDIT: 

A new question has popped up in my mind. When a city has still little development, any new residentials I add find a job very quickly, almost straight away. Does this mean that in such cases I am so lucky as to begin the simulation just at the time when the destination finder is running, or is there something else to it that I'm missing? It seems to me the more developed a city is, the slower the destination finder finds out there are new unemployed sims (even if they are located in the North-West corner, where they should be detected early!), and the less effective it is in providing them with a job, until it fails completely. 

However, the decreased speed and effectiveness isn't a simple function of population. I have smaller cities already stuck, and more populous ones that are still working. But all of them started out with very quick and 100% effective path finding, even the farthest from the jobs. 

In essence what I would like someone to explain to me is: what happens right after I growify my residentials? Why does the destination finder appear to activate immediately in young cities, rather than after a few months? 

Further: would it be theoretically possible to make the DF search for longer until it finds jobs? (from what I read, it would seem its workings are sadly hard-coded). 

[CorinaMarie 29,777]

3 hours ago, justforfun said:

When a city has still little development, any new residentials I add find a job very quickly, almost straight away.

I'm certain the size and complexity of a city will mean way more calculations so that part tracks that smaller ones process quicker.

I've been thinking back to the education part. I believe you've got all the amenities a Sim could ever hope for? Does this also mean very high EQs and mostly jobs for well educated Sims?

For each grown or plopped/growified residential they will be starting at the base EQ for their social status. Off the top of my head that's 20 for R$, something for R$$, and (perhaps) 50 for R$$$.

As a test, maybe mod a school for all age groups to have 10x or 25x faster EQ boost. Plop one temporarily and run a month's time to establish its presence, then plop one of your dilapidation prone residentials right next to it. Run time and see if they find jobs?

[justforfun 7,878]

13 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I believe you've got all the amenities a Sim could ever hope for?

Usually yes. Every tile even has more than one university.

13 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

As a test, maybe mod a school for all age groups to have 10x or 25x faster EQ boost. Plop one temporarily and run a month's time to establish its presence, then plop one of your dilapidation prone residentials right next to it. Run time and see if they find jobs?

Good idea, thank you. The no-job zots affect all wealth / education levels at the same time though.  I'm now having a try by increasing road and railway capacity, to get rid of the few congested routes I have. Let's see if that makes a difference. 

[CorinaMarie 29,777]

7 hours ago, justforfun said:

I'm now having a try by increasing road and railway capacity, to get rid of the few congested routes I have. Let's see if that makes a difference.

Back when I was tweaking and there was the TSCT, I also reduced congestion at intersections. I didn't eliminate it, but (iirc) I made it about half (or maybe one-third) of what NAM suggested was realistic.  

[justforfun 7,878]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Back when I was tweaking and there was the TSCT, I also reduced congestion at intersections.

Good point. The current values in my simulator are 1.25,  0.2  and 0.4.  How confusing though, does it mean that the capacity of the intersection square is actually higher than 1, whereas it drops in the nearby squares? Is that because it takes into account the extra capacity of the intersecting road? 

[CorinaMarie 29,777]

51 minutes ago, justforfun said:

The current values in my simulator are 1.25,  0.2  and 0.4.

I'm pretty sure the default values are 1.25, 1.0, and 1.0.

 

52 minutes ago, justforfun said:

How confusing though, does it mean that the capacity of the intersection square is actually higher than 1, whereas it drops in the nearby squares?

I'm trying to recall, but I believe it's a congestion multiplier which then has a negative impact on capacity when greater than 1.0.

If so, it means the congestion effect is 125% of normal for the actual intersection tile. Then yours is tweaked to have a mere 20% on the tile adjacent to the intersection, and 40% on the 2nd tile from it.

I believe I went with something like 0.5, 0.4, and 0.2 in that order. (But that was a thousand years ago on another comp.  )

[justforfun 7,878]

14 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I'm pretty sure the default values are 1.25, 1.0, and 1.0.

Maybe those are the settings in the latest NAM, because I don't recall ever touching that property.  

 

14 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

I'm trying to recall, but I believe it's a congestion multiplier

Oh that explains it! What made me assume it was a capacity multiplier was the fact that the furthest square was set at 0.4, and the one next to the intersection to 0.2, which is puzzling if this is actually a congestion multiplier. I might have to reduce the values then, because despite setting the road capacity to 10,000 I still get mild congestion around several intersections. I'll have a go with yours. (btw, you do have  good memory, Cori!)

UPDATE: 

Nope, I just found out reducing the values doesn't reduce congestion, but setting them to 1.25, 1 and 1 does. I also had to increase road capacity to 15,000 to finally eliminate all red spots in the main tile. Despite this, there are still a couple of new residentials within the tile which can't find a job. Oh well. 

[justforfun 7,878]

So here we are, even after eliminating any and all congestion the new residentials I'm trying to develop can't find jobs. A much improved destination finder is what we badly need for large cities and interconnected regions. Achievable through some advanced modding?

Unless or until  we get there, my region is stuck, hence creating more residential models seems pointless. 

[Kel9509 1,475]

2 minutes ago, justforfun said:

A much improved destination finder is what we badly need for large cities and interconnected regions. Achievable through some advanced modding?

I don't think that there is any way for residents in one city to know precisely where they may find work in an unconnected city that is multiple region tiles away.  I think the game only aggregates jobs available by what's in the next city.  The Eternal Communter bug occurs because each city thinks jobs are available in the next city over and over, and so they keep moving.

Essentially, unless residents find a job in a neighboring city, then while they may commute to another city farther away from their home I don't know if the game ultimately understands this.  One thing you might try doing is loading and running time and re-saving in those destination job cities, as well as all interconnected cities along the way, to preserve the data, and then going back to the resident's city and running time and saving there as well (keep backups).

I generally try to keep jobs relatively close to residents.  It's one thing to have jobs in a neighboring city, but I'd never put them farther apart than that in the region.  It's asking for trouble.

[Null 45 3,064]

3 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I think the game only aggregates jobs available by what's in the next city.  The Eternal Communter bug occurs because each city thinks jobs are available in the next city over and over, and so they keep moving.

I am not sure how it keeps track of jobs, the lots and neighbor connections have 'trip data' which includes things like the path that commuter takes through the tile.

Based on the fact the eternal commuter bug exists Maxis doesn't appear to have tracked the cities visited through neighbor connections, which would have broken that loop by stopping it from visiting the same city more than once.

[justforfun 7,878]

17 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

I think the game only aggregates jobs available by what's in the next city. 

Ok, I assume there's no way to mod this. However, the cities where there is presently abandonment due to commute are all adjacent to the one where the jobs are. Even some residentials within the job city can't find jobs just a few hundred yards away, if not across the street! It seems to me the destination finder isn't working well even at short distance. Looks like it cannot handle the calculations once the city grows past a certain point?

[Kel9509 1,475]

22 minutes ago, justforfun said:

Looks like it cannot handle the calculations once the city grows past a certain point?

How big are your cities? Is it possible that you just don't have enough zoned jobs available? I once had a problem with unemployment and residential dilapidation similar to what you describe and ended up fixing it by plopping a giant office tower in that city that provided over 4,000 jobs (keep in mind that the total jobs are really split into low, medium, and high wealth jobs).  It seemed to solve the problem and other residents went back to finding jobs normally.

[justforfun 7,878]

5 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

How big are your cities?

The central tile with most job has 220,000 sims, the adjacent ones range from 100,000 to 180,000. Usually the first no-job zots begin appearing when the cities approach 50,000 sims or so. Up to this point I had managed to overcome the stalls by increasing station capacity, easing congestion, or plopping the odd office or reward building, but there are now places where I wouldn't know what to do to further improve the situation. 

5 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

Is it possible that you just don't have enough zoned jobs available?

All my commercials and industrials are plopped and growified, at present the central tile has no less than 2 million available jobs. In other words, more than the population of the entire region, which is almost 1,500,000. 

I wonder whether the game expects any region this big to have highways and airports? Since mine is ante-bellum style, I have neither. Plenty of trains and buses though.