Zero population but city growing

[skillfulabbot 4]

Hello Sim community

I have a city that was designed as a major commercial hub.  After I a while, I noticed it had a population of 0,

but was still gaining income and growing.  Is this a bug?

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

Seems odd, but not bugged presuming you have other connected, grown city tiles. The income is based on a percent of the all the buildings's value so that's ok with no population. And if it is commercial and industrial growing, that could be to offer jobs to the neighbors or just that the demand is high enough for them to sprout.

[skillfulabbot 4]

Thank you for the reply.

Ah, that is what I thought, but wanted to double check.  It is connected to several flourishing cities on the regional map.  I also used a lot of those landmark buildings.  Since it is flourishing so well, I destroyed all the schools and hospitals, however i still get complaints about that one particular high school.

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

3 minutes ago, skillfulabbot said:

I still get complaints about that one particular high school.

Now that's eerie. With no Sims living there, who's complaining?  

[skillfulabbot 4]

education advisor.   she keeps insisting the teachers will strike.

[rsc204 21,806]

13 hours ago, skillfulabbot said:

education advisor.   she keeps insisting the teachers will strike.

I think this is something in the LUA code, essentially that's how such messages are triggered such that this message only appears if certain conditions are met. If a utility has good funding, you wouldn't expect to see this message. However, I've seen them appear when the slider in the city-wide Health and Education expenses is below optimum:

I've highlighted in yellow the white marker, which is where that game considers funding to be satisfactory across your entire city for a given service. Sadly this can be the case, even though there are no actual problems that would cause strikes. Just because you've reduced funding because of reduced demand or radius for related vehicles. I suppose Cori, being a bit of an expert with LUA might be able to track down exactly what's going on here.

13 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

Now that's eerie. With no Sims living there, who's complaining?  

Which rather begs the question do you really need healthcare or schools when nobody actually lives in this city. The former I believe can help with desirability for Com, perhaps I-HT too, but so far as I know schools only benefit Res. I assume you've not zoned any Res in this city?, unless you intend to, I'd ditch the school to save money.

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

2 hours ago, rsc204 said:

I suppose Cori, being a bit of an expert with LUA might be able to track down exactly what's going on here.

Yep. That's right up my alley, but to make it easier I'd prefer to start with a copy of the exact message since there are oodles of advice triggers in the Lua code.

One, for instance, uses this trigger:

a.trigger  = "game.g_education_funding_p < tuning_constants.FUNDING_MEDIUM 
             and game.g_num_educational_buildings > 0
             and game.ga_school_grade < tuning_constants.ED_GRADE_HIGH"

And the key part of that is the tuning_constants.FUNDING_MEDIUM = 90 which is a percent of the highlighted white bar as shown on rsc's image.

[skillfulabbot 4]

Yeah, I've moved the slider to 0.

The city began as a huge commercial zone touch light residential/industry (with a waste area way along a map edge). 
At some point, after jacking the taxes really high, I noticed that everyone had moved, but the city continued to develop.
That's when I destroyed all education related services and moved the sliders.