R$$$ demand bug

[tomek4zielinski 13]

Hello everyone, once again I'm asking for help.

There's unknown issue in my SC4. I had a break in playing, didn't launch the game for about three weeks, but when I launched it yesterday, I noticed that every city of my metropolis had a negative R$$$ demand (between -5000 and -6000, other demands are fine). Now in every city jobless icons appear above most of the existing R$$$ residences and my whole region begins to fall.

I did some testing, I started the next city connected to others - the demand was low even before placing the first building, so no building mod is a cause, I suppose. I also remember my last gameplay before the break - everything was ok and I had always a positive demand, and I haven't added any new mod until today, I did not raise taxes, pollution, didn't remove parks, communications, jobs or public services.

Then I started new city far away from others and unconnected - demand was all right. So this issue exists whenever something is a part of my metropolis, connected to an existing one. That's incredibly odd, because my last gameplay before three weeks ago worked fine and there was no such a bug anywhere. It looks like it appeared from nowhere.

What's going on? It's beyond my comprehension. I'm aware of super demand and demand ordinance mod, but I don't find those mods as a resolve and I don't want them as the fix - they're not a fix, just a fake cover. It's even more difficult to build with them on, only tallest skyscrapers appear making the city look fake. I prefer finding a solution to bring the demand to it's natural behaviour.

Help guys! It's been a long time since I made a backup region - many weeks of my work can be lost. I'll be glad for your effort.

[rsc204 21,867]

5 hours ago, tomek4zielinski said:

Then I started new city far away from others and unconnected - demand was all right. So this issue exists whenever something is a part of my metropolis, connected to an existing one. That's incredibly odd, because my last gameplay before three weeks ago worked fine and there was no such a bug anywhere. It looks like it appeared from nowhere.

Well this at least makes complete sense, the regional "shared" demand system only operates within those cities that are connected in some way to others. Opening a new city with no connection to the wider region, you'll begin as if it was a new region with a default level of demand.

5 hours ago, tomek4zielinski said:

There's unknown issue in my SC4. I had a break in playing, didn't launch the game for about three weeks, but when I launched it yesterday, I noticed that every city of my metropolis had a negative R$$$ demand (between -5000 and -6000, other demands are fine). Now in every city jobless icons appear above most of the existing R$$$ residences and my whole region begins to fall.

Something must have happened within the game to sway demand, it sounds to me like this may have occurred without you noticing, around the time you last stopped playing. So when you reopen your city thereafter, you see the effects but it comes as a surprise.

In the first instance, try to check any relevant data views to confirm everything in your city really is OK. For example, are their power/water or road access issues that may have caused problems to develop? Have your schools capacities suddenly been overrun or similar with Police, Fire and Health coverage?

Note that CO and I-HT buildings employ the bulk of your R$$$ sims, if such types have abandoned, this would cause a loss of demand for R$$$ due to a sudden burst of unemployed R$$$ sims. Likewise, most R$$$ sims prefer to drive to work, so if a vital link between R$$$ housing and CO / I-HT is suddenly less viable, for example congested roads, it would again explain what's going on.

Otherwise are you using any mods that alter demand from the defaults?

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

10 hours ago, tomek4zielinski said:

yesterday, I noticed that every city of my metropolis had a negative R$$$ demand

Sudden collapse of demand like that sounds like you plopped a big residential building. "Ploppable residence" is inherently buggy; though they exist among mods, they should be avoided. Check all suspect buildings to see if what you thought was eye-candy is really a residence.

[Prophet42 1,503]

Another thing to check is if you plopped the opera house reward in one of your cities last time you played.  The opera house has a bug in it that when you plop it, it will increase the R$$$ demand so high that it will overflow and essentially crash the R$$$ demand to a large negative.  There is a fix for the bug on the STEX that when applied it will limit the demand increase to a more reasonable level.  The fix has to be applied before you place the opera house.

[xxdita 1,097]

Nobody said check your taxes? 

[tomek4zielinski 13]

All in-game necessities such as power, water, public services, taxes, land value and so on are an obvious thing. I'm SC4 player for many years and I've done many metropolital regions with no trouble. No workplaces are abandoned either. The opera house bug is not probable - where they had been placed, they have remained for a long time before the bug occured. And negative demand is also in the cities where it's not there. Even in those where I haven't placed anything yet.

11 hours ago, jeffryfisher said:

sounds like you plopped a big residential building

I do use many mods, but ploppable residences are not one of them, because there is always an error the inhabitants of the plopped one can't go to work and the building finally gets abandoned. I have mods with growable residences. But it's been a long time since the last change with residential mods and everything was fine even with them. Until now.

16 hours ago, rsc204 said:

Otherwise are you using any mods that alter demand from the defaults?

There was a story. Half a year ago in my first city I added a vet clinic which supressed all residential demands to zero. I got scared and deleted the mod from the plugins with it's remnants on map, but the bug stayed this way and this city remained residentally supressed noone knows why, thankfully the city had been already finished, so I didn't care any more and continued on with the region. In other cities made later on (about 20) there was no trace of any bug even despite that one left unsolved. Until two days ago. But it's not the cause. I tried removing this square yesterday and the rest of the metropolis still remains in negative demand. I used demand ordinance mod, but literally for about two minutes. I didn't fancy them and they got deleted quickly, and it all happened also months ago.

16 hours ago, rsc204 said:

this may have occurred without you noticing, around the time you last stopped playing

I even see the R$$$ houses built recently just before I saved the game for a last time and made a break. Even with all the mods already in use, few bug stories I had - there was a long period of time after this when everything worked fine. Like I said, it happened in a flash of an eye.

I got an idea this morning - because separated cities are not touched by the bug, I can use this fact and try something - I will remove all the cities from my region folder, then I will start adding them back, but one by one. I will open every added one (unconnected to others at this point), check if demands are ok, save it, add another and so on. If after a certain city the demands would drop, I might find the guilty one. What is your opinion about this idea? Can it work?

In the meantime while I'll be checking things out, please keep this thread in mind and notify me if you get another idea. Your community saved my region from prop pox once. I trust the resolve in on our way.

[xxdita 1,097]

The best tool I know of to help with trying to figure this out is the Census Repository by RippleJet on the LEX. It includes a custom query that gives you a ton of information about both your city and region. Place it in your city and get a screenshot of the query, then post that here and I can help more. 

[tomek4zielinski 13]

Ok, I will try to find some free time in a few days and get to work with it.

[tomek4zielinski 13]

Ok, I'm back. I present the screenshots of every city of my metropolis with use of Census Office Mod. To remind, the R$$$ demand have dropped suddenly everywhere with no particular reason in every city connected to my metropolis. I've also uploaded pictures of poor and industrial cities where R$$$ demand is supposed to be low, but I wanted to picture the whole metropolis. Everywhere else, where everything was ok, in one day demands broke, despite workplaces, taxes, parks, connections, etc, and despite the day before that the demands were fine.

Reffering to the pics, the city of Midtown was the very first built, you can see R$ and R$$ are supressed there, as a side effect of a corrupted vet clinic mod, bug present even after a mod removal; but it has never affected any city later build - which means all other. So I don't think it's the problem.

I've deduced and got to some details - first, the story was like this - I finished the city of Marine (where R$$$ homes grew till the very end), then I started new city of Harley, using mods such as new jails, train and subway repair stations and first bicycle paths. After finishing it I started another new city of Emerald, and there, at the very beginning I noticed the negative R$$$ demand. I looked at another cities and this bug turned out to be present everywhere. Second, while making these pics I noticed that cities are loading much longer than earlier.

I want to know if this knowledge gives you any ideas of what can be wrong.

 

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

With the number of people you have in your region, your neutral tax rate is well below the starting level of 9%, so you should reduce taxes significantly for every category you want to grow in every city that you want growing.

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

Hiya tomek4zielinski, here is a reference of neutral tax which jeffryfisher mentioned:

though it seems like your residential population is not so high(but i haven't looked through your thread carefully), i thought you could give tax reduction a try. Hope it helps.

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[Prophet42 1,503]

Just a question...how many sim years do you play each city when you open it.  The reason I ask is because, when you play a city, the simulator assumes a certain growth rate in it's neighbors (population and demand growth).  If then you open a neighbor city and play it, but don't play it long enough to catch up with the assumed growth, when you open up the original city and it sees the neighbor growth is less than the assumed growth it will see that as a negative (population and demand decline).  If you kept opening cities and closing them with less than 10 sim years of play, maybe you got yourself into a negative growth feedback cycle.

It's just a thought.

[Raymond7cn 6,776]

1 hour ago, Prophet42 said:

Just a question...how many sim years do you play each city when you open it.  The reason I ask is because, when you play a city, the simulator assumes a certain growth rate in it's neighbors (population and demand growth).  If then open a neighbor city and play it, but don't play it long enough to catch up with the assumed growth, when you open up the original city and it sees the neighbor growth is less than the assumed growth it will see that as a negative (population and demand decline).  If you kept opening cities and closing them with less than 10 sim years of play, maybe you got yourself into a negative growth feedback cycle.

It's just a thought.

Dear @Prophet42, it’s my turn to say thanks, I didn't know that as well since seldom played with neighbor city. I have added your valuable tips into my notebook, Thank you for sharing!

Sincerely,

-- Raymond

[thingfishs 417]

2 hours ago, Prophet42 said:

If then open a neighbor city and play it, but don't play it long enough to catch up with the assumed growth, when you open up the original city and it sees the neighbor growth is less than the assumed growth it will see that as a negative (population and demand decline).  If you kept opening cities and closing them with less than 10 sim years of play, maybe you got yourself into a negative growth feedback cycle.

Thanks from me as well.  I think I've heard this before but probably it wasn't relevant at the time so I didn't retain it (I have tended to spend a long time in each city).

However, I am creating a replica of my home city which is a project covering many large tiles, and when it's finally time to flick the switch, I imagine I will want to jump from tile to tile so that the growth is roughly approximate across the whole city/region. So this is valuable info - is 10 a precise or ballpark figure?

[tomek4zielinski 13]

On 19.06.2020 at 9:09 AM, thingfishs said:

If you kept opening cities and closing them with less than 10 sim years of play, maybe you got yourself into a negative growth feedback cycle

This might be the one. Right before the bug, I used to download next and next mods to enrich my game. When I found one and downloaded it, such as new sports courts etc; I did add them to every city in the metropolis in one cycle. It was like this - mod found -> download -> load the city -> open, place, save, move on to another. I did it several times with bunch of mods, and time of gameplay for everycity to just add new building was certainly shorter than 10 years. But if this is it, how to get it fixed? 

[Prophet42 1,503]

My suggestion would be to open one city and play it for 10+ sim years (I usually play mine for 25 sim years).  Once you are done with that city, open a connecting city and play for the same amount of sim years.  Do this for each city connected to the first city. Repeat this until you have played each city in the region. 

While you are playing each city, try to improve your transportation network.  Also you can demolish any buildings that abandon and let the zone redevelop.  You can also zone more land according to any positive demand you have.  However do this slowly.  Let the new zone develop and give the simulator time to readjust the demand (usually 2 or 3 sim months after the development is finished).

You may have to repeat this cycle a couple of times

See if that balances out your demand.  One last tip.  Before you start, create a back-up of your region.  This way, if things go horribly wrong you can always get back to a known starting point.  Good luck, and let us know how it goes.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

7 hours ago, Prophet42 said:

play it for 10+ sim years

Game-years is probably the wrong measure. Because of the way SC4 does CPU sharing, what you need is minutes of CPU time. So you could maybe play at turtle speed for 1 year and accomplish what you want.

You'll know you've played long enough when the traffic-volume heat map has been thoroughly recalculated.