Help Troubleshooting City of 80k

[AuspiciousArchitect23 4]

I’m having quite a frustrating problem(s) with a city of 80k people. I will try to explain the problem(s) as linearly as possible. I’m having trouble precisely and concisely articulating the problem b/c it’s not clear at all what even I think the causes are, so please bear with me as I state the problem(s) I perceive as if I were trying to think it through. Will attempt to summarize all of this in a TLDR at the bottom. I would like as much as possible to at least eliminate enough of the problem(s) so that I can continue with this region and the 80k city especially; I do not want to start over.

 

As you’ll see, there is a high demand for R$ & R$$ type buildings. It’s so high, actually, that R$ is as absolutely high as the demand graph can visually show, and R$$ demand is very close to being visually maxed too; with that high of a demand, I’d instantly skyscrapers would instantly develop—in explosive fashion.

However, the only actively developing residence type is R$$$, and R$$$ type buildings instantly appear as soon as there is even slight demand for it.

If I can get R$$$ to develop with little to no effort, surely the reason why such high demand for R$ & R$$$ will not be as easily satisfied cannot be b/c of desirability deficiencies alone. IF R$$$ buildings easily develop, desirability factors can’t be deficient enough to halt development of R$ & R$$.

There are only a few reasons I can not think of that would explain this strange phenomena, but I don’t know how to test them. I’m first asking for advice on how to diagnose the problem. I ask this first, and now I explain what I think some of the following causes of this halt in development of R$ & R$$ buildings are that I’m asking for help to diagnose.

• Lack of jobs

• Poor transportation

• Desirability

• Taxes

• Infinite Commuter loop (I’ll get to this)

 

I’m pulling my hair out as I try to determine the cause of the perceived problem. As I was testing to see if job availability is at least one cause of R$ & R$$ buildings not developing, I zoned I-D, as I knew that my demand for I-D was very high and lack of I-D jobs may explain why at least the R$ demand cannot be satisfied. So I zoned I-D in the same city, and sure enough I began to see R$$ appear in the city (oddly enough, since I expected to see R$ appear).

It gets weirder, though.

Near a cluster of high-rises, I had a fairly large patch of industrial zone filled exclusively with I-HT. I rezoned this to medium-density residential, and oddly enough the rezoned area began rapidly developing with buildings that could each hold ~100-300 occupants. But then–much of the buildings began to dilapidate and abandon. R$, R$$ & R$$$ alike, all dilapidating and abandoning. And when I’d click on the buildings, explanations for the abandonment was commute time and desirability. This is also not the only city in the region. I have a city of over 100k directly adjacent to it, and two other tiny cities (each lower than 10k pop), each of which connecting to the two big cities. That means that the infinite commuter bug could also be causing the dilapidation, although I have no idea how to see if it’s actually present.

 

TLDR: So, all that said, here is the problem I perceive in as small a nutshell as I can say: R$ & R$$ demand is so high that visually R$ demand completely fills the demand graph and R$$ demand is just a sliver away from also completely filling the graph. But neither develops. And when I rezoned a patch of industrial zone to medium-density residential, many new R$$ (mostly R$$) buildings developed, but much of them quickly began to dilapidate and abandon. I also have more connecting cities in the region, which complicates the matter even more. I have no problem getting every job type to develop; just residential. And, while I can’t imagine that this would cause such massive fluctuations in demand across each city, tax rates are not consistent in every city.

[AuspiciousArchitect23 4]

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

Looks good with the selective tax rates to get the demands you want. (I was going to suggest that so it's nice to see you understand how to use them effectively.)

You'll want to be sure to have the following installed:

• Cori's No Kickout Lower Wealth Mod
• Less Abandonment
• Fixed Underfunded Notices
• Opera House Fix

The latter one is in case you have plopped an Opera House and it's overwhelmed. Turns out that can bork growth in a hidden way.

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

Just adding to what Cori advised...

It might also help to have the high tech missing jobs fix installed. This solves an issue that prevents R$$$ Sims working in high tech jobs. The fix can be simply installed in Plugins like any other mod, and contrary to a long-held belief, doesn't need packing into the game's SimCity_1.dat file.

This is also something we'll be creating for our ModPacc Zero (core game fixes and enhancements) project, but the original can be installed as it works functionally fine.

[AuspiciousArchitect23 4]

UPDATE on the situation

So I installed the no-kickout mod, 'less abandonment' & 'fixed underfunded notices' (however, b/c it's hard to see if installed mods actually start working correctly, I'm going to run another test to see if these mods actually started affecting gameplay). I also removed a neighboring city that I think contributed to the problem. Assuming the mods were functioning, as soon as I removed this city, demand in the 80k city for all job types increased overall, and my city's population has now increased to ~130k as well as the number of commercial & industrial jobs. Dilapidation and abandonment also mostly disappeared in all areas affected; that means that the removal of the connecting city was probably responsible for temporarily (I say temporarily, and I will say why shortly) solving the R$ & R$$ lack of development by the elimination of the infinite commuter bug, too-distant jobs, or both.

 

Now, I say temporarily b/c the situation has changed. More development has occurred, but now almost all job types, as well as R$ R$$ & R$$$, are at maximum demand (see photos). With that high of a demand, I would expect even my high-density zones to very rapidly start exploding with development until the demand is satisfied. However, as illustrated in one of the photos, I didn't get skyscrapers. I didn't even get small high-rises. Instead, I get dinky houses. Unless my interpretation is incorrect or I'm missing something, that can only mean that there are not enough jobs that new development could reach; not that there are no jobs in the city--perhaps transportation is a problem (but I have many different kinds of transportation going across the city, so how would I pin-point where specifically within the city transportation is needed and what needs it?) I can't quite come to a conclusion b/c there are still too numerous variables.

[AuspiciousArchitect23 4]

And... why the extremely negative I-D & I-M demand?

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

4 minutes ago, AuspiciousArchitect23 said:

I didn't get skyscrapers. I didn't even get small high-rises.

That's likely to be the stage caps at this point. It'll depend on the overall region population.

 

3 minutes ago, AuspiciousArchitect23 said:

And... why the extremely negative I-D & I-M demand?

Check your tax rates for those. Have you set them back to 9.0%? (Or maybe even 8.9% is needed.)

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

Ummm... am I the only one to notice the weird "Save with potential corruption and quit" button...?  

I'd rather troubleshot this!

[Cyclone Boom 17,031]

That'll be my fault...
 

(The description I wrote explains about both available options.)

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

9 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

That'll be my fault...

I didn't know this mod. Thought this was a vanilla warning and was quite perplexed about it!

[AuspiciousArchitect23 4]

7 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Ummm... am I the only one to notice the weird "Save with potential corruption and quit" button...?  

I'd rather troubleshot this!

 

7 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I didn't know this mod. Thought this was a vanilla warning and was quite perplexed about it!

Yes, this is a mod. According to a youtube guide on SC4's game mechanics, it has "long been known" that the save and quit to region options can cause corruption of your city tile. Saving via ctrl-s or clicking the save icon which that shortcut refers to is safer.

On 10/22/2021 at 7:16 PM, CorinaMarie said:

That's likely to be the stage caps at this point. It'll depend on the overall region population.

 

Check your tax rates for those. Have you set them back to 9.0%? (Or maybe even 8.9% is needed.)

Stage caps? What are you talking about? Are you referring to the stages that limit the capacity of buildings--for instance, the population threshold that must be reached for skyscrapers to start developing? Or is this an entirely separate mechanic? Please be more specific, b/c unless the mechanic I described is not the only one that limits the number of skyscrapers in a given city, your explanation does not reveal what it is nor the puzzling reason why tiny houses would develop in a high-density zone in a city of over 143k (the pop threshold for skyscrapers is ~30-40k).

See the attached photo for current tax rates in my formerly-80k-now-143k city.

[AuspiciousArchitect23 4]

Also, that Transportation Department income. Damn, damn, DAYUM SON! I am just noticing it. With that kind of income for transportation, I'm either a master at managing my sims's transportation needs or transportation income should be placed in a class of wealth in addition to R$ R$$ & R$$$!!!

My city's monthly transportation income also vastly fluctuates. It fluctuates between several thousand dollars each month at least. It can even increase or decrease each month between + or - $0-10k! I can move the following question to a new thread if the moderators want that, but I'm going to ask--any tips to make my transportation income more stable? Perhaps it's to be expected in a rapidly growing city of this size, but I'll take any stabilization over these adolescent swings.

[CorinaMarie 29,856]

46 minutes ago, AuspiciousArchitect23 said:

Stage caps? What are you talking about?

Yep. It sounds like you are already aware of it.

See the first post in @RippleJet's topic over at Devotion in Stage Limits and Thresholds (Rush Hour). This is known colloquially as Stage Caps in many other posts.

 

46 minutes ago, AuspiciousArchitect23 said:

See the attached photo for current tax rates ...

Looks good. The other thing which will affect Dirty and Manufacturing demand is the current Education Quotient (EQ). The higher the education level in the current city tile (along with demand propagated from connected tiles) will decrease those demands while increasing High Tech.

In one of your earlier pics, it shows EQ is very high for all age groups. That explains the low demand for ID and IM.

 

33 minutes ago, AuspiciousArchitect23 said:

My city's monthly transportation income also vastly fluctuates. It fluctuates between several thousand dollars each month at least.

How's your traffic congestion from month to month? It might be that a bunch of Sims travel certain paths via public transportation which produces the high income, but later those routes get overwhelmed and so they don't travel that way which drops the income. Then because they didn't take the (possibly) congested path it becomes viable looking again and so they flock to it in a repeating cycle of using it, not using, using it, etc.

[AuspiciousArchitect23 4]

On 10/23/2021 at 11:38 PM, CorinaMarie said:

See the first post in @RippleJet's topic over at Devotion in Stage Limits and Thresholds (Rush Hour). This is known colloquially as Stage Caps in many other posts.

 

The other thing which will affect Dirty and Manufacturing demand is the current Education Quotient (EQ). The higher the education level in the current city tile (along with demand propagated from connected tiles) will decrease those demands while increasing High Tech.

In one of your earlier pics, it shows EQ is very high for all age groups. That explains the low demand for ID and IM.

 

How's your traffic congestion from month to month? It might be that a bunch of Sims travel certain paths via public transportation which produces the high income, but later those routes get overwhelmed and so they don't travel that way which drops the income. Then because they didn't take the (possibly) congested path it becomes viable looking again and so they flock to it in a repeating cycle of using it, not using, using it, etc.

I'll give "Stage Limits and Thresholds" a read.

I had no idea that education level actually affects the demand for certain types of industry (how logical). If this is a problem, it's a damn good one to have. Will have to keep this in mind for future development.

And lastly, to reply to your third comment, my traffic congestion is fine--with exception of literally a single red dot in the corner of my city on an avenue. That's no surprise, since it connects another city of over 120k. I recently reworked the highway connection leading between the two cities after noticing that it was wonky, so we'll see if and how that alleviates the problem. The only other remotely congested component of my city's transportation network is a ground rail line that's colored yellow in the traffic info view. ~22k passengers max in a single lane, so no surprise there. Apart from the rail line and the red square on the avenue, traffic is as close to flawless as you could possibly achieve across the rest of the city.

 

I think I can now call this topic answered! I'm somewhat satisfied with the explanation to the lack of development in spite of near-max demand in every sector that there is a regional cap limiting skyscrapers from appearing (I want skyscrapers, but the fact that lower-capacity buildings are appearing since I developed new zones means that my city and/or the game isn't catastrophically broken). I suppose that that's even somewhat realistic. Even if there was some other factor responsible for the lack of development, the city occupies almost the entire tile and it hasn't fallen apart. Given how complex and challenging this game can be, I consider just that alone a major achievement. And whether it was the no-kickout mod and the less abandonment mod as the sole cause or working in conjunction with another variable to eliminate dilapidation from my city, that problem's solved too. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for problems, but for now my OCD may rest happily.

Thanks for the help, resources and advice, guys.

[Naomi57 2,985]

The issue that leaps out at me is this one:

Total City Infrastructure Threatened by Power Funding Scarcity

Running power or water close to capacity will limit city growth.
Running power or water over capacity has extremely negative impacts on the game.

While you're there, I'd encourage you to look through the following graphs:

• Crime
• Power
• Water
• Air Pollution
• Water Pollution
• Garbage
• Jobs & Pop.

You've clearly got a good handle on Education, and that probably means you're doing well on Health, too.  The above graphs will tell you if there's something else that needs your attention as mayor.

In terms of Data Views to diagnose issues, Water, Traffic, Power, Air Pollution and Water Pollution are all important to check.

City growth also depends on a 2:1 ratio of population to suitable jobs.   e.g.  A population of 80 thousand should have 40 thousand jobs within easy commute that are a decent match to the EQ and Wealth characteristics of your residents.

[greenOak 25]

The reason I-M demand is strongly negative is probably due to your sims being more educated. As a rule of thumb, poorly educates sims increase demand mostly for I-D, moderately educated sims mostly for I-M, while highly educated sims mostly for I-HT. It is likely sims who were once driving demand for I-M are now driving demand for I-HT. You can search “workforce occupation drives” for a more detailed breakdown. 

I-D demand is strongly negative because of the 12% tax rate. If you still have I-D buildings left in the city, the aforementioned effect could be causing negative demand at all.

Negative I-D and I-M demand isn’t actually a problem unless you want to have I-D and I-M in your city. It’s normal for an I-HT dominant city to have negative I-D and I-M demand. It is very common for a city to:

1. Start with only I-R and I-D demand due to a poorly educated workforce.

2. Once sims become more educated (city wide EQ ~50), I-D demand starts tanking, while I-M demand starts rapidly increasing. To balance this demand, one can demolish I-D buildings which will get replaced by I-M buildings.

3. Once sims become highly educated (city wide EQ ~150+), I-M demand starts to tank, while I-HT demand rapidly increases. Again, to balance this demand, one can demolish I-M buildings and have I-HT buildings grow in its place. The only caveat being that I-HT won't develop in even moderately polluted areas.