Are there really a limit to growth?

[Propfam 2,305]

Hello,

I have a dream of realizing some sort of Ultrasanti one day. Ultrasanti is a kind of city that's a development of Magnasanti, the famous SC3k city. For those unprepared, Magnasanti features the densest city possible in a single tile (I forgot which size it uses), all in the name of making the highest profit possible. It's pretty much dystopian. But Ultrasanti is different. The aim is still making largest and possibly also densest region (we're talking SC4 here, with its regional play) possible in SimCity without any ploppable RCIs, rivaling RL cities like Tokyo, Jakarta, and Greater Bay Area, and even countries like Bangladesh. It'll be a some sort of utopia. Everyone's happy and wealthy (tho the latter is subject to change, especially a healthy city still needs middle class and the poor). It's probably the richest and wealthiest region in the world today if it's exist in real life, with estimated equivalent GDP of $30 trillion, assuming we have 200 million max-educated middle-class sims, and basically unimaginable wealth, all in a region comparable to say, Chongqing or something similar. Ultrasanti would be the largest region, in terms of population and also size, in the history of SimCity 4, even rivaling likes of 3RR (remember that?)

The problems are quite paramount. First, we don't know how much computing power we'll need. That's why I refrain it from now. Second, can SC4 really handle such really high population regionally? Third, limits, in terms of networks, water, power, etc can be easily exceeded. Heck I even have really dense medium-sized tiles that basically putting NAM to its knees both practically (there's no way to make a beautiful pedmall in a really dense city, especially medium and small tiles ones) and technically (4x the max capacity of even monorail is alarming at best and outright detrimental at worst). Not to mention those power poles. They can't be removed for neighbor play. So the only way is to accept them as they are and reduce the space available for buildings. Fourth, it will saturate even CAM eventually. Stage 15 would be very easy to get, making staging irrelevant and building higher buildings more difficult without either stage expansion and/or blockers. Fifth, even buildings have limits. There's a limit on how tall we can make. Technically, there's almost none. But practically, there will. Sure, vertiport is a thing. But think for a sec. What happen if such thing is renovated. Tens or even hundreds of ks of jobs will be lost in the process, possibly making the worst recession possible since every renovation would result in that phenomenon. Yeah, you may suggest, "Why not make something like Manhattan's Billionaires Row or even better, overhanging buildings, all within small lot sizes (let's say 2x2 or even 1x1)." Hear me out, there will be a limit on how small buildings can be. We can't cramp more and more buildings into smaller and smaller spaces. The game has 1x1 limitation to begin with. Not to mention, the possibility of misbulldozing and even immortal lots are pretty much astronomical. Last, but not least, since we can't fully figure out on mixed use buildings, yet (despite @mattb325 recent findings), it's pretty much impossible to have superblocks, including vertiports, on growables without resorting to workarounds like 1x1 overhangs and something like that. Hopefully this last problem will be fixed sooner by doing more research. Finally, I can't imagine the situation of civics. Heck, Maxis civics simply couldn't keep up in one of my (lost) cities. I had to use BSC solutions instead.

@rsc204, @Terring, @TogaMasterJohn, @Naomi57, @simcitynate, what do you think about this? Let me know in the replies. As always, thanks.

[Terring 6,476]

Building such a big city is possible, even without using mods. Peter Richie had made a huge regional city with more than 100 million Sims without using a single mod. That city has almost 10 times the population of Greece! It's so big that has been featured in the Guiness Book of World Records 2017 Gamers Edition as the largest SimCity region ever made. In this video he shows some of the statistics, insides and details of his megacity. I recommend you studying the video and his channel to get some inspirations and ideas.

But there is a huge difference between what he has build and what you want to build. His project was pure vanilla. He used absolutely no mod at all (not even NAM!) to build his megacity, resulting in an urban titan which is epic and badass, but also creepy and dystopian. If he could build such a big city without any mod, try to imagine what you can build by using custom-made stuff like high capacity apartment buildings and mass transit stations and mods like NAM and CAM. The result would be a legendary and a truly utopian leviathan which could include tram lines on roads, pedmalls, heliports, very large hospitals, a mix of residential and commercial zones to reduce commute time, huge green zones, canals, whatever you want. So if you can build something that big without mods, try to imagine what you can build with mods

[Propfam 2,305]

14 minutes ago, Terring said:

Building such a big city is possible, even without using mods. Peter Richie had made a huge regional city with more than 100 million Sims without using a single mod. That city has almost 10 times the population of Greece! It's so big that has been featured in the Guiness Book of World Records 2017 Gamers Edition as the largest SimCity region ever made. In this video he shows some of the statistics, insides and details of his megacity. I recommend you studying the video and his channel to get some inspirations and ideas.

But there is a huge difference between what he has build and what you want to build. His project was pure vanilla. He used absolutely no mod at all (not even NAM!) to build his megacity, resulting in an urban titan which is epic and badass, but also creepy and dystopian. If he could build such a big city without any mod, try to imagine what you can build by using custom-made stuff like high capacity apartment buildings and mass transit stations and mods like NAM and CAM. The result would be a legendary and a truly utopian leviathan which could include tram lines on roads, pedmalls, heliports, very large hospitals, a mix of residential and commercial zones to reduce commute time, huge green zones, canals, whatever you want. So if you can build something that big without mods, try to imagine what you can build with mods

I'm still afraid with claustrophobia in mid-size tiles. Everything that's cosmetic is straight up discarded for efficiency. The only cosmetics I added is parks. That's it. And even then, I have a bit strict policy regarding it. Fortunately, everything in my cities (except ones that are made solely to gain insane population) are filled with middle class stuff, or at least it's not like R$+I-D nightmare which straight up from 1800s (way worse than that even. Worse than even 2013 Beijing tbh). Yes I do get populations ranging from 240k to even 700k (this is with R$ however), with lots of room left for commercial offices (and in that 240k city, it also boasts lots of services as well)

I want to make a replica of Jakarta, which has almost the same population and economy as Greece but much denser since it's a city. But despite @roe99 (of Menara Batavia fame) making a map of it, it's not 1:1 afaik. I want something that's completely 1:1. I don't know if DEMs are exist for Jakarta, let alone Indonesia and rest of SEA, especially in urban scale (not something like Borneo). Not to mention I'm afraid that human-made features like reclamations and even roads can't be stripped away, as Roe made his map 13 years ago, resulting in massive bumps out of nowhere.

[Girafarig 1,414]

Jakarta would be a really cool city/region to replicate. I thought there was a map by TCC, but no dice. Still, if you ask him nicely, you might get such a map.

I have a modest, 2.5 mill. region and it runs with no issues on my M1 MacBook Pro. I don't think larger regions, with more population, would represent much of a challenge, since for most calculations, SimCity only uses the city it loaded and its neighbours, which at most it's going to be 6 large cities (it could be a lesser amount of medium and small cities, of course, but why would you do that to yourself?)

And then there's City Journals like Dimland. I think a region there is hitting the 25 mill. mark soon, which is about the size of Jakarta. Maybe you should go check that out.

[Propfam 2,305]

5 hours ago, Girafarig said:

M1 MacBook Pro

That's why. A minimum of 8 gigs (which actually is pretty low for a new laptop. At least not as bad as Asus for their Vivobook series which I have now. Their insist on 4 gigs even on $700 laptop is just insulting), the fastest single-core ever on any computer including servers, unlimited access to unified memory, and most importantly, being able to access more than one core are reasons why you can play huge regions so effortlessly. Windows users have to stick with one and only one core and limited RAM availability of just 4 gigs for SC4. Ofc, nothing is perfect. The Mac version famously suffers from the file number limit. But it's easy to solve and with a proper system, you could have practically unlimited set of plugins that's also quite modular. Another problem is Mac-related exemplar CTDs which if done right, shouldn't happen in the first place. It's just there are few Mac users, with @rsc204 being the notable one that's still around, that also happens to be a modder. Lastly, there's the huge problem of nonexistent niteliting. That's more like Aspyr's (tho again, more like EA's) fault than anything

[TogaMasterJohn 711]

On 9/14/2023 at 9:08 AM, Terring said:

Peter Richie had made a huge regional city with more than 100 million Sims without using a single mod. That city has almost 10 times the population of Greece! It's so big that has been featured in the Guiness Book of World Records 2017 Gamers Edition as the largest SimCity region ever made.

WOW... I have not seen that video before. That is amazing!  I saw where Peter has the region available for download. I would love to see that in person! Now I really cannot wait to fire up the game again. While I have not been able to play this amazing game in a while due to IRL things taking up a lot of my time, I still come here quite often (or, when I can) to see what's up at one of my favorite websites.

Anyways, I digress!

I agree with Terring, @elfrjz. I think it would be amazing to see a regional megacity built with NAM and possibly CAM. With careful planning and placement, I can only imagine what is possible! A massive dystopian regional megacity... or a massive, beautiful regional megacity. The possibilities are endless, and that's why this game, with the sheer amount of content available, still amazes me today. 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

The only foreseeable issue that I can think of might be the amount of plugins in use in such city. I think I read somewhere that it may influence saving process and carry the risk of some save corruptions taking place, though I can't remember the specific details.

[Terring 6,476]

1 hour ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I think I read somewhere that it may influence saving process and carry the risk of some save corruptions taking place

I think you're talking about the danger of having your hard work corrupted after using the Save and Exit or Save and Quit button. That's because when using either and option, the code will provide to the game only a certain amount of time to save your work before exiting or quitting. If what you're going to save is something small, like a tiny village without too much development or some terraforming and planting trees process, and if your game is mostly or full vanilla, you don't have to worry. After all, Maxis never envisioned the ludicrous speed quantity of custom-made content that we use today. But if you choose Save and Exit or Save and Quit for big cities with lots of development that feature an abundance of custom content, that's when the problem will most likely be occurred. In those cases, the time the game have available to save your projects could not be enough. The save process will ends up before being completed and the save file will likely be corrupted.

To avoid this problem, always use the Save option to give the game all the time it needs to completely save the game. If you want to exit a city, first hit Save and then Exit without Saving. Save Warning made by @Cyclone Boom can help you never forget that.

[Propfam 2,305]

43 minutes ago, Terring said:

I think you're talking about the danger of having your hard work corrupted after using the Save and Exit or Save and Quit button. That's because when using either and option, the code will provide to the game only a certain amount of time to save your work before exiting or quitting. If what you're going to save is something small, like a tiny village without too much development or some terraforming and planting trees process, and if your game is mostly or full vanilla, you don't have to worry. After all, Maxis never envisioned the ludicrous speed quantity of custom-made content that we use today. But if you choose Save and Exit or Save and Quit for big cities with lots of development that feature an abundance of custom content, that's when the problem will most likely be occurred. In those cases, the time the game have available to save your projects could not be enough. The save process will ends up before being completed and the save file will likely be corrupted.

To avoid this problem, always use the Save option to give the game all the time it needs to completely save the game. If you want to exit a city, first hit Save and then Exit without Saving. Save Warning made by @Cyclone Boom can help you never forget that.

I heard there are cases of instant CTD after quitting, even with saving beforehand

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

48 minutes ago, Terring said:

I think you're talking about the danger of having your hard work corrupted after using the Save and Exit or Save and Quit button.

Hmmm, I remember this but I think it was a yet different problem which involved the number of plugins and instances on their own being scattered across large regions bogging down the system and making it nearly impossible to play due to slowdowns and the sheer number of plugin content being run on a machine.

[Brad 343]

on something so extensive, I'd recommend copying the region to a backup folder every time you close the game. this way, you wouldn't lose as much work if the save does corrupt. can always recover past work if needed.

[Odainsaker 2,137]

I have noticed that it is possible to run out of 32-bit memory when using any "Exit to Region" options, and this too can have dire effects on any "Save and Exit to Region" function.  During "Exit to Region," the current city with all its loaded plugins still remains fully in memory even as the Region View is reconstructed for loading, and a combination of large enough city, heavy enough plugin utilization, and large enough region can exceed even the hard 4 GB addressable memory limit of 32-bit SimCity with the 4GB Patch applied.  This will result in an inevitable crash, and if your game is additionally saving when this crash happens from using the "Save and Exit to Region" function, the save will also be corrupted.  If the 4GB Patch has not been applied, then the addressable memory limit is only 2 GB!

This type of crash will vary for each player as it depends on their combination of city, plugin, and region utilized memory sizes, but it is a real constraint on how expansive we can make our games.  I have crafted test regions where the Region View alone requires around 3.7 GB, seemingly leaving little leeway left for loading a city and plugins in a 4 GB space.  However, when loading a city and its plugins from Region View, the Region View memory is swiftly flushed and the chosen city thumbnail with minimal memory usage displayed during the transition until the Loading City is ready, so it is still possible to normally load and play a full city from an extremely large region as the hard memory limit is avoided.  The issue comes when exiting the loaded city back to Region View using the "Exit to Region" options, via either "Save and Exit to Region" or "Exit Without Saving," as as there is no placeholder transition thumbnail view behind which the city memory can be flushed.  Instead, the loaded city and its plugins remain fully displayed and in memory even as the Region View is reconstructed, and if my large NAM city has 2 GB of simulation and custom content in play as a 3.7 GB Region View is simultaneously being reconstructed, I am going to hit the 4 GB addressable memory limit and crash.  Other players may have smaller regions to load, but alternatively have much more complex city simulation and greater quantities of plugins utilized, with their own such combinations still also hitting the 4 GB limit.

I have found in this sort of circumstance that I can only "Save City" and then afterwards "Quit without Save" without ever returning to Region View during the same session if I want to avoid this type of crash.  Restarting SimCity to play each city tile in a gigantic region might seem a daunting adaptation for some, and it would be nice to make a magic mod that flushes persistent memory during the "Exit to Region" process and reduce unexpected crashes, though the time then spent reloading plugins for each would probably moot any time savings from restarting the game for each city.

A quick way for other players to test this themselves is to use Windows Task Manager to monitor the memory usage of the SimCity 4.exe process, noting how much memory is used at loaded Region View, how memory changes at the Loading City thumbnail transition, how much memory is used by a fully loaded city, and then how memory changes when exiting back to region.  If the memory of loaded Region View plus the memory of a fully loaded city is greater than 4 GB, then a crash is likely when exiting back to region.  During the Loading City transition, you can see the memory get flushed, while during the exit to region process, you can see unflushed memory from the city already loaded balloon as the Region View memory is added until the addressable memory limit is ultimately reached.

 

(Edit:  The 4 GB limit described above applies only to 32-bit versions of SimCity 4 and shouldn't apply to the 64-bit version of SimCity 4 for Mac.)

 

[Naomi57 2,985]

Ultrasanti makes for such an interesting conversation, @elfrjz.  I've been long-term unwell, which is why my participation here has been limited lately, but this conversation very happily engaged my attention.  

On 14/09/2023 at 11:08 PM, Terring said:

Building such a big city is possible, even without using mods. Peter Richie had made a huge regional city with more than 100 million Sims without using a single mod. That city has almost 10 times the population of Greece!

Thank you for posting that YouTube account, @Terring.  I've just watched all seven parts of Peter Richie's "How to Build a Mega City" YouTube series.  Admittedly, I watched most of it with sound muted, only unmuting for parts that looked interesting and in the last two videos in the series, right-arrowing ahead through the videos to take in the boring bits quicker.  Fascinating to see a gameplay style so at odds with my own, but still aiming for a prosperous High-Tech/High Commerce healthy and happy city in the end.  

Here's a 43x47 representative piece of his "How to Build a Mega City" map that I plotted out in Excel with yellow lines indicating subway and arrows indicating neighbour connections.  I plotted out more of his city if you're interested to see.

Truly excellent points with Peter Richie's city building recipe:

• Zero cheats and zero mods, none at all!  
• 21x21 cell grid made up of nine 6x6 blocks is an excellent grid geometry, with 3 times 21 = 63 leaving 2 cells for a bordering Avenue (or Highway).  
• Dirty industry (I-D) is the fastest way to make money without cheats.  
• Distance is the simplest way to avoid the deleterious impacts of I-D pollution and Waste-to-Energy Plants. 
   https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Waste_to_Energy_Plant 
• Building out substantial residential/commercial/industrial sectors before de-zoning everything seems to have lingering effects that are useful and interesting.
• He very correctly builds for residential proximity to industrial and commercial jobs.  
• 100% coverage of Fire Stations completely suppresses fire emergencies for Cheetah play speed (Ctrl+3).
• He does not mess with Transportation, Water, Police or Fire funding!  
• He manages Health and Education funding using central budget sliders rather than building-by-building, an easier approach for a quick Mega City build.
• Switch to Zone data view for faster Cheetah play speed.  
• Using Oil Power Plants for initial high capacity power, in preference to Gas or Coal. 
   https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Oil_Power_Plant 
• When Hydrogen Power Plants become available, use the Nuclear Free Zone ordinance to clear the Nuclear Power Plants from the map.
• Libraries are important!  https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Local_Branch_Library 

Quote

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/418977-largest-SimCity-4-city-region
WHO: PETER RICHIE                   WHEN: 12 JANUARY 2016

As of 12 January 2016, the largest SimCity 4 region ever created, in terms of total population, was made by YouTube user Peter Ritchie. His monstrous mega-region consisted of 81 large city tiles, 16,492 miles of paved road, 5,360 miles of subway lines, 324 hydrogen power plants, 486 waste-to-energy plants, 512 large water pumps, plus over 2,000 schools, 81 universities and 162 colleges. All that infrastructure enabled the region to reach a maximum, record-setting population of 107,658,254 residents.

Kudos for getting into the Guinness Book of World Records, but I do have some problems with Peter Richie's approach:

• Orthogonal (horizontal/vertical) subways ignores the extra commuting power of diagonal subways.  
• Subway station usage benefits from pedestrian proximity to side streets.
• He leans heavily on the overpowered (OP) stats of the Avenue in vanilla SC4.  That won't work with a NAM city which far more desperately needs Highway grade (MHW or RHW).  
• He completely ignores traffic congestion problems.  
• He completely ignores the dreaded SC4 Eternal Commuter bug in the planning of his neighbour connections, which I think he doesn't notice because he doesn't care about traffic congestion.    See @CorinaMarie's legendary analysis in this post to thoroughly understand this issue, and
   https://www.google.com/search?q=Eternal+Commuter+bug+site%3Acommunity.simtropolis.com for more threads discussing it.
• He zones vast swathes of commercial, ignoring the fact that commercial prosperity depends upon vehicle traffic and light rail traffic in an 8x8 radius centred upon each building's 4x4 home tract. This probably works in his case because of the massive traffic snarls he tolerates.  
• He completely ignores health and education strikes, which does have economic impacts.  
• The Casino has the maximum police corruption effect of 50 with radius of 128 tiles.    https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Casino  I think he misattributes this effect to the Airport.  This is a non-issue in his Dirty Industry phase, but really not a great "Reward" to include in the city in the fast commercial growth phase!  
• The Legalize Gambling ordinance has a citywide 20% increase crime effect,  which is particularly counter-productive to developing high density commercial. 

My key differences of play preference from Peter Richie.

• IMPORTANT: Population growth depends on actual employment, not just the existence of buildings.  Actual employment depends on commute journey time, and while sims will travel further for cushie office jobs, I very seriously question the depth of that blue commercial zoning and commute distance from residential to the extreme centre of his city.  I don't think he's checking Route Query to see if any sims really do commute all the way to the centre.
• I think he's using default School Bus funding.  Zero School Bus and zero Ambulance funding is far more effective way of moderating city expenses, without the economic hazard of causing strikes.  City Beautification is another budget you can plonk to zero and gradually increase.
• Preserving a bit of Manufacturing industry (I-M) is actually a good thing for R$ employment, and sector diversification improves economic growth and resilience, and I-M makes is a good buffer zone around Waste-to-Energy Plants.  For that matter, low wealth R$ residential makes a great buffer zone around manufacturing (I-M).
• Water Pipes every 13 tiles works.  In this case, pipes every 10-11 tiles would fit the 21 tile grid geometry.
• No need to turn on so many Ordinances!  Some are invaluable, but most can be ignored.   https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Ordinance
• Rewards like Movie Studio which don't improve your RCI CAPS are a waste of space.  https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Movie_Studio 
• I prefer planned plop of all civics, including schools, libraries, hospitals, police and fire, rather than his random plop to fill the coverage radius circles on the map.
• I'll happily use cheat Ctrl+X  you don't deserve it  to make my city planning easier.  https://wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=Cheat_codes 
   

On 15/09/2023 at 1:52 PM, elfrjz said:

Windows users have to stick with one and only one core and limited RAM availability of just 4 gigs for SC4.

I have noticed that Windows systems with lots of mods tend to bog down the SimCity 4 open/save/refresh performance.  That's one reason I keep my mod list small and avoid the HD cosmetic mods, because I value speed.

I'm pretty sure that too many mods impacts performance, responsiveness and playability of large cities (256x256), which could be a big issue in building an Ultrasanti region.  The region size, on the other hand, is far less of an issue because that only affects performance in Region View.  Once you've loaded a city, it's only that one city and its immediate neighbour connection properties that are in memory.

[Naomi57 2,985]

On 14/09/2023 at 8:40 PM, elfrjz said:

I have a dream of realizing some sort of Ultrasanti one day. Ultrasanti is a kind of city that's a development of Magnasanti, the famous SC3k city. For those unprepared, Magnasanti features the densest city possible in a single tile (I forgot which size it uses), all in the name of making the highest profit possible. It's pretty much dystopian. But Ultrasanti is different. The aim is still making largest and possibly also densest region (we're talking SC4 here, with its regional play) possible in SimCity without any ploppable RCIs, rivaling RL cities like Tokyo, Jakarta, and Greater Bay Area, and even countries like Bangladesh. It'll be a some sort of utopia. Everyone's happy and wealthy (tho the latter is subject to change, especially a healthy city still needs middle class and the poor).

I specifically resist gentrification in my SimCity 4 cities.  Given the economic simulation in SC4 generally attempts to simulate real-life economic factors, the low wealth sims are not becoming wealthy, they are being pushed out by speculative property developers and a lack of affordable housing.

I make sure to use a combination of NIMBY and air pollution to guarantee low wealth sims have affordable housing in some neighbourhoods, or else using other techniques to plan and preserve low wealth neighbourhoods.  This is a type of "companion planting" that goes into my city-planning.  Some types of zoning and buildings work well together, other combinations are very bad.  My techniques don't solve all problems in creating an Ultrasanti, but it helps realise a vision of protopia, rather than a vision of utopia.

Here's a table I compiled examining this "companion planting" of SC4 buildings and zones, with protopian objectives, and with vanilla+NAM economic prosperity in mind.  This is in three sections:

1. causes of city neighbourhood problems,
2. the neutral buildings which serve well as a buffer zone,
3. the victims of regulatory failings in city planning.

 

On 14/09/2023 at 11:08 PM, Terring said:

Peter Richie had made a huge regional city with more than 100 million Sims without using a single mod.

My "companion planting" table helps assess Peter Richie megacity recipe, and can be used for assessing and tweaking your city planning.

1. Best border any dirty industry (I-D) with civics, water treatment plants, trees, and then manufacturing.
2. Proximity of low wealth residential R$ and manufacturing (I-M) is a natural fit.  
3. Proximity of high wealth residential R$$$ and high tech (I-HT) is a natural fit.
4. Casino doesn't fit well with much at all, and did you know that it's even radioactive!  

What is not mentioned in this "companion planting" table, is the critical factor of commute distance, and match of education status and wealth class to available jobs.  Unemployment, underemployment, long commute, and job/skills mismatch are frequent deal breakers for sims.  Good employment and ease of commute are generally the two most important factors for happy sims.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,107]

Wow @Naomi57 and wow again... That's a lot of work you put in this file... Sometimes it's indeed good to write down all the variables and elements into one chart that allows a "bird's view" on all of them at once.

I would, however, like to point out a few issues that I have with this table which I find disputable. Not everything I can see here translates to my own experience with the game. No offence meant of course. Just two adult people arguing about, what is essentially, a set of Lego blocks. 

One of the key issues I can see with your table is the fact that you completely left out the garbage from the tolerance equations...  And this, I think you will agree with me, has really serious impact on some of the developer types with commercial sector being most susceptible to it.

If you compare the two problems then crime, actually, is less serious than garbage piling up in the streets. Why? Because crime is very fluid. It tends to occupy certain lots or buildings but after that, just one or two months later, it may migrate to an entirely new area leaving the old one free.

Garbage, however, behaves more like a cancerous tissue because once it starts to accumulate in a certain location it won't go away with time. On the contrary - it will stay in same exact place and devastate the area. This is why I believe that the table should contain this variable with all developer types above C$ and R$ treating this problem as a serious hindrance to development.

Another thing that came to my mind is that you can't really have a single table for all of the game's difficulty types... I notice that, for example, when you play your cities on easy level one can get away with almost anything and still run a strong city.

This point is partially why I disagree with some of the "tolerates" ratings that you applied for certain zones. I don't really agree with the assessment that R$ Sims may become grumpy from any of the detrimental factors mentioned... In some of my cities, R$ live in Dickensian workhouse environments which are fully surrounded with the mix of I-D and I-M zones and they thrive there regardless. Pollution has minimal effect on them at all be it water or air borne.

This is all I can think of for now. Perhaps I'll find something else yet. In any case the chart is a fun tool indeed... Truly, I had no idea that Casino is radioactive...  Maybe this is actually an error?