Abandoned buildings

[TealThylacine 9]

So I'm fairly new to this game, and at one point I had two cities that were really prospering, things were great, no huge issues, and only a few black/grey buildings, which I'd bulldoze immediately. It seemed that the RCI demand was always on the up-tick. My latest city is doing well financially, the population is ok, but the grey/black buildings are everywhere. My RCI fluctuates like crazy, and everything is just discombobulated. Residential demand is high, but buildings actually build grey, sometimes build black. C and I buildings are similar, although they aren't in as high of demand. I have no idea why this city (which I've actually demolished and started a few times) isn't working out like my previous ones. I'm doing the exact same thing, and buildings are just not making it. Suggestions?

[Kel9509 1,476]

Try one of the Less Abandonment mods.  I've found that the one linked below is pretty good, as it actually improves the balance of the game.  SimCity has a tendency to build high-wealth residential buildings a lot, which then become abandoned when the overall city or region cannot support them with the necessary jobs.  

This mod works by lowering the threshold for high-wealth buildings to be built, from a 50% threshold to a 20% threshold.  I've been using it in my new game and it works great, because now the city is building low-wealth and medium-wealth skyscrapers.  Those citizens are needed to support the overall job market in the city, since the city can't just be full of rich sims.  A broader base of lower-wealth sims are needed to support growth. 

Note that the Less Abandonment mod linked above conflicts with another mod that reduces traffic noise for residential buildings.  If you're new to the game you should install a lot of the fixes and better mods to fix a lot of the game's issues.  If you want to fix the error for traffic noise and also use the Less Abandonment mod, see  here: 

 

[TealThylacine 9]

Thank you! I've been having to go re-zone everything low wealth, and it somewhat fixes the problem. In my other games all I did was medium wealth and they turned out fine. It's frustrating that whatever I did isn't working now.

[Kel9509 1,476]

You don't zone "wealth", you zone density.  Start with low density, so that sims can move in and build houses.  Make sure you have the basics like police, education, etc.  Switch to medium density when you have several thousand sims in your city.  At around 30 to 40 thousand, you can start switching to high density.  The buildings will grow assuming you have the jobs to support them.  Also, build a neighbor connection but be careful not to build too many (especially making connections that are circular).  Too many bad connections can cause the "endless commuter" loop whereby sims just keep traveling looking for a job.  I build only a few neighbor connections with highways and rail only for now, to avoid that.  

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

Good advice on @Kel9509's part @TealThylacine. Unfortunately, the original game puts too much control into developers hands (which, sort of, is indeed realistic) and this is why many have trouble balancing out their cities.

16 hours ago, Kel9509 said:

You don't zone "wealth", you zone density.

To be honest one can, sort of, zone for wealth too.  For example, if you put some residential areas next to industry and no amenities are found, then most development will indeed be R$. However, if you zone another area amongst some parks and police plus fire coverage, then there is a good chance that these areas will be used by R$$ developers. Place all amenities possible, and the R$$$ will notice.

It's about the preparation of a given area - you can encourage some forms of development if you use certain tools beforehand. Though this is also dependant on the demand of course.

[TealThylacine 9]

I'm further along in my game that is actually working out, and mostly it says there's no demand for anything. Suggestions? I don't have room to expand more for when there is a demand, so I've started to upgrade densities instead. Is that the way to go?

[TealThylacine 9]

Ok, new problem with demand. I've started (and re-started) a city and there seems to be demand for industrial, and some buildings grow at first, but then alll the buildings are abandoned and when I demolish them, nothing grows back. Nothing. What on earth am I doing wrong? Even doing the most basic of city layouts, starting from beginner scratch, the buildings just don't build.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

Tax rates?

[TealThylacine 9]

I literally just started this city. I put it on high speed. Left it on high speed. Nothing happens. I am using cheats for water and power.

[Prophet42 1,503]

Just a theory, maybe one of the cheat mods you are using is affecting the game play.  What version of the game are you using, Origin, Steam or GoG?  The GoG version is the closest to the original and is less likely to be broken when using cheats.  The Origin version is trash and should be avoided.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

On 14.10.2023 at 10:35 PM, TealThylacine said:

I literally just started this city. I put it on high speed. Left it on high speed. Nothing happens. I am using cheats for water and power.

 

Take a look at your infrastructure. It is clear to me that Fuckthishit () has no power lines nor any power plant...

• If it has no power, industry won't grow.
• If industry won't grow, residential zones will have no place to work.
• If there are no places to work, "no job" zots will appear.

Place a power plant near one of the zones and connect the rest with power lines. Power radiates freely within four (I believe?) tiles away from an already powered building, but it doesn't include cross-border zoning!

So even if you have a powered zone right in the neighboring Whatashit, Fuckthisshit will not be plugged into this source unless a neighbor deal is signed. 

[TealThylacine 9]

10 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I'm using power and water cheats.

Take a look at your infrastructure. It is clear to me that Fuckthishit () has no power lines nor any power plant...

• If it has no power, industry won't grow.
• If industry won't grow, residential zones will have no place to work.
• If there are no places to work, "no job" zots will appear.

Place a power plant near one of the zones and connect the rest with power lines. Power radiates freely within four (I believe?) tiles away from an already powered building, but it doesn't include cross-border zoning!

So even if you have a powered zone right in the neighboring Whatashit, Fuckthisshit will not be plugged into this source unless a neighbor deal is signed. 

 

[TealThylacine 9]

14 hours ago, Prophet42 said:

Just a theory, maybe one of the cheat mods you are using is affecting the game play.  What version of the game are you using, Origin, Steam or GoG?  The GoG version is the closest to the original and is less likely to be broken when using cheats.  The Origin version is trash and should be avoided.

Steam. The cheats seem to work, what's the difference?

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

33 minutes ago, TealThylacine said:

Steam. The cheats seem to work, what's the difference?

Some of the mods turn the intended game mechanisms upside-down and may be the reason for some things to break. In other words, they are intended to facilitate one thing but at the same time interfere with many more.

You quoted my reply, but there is no message attached to it - did you want to refer to what I wrote or is it a mistake quote?

[anonymous1234 216]

27 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

Some of the mods turn the intended game mechanisms upside-down and may be the reason for some things to break. In other words, they are intended to facilitate one thing but at the same time interfere with many more.

You quoted my reply, but there is no message attached to it - did you want to refer to what I wrote or is it a mistake quote?

Yes. I can confirm that those cheats can break the game. I tried right now to use the ones that @TealThylacinesaid that he/she used (water and power) and my game gone crazy since I turned them on. Every minute (literally) messages pop up on my screen complaining about my energy management to the point that it nearly doesn't let me play, it's making me a "review bombing". The water one doesn't seem to work, positively or negatively.

When I turn them off everything starts to be normal again, so it has to be some kind of malfunctioning of the cheat. I tried too Weaknesspays and dollyllama (my favourite) This pair work perfectly. I also have the game on Steam.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

The power and water cheats(Extra Cheats) are meant  to distribute utilities out over the tile. You still need a power source and water pump, regardless of how powerful they are. You might want to shorten the distance to work, also.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

39 minutes ago, Cortana said:

Yes. I can confirm that those cheats can break the game.

No - native cheats like "fightthepower" or "howdryiam" cannot break the game. With "break" being understood as the game acting in an unpredictable way.

The fact that your advisors spam you with messages is a normal game mechanism in which they react when a certain problem appears in your city. Advisors cannot tell the difference between a city watered/powered traditional way and one that uses a cheat to satisfy these requirements.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear - I meant mods not "cheats". Like in "specifically scripted, custom-made files" which can be launched into the game through "Plugins" folder. There are quite a few items on this list that can royally mess the game up if used without any reservations. Radical demand mods being one of these.

28 minutes ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

The power and water cheats(Extra Cheats) are meant  to distribute utilities out over the tile. You still need a power source and water pump, regardless of how powerful they are.

Not necessarily. I just made a quick test and one can absolutely grow a city with just cheats in place for power and water plants:

[anonymous1234 216]

53 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

No - native cheats like "fightthepower" or "howdryiam" cannot break the game. With "break" being understood as the game acting in an unpredictable way.

The fact that your advisors spam you with messages is a normal game mechanism in which they react when a certain problem appears in your city. Advisors cannot tell the difference between a city watered/powered traditional way and one that uses a cheat to satisfy these requirements.

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear - I meant mods not "cheats". Like in "specifically scripted, custom-made files" which can be launched into the game through "Plugins" folder. There are quite a few items on this list that can royally mess the game up if used without any reservations. Radical demand mods being one of these.

Not necessarily. I just made a quick test and one can absolutely grow a city with just cheats in place for power and water plants:

Ah, ok. Sorry, I didn't understood you well. My fault. Also I thought that the the game broke or something like that because the advisors are ALWAYS annoing, atleast to me, (that's why I converted them to Llamas) but when I entered the cheat their annoyingness got multiplied like x100 and always speaking about the same again and again. So now that you say it's not a faliure in technical terms, what I do understand is that if you already had enough power plants they're still working but the buildings now doesn't need them and that's why they say that you're "throwing away" energy or something like that? When I turned it off fortunately they went again to their normal pace. And I have a question. Is there a way to turn them off without installing mods? Sorry for asking too much, but I don't a lot about computer games, cheats, mods and all those things, I've been always a console player

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

8 hours ago, Cortana said:

Ah, ok. Sorry, I didn't understood you well. My fault.

No worries. I think the issue is with us having different understanding of what @Prophet42 initially referred to when he said "cheat mods". So in general, the native cheats (i.e.: Those existing in the released game) cannot break the game. Different mods can, however, especially if they are badly coded, go untested etc. As I mentioned earlier, there is a couple of mods that, sadly, have that potential. Luckily, they are hard to find... 

8 hours ago, Cortana said:

And I have a question. Is there a way to turn them off without installing mods?

Yup. See this post for reference. This option is available in the in-game menu somewhere.

 

[anonymous1234 216]

4 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

No worries. I think the issue is with us having different understanding of what @Prophet42 initially referred to when he said "cheat mods". So in general, the native cheats (i.e.: Those existing in the released game) cannot break the game. Different mods can, however, especially if they are badly coded, go untested etc. As I mentioned earlier, there is a couple of mods that, sadly, have that potential. Luckily, they are hard to find... 

Yup. See this post for reference. This option is available in the in-game menu somewhere.

 

Oh, thanks 😉

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that hates the advisors. I think that they at Maxis tried to make a good feature but messed up a lot. I don't know how they were in SimCity 3000, sadly I didn't tried the game. I hope to do it in a future. But I assume they were the same or even worse, considering the game is older.

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

6 hours ago, Cortana said:

I don't know how they were in SimCity 3000, sadly I didn't tried the game. I hope to do it in a future. But I assume they were the same or even worse, considering the game is older.

On the contrary! 

You'll be surprised to know that SC3000 advisors were actually very well balanced and offered advice that was accurate in most cases. Moreover, their tips and even critical remarks never popped up in your face but were either accessible in the news ticker or available after actually opening the advisor window. If you genuinely messed something up, you could notice a red news ticker scrolling in the bottom and this was the only way in which advisors ever outright demanded to be heard.

Also, some of the advisors' statements were semi-permanent. In other words, if you were doing good job managing traffic, Moe Biehl (that was his name) simply held up "No traffic problems" message in his dialogue box, rather than keep on inventing and imagining new things to say.

[anonymous1234 216]

10 minutes ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

On the contrary! 

You'll be surprised to know that SC3000 advisors were actually very well balanced and offered advice that was accurate in most cases. Moreover, their tips and even critical remarks never popped up in your face but were either accessible in the news ticker or available after actually opening the advisor window. If you genuinely messed something up, you could notice a red news ticker scrolling in the bottom and this was the only way in which advisors ever outright demanded to be heard.

Also, some of the advisors' statements were semi-permanent. In other words, if you were doing good job managing traffic, Moe Biehl (that was his name) simply held up "No traffic problems" message in his dialogue box, rather than keep on inventing and imagining new things to say.

Oh wow! That's great. I like the fact that the messages never popped up. That's what irritates me the most in SC4, along with the fact that I don't consider their recommendations actually accurate. Literally yesterday I maxed out my Mayor's index (I'm translating literally from Spanish, I don't know if it's called like that in English) doing the opposite things that the advisors said me to do...

 Well, maybe one day I try to buy SC3000 (or I leave it for Christmas so I have something to put in my "letter"). I hear and read mostly good things about it, so I guess I would like it.

[TealThylacine 9]

Ok, I still can't get cities to actually build. Nothing grows. Even when there is a very high demand, nothing grows. I put down park upon park, made boatloads of roads out of the city, and absolutely NOTHING grows. It's the same in two different cities. Help!

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

The last screenshot of your city that I remember has shown complete lack of a power source. I cannot make this any clearer - your city needs a power plant or a neighbor power line connection to start growing.

For at least a month I will have an excess of free time on my hands so if you like, you can also send me your city or region files and I can have a look at it too.

[TealThylacine 9]

I use fightthepower

[TheMurderousCricket 5,085]

I just made another test on a fresh city with no power plants and "fightthepower" enabled and can only confirm that powering a town up with just the cheat should be perfectly possible.

The fact that nothing at all develops in your cities is very peculiar. However, it is hard to diagnose it without knowing the inner workings of your region and the contents of your plugin folder. I still suggest you simply share your save files so we can run some tests on your cities.

Other than that, the only thing left that still comes to my mind is that you may have a Maxis building blocker dumped somewhere in your plugins. This can ultimately lock out every possible building the game can choose from, leaving you with a city that simply won't develop because all building are overridden.

[rsc204 21,859]

On 28/10/2023 at 9:50 PM, Cortana said:

Yes. I can confirm that those cheats can break the game. I tried right now to use the ones that @TealThylacinesaid that he/she used (water and power) and my game gone crazy since I turned them on. Every minute (literally) messages pop up on my screen complaining about my energy management to the point that it nearly doesn't let me play, it's making me a "review bombing". The water one doesn't seem to work, positively or negatively.

Bottom line here, certain code exists that triggers these messages if certain conditions are true or false, the LUA code that defines them is easily accessible and can be modified too. So imagine one of those messages looks at your Power Generated and Power Used and pops up to warn you that you will need more Power soon, triggered when you have less than a 10% surplus of power. Using the cheat you always have as much power as you need, but you never have more than is needed, there is no excess capacity. So any messages that relate to not having enough surplus capacity are going to be triggered, hence the annoyance.

You could find a mod that makes these messages go away, although if playing normally things like a lack of power you want to know about before it happens. No power (or water) can be disastrous if left unattended in a well built city/region. However if you never intend to build a power network, then suppressing them won't cause any harm.

On 14/10/2023 at 10:35 PM, TealThylacine said:

I literally just started this city. I put it on high speed. Left it on high speed. Nothing happens. I am using cheats for water and power.

Well if those no Road zots are still present (car above Res), then for reasons not immediately explainable, the sims have no path from the res zones to the street in front of them. That’s really a problem, maybe try redrawing the streets or if that fails use roads instead. Just a thought, if you've no Neighbour Connection and the demand is coming from a neighbouring city, without such an NC, sims will have no path to any jobs and no jobs could be fulfilled by sims. So maybe you just need to connect the city to the wider region here?

As for using Power/Water cheats (the later is unimportant since only Power is necessary for buildings to grow), have you checked that these zones are actually powered? Just check the Power Data Tool and it will easily show if zones have power or not. I'm not sure because I don't really use these cheats, but I should think most cheats need to be activated in every new city, it's not stored globally as part of the region. So all else fails, you could simply try re-entering it.