Negative Mayor rating bug - Is it stuck?

[Hamstead 27]

So I built a city over the last few days, and the mayor rating is stuck around -80 no matter what I do.

I partially pre-built infrastructure before zoning and letting Sims move in, so I'd rather not scrap the map if I can help it, I put a lot of work into it - and I'm not sure if it could happen again!

Here's what I've tried:

My game is modded, but I have other cities running the same mod set with no rating issues. I did add a few new mods/lots in the last day. I tested them in my other (unaffected) cities - no negative effect on rating, nice and green. I also removed the latest mods in bulk from my plugins and ran the game - did not rectify the issue.

To isolate it further, I bulldozed/un-zoned everything on the map in question (above and below ground) until population and rating both hit 0, then rebuilt a small test town using only vanilla assets and setting taxes etc. to default. The moment population starts growing again, the rating tanks right back down. This is the strangest one as I am effectively starting a fresh map, yet I have tried starting a fresh map like this and the Mayor rating behaves normally!

The Mayor rating window doesn't show anything unusual. Perhaps my citizens seem to be more sensitive to pollution than normal? But even when I rectify that - i.e. garbage in neighbouring city, clean energy only, spamming trees in god mode to get a very good environmental rating, it still does nothing?

So it seems tied to this specific city save rather than any mod, lot, or my building choices. Has anyone seen this before, or know what else drives mayor rating that could get "stuck" like this at the save level? Thank you.

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,926]

This really, really sounds like a bug @11241036 (iirc) described one time. I believe that was tied to some embankment wall with a super high park or landmark aura per piece. When bulldozing them en masse, the game gets confuzzled on reversing that, slips a gear, and sets something internal to a hug negative.

Your case might be similar or the same if you've used and bulldozed embankment walls. Or was it canal pieces? (I'm forgetting the details. And it might be one @Null 45 made a fix for? I know they did for runaway pollution.)

[Hamstead 27]

Thanks for the reply @CorinaMarie!

It does sound like it could be something like this. I can confirm it's neither canal pieces or embankment walls because I haven't used any of those.

I may have to go back and think of what I put in the map when building it and deleted, adding them into a new map and deleting them one by one... or adding them back in to see if it bumps it up again!

I don't know if it makes a difference, but I didn't run the game (i.e. gain a population or rating) before the rating went negative - it just went there right off the bat.

[Null 45 3,133]

35 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

And it might be one @Null 45 made a fix for? I know they did for runaway pollution.)

I have not made any DLLs that fix a mayor rating bug, but it wouldn't be hard to make one if this is a common bug. 

19 minutes ago, Hamstead said:

I don't know if it makes a difference, but I didn't run the game (i.e. gain a population or rating) before the rating went negative - it just went there right off the bat.

My Query UI Extensions DLL has mayor rating as part of its extended terrain query, I am curious what the cell numbers would be on that map.

One thing you could try after making a backup of the save game and clearing the tile is opening it in the Reader and deleting the entry with the type id 0x0990bdd8. This would remove the aura simulator data from the save. Clearing the tile is necessary to keep the game state from going out of sync, as the aura simulation is being reset to its Establish City state.

[Hamstead 27]

9 hours ago, Null 45 said:

My Query UI Extensions DLL has mayor rating as part of its extended terrain query, I am curious what the cell numbers would be on that map.

Thanks so much for the response. The pollution hotspots (i.e. industry and power plants) are reading around 394 for pollution. I'm not sure what's considered normal. Residential zones are reading 0.

I also installed your Clear Pollution mod which didn't rectify anything - so appears to be a different issue.

Environment does seem to be what this bug is related to as it's the only red bar in the opinion polls. Spamming ungodly numbers of trees (to the point there's not much room to zone anything) via God mode still only has a marginal effect on the Mayor rating, even if the environment bar turns healthily green.

9 hours ago, Null 45 said:

One thing you could try after making a backup of the save game and clearing the tile is opening it in the Reader and deleting the entry with the type id 0x0990bdd8. This would remove the aura simulator data from the save. Clearing the tile is necessary to keep the game state from going out of sync, as the aura simulation is being reset to its Establish City state.

I've not used Reader before but will take a look.

[simster007 404]

The same thing happened to me once after I built seawalls and then tore them down again. See page 2 in this old topic:

 

 

[Null 45 3,133]

3 hours ago, Hamstead said:

Thanks so much for the response. The pollution hotspots (i.e. industry and power plants) are reading around 394 for pollution. I'm not sure what's considered normal. Residential zones are reading 0.

That query also has the mayor rating value for the cell, IIRC it is somewhere above the pollution values.

[11241036 5,120]

@Hamstead @CorinaMarie I'm sharing Corina's opinion, it seems to me that you've plopped something in your city that increases mayor rating to a point where it was above 200. The game cannot go above 200. But when you remove said building, it just removes the mayor rating, without double checking in a certain area/city how high it should be after considering other buildings and other factors that have an influence on mayor rating.

Under your circumstances, you can only either wipe out your city (just manually bulldozing everything won't do, you need to use the Obliterate City function in the God Mode menu), wait for someone to make a DLL mod that fixes that, or use a dirty trick (please check the link below, I don't want to write this several times).

In general, if you want to know what plugins/buildings are responsible for that: I've downloaded much stuff, and I've seen many landmarks, especially churches, having a Mayor Rating property. Also, as Corina already mentioned, the JS Seawalls can really cause much trouble, because most people would plop a lot of them, making mayor rating jump to crazily high values (and drop after being demolished). If that is feasible for you, you might try to recall which buildings you have installed and them removed with the bulldozer.

I found the post Corina mentioned here: https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/764144-negative-mayor-rating/?do=findComment&comment=1811237

[Hamstead 27]

Thanks everyone.

I tried @Null 45's suggestion of removing the 0990bdd8 entry in Reader and that seems to have solved it. The Mayor rating appears to be behaving as expected. Pollution still seems to be behaving weirdly at least in a ratings sense - it doesn't seem to be affecting desirability or anything negatively. At the very least I've stopped the constant riots!

I did try and recall what I had plopped but nothing seemed to have an effect. Maybe it'll come to mind as I play the game, but I'll live with how things are for now.