Big city growth

[wonnage 0]

I have a large-ish city, around 200k pop. Whenever I zone a new area it takes like five minutes before any development begins. The game speed is on fastest, I have a gig of ram, demand bars are all almost at max, am I missing something here?

[Mickebear 2]

you need to make sure that you also provide things like water, electricity; if you already did that, also check that your areas are covered by education, health, fire and police.

EDIT: Wonnage, welcome to Simtropolis

[EricN 0]

Cities require alot of number-crunching when they get big. You may need to start lowering your graphics settings to keep things moving.

Something I find useful to do occasionally:

-select the Build Subway Lines tool
-scroll to a corner of the map
-zoom in to level 5
-set the game to turtle speed
-turn of the HUD
-go do something else for 15-20 minutes.

The basic idea is to take some load off your CPU so it can plow through the backlog of commute paths it needs to calculate. I find that this helps speed up gameplay and minimize abandonment because the computer couldn't get around to calculating some sim's commute before too much game-time elapsed.

[Prophet42 1,501]

I have the same issue in my larger cities.  On top of what Mickebear stated, I find what helps spur development is to place a bus stop (or some other public transportation stop) and/or park in the area.  This usally gets things going.  If that doesn't help, try zoning a small commercial or industrial lot near by.  This too will sometimes get sims to move into the area.  Welcome and have fun!

[mrbarham 4]

Great idea, I have had the same problem...

The city is screaming for housing, but wont build...

I am not sure what you mean by HUD though.

thanks for tolerating the $%&^!