Peorth

Maybe you can try running the simulation for a bit and see if anything changes. The worker request agents and extra system might need some time before they start working properly. The whole employment system in SC2013 is explained in great detail at the official site: http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/the-workers-of-simcity

The weak commuting infrastructure in SC2013 is exactly the reason why I make all my cities compartmentalized in terms of jobs and education. Never rely on other cities to provide these two things. In contrast, utilities work as they should so power, sewage processing, water, etc. can readily be shared between cities in a region.

Indeed, I discovered quite early on that balancing demand in SC2013 is an exercise in futility. If you zone R they'll demand C for shopping while C will demand I for freight. If you try to fulfill the shopping needs of your R (no unsatisfied shoppers) you'll need more C which will need more I, which in turn demands more R than can be satisfied by your C. It's essentially a vicious cycle that has no ending. Well, in the end all my cities end up having a shortage of workers because an absurdly small number of Sims work (~10%) relative to the total population. Well, workplaces don't need 100% employment to function anyway so I've become used to ignoring the nagging advisor saying I need more workers.

Nope, it has nothing to do with mods. It has always been present in SC2013 but it only occurs intermittently, and is more of a nuisance than anything else.

Indeed, gambling cities are really the worst crime generators. You'll definitely need precincts for those, whereas other cities will do well with just police stations as long as the population is adequately educated. Since you're making a guideline, the grammar Nazi in me is telling me to give some suggestions: First of all "All mayors must maintain criminal activity" is frankly wrong. To "maintain" means to sustain, and hence it means you want criminal activity to continue. Instead, you should state it this way: "All mayors must control criminal activity" "All mayors must limit criminal activity" Second, you don't "raise" a police force, rather you should maintain an adequate police force.

From what I recall, it happens sometimes when you access the Details tab of the Population panel. I think you can make it appear again by pressing Esc to exit the Population panel and pressing the right mouse button.

Sorry, but can you elaborate more on what you exactly want to do? I also don't understand what you're asking.

I have a few cities where I have 100% attendance but those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Majority don't, with 4 to 4.5 hats as you've described. I've noticed this for a long time now, the incomplete education of a city's students despite low traffic and presence of vacant desks (and as always I attribute it to some bug which seem to abound in SC2013). However I don't regard this phenomenon as "education has gone down the toilet," as originally described by the threadstarter because it isn't severe enough to cripple the city. As long as the education doesn't dip too low, say, 3 hats the industries don't complain of the lack of skilled workers which given long enough causes them to abandon. It would be nice if this bug is fixed though.

I actually use the whole range of schools in my cities except universities, which I only use for a few in a region since unlocks are region-wide anyway. I don't find the upper tech levels relevant for certain specializations and I never use nuclear plants because of the possibility of radiation contamination if a disaster hits the plant. About the second issue, "students flooding your schools robbing your students education" how is this demonstrated while running the simulation? It's kinda counterintuitive how many students coming to school will cause a decrease in education.

I dunno which videos you're referring to but you'll want the highest density buildings (not mid density ones or apartments) because they pack the most sims per area. If you look at Cartwheels' screenshot of his 1.6M city you'll see that practically all the buildings are high-density ones. For employment, it was mentioned earlier than one technique is to zone purely commercial (no industry). However AFAIK that approach is no longer be feasible because an update changed the RCI dynamics so that commercial happiness is linked to receiving freight. Without industry to supply freight commercial will abandon. Personally, I don't care about city population at all. I always create substantial amounts of medium- and high-wealth zones which is more realistic and pleasing to the eye but limits the population (since you pack less sims per area as you go up the wealth brackets).

Pretty much my sentiments. I suppose there are terrible games out there where five minutes is enough to judge them as worthless but SC2013 is far from it. Besides, I don't understand how "the graphics are terrible" unless the thread starter is using an ancient computer that doesn't support the high graphics settings.

Why are there five issues for "The two biggest issues are:"? Kidding aside, I do watch education carefully, particularly the display that shows the number of educated/uneducated students and those waiting at bus stops. I usually run the simulation for a while with that display enabled to see the dynamics of the education process. And like I said earlier, I haven't encountered any serious education-related issues. At the most I've had that nagging message about the lack of skilled workers for a single factory, which didn't disappear despite having good education. A simple bulldoze resolved the issue. I know everyone has different playing styles regarding education. I tend to use grade schools frequently (despite being less "bang-for-buck") because they offer the most buses and I use those buses to scour students off the map. If this is evidence-based I have no idea.

Well, no program takes three days to install so you should have cancelled it earlier and retried the installation. Have you done this?

I think might help you.

The official Simcity page about Universities seems to suggest otherwise: "Dorms provide students to the university without the need to build up more residential. They also allow many students to get to class without adding to traffic near the beginning of classes." I wonder how common this education bug is because I've never encountered it despite plopping the whole range of schools (excluding universities) in most of my cities. Even those with universities have escaped the bug so far.

You're missing the point though, because there will always be bad games regardless of what genre it is, and it only proves making a successful game is no easy task. Rather, in the overall scheme of things a person is more likely to go for something less cerebral and/or has a higher or more immediate fun/action factor like FPS games over calm and arguably boring games like city simulators. Indeed, I think most games (especially FPS ones) have limited replay value because once you're done with it then that's that. Simcity certainly has great replayability factor because of the nature of the game, though honestly I think SC2013 has the least (well at least compared to SC4) mainly because of the frustratingly small city size. Regarding games where you can dump a lot of hours in (and pay more for that fix), it actually reminds me of another game of a completely different genre: Skyrim. Several DLCs help Skyrim's replayability and longevity, but I believe a major factor supporting this is the huge modding community. It allows people to tweak the game in a tremendous number of ways and alter the vanilla version significantly. I guess if we related it to the SC series the closest would be SC4.

In other words, there ain't enough nerds playing city simulators to make them profitable. After all, these kinds of games are more likely to bore people than just about any other kind of game: city simulators -- requires patience (a lot of it), a lot of thinking/planning, a lot of micromanagement, NO action real-time strategy games (e.g. Starcraft) -- requires thinking and planning, a lot of micromanagement, LOTS of action first-person shooters (e.g. Call of Duty) -- requires some thinking and planning, some degree of management, LOADS of action There you have it: the more onerous the requirements and less exciting it is, the lesser players you have and the higher the "nerdiness" required to play the game -- which IMHO makes the players of Simcity (and other simulators) somewhat special, in the positive sense of the word.

You might want to check out this previous discussion:

I have no issues with getting taller buildings, but frankly I'd rather they fix more important things first. Stuff like city size, or if not this, at least things like RCI balance which is hopelessly screwed up.

Swiss Miss and a small cinnamon roll. Guess I have a sweet tooth

It's related to the whole Chuck Norris meme/jokes, where the main idea is that he's incredibly strong, e.g: In other words the Nazis surrendered out of fear of him.

Animated gif time... Kids, it's not a good idea to drop a firecracker inside a sewer manhole...

Planetarium by Daishi Dance - purely instrumental and could actually be used as a background music piece for SC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SqjHPsZ4GU *Listening with a 1000$ custom in-ear monitor