aminom

After a small bit of gameplay testing and having learned about how buses work I think I know what the problem is. Currently there is a bug/issue with buses where a whole lot of them will go to other cities instead of servicing the home city. The result is that your jobs are "stolen" by all the agents your buses haul in from other cities instead of hauling your own citizens to their jobs. This is to be fixed in the upcoming patch. For now, this seems to be one of the overwhelming factors when it comes to out of money problems with multi city regions. To fix it, you can either try to satify all the excess job demand somehow so there's enough to fully service both your citizens and the excess from other cities, or somehow restrict and localize your transportation network (maybe using few buses and more streetcars.) If anyone seems to be seeing this bus issue (keep track of individual buses) or are not seeing it please tell.

If I am wrong about anything, please correct me! There's still a whole lot that I don't know, but I will try to examine what I think is happening. If only we could share saves You have tons of commuters, which is probably the most important factor. Does anyone know how commuters work on a deep level? if Grimhood has 30k low wealth worker commuters, 17k worker residents, and 24 k jobs, wouldn't there be massive competition, or is there some check that makes sure that local workers are satisfied first? Also a bit more information would help (Not your fault, we need save sharing!) about what type of buildings are being abandoned. If they are low-class residential and tend to get abandoned nearer to city exits, this probably means that your workers are competing with commuters. Try zoning about 10 high density low wealth commercial buildings and maybe a couple of medium wealth as well bunched against your rail line right next to train stations. You want to bunch them so that they can absorb the commuter sources that you have so much of, so that the rest of your commercial buildings around your city can satify local shopping demand. Another factor is that it is my understanding that buildings aren't simply open or closed, but have different efficiencies based on how satisfied they are. For example if a building barely has enough workers to stay open, it will generate less money and goods than if it is fully staffed. A high density $$C building requires 400 $ workers, 200$$ workers, and 70 $$$ workers for example. If this analysis is correct, since you lack a whole lot of $$$ Workers it could help the problem by making your commercial jobs not only give more money to their workers but also produce more goods to satisfy more shopping demand per building. http://sccalc.com/ is an essential tool to find out how many building you need and what kind of jobs buildings provide. For example the wealth level of a commercial building is mostly about what kind of customers it services, as a hi density $$$ building will give 200 $ jobs, 300 $$ jobs and 120 $$$ jobs.

The most important thing is to not make one massive residential area and do the same for the other zone types. This will make no job zots pop up because the sims cannot get to all the jobs. Spread out your zones, and make small clusters of residential zones so that commute times are short. The route query tool is invaluable- use it on a commercial or industrial zone to check to see how many workers are physically traveling to a job, then compare this to the job capacity when you normal query it. If there is a large difference, it's because the zone is too far away from suitable residential zones for the workers to get to it. You can either zone another small section of residential close to it, or add more bus stops, or train/sub routes. Other important issue is to control your rich sims. At the default 9% tax level, they will storm into your city in droves, go crazy looking for jobs, and hop from zone to zone, leaving delapidation in their wake. In the beginning I raise my R$$$ taxes to 10.5% or even more, and after I have R$ and R$$ established, will lower it just so that they seep in until they are around 7%-10% of the population. I'll then raise the tax rate until the demand is -3000; halfway in full negative. This seems to stabilize them at a good point. When you think sim transportation, you need to think stupid Sims will always use the _most direct_ route, not the fastest, or even the shortest. That is, if a job is say, 20 spaces north and 12 west of a residence, they will try to take the paths that follow that route even if it takes them off into a weird, long detour. Learn to channel the flow of your sims- most times simple grids can be very ineffective for this. When you plan something like a highway, you need to think where your sims want to go from where they are. Do some route querying to see what paths they actually take, then think if it will really be beneficial if they use something like a highway as opposed to other means such as mass transit and rails. If so, build your highway and force your sims to take it by eliminating all other paths such as secondary roads they could take to get to their jobs. Think of it as like a bottleneck; you want the highway to be the physical bottleneck in your transportation system, but as it has high capacity and high speeds it can handle taking all the traffic directed towards it.

I'm guessing that the reason why this happens is that bridges and tunnels are in the same sort of object class as the connection thing. Ahen you reconcile, it re-creates all of your neighbor connections from scratch, and if other things are in the same object class... obliteration.

I'm with majormommy- the click for cash lots are great. I use the "reset" one that resets your funds to 1 million. I will only use it at the start of the city (if I plan to construct the whole thing in one go) and never during the game. As I get more experienced in the game, I cheat less and less, and eventully I won't need crutches. Simcity is one game that it is perfectly okay to cheat in the beginning without ruining the game

Bones1 I just got through downloading your mod and "converting" a region that used the quadrupler by adding more industry and utilities. I am much more happy with this mod because it is more balanced and that cheating feeling is much less Thanks for the mod. The added pollution is greatly appreciated... I "zone" for R$ using industry pollution, and with the quadrupler I couldn't get a nice. big, red pollution blotch that R$$ or R$$$ wouldn't touch

Nah I am still a relative newbie at the game, so no CJ or anything like that. Maybe I will after I am much more experienced (and have downloaded more stuff). For the Mayan city thing, traffic from level to level is done with subways that function more like ped elevators- most are 3-4 tiles long but very high. I used the underground elevation mod for this. Car use is really small, and bus use high, but there's some traffic problems. Here is a HUGE tip: digitier pens (wacom etc) Rock for almost everything in simcity. I have a lowly 1st gen graphire and it makes precise terraforming easier. Yes they are somewhat expensive but they are also incredibly useful for graphic programs such as photoshop. Here's the city developed Region pic Been messing around with rock/water mods, so it looks funny.

As far as I've heard this is impossible, but the normal tools can do something similar. First level out your basic stuff with the quicklevel tool. A good detail tool is the normal godmode quicklevel tool, with its circle set to three squares in diameter (you can change the diameters by changing zoom levels and by holding down shift and a number from 1-10.) Use this to touch-up sides and corners, but use it carefully. Here's a city I'm making that uses this a lot (probably too much):

Thanks for the comments South of Midgar (the above city) is Junon. Because Midgar has so few rich from a high R$$$ tax rate, this smaller city is nearly half R$$$. I need to download some RCI growables to add diversity As well as more of evverything from this site Each of the five levels has five subway stations, each with independant lines to the other levels without any line cross-overs. I had some difficulty in making it- both in figuring hwo to draw the subways so they don't interccross, and having to space the stations so that they are not adjacent, so that trains don't jump tracks. I need to duplicate the system on the other side of the city's central structure. This is the look I'm trying to get in Midgar but it is more difficult with that city because of the circle walls and all the diagonal angles. Here's a plan view of the city. I'll bet those workers in the buildings on the raised peninsula thing don't like planes buzzing past their windows all day, but at least they have a nice view This is a view of the trans network called "The Circuit." Surrounding the stations are ped malls and bus stations. There's 10 independant sub lines This view shows the sub traffic and some of the routes.

this city is part of a region I am making with some unusual transportation infrastructures and zone superstructures. the region is heavy on medium density. This city is still under construction. When finished, the core is going to have 4 central final-stage towers, surrounded by other c and r towers, and the walls of the city will be completed with the texturing, to be made to look liek they are made of solid concrete and steel rather than dirt embankments.

This city has five levels. Transportation among the levels will be performed on a transit system called The Circuit. On each level is a cluster of four subways, each going on an independant track for another level without any lines crossing over.So, if you are a sim, you can go from one level directly to another on a train that only goes from the chosen level to another. This city is still in the beginning of constructed and I'm interested to see how this will work.

You have lots of connections and traffic. Maybe it is something else?To me it seems that to get a lot of commercial demand you need to have lots of industry (especially high-tech) and very good education/health. This makes sense because industry supports commerce (you can't sell goods unless they are first made) and education and good health are needed for service/office as opposed to a factory job. All else failing, plop plazas in the undeveloped area.

Great ring city Gnargenox! I'm a big fan of unusual symmetrical transportation structures and grids. Recently I made a residential ziggurat designed like one of the aztec pyramids using Smoncrie's raisers, with boulevards as the "stairs." I think I'll see how the idea works with rings instead of concentric squares...

I'm rather new to simcity 4 as well and had many of the same problems. I feel as if I am beginning to get a hold of the game. The main key is to not grow to quickly; zone low and medium density ONLY to start for commercial and residential, then at you try to reach 100,000 sims and beyond, zone a few high-density R, but not any commercial. This is to allow the education of the medium-density R zones to get very high which will transfer when you zone the density of the zone up. so you won't get delapidation or outright abandonment as much. Similarly for C, if you have a bunch of high-denisty and little mid, as demand waxes and wanes you may end up with ugly delapidation. A city with a few occupied C and R towers and much more lower denisty is a whole lot more efficient and visually appealing than a skyscraper forest with half of the "trees" completely black and with rolling cycles of delapidation. In the end,You should have a good amount of commercial and indistrual sprawl but a semi-compact residential region(s) that allows to maximize all those fussy services residential needs, as well as giving you more direct control over commute routes. Regional play is almost essential. I've played with specialty cities but find that completely specializing a city can make for many headaches. It's better to have cities that are heavy in C, R, or I, but still have some of the other types as well. For example, in one region I've just started, the first one I filled is a complete mix of all types of R, C, and I, with no high-density R or C. Due to an inbalance during its development where were roming waves of unemployed R$$$ that caused one part of the city to have delapidation to R$$. I Still need to fix the delapidation even though it is now stable. The second is heavy in commercial services and high-tech, with many of the high-tech jobs claimed by the first city. The most recent city features a single residental area a fourth of the map in size. Completed, all of the residental buildings are zoned for high-density, and many are towers, wit some midrises, and no delapidation. There's lots of commercial office, with some high-density, and mild office delapidation. There's also extensive high-tech with no other industry as early the jobs from the second city supported the learning populace while the R zoning was still medium density. All cities are connected with heavy rail and dedicated high-speed bus lines using the ANT network which cars do not travel upon.

I'm new to Simcity and have been a forum lurker for a bit. I've read nearly the entire thread and I commend you all for attempting such an interesting idea, even if it did not come to fruitition.