Spinmaster

Yes, if you're brand new to NAM, there are several different "simulators" as there are many opinions as to what factors weigh in "realistic" pathfinding. Each has had extensive research, often with math that would spin Hawking's head. Some are relatively new, some are "old favorites" left in the package to appease those who don't want to change from their older simulator, even if it's not as good as the newer ones. Obviously, installing a new simulator means significant changes to your traffic patterns, congestion where you hadn't seen it before, empty highways that were full before, etc.... It's usually for the sake of more realistic pathfinding, but it still forces a would-be mayor to compensate at least some. Those with massively-developed regions and/or long-running CJ's may be less inclined to do so. The documentation with NAM explains each simulator fairly well. The best advice is to read about them, and decide for yourself which to install. Nobody can say which is really the best one, only the best one "for me." Because of this I presume, yes, the default simulator when you install NAM is the default "nothing changed."

NAM (Network Addon Mod), if you don't already have it. Primarily it makes the pathfinding much more intelligent, nevermind the wealth of other features it adds, like roundabouts, ground light rail, elevated road and ramp pieces. And then there are the add-ons to the add-on; SAM (different street textures), RAM (single-track rail and more), RHW (Rural Realistic Highways), HSR (High Speed Rail)... they do love their acronyms, by the way.

"Abandoned due to commute time" actually has two possible meanings: 1. They left because the commute time to the jobs they had became too high... this one is obvious, usually it's an issue with traffic; find the clogs, improve the networks, add more MT, etc... 2. They left because they can't find jobs at all, not within a tolerable commute time anyway... this may be the same solutions, or you may in fact be out of jobs entirely and have to zone for more There is a no-job zot over buildings as you've noticed, but unfortunately there's no corelated "Abandoned due to unemployment" status for the building queries. If you're watching your city often enough though, you'll notice the no-job zot appears over a building usually a couple months before the sims actually abandon it. This means if you catch the unemployment in time, and explore the graphs and views to troubleshoot why it's happening, you can often prevent the abandonment. Unfortunately the game doesn't really have any data view or graph to directly show unemployment. There is the jobs & population graph, but it only shows numbers for who's actually working, not who wants to but can't.

Note about #1, bigthing is almost correct. The trash in the landfill decays, it does so according to how much trash there is in it. When it gets down to that last little bit, it can take seemingly forever. Whether or not that time is realistic is certainlly debatable, but that it happens that way isn't a "bug." There are actually a few mods around that can speed that up if you wish. There is a bonafide bug though - any less-than-2-wide landfill e.g. 1 x m tiles in size won't decay at all. This is especially noticeable if you see what appears to be a 1/4 fragment of a trash heap all by itself. The simulator can't decay it (seems as if it rounds something down and sees zero trash to decay), but you can't simply dezone it either, because there is still actually some trash there. There is no fix for this, but a simple heads-up: don't dezone a 2x2 landfill until the entire thing is empty, even if the game lets you do so. If you search "garbage" or "trash" or other such terms in STEX you'll find several other options, some radical, some cheating, some very realistic. Note that if you drop the WTE plant's funding to $0, it'll still burn trash, just not produce electricity... most consider that cheating, but that certainly doesn't mean you can't do it . Pegasus has a couple of garbage docks for shipping garbage out - a realistic solution that doesn't pollute, unlike the WTE plant. He also has a couple of garbage "chutes" basically dumping garbage off the edge of the flat city. Realistic? To us, who live on a round planet, no. But the sims live in Columbus' worst nightmare... so you decide.

C:\Users\****\Appdata\Local\temp\Autorun..... The specified file was not found.quote> I wonder if this is the same bug Google's Picasa seems to have (or at least did, haven't reloaded or updated it in a while). It has/had a problem with not being able to see and scan for pictures through hidden and system folders, which are for better or worse part of the user profile paths in Vista. Try unhiding the **** (name) folder (don't propogate though), and see if RH can install then. As for the blank screen without RH... that sounds like a video driver issue, but I can't say for sure. Most folks have Deluxe (SC4 + RH in one installation) by now. A bad video driver would have the same effect regardless, but if it's an issue with the separate vanilla/RH installations specifically, you're looking for someone who a) also has the separate vanilla + RH, b) installed it on Vista 64-bit, and c) had the same problem.

Hard to make anything out in those pictures, they're terribly small. But the second one, hard to tell but I think I'm seeing a "missing props" thing, peg's if I'm not mistaken. That would indicate you probably do have some custom lots there, and several of them. Any idea what they are? Possibly the source of the water pollution (plus of course the missing dependencies). If you can fix the picture issue someone might be able to identify the lots (probably not me, I don't use an aweful lot of custom RCI).

In a brand-spanking-new region, IA demand is modest, ID and R$ will be low, CS$ is "just barely", and IM is non-existent (requires at least a little education and wealth, for one). But I agree there's probably a bug at work. I've experienced it myself once before, in a region that was empty to start - good little ol' Fairview. Problem was, I had built up a massive infrastructure, zoned the daylights out of it, basically it was a completely stenciled city right from the start, as of day one of the city, paused the whole time while building. Soon as I unpaused it, about 80 sims moved in... then instant negative demand across the board. No jobs built. No more residents. The 80 that had moved in were unemployed and quickly abandoned. I hadn't touched taxes, hadn't obliterated anything, just started with the original virgin region, no content I hadn't used before or ever had a problem with before, nothing out of the ordinary. It was as if I'd named the city Prypiat. I even checked the radiation data view out of a whim, but of course that showed nothing. But it really did seem like the simulator "thought" the whole city was blanketed or something, same essential effect anyway. It's very rare to see negative R$ or ID demand without jacking up taxes, they'll pretty much build anywhere you let them, if the higher-wealths don't take over first. They'll live under red air pollution, they'll build next to a landfill. They might riot but even crime doesn't seem to send them packing. Radiation is about the only thing that really drives them away (again, aside from ridiculous taxes). I obliterated it of course. Reloaded the city, and sure enough - everything was "normal". Even let the simulator run with the empty city for a couple months just to be sure. Then I paused and proceeded to rebuild everything as before, same general layout and all. Everything was fine this time. I didn't even restart the game, just obliterated and restarted the city itself. "Bug" doesn't seem to really describe it. A "bug" is normally reproducible under unusual circumstances (even if nobody can figure out what those circumstances are). This was more like a "random feature" I suppose. Needless to say I learned the hard way, don't pause-and-build instantly when starting a new city, let the simulator run a bit. Build or don't build meanwhile, but let the simulator "prime" itself early on one way or another.

In fact, there is an excellent table on SC4Devotion for this. Also, the 10/80/10 figure for IHT is the game's default, without a fix. This fix by HeinBloed4711 adjusts it to 12/78/10.

If you're new to the game, it's highly advised to: 1. Run through the in-game tutorials; these are great for understanding the mechanics of the game 2. Peruse some of the articles in the Omnibus, there are some excellent "getting started" articles for understanding general strategies Before long you'll be asking the familiar opposite question: "how do I keep the rich sims out?!?!?" Seriously, while it sounds glamorous to have an all-rich city, keeping the rich under control is in fact usually one of the biggest challenges in this game even for seasoned players, once they have a developed region. One of the least realistic things about the game is that, if you provide everyone with good education and other civic services, then everyone becomes smart and eventually rich. Not just everyone could... everyone does. Problem is, you need by far most of the residential population to be low and mid-wealth, to demand the high-wealth jobs (the company may be rich, that doesn't mean its employees are), which in-turn only employ a very small ratio of rich sims. High-wealth commercial office, for example, is only 15% full of rich workers, and that's the highest for any of the jobs. The other 85% is all mid- and low-wealth workers. Dirty industry, farms, and low-wealth commercial services - which is probably all you have demand for job-wise anyway - don't employ any rich sims (some custom ones do, but very few if any).

A picture would tell a thousand words in this case, with and without the water pollution data view turned on. I believe there's some confusion as to the source of the water pollution in the first place. As you describe, it almost sounds like the highway itself is doing it, but few would agree that's possible, not to the extent you're seeing it anyway. Airports do generate somewhat high water (and air, and garbage) pollution, but nothing off-the-chart usually. Two things I can imagine: 1. lots of industry; note that even high-tech can pollute some, though nowhere near as much as dirty, manufacturing, and farming of course; but you've said it's nowhere near the pollution anyway, so... 2. one or two bad lots - maybe but not necessarily industry - that have an unreasonably high water pollution stat about them. This isn't terribly common, but it certainly does happen, and there are some custom-content creators that love to make evil buildings, or just didn't realize what they were doing at the time, that have high pollution or other out-of-whack stats. Look for any custom buildings around the center of the worst of the pollution, then use iLive's Reader or a similar tool and see what water pollution it produces. It's not likely one of the Maxis lots, though even that is theoretically possible. This is rarely a problem with the highly-reputed creators, but even from them some of their older lots (when the Lot Editor was all there was) have stats problems, such as bus stops with nothing but a bench consuming as much power as an airport. For one-hit-wonders especially though, definitely get familiar with one of the data tools and get used to using it, at least to look at the stats of a new lot before you start using it. Seek advice before changing any of them though. Some tweaks are harmless adjustments/fixes... others can throw things irrecoverably out of balance.

Sorry to ask a "duh" question, but... that highway you have... there are entrance/exit ramps, too, right? Just thought I'd ask, I don't see any ramps in the pictures, or are they just out-of-frame?

Among other things check your education - CO$$$ requires well-educated sims, of all wealth levels (primarily mid and low; only about 15% high-wealth workers). Note that if you had a mass-exodus of residents from any particular city, then suddenly "they came back" - well actually nobody came back, they're new uneducated sims who aren't smart enough to demand CO$$$ yet. Dunno if that happened to you at any point, just something to keep in mind in case it did or does.

If you're looking to correct R$$$ unemployment with high-tech industry, you will need this bug fix if you don't already have it. Long story short: there's a bug in the game that prevents the IHT lots from actually offering jobs for R$$$, even though up to 10% of the workforce in IHT is supposed to be high-wealth. The highlighted download should fix that by slightly altering the ratio.

Sort of. Depending on the simulator you've chosen, most of them improve the pathfinding substantially. Without NAM the game chooses the shortest possible route by distance - meaning your sims will bee-line it through neighborhoods on low-speed streets, if using a highway means going even just a block or two out of the way. With NAM the paths are effectively chosen by travel time - so they'll behave more like "we" would when driving somewhere, using major, faster routes etc.... Note that the jobs is still worth considering though. Demand mod or not, if you don't have enough low and mid wealth sims to occupy the jobs in a commercial office, that office can't support the rich workers, either. And dilapidation is still a possibility.

Hmm... I thought by now someone would have mentioned this possibility: maybe the R$$$ sims complaining they don't have jobs actually don't have jobs? Keep in mind, a rich company is not full of rich employees - only 15% of CO$$$ workers are high-wealth. The rest is all mid and low. And that's the highest % there is for rich workers; IHT is 10% (that's the spec, but due to a bug, in fact zero rich sims can work in IHT - but there is a fix on STEX for that). It drops sharply after that. Moral: you need a lot more mid and low wealth sims than rich ones, otherwise the rich become easily unemployed. Check your demand graph, if you have extreme demand for low and mid-wealth sims, but not so much rich, then you have a lot of high-wealth jobs that don't have enough mid and low-wealth workers. So long as that's the case you won't get much more development of jobs for the high-rollers, either. Note that the low and mid-wealth sims need to be well-educated, as well, otherwise they'll only demand and work in low(er) wealth jobs. Another possibility: consider that buildings can dilapidate. This does more than make them dirty and ugly, it also decreases the wealth-level of the jobs occupying them. So that giant CO$$$ skyscraper might now just be CO$$, which employs far fewer high-wealth sims. And whatever caused that one skyscraper to degrade most likely will cause others to as well. In fact, simply being next to a lower-wealth building (via initial development or dilapidation) is a NIMBY to the higher-wealth development. Dilapidation is almost a viral effect, if it's not caught and treated early it can spread until the entire city is full of dirty or even abandoned buildings. Long story short: you could well be facing SC4's version of a recession. Look for a lot of dilapidated buildings around the jobs area, and do what you can to correct the situation. Check the desirability, land value, and mayor rating data views, and correlate with things like pollution, traffic volume, garbage, crime, etc.... A few plazas or even a nice landmark can also go a long way. Of course, it could indeed be just the commuting. Just don't assume it's that simple - it rarely is in this game.

"A" slope mod vs. terraforming, those are your only real options I'm afraid. Note I put "A" in quotes though - there are several of them, on here and at SC4Devotion, not to mention a dozen other sites. They all have different assortments of gradients applied to the networks (and one slope mod by Ennedi on SC4D comes with three varieties for mountainous terrain, smooth terrain, and "medium", i.e. in between). But they're all used the same way, altering the max gradient for each of the networks. And the only way to switch them (or any mod) off is to exit, remove the mod, and restart the game. Yes, it does suck sometimes. All I can say is, I feel for ya. Note that you don't have to use the same network you make the slope for though. I often use rails to build smooth ramps, particularly for bridges, but not "for" rail. Use the rail to draw the slope, then bulldoze the rail and lay the avenue. It works wonders. I presume you also have joerg's Bridge Height Mod (prevents the game building its own bridge approach ramps, which it usually does very poorly)? As for terraforming causing destruction... nope, there's no way to prevent it except being very very careful. Think about it - you're "god" in that mode. Destroyed roads and buildings aren't your problem.

Originally posted by: Hybr1d Is ID and IM needed at first when you first start a region? Then when you get your sims educated in the region can you eliminate ID and IM?quote> Simply put: yes. Strictly: no, but it'll be very very vvvvvvveeeeerrrrrrryyyyy slow-going early on. Uneducated sims - which is all you start out with in a new region - don't demand very many commercial jobs. And without other jobs, you won't get many sims at first. So you have to wait until that first small batch is educated enough to demand a little more commercial, which in turn will demand a few more residents, which you then have to educate before they add much to the commercial demand, and round and round ya go. But why would you want to do this anyway? If I answered your thread title based on "real world" vs. SC4, the answer would be "industry is absolutely needed!!!!!!!" Now, if you're concerned about the low number of jobs offered by most industry in the game, and thus how much space industry ends up consuming - which is a very common gripe (putting aside the debate about whether or not it's realistic) - there are a few industry jobs multipliers on STEX (2x, 3x, 4x, and I think there's even a 16x... serious overkill IMO, but to each their own).

This is one of the fun paradoxes in SC4: is it "cheating" to tweak a building, for the sake of overcoming an unrealistic weakness in the game? My answer: cheating is in the eye of the beholder. Me, I would (did) change the station's capacity (e.g. iLive Reader, SC4Tool, etc...), or download a custom station with an already-jacked capacity. The problem lies in that the network has one capacity representing how many passengers can traverse it, and each station has another (much lower) capacity, representing how many people can stand in that station and board trains. Unfortunately when the two occupy the same space - such as an inline station (monorail, el, subway), the lot's capacity gets overwhelmed by the network. So even a 2000-passenger station gets "severely congested" by the 5000 passengers riding through the station, even though none get on or off at it. And it just gets worse down the line, when more and more passengers do board at other stations, but don't get off until near the end of the line. You can use a "spur" to get around this limitation, but personally I find that unrealistic. I've never seen that for a light commuter rail system; and I've been through most of the major cities in US and Europe). Ground-level heavy rails, sometimes, and around freight stations and railyards obviously, but not light commuter rails (not to say they don't exist, just that I've never seen it... I've never personally seen Nebraska either, but I'll accept that it might actually exist somewhere ). So, enter option B: raise the station's capacity to that of the network. There is of course a drawback to this - because now the station itself can't become congested unless the network is. So your choice is between an unrealistic spur (nevermind the extra space it consumes) vs. effectively eliminating one of the gameplay challenges (congested stations). Note that it is still possible to manually detect congestion at a tweaked station, though it is a bit tedious. You'd have to route-query the station, disable the network passing through it in the view (eliminating the passengers merely passing through), and add up all the people traveling to the station, yourself... all while remembering what the station's true "passenger" capacity should be. This is only for your own information though, the game only knows the station's actual capacity, so to the game what you perceive as congestion is just that, your own perception. One exception is the subway: since it's underground anyway, it doesn't "look odd" to set the station one or two tiles away from the main tube, unless you're actually looking underground at it.

PEG also has a nice-looking conduit, basically just a small concrete "hump" with a light on it. It's doesn't disturb the visuals much at all. It's quite handy for this purpose, especially since the light on it helps you notice if it's actually passing power or not. I also used to use simple grass parks and throw trees on them. But a) the open grass still costs $5/mo and 2) good luck finding it in the middle of a forest if you're looking for it later on. The conduits look great, aren't visually overbearing, and are easy to find. To help even more, there is at least one mod for increasing the radius for power lines i.e. so you can have a larger distance between zoned areas - this works great with the conduits, as you won't need very many of them. Unfortunately it appears STEX search is offline, so I can't find the links to either items. But "conduit" should find PEG's power conduits (or you can just go to simpeg.com to find them there). "Radius" will pull up many mods, but among them should be one or more for the power radius.

... they should disable solo mode in my opinion.quote> I agree wholeheartedly at this point. Then, those of us who would love to spend the money on the game, but don't feel that when we buy a hamburger we should be forced to rent the bun, and pick off the onions we didn't ask for, can give up on CXL and Monte Cristo once and for all. And the rest of y'all who are happy with this model can go on and... be happy. By the way, I'm sincere when I say that - if you like CXL's model, great - love it, revel in it, sleep with it if you want, and by all means tell everyone why. I'm happy for ya, seriously!! But STOP telling me I have to love it, too. It's a game, not a religion. As to forced patching... even if I did love the game, I'm pretty sure I'd hate burning time and bandwidth downloading content packs I have no use for. Even with SC4 I do that sometimes, but at least I only have myself to kick then. And even if it is a content pack I do want eventually, or even a bug patch, well what if I don't want it right now? Maybe I just want to mess around for a few minutes before work, as another poster pointed out, not with any new stuff, and I can tolerate the bugs for a few minutes. Do I really have to make a point to start the game before eating dinner every night, whether I intend to play that night or not???

Same questions. Same answers. Same reaction - no sale. Ok, MC... let's just have us a good ol' stare-down. Costs me nothing to wait for you to blink. Costs you my cash. Best of luck to you.

Originally posted by: Psycho_Teddy Can someone from MC verify that this is a legal bypass? This is a bit touchy in my book, but I'm not sure. It would be greatly appreciated.quote> There is nothing legally "touchy" about modifying a shortcut (especially since MC themselves provided the command line parameters for doing so) or renaming a file on your own computer. You are not changing their intellectual property in any way whatsoever. However... support may be another matter, particularly if indeed you're not getting updates automatically.