joecollege05

My commercial buildings always have "low customers," almost without exception. Even when there is ample public transport and/or parking, even when the commercial demand is higher than the residential demand, I have never seen anything other than "low" next to "customers." Is there a way to address this? Thanks!

I have been playing a lot over the past month, and I keep running into the same walls very quickly in every city: 1. My cities become overrun with "no job" zots and a big chunk of my R zones get abandoned. This will happen even if industrial demand is negative, R demand is sky hight, and I put industry right next to houses. The houses get built and filled lickety split but immediately get no-job zots and every house says it has a medium or long commute. And I'm using the radical transit mods - they seem to have little effect! I have been playing with all kinds of mass transit strategies but it seems like my methods are getting severe - only roads even in the tiniest villages, bus stops on every corner - and it isn't solving the problem. Is there a basic strategy element I'm missing? 2. Is there a way to control the wealth levels of your zones? My R zones never stay low-weath for long, and I end up with nothing but posh houses that swallow up all the zoned R space. Any tips on encouraging certain wealth levels in certain areas of your city? Particularly creating low-weath R neighborhoods? I apologize if these questions are actually hugely complicated and not answerable. But if you have tips, please do share. Thanks!

Nevermind. If I had read a few older posts I could have figured it out in a jiffy. As CaptCity explains below, I had to reset my graphics options after running the patch. I don't recall that being in the instructions anywhere, though I might be wrong. I wonder how many people get confused by the same thing? I have only been a member of this site for about 12 hours and I am already hopelessly addicted. Thanks!

I played SC4 a lot about 2 years ago, then stopped, and now I'm into it again. I downloaded the basic patch from maxis, and then dove into simtropolis, getting all kinds of nifty new plugins and prop sets and whatnot. Then I opened the game and started playing, and realized something was up: all my park tiles are blank green squares, and all my buildings look right except instead of trees, fences, etc, it's just a house surrounded by a green square. THEN I remembered why I stopped playing 2 years ago: I downloaded that same patch (this was before I knew about plugins and extras - I was just a casual player) and this same problem happened. No trees or props of any kind, just green squares and barren buildings. I guess I must have deleted the patch files, because when I started playing again a week ago, everything looked great. What's the deal? Anyone know how to fix this? Do I have to delete all my new plugins? Thanks.....