viddy

There's a bug that I've noticed with the avenues. It doesn't seem to be that common (I don't recall having seen it mentioned on these forums), so I'm not sure if this will fix your problem, but you could give it a shot. Sometimes, the avenues don't connect to other cities correctly. You know that you have this bug if the connection on either side is missing one of the yellow arrows. You'll need to check both cities--one city might display both arrows while the other does not. If that's the case, then this is how to fix it (note that if the connectors on both sides each have both of the yellow arrows, then this won't help): 1. Open Cardiff and bulldoze the avenue connection. 2. Save and exit Cardiff, then open Leucadia. The avenue connection between the two cities should have been removed automatically as a result of bulldozing the connection on the Cardiff side. If it didn't, then bulldoze it. 3. Run Leucadia on turtle speed until the traffic is reassigned. This typically takes about four game months. To check if the traffic has been reassigned: Immediately after opening Leucadia, be sure the game is paused, then check the traffic on the connector to Encintas (you'll need to check a connector to a city other than the one you're trying to fix). It will display the volume of traffic, but it will not display the actual routes that commuters from Encintas are taking. (It will display outgoing routes from Leucadia to Encintas, but it will not display incoming routes travelled from Encintas to Leucadia.) You can then run Leucadia on turtle speed until the incoming routes from Encintas are displayed. Once you see those incoming routes, then you know that traffic has been reassigned. 4. After the traffic has been reassigned, rebuild the avenue connection to Cardiff. Check to make sure both yellow arrows are displayed on the avenue connection. 5. Save and exit Leucadia. 6. Open Cardiff. The connector to Leucadia should have been rebuilt automatically as a result of rebuilding it in Leucadia. Important: Check to make sure that both yellow arrows appear on the avenue connection. 7. Run the game on turtle speed until the traffic is reassigned. Again, this takes about four game months, and you can see if traffic has been reassigned by checking the incoming traffic from Encintas, assuming that there are residents travelling from Encintas to Cardiff. If there aren't, you can check that traffic is reassigned by building a new industrial zone near the Cardiff connection. Once that industrial zone displays outgoing freight trucks to Leucadia, then you know the traffic has been reassigned. 8. Save Cardiff and reopen Leucadia. 9. Let Leucadia run until traffic is reassigned again. The connector should be working properly now--you should see residents driving from Leucadia to Cardiff. The NJZ won't immediately disappear at this point, but they will soon.

Highly educated low-wealth residents call out demand at these levels: Low-wealth Comm Services: 10% Med Wealth Comm Services: 15% Med Wealth Comm Offices: 45% High Wealth Comm Offices: 15% Manufacturing Industry: 15% By taxing out commercial offices, 60% of the jobs that the residents demand are unavailable. They're only able to work the services or manufacturing jobs, and those jobs only account for 40% of the jobs they're asking for. Under those circumstances, the manufacturing and service jobs will be taken up quickly, and as you've seen, the demand for those jobs will soon drop to negative values. What's going on is that your city already has all the manufacturing and service jobs that the residents are asking for. You could continue to build anyway, at least for a while. New low-wealth residents won't ask for those jobs right away--they need to be highly educated before they'll ask for anything beyond farms, dirty industry, and low-wealth services--but they'll eventually kick the demand for manufacturing and medium-wealth services up a little. But, this won't last forever. Remember that this tax policy only provides 40% of the jobs that the residents are asking for, so eventually, demand for residents and jobs will go negative. A possible solution is to allow offices, both medium and high wealth. The offices themselves won't reach full employment without richer residents, but you'd be able to sustain R$ growth for quite some time by having those offices there. Another possible solution would be to allow medium and high wealth residents. They'll call out for those kinds of jobs and raise the demand back up. It seems that this is not what you have in mind for the city, but you could always zone for them in the city next door to keep the demand for manufacturing and medium-wealth services high in this one.

Also, the number for "stage" on most listings determines the density level. Stage 1-3 is low density, 4-6 is medium density, and 7-8 is high density. So, a R$$ Stage 8 building means medium wealth, high density.

Raising taxes lowers demand. If you raise taxes to 13 early in the game, the demand will usually drop to negative. You said that you're not getting warnings that your taxes are too high, but those warnings only come if they're way too high--demand will go negative long before your advisors tell you that the taxes are too high. Try not raising taxes at all. If you need more money, zone more. That will increase the number of people paying taxes, and that will increase your income. Also, try to avoid adding too many civic services early in the game (schools, police, health, etc). They're expensive. They pay off in the long run, but over the short term, they often cost more than you can afford. I assume that's why you raised the taxes--to pay for the schools and health and such. Instead, keep everything poor and crappy at first. Continue to build outwards without building any services until you have a monthly income that is at least $2000 over your monthly expenses. Then, you can start adding services, little by little, keeping a budget surplus of $2000 so that you'll have the cash you need to zone more. Also, prioritize schools over everything else. Schools are the most important civic service to raise the wealth level of the residents (and wealthier residents pay more taxes, which will then give you the budget surplus you need to afford police, fire, health, etc). And, did you see that if you click on any of the education buildings, there are sliders that affect the student capacity? The default capacity for an elementary school, for example, is 125. But, if only 30 people are attending that school, you can lower the amount you spend on that school to lower the capacity to just over 30, which saves you money.

Also, since extrapolations seem to be part of the problem (if not the cause), it might help just to enter each city in the region, run them for a year, and save them.

And, by the way, the bug could also be from something plopped in another city. The CR is extrapolating six billion residents elsewhere in your region. In case you don't know how extrapolation works, when you play a city, the city you're currently playing assumes that other cities in your region are growing as well. The amount it assumes your other cities are growing is proportionate to the population of those cities. So, if the other cities in the region are small, the extrapolations will be small as well. An extrapolation of six billion is completely ludicrous, and you should only see that if your other cities are ludicrously large. However, even if this extrapolation was legitimate, the demand you see in this city would almost certainly be something other than zero. What this suggests is that whatever is causing the bug might be elsewhere in the region. It could be caused by a ploppable building that affects demand and/or population that you may have built in city in the region other than this one (and, in my opinion, that's the most likely explanation).

It suggests that there's something buggy, though, so all the advice about how to increase residential demand through normal, in-game means might not fix your problem. Did you install any mods or make any program changes right before your residential demand suddenly dropped to zero?

According to your census repository, you've got regional capacity of 139,000, but regional projections of six billion. How did that happen?

Also, when you upgrade the density, it will keep the wealth level of the lot you rezoned. So, if you change some medium wealth zones to medium density, the taller buildings will be either medium or high wealth. If you're trying to get low wealth apartments in an area with medium or high wealth houses, you'll need to demolish those houses so that low wealth can be built. But, if you're trying to get medium or high wealth apartments, then don't demolish the houses that are already there or it might build low wealth and you'll have to wait for them to upgrade on their own.

This can be done, but it requires a little cheating. The game has restrictions on power deals. A city can only purchase the amount of power that it needs, unless that city is also providing power to other cities. So, if B is not selling power to A, C can only sell enough power to cover B's needs, even if C is producing plenty of surplus power. It won't allow B to strike a deal with A because C can't sell B enough power to create the surplus that B can sell to A. The trick, then, is to bypass those rules to establish a connection between B and A. Here's how to do that. First, make sure you have power connections with each of the three cities. All the cities must be connected, and all cities must have at least one tile that requires power. (In other words, if you're doing this with a brand new city, you can zone just one residential lot, drag power lines from the power connection to that residential lot, then save the city. Bear in mind that just having a neighbor connection isn't enough--power has to move from the neighbor connection to at least one zone of any type before the simulator recognizes a need for power.) Note also that you don't need to have a single power line stretching across the middle city, but power needs to be able to move from one connection to the other, i.e. you can build connector-->power line-->zoned land-->power line-->connector, rather than one long power line. Be sure that they're all properly connected, and that you've saved each of the three cities with those connections in place. Second, build a plant in city B--the middle city. This plant is very temporary, so it can be any plant except wind (one wind plant won't provide enough power to get this to work). I usually just use coal. Once the plant is built, city B will have surplus power--the power it's buying from C is added to the power that B is now generating. (By the way, do not cancel the deal with C!) Third, now that B has surplus power, you can strike a deal to sell some of that power to A. At this point, B is buying from C, selling to A, and has a coal plant. Remember, the restrictions on deals do not apply to a city that is both buying AND selling power. You can see at this point, if you go into the neighbor deals, that C can now sell B all of its surplus power, regardless of how much power B needs. Fourth, demolish the plant you just built in city B. (This is where the cheating comes in. It's not necessary, but I don't like making my middle city spend $10,000 on a coal plant just to establish a deal that it should have been able to strike anyway, so I use ten weaknesspays cheats to give city B its money back.) Now, you'll see "no-power" zots in city B. This is because C was only providing B with enough power for itself, but is now selling some of it to A, so there's a shortage. But, because the restrictions are lifted, B can simply increase the deal with C to get its power. So fifth, Increase the power deal between B and C, and voila--City C is providing power to all three cities. Note also that if you connect a new city D with B, then B can buy all of C's extra power and sell some of it to D without having to build and tear down a plant again (B is already buying AND selling, so it can purchase as much surplus power as C is generating). However, if you connect D to A, those restrictions are still in place because A is only buying, not buying and selling. But, you could repeat this process in city A (connect properly to D, build a plant in A, sell power to D, bulldoze the plant, buy more power from B, and cheat to get your money back). That way, C will still continue to provide power to all of the cities.

What's the income on monorail fares? Can we see your budget screen?

Do you have heavy traffic congestion?

You'll want to check the wealth level of your "no job" zots. Most of the time, especially in smaller cities, you'll only see them over one wealth level, and that level is usually high wealth. If that's the case, then it's not just a matter of zoning more places to work. Rather, you need to zone the right kinds of places. If you only see them over the high wealth residents, for example, then you'll want more C$$, C$$$, IM, and IHT. Dirty industry, farms, and CS$ will not help at all, as there are no jobs in those zones that high wealth residents can take. (Doctors won't work at the car repair shops.) If you're seeing them over the low-wealth residents, the problem is probably not specifically a zoning issue, because R$ can work anywhere. (Office buildings need janitors.) If that's the case, check to make sure your roads aren't congested. You usually only see "no job" zots over R$ when it's too hard for them to get to a job, rather than having no jobs available. I suspect that it's the high-wealth residents that aren't finding work (or perhaps the medium as well). In order to get the right kinds of jobs for those people, you'll need to zone commercial in areas with a good amount of traffic, no pollution, and amenities nearby such as a plaza or one of the rewards. You'll also need to make sure that there are enough wealthy residents to support the office buildings, and for that, education facilities are most important. When the residents are better educated, their wealth levels will rise, which will increase the demand for better office buildings, which will replace the CS$ buildings and provide jobs for your residents.

C+I should be half of R and no less. One job is assigned for roughly every two people, which means if C+I is less than half of R, there will not be enough jobs for your residents.