Baro

Countries like North Korea make me think this is all some big game of Civilization, and North Korean is being played by some new idiot who doesn't even know the basic interface of the game. He saw the cool military and palace options, but the food and labour screen is 'too confusing' for him and he just wants to have fun and build all the coolest stuff and not worry about the rest. Everyone tells him he's a terrible player and really needs to learn the basic mechanics of the game (like feeding your people, making sure you can afford your projects) but as the player is only some spoiled suburban 13 year old kid he stubbornly keep playing untill he either gets bored or he manages to run his country into the ground. North Korea actually is an increadibly unique country. Not even Stalin's russia was this oppressive and crazy. It's one of the only countries in the world where things are absolutely black and white. It's a horrible horrible country ruled by horrible people. And they're not even smart-evil, they're absolutely incompotent evil. They only know how to do one thing, and that's brutally oppress and isolate their entire population so they never learn just how bad their country is, how their entire lives have been lies. The entire place seems like something out of a book, ripped from the pages of 1984 and 50's anti-communist propaganda. Sadly it's a very real place. There are many very good indepth documentaries of people who have managed to get in and get a little off the beaten path. Even the worst pictures posted here are of the areas the government has poured all their efforts into putting up a facad of respectibility. But that's it, there's the capital and a few squares, the rest is some of the worst hell on earth starvation, slavery, poverty, currently existing today. There's no 'other side' to the issue, well i supose there are two sides to North korea. The terrible side, and the even more terrible side. There's no exuse for this country. It would be hillarious if it wasn't so tragic.

Population growth in simcity is just purely due to zoning and construction, there's no biology involved. Your city doesn't grow due to natural population growth, it only grows due to new buildings getting build. If you want more people, build more city. if you have a small area that has 500 people for example fully developed, unless you build something new, it will stay at that population for thousands of years.

What's with all the abandonment?

Is there a way to mod out this farming demand reduction? Generally it makes sense, as my city gets big and urban, land simply is too expensive to demand farming. But sometimes, specially on the huge maps, I just have a tiny dense little city in a corner, and huge open flat areas begging for farming, but the demand has been 'capped' out or what not at exactly 0. it seems a little redundant to me. If your city is educated and high wealth enough to not demand farming, then it won't demand farming. To have that population switch that just turns off farming can be troublsome. Always makes me have to do all my farming perfectly before I build my city, as I can't get them back.

I found every time I built a city, some strange unknown factor randomly seemed to decide if it would get horrible no-job zot problems or not. I never knew why I got them, but they always occured in similar situations. They always seemed to happen in chunks of residential near an edge of a map, or chunks of residential near the center of the map that had to travel through C and I zones to reach outside the map. It was as if the later group would look at those C zones, not find a job so move to the I zones, not find a job, and give up, not going to the neighbouring city with a ton of jobs. The people on the edge for some reason would ALWAYS only communite to the other city tile to work, never working in their home tile, even if tons of open jobs were close by. So long as the CONECTION was closer (even if the jobs were father on the other map), if the conection was closer they woudl always always take it. This caused a ton of traffic as the people on both cities would both only work in the oposite cities. Crazy! I did use a ton of mods I collected over the years. The nam, road top MT, all sorts of plops and transit tweeks. I thought it was time for a fresh start, so I re-installed the game on a clean slate, downloading only the latest name, 2x capacity, 10x comute, perfect path finding. Another thing I noticed is that these problems were 10x worse when I used avenues, so with my fresh slate I thougth I'd run an experiment. I created a city that had some avenues in it. A mixed C and R zone in the middle, and a yucky industrial zone conected by a long avenue. From the start.. I had more no job zots than normal. People used the avenue, car and bus, yet people had strange times finding jobs, when they should not have given the above needed types and numbers of jobs for all classes and educations. I created a very similar city with no avenues. It ran great, a few no job zots for the rich, but that always happens. I kept playing this city as I enjoyed it. It expanded into a neighbouring tile. The neighbouring tile developed into a very similar city, except one of its roads was getting red, a road to the neighbour, so I decided to try to upgrade it to an avenue. I upgraded the road to an avenue, then saved and went to the first city and continued the avenue there along where the road was red. Then I went back to the 2nd city. Every R near the new upgraded avenue, every R that passed by the avenue or used the conection instantly got no job zots. A whole corner of the city just kept growing, getting no jobs, abandoning, coming back, getting no jobs. Terrible!! I know the traffic engine can be a little slow sometimes, so I let the city run for a year. I went to the other city and let it run for a year, went back tot he 2nd city and let it run for another year. Still the same horrible cycle of no-job zots. So, I deleted the avenue conection. instantly the neighbourhood pops back to stable life, and they all just use the next conection with a mix of about 70% car 30% bus. Very wierd. I decide to totally delete the conection where the avenue was on both sides and run the game for a year. A clean slate. I create a brand new avenue conection to see what happens. As soon as I make the conection I let the game run slow to see what happens. I think these are important clues, the answer is here, but it would take someone from the NAM to probably figure it out. The sims detect the new avenue, see it's obviously faster and closer and take it. BUT they switch to 100% bus. For some reason the traffic sim calculates bus for the best choice, but for some reason this choise results in every single person using the conection to have a no-job zot. It's as if they can't use their cars on this conection, and thus don't have the flexibility to find the correct job or get where they want to in the neighbouring city. Checking the neighbouring city, I find the 3000 or so cars along with 1000 or so bus that came in on the old road are replaced with about 2000 bus, no cars what so ever. This matches the other city. These bus comuters all go to jobs, but cycle around a lot, every month seeming to change where they are going drasticaly, like they are trying to find jobs but not quite doing it. This is quite the mystery and i'm surprised no one has had thisproblem before, as as far as I can remember, with every install, every computer, every mod, I've had this strange no job problem, so I pretty much NEVER use avenues or highway due to it. Can anyone solve the mystery? Can anyone shed any insight? Did anyone even read this far?

Yep! Sometimes one way's fix the problem if I totally replace the avenue, but that isn't always an option with bridges. And of course since you can't have one way neighbour conections, it doesn't fix my main problem, avenue conections. I've started another city, this time instead of building the city at the edge of the map in preperation to expand seamlessly to the other tile (the last design that gave a ton of no job zots) I put the population in the middle. I also made sure to have no neighbour conections. No problems so far! It seems even a conection to 'simnation' is enough to confuse the sims into not going to work.

All my sims are at max education and both cities have more jobs than pop, due to all the dirty ind no one needs still being around. Besides, why would education effect a problem that only happens with avenues. If you read the full message, the problem goes away as soon as I delete the avenue and replace it with a road. I just started a new city using avenues. No neighbouring city, but tons of no job-zots. Even just in a town of 2,000 with no education. Some houses on one side, more than enough factories on the other. If I delete the avenue conecting the two areas and replace it with a road, the sims can find their jobs perfectly fine. Arggg. I give up and I'm going back to my road-only cities.

Since I deleted the road top mt thing fearing it was the cause for all this, I don't have much mass transit in my city, lots of cars.. a first for me! So I'm now enjoying creating a polluted car-loving city with a working highway and everything.

Success????? I extended the avenue in the first pic past the first round about, basically extended it another 2 blocks. I also deleted some of the round abouts. Let it run for a few months. Problems still... Then, just on a wierd whim, I added a tiny little street on the 2nd to last tiles of the avenue. Just to give sims a place to turn around, even though there's a road like 5 tiles up. As soon as I built that little 2 tile long street inside the avenue. All problems stopped. what the hell?!? Letting the game run for a few months, if I click on the outgoing road, both lanes light up blue. Showing me on a trip to work people are leaving the city and coming back the same way. BUT it shows no use on the little street I added. It fixed the problem, yet no one is actually using it, everyone is still driving (or bussing) in a loop from their homes, to the other city, and back along the same ave. Crazy stuff.

Right click, view image. They're full size right from the game. Nothing to really see on the region view. See all the litle road conections leading to the north in the 2nd screen shot.. those just conect every block with their counterparts on the first screen shot. The blocks and such in both screen shots are typical, it's just more of the same off the screen. I'm going to do some expiraments, like deleting the entire neighbourhood

Update! I thought I'd post a pic of the other side, and I noticed something. Checking out the incoming lane, it looks like buses going To work are coming in one lane, looping all over the city, then going back out, as can be seen here. Some do go to jobs, but it looks like the bulk of them are coming into the city, driving around, then coming out. What the heck!?

This ave goes through a dense area of residential with cross roads every 8 tiles. It's not some ave in the middle of nowhere, it's part of a grid of streets. It is like this one both sides. here, let me post a pic It looks pretty much the same on the other side, other than the ave going to an industrial area. But it goes through the city, lots of cross streets and roads. As you can see, every single R in the area has no job zots. As soon as I delete the ave.. probelm solved. But the mystery isn't, and the fact that I'd really like an avenue there!

How do you get the terrain hole or slope so it perfectly matches the slope of the ramp? It seems the ramps were designed for an exact depth of crossing.