TuPhat

If you can, build up your city (layout and zoning) before you plot down any tourism. Once you have your city built up, de-zone your commercial shops and start tourism and hope you don't have any of those building burn down or fall victim to disasters. More than once I had to kill off my entire tourism in my city just so that I could rezone a bunch of shopping again. Just a bit frustrating.

Just went through that problem too. Turned off any secondary schools. Had to rezone industry and let a bunch of low tech buildings build up. Ran with them for a day or so at low tech. Fired up the university and waited for the buildings to tech up. Pain in the but. I had to rezone my industry buildings in a different area for even with the university turned off, when I demolished the industry buildings they still came back a high tech. Perhaps I needed to wait a bit, but zoning in a different area solved the issue. So yeah. As you said. Build low tech somewhere and run them for a bit. Make sure not to be running any secondary schooling such as college or university. If can, build more than 5 buildings in case they don't all zone up to medium at the same time. Good luck.

Nothing too exciting. Fixes some crashes. http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9482065.page http://answers.ea.com/t5/Miscellaneous-Issues/Patch-Notes-Update-2-2-live-now/m-p/694284#U694284 Update 2.2 • Addresses a number of crashes reported via Answers HQ (http://answers.ea.com/t5/SimCity/ct-p/SimCity).

Clicked on population, and checked out the numbers by month. . That shows visitors in total, not tourists. This ^^ Lxxseven, this is reason why I asked where you were getting the numbers from. The population tab shows vistiors, which includes workers, shoppers and students, not tourists. The massive number of 450,000 is no doubt from the Arcology, but doesn't help fund your casinos. To get tourism numbers, click on the Culture tab from the City Specialization menu. This may partially explain why things didn't make sense for you. I'm sorry you lost your city. It sucks.

450,000 tourists or visitors? Where are getting this number from?

So perablenta, as mentioned above I could not bring in extra tourists post 2.0 patch in my private region. The region was created pre-2.0 patch and was specifically built for casino/tourism. Once 2.0 patch was released I immediately started my casinos. Couldn't make it work. Like I said above, with expo, multiple high attraction tourist traps, casinos, I couldn't pull in over 3900 tourists per day. High approval rate. Good city. So I started a new region (post 2.0/2.1). I've got two cities going now. Completed education electronics city. Completed oil/mining city. Finished international airport. In my oil/mining city, I'm pulling in anywhere from 12k-16k tourists per day without a single tourist attraction. Hmmmm. I'm guessing the region I created pre-2.0 was somehow bugged. The tourism patch didn't work for it. I am wondering if other people may be experiencing the same. My region post 2.0 seems great so far. I'm starting my tourism city tonight. I'll let you know how it goes!

My 2 cents. I was micro-managing things to a greater detail but I got tired of it, now I just zone residential and commercial in chunks of 4 clicks. Zoning chunks of R/C in 4 click blocks usually gives you a proper medium size building and 8 blocks a high density building. I usually zone in 2R:1C ratio and enough I to fulfill workers until no longer needed. 8 clicks green, 4 clicks blue, repeat. Check workers and dezone/zone I. I may throw in a bit more C somewhere if needed. Though its not perfect system, it seems to work well enough for most builds. Usually a little short on commercial at low density, but balances out better at medium high density. I blindly follow the above pattern in all my cities now and rarely look at the population details panel to balance (except for workers). With proper road layout and transit options, I usually end up somewhere in the 90-95% approval rate and very close to being balanced.

Probably not related to 2.0 patch recently, but since the patch I have one city that has a stuck vehicle on the region highway, way outside my control. This stuck vehicle is vibrating on the right lane exiting the region, blocking two of the three lanes of traffic on the region highway. Looks to be a large vehicle, like a school or municipal bus though its hard to determine for I cannot zoom in on the area. It's way out there! Upon playing the city, within a few minutes, traffic begins to back up on the region highway eventually all the way into my city. While some cars are able to pass the vehicle on the left lane, once traffic begins to back up behind this vehicle, my trade trucks don't seem to be able to pass the vehicle. This is causing me quite a few problems and I don't know how to fix it. I've tried restarting Simcity, restarting the PC etc to see if this anomaly goes away, it doesn't. I was thinking that I could delete a bus depot or something to see if it goes away, but I don't know what type of vehicle it is. It could be a moving truck for all I know. The region is full of cities so its not like want to delete all my bus depots, schools, trade depots etc. Ack! Anyone else have this happen to them? Any ideas on how to resolve this? Edit: Pictures of the problem added in my posting further down.

There is no direct correlation between the region highway leading outside my city and the actual roads in the other city. I can load up city 5 (the other city) and completely wipe out all the roads/buildings in the area so its a big green spot on the map. Loading up the problem city, zooming out I can see where I wiped out all the roads in the other city, but the region highway still is there, along with the stuck vehicle. Ha. No problem. I laugh it too. When I play that particular city, I just doze the highway link to region. I still have a highway link to the region on the other side of the map. It seems that this bug was confirmed in the EA Answers HQ and has been fixed. Just waiting for it to be included into a future patch. Yay!

Oh no worries! I've been gifting this casino city is lots of cash from other cities in the region so I'm not concerned about blowing away a bunch of cash. Just experiementing around. Managing taxis is tough. It really comes down to smart street design and having mass transit. Before I even plopped down a single casino, I made sure my street design and traffic was perfect, knowing that taxi's can ruin all your good efforts. As mentioned above, taxis come from several sources. Not having any hotels mean sims will leave your city (usually) the same way they come in (mass transit), but you don't get take advantage of them staying the night and spending their cash the next day. Putting hotels right next to your casinos will keep sims on the feet, until the sims decide to leave the hotel and go home where they will take a taxi. There is no easy answer but to design your city well and prepare for the onslaught. Edit: It seems that my tourism city is the only city that isn't benefiting from the Space Center. All the other cities in the region is showing benefits. Nice. Edit: I've given up again on tourism for another week.

For the sci-fi casino, do you actually see a difference when running the attraction upgrades. I mention this because I plopped a sci-fi casino down and added two of the medium wealth attractions, not one more tourist entered the city (ran it for days). Tourists numbers were consistant with the sci-fi casino enabled or not. I would expect the numbers to jump if the sci-fi casino is running. I'm thinking that my region may be bugged. I wouldn't expect that since I have water/power/sewage etc running the casino city that it would make a difference to the attraction rating. I could try and offload it into one of my other cities.

Thumbs up! To help out on taxis and hotels in a bit more detail (you have it right). Lets take a look at a sleek casino. You can have low, medium and high wealth gamblers. Once a sim is finished with the casino, he will want to leave the casino for a hotel (providing there isn't a hotel attached to casino). Low wealth sim looks for low wealth hotel. Medium wealth sim looks for medium wealth hotel. Etc. If there is a hotel of their wealth level near the casino, the sim will simply walk to a hotel, otherwise he will take a taxi. I believe high wealth sims will drive if the hotel isn't near. When a sim is completely out of money and is leaving the city, the taxi is grey (in the tourism data layer), otherwise the taxi is yellow meaning that the sim isn't leaving the city, but looking for either shopping or a hotel. Now when sims leave a hotel, I'm not quite sure what happens. I need to look at this more. I know if they still have money, they will walk again if it is close, or I believe taxi if it is far away. If they are out of money, I believe they take a taxi out of the city. I will look at this more... perablenta, I'm not having the success you are. I only get a fixed number of tourists, never any more day to day, and never enough earn a profit on the stadium. The space center is shooting off rockets and it never says it gives me any tourists. With consistant 92% approval rate (mayor's mansion is fully max'd out) and empire state, statue of liberty, expo, couple sleek casinos, I can never increase the number of tourists day over day. I barely break even each day and loose lots on the stadium when I'm running it. No traffic issues, multiple train stations (with only about 2K riders per day), ferry, buses, airport etc. Frustrating! I still think there may be a region issue/bug or just something I'm not doing right. Have you tried this outside of sandbox? Anyone else having great success with casinos? I would love to see this work...

Thanks for the responses. I'm going to try to rezone some of my low wealth to high wealth to see if it makes a difference. I see your landmarks now! Ooops! They are tucked in with your casinos. Thanks for the tips. Going to play around some more. Note: I wish I knew what drives the tourism numbers a bit more. Since I have demolished all my tourism/casinos, I plopped down a sci-fi, sleek, empire state and expo center and I'm not drawing a single low wealth tourist, not a one. However, I am getting lots of medium and some high wealth tourists. This game is weird. Edit: Nope. Nothing I do will gain me any more tourists. With average 92% approval rate, micro controlled everything I know. I average about 3500-4000 tourists with expo, about 12K with stadium (not making profits). Not sure what I do anymore.

Thanks for posting this. I've been working on my casino city with mixed results, but I never could increase my profits anywhere near where you did though I was able to fully unlock the Gambling HQ. With an expo center and stadium I could usually bring anywhere from 10k-15k people, but they would goto my casinos and other monuments, never turning a profit in my stadium. My casinos were rocking pretty good though. Been looking for the secret to bring in more people but never could figure it out (yet). I have a couple questions. Q: Is there any reason for zoning medium or high wealth? Does it affect tourism at all? My casino city was 95% low wealth with a splattering of high wealth around the mansion. Though I have loads of medium/high wealth jobs open, I balanced low wealth jobs/shopping really well. Nobody was complaining of needing workers. All my other cities in the region was balanced really well too so I wasn't getting medium/high wealth workers commuting in for jobs. Q: I noticed you didn't have any other tourism spots, such as Empire State Building etc. Do you think these are counter productive for casinos? They will bring in tourists, but I guess they trap them there instead of the casinos. Q: How many hotels? When I play, I notice lots of vehicles and people leaving casinos looking for a hotel. I've played around with having lots of hotels and not having many at all. Not sure what works best. Just let the tourists leave and come back, or deal with them staying and lots of taxies. Q: I read that Approval rating has a big affect on number people that enter your city? Any confirmation on that? I've spent hours balancing my city, so I'm running anywhere between 88%-91% at any given time. Tough keeping really high. Q: Any tips for getting those big tourism numbers? Q: Do you think playing in sandbox vs private region makes a difference? This is a screen-shot of my casino/tourism. My thoughts was to bring in people via train and boat (at the top and right), have them walk past the casinos, whatever was left over would goto the monuments and stadium/expo. The bus depot at the bottom/left brought in tourists too. The airport is there too a the bottom right which seemed pretty busy. I have space center going too, but it doesn't seem to bring in many tourists at all. Any tips/comments are welcome. Note: I've pretty much dozed my entire tourism area and I'm starting over.

I thought of that too! No it didn't. I completely removed the road in city 5 and it doesn't affect the vehicle. Thanks for the suggestion though.

FYI: I've played quite a few cities since the patch, some are very heavy oil/mining towns, others with processor and computer factories and I don't have any issues with pollution. I plant trees everywhere daily, so perhaps that may be helping me. Pollution is pretty much same pre-2.0 patch. I'm sorry for everyone who is having problems with this. Sucks.

According the Dell website, if you are running the integrated video card on your machine, it may be the nVidia Geforce GT530. This video card is decent enough for normal PC non-gaming use, but it is not a great gaming card. The rest of your spec's on your machine is fine to run the game. My best advice is to look into picking up a video card, which should solve the problem. Either have a chat with Dell or a local computer store to verify this before purchasing anything. I would hate to give you wrong advice all things considered.

Pictures added to show the problem from the original post. While the picture shows two school buses, its actually just one vibrating really fast. It is stuck way out there in the region highway. This snapshot was taken just after loading the city, zoomed way out. This additional picture shows what will happen if you run the city for a day. Traffic starts to backup on the highway, eventually it will back right up into the city. Notice all my wonderful trade trucks stuck in traffic way out in the region. Grrrr

I actually really like this idea. It would give you enough control over the buses. Alternatively, municipal buses in neighboring cities would only pick-up/drop-off sims at the bus depot.

So last night, in about 3 hours of playing a single city, I had a lizard attack, tornado and zombie attack. So much for cooldowns! Tourism seems decent at the moment. Finally was able to turn the page on the tourism/casino city last night so that I'm making ok profits. Quite a challenge. I'm pulling anywhere from 12k-17k tourists per day now depending on which events I'm running and satellite launches. One of my fully upgraded Sleek casinos is pulling in 140K per day! Yay! The two others are averaging 80k-100k per day right now. Adding a fourth casino tonight to see what happens. Lots of tweaking. Keeping traffic moving is tough especially with all the taxi's. * Saw my tourism numbers drop drastically and thought, here we go again. Well, three trains got jammed up at the station effectively shutting down all my tourism traffic. Quick fix and the numbers came back. Whew!

Update: Last night I was able to determine that the culprit vehicle is a school bus via the data filters. I proceeded to remove all elementary and high schools in all my cities in the region along with all the school bus stops. Played each city in the region for a bit so that there were no active school buses anywhere. Exited and entered Simcity game again and the stuck vehicle is still there. There is nothing I can do to remove this vehicle from the map at this point, so I plopped my education back down again. I will post a screen shot tonight, for I'm at work right now. For reference. I'm playing in the WhiteWater Valley private region. I have cities in locations 2, 3, 4, 5. The problem city is in location 3, this is where I can see the stuck vehicle. The stuck vehicle however is on the region highway, way out in the middle of city 5. If I load up city 5, I do not see the stuck vehicle on the highway.

Hey thanks for the suggestion. It is a bit 'out there' but perhaps a solution. I've done some modding in other games so I'm not opposed to the solution. I'm a little hesitant on hacking up the game at this point, but if I'm desperate enough I may look into it. Cheers!

I don't believe so. I believe the great work supplies only to cities that are closely connected. What I mean by that is, when playing the city and you see that it has a great work completed, you get benefits from that particular great work. Any city showing that it doesn't have a great work built, you don't receive any benefits.

Just to further update things after a few days of playing. - All my cities that were unplayable to due to unable to process or just hanging on load, are still broken. Unfortunately I have a bunch. - I can't say if tourism has changed much, but it seems like I'm getting decent numbers. - I like that I can add additional modules to my casinos! - I'm still burning through cash like crazy to make casinos profitable, but I'm working on it. - I've seen the school bus bug before, but haven't seen it yet since the patch. - I somewhat saw the pollution bug everyone is complaining about, but so far it hasn't affected my cities much. I'm obsessive at planting trees, so maybe that is helping me. - I haven't had a single disaster since the patch. Yay! Perhaps I've been lucky. - Lights on medium density streets is killing some of my cities with traffic.

Since 2.0 patch, I would say that traffic is way worse than before. The addition of street lights on medium density streets have slowed down my traffic to an absolute crawl. On a couple cities that I played last night, where I was dealing with minor traffic issues pre 2.0, now I'm having major issues. Pre-patch, I could design my street layouts to maximize fast traffic flow by limiting the amount of traffic lights. This could be done by downgrading high density streets to medium density just before hitting avenues in order to keep traffic flowing on these major routes. Now with 2.0 patch, every medium density street will plop a street light which is slowing up my traffic. Traffic was fairly frustrating enough before 2.0, now it's nearly unbearable. I'm going to play around some more tonight, hopefully I don't need to redesign my cities because of this patch.