ArchDan

Damn meteor strike left a big radiation circle in a area of my city, been planting trees there for years but to no avail, is there any way to get rid of it.. Or does it have a 2,000,000 year half life or something lol

Okay here is the deal, hopefully someone has figured this out because i'm totally stumped and frustrated to the max. Which has left me thinking something may be broken.. So i'm trying to partially specialize in tourism and gambling. I have a very low crime rate, three police stations maxxed out in strategic areas, one is specifically situated very close to the gambling hall.. Additionally I have tirelessly defeated traffic in my city (everywhere is bright green 99% of every hour. I have done this by including train stations (one situated next to the gambling hall, another next to major tourist attractions), 2 bus stations (both situated near the gambling hall and maxxed out), a bus terminal, a streetcar station AND a municipal airport.. My cultural buildings are the Willis tower, statue of liberty, and an expo center... Also i have a well balanced commercial area beside my gambling hall and surrounding my cultural buildings.. Now despite all this hard work, I have a pathetic amount of tourists, barely enough to generate I would estimate, less then $1000 per hr on average from my cultural buildings (because this fluctuation is erratic and never consistent) and consistently negative from my gambling hall....How is this possible? I am just laughing out loud at this point.. Please someone give me some insight if there is any to be had.. Thanks.

Thanks everyone for the info

I had the same prob, and still do.. In my experience tourism is not consistent.. It does not work in a way that would seem logical to me in any manner...Ill run my city by the book so to speak in order to successfully run a tourism city and it will work great for a few months then everything goes to sh@t then it will randomly become successful then it will decline again then become more profitable then ever before, then it will be as costly as ever before.. Its ridiculous...

Stay away from tourism and gambling, that in my opinion is the best strategy...Tourism and gambling from my experiences are broken.. or at the very least extremely inconsistent. Trade in combination with electronic factories are your best bet for making LOADS of money... It is simply the most consistent and reliable method of making money (i'm currently making millions per month in my relatively small city)..

Okay so the biggest problem among the plethora of issues faced designing the perfect city imo is finding the correct balance between residential, commercial, and industrial... For some reason no matter what I do finding this balance is never possible and i would like as much advice and tips as possible... Before you give me you insight tho, I want to share some things ive noticed thus far. For one I've mixed commercial buildings with residential in a way to insure my sims have a place to shop.. Regardless they still display the "where is the shopping in this town statement" also despite the fact the the zoning meter suggests there is no demand for commercial...which i think is discouraging.. Secondly i have made sure i have enough workers for my industrial, but even with a clear overabundance of people vs. amount of jobs available, industry still keeps giving me the message "shortage of workers" on that note industry occasionally displays "not enough skilled workers" but my educational level is 4.5/5 and the education data map suggests literally everyone in my city is educated... So those are a few of the many discrepancies ive experienced.. Ill start with those.. All insight is welcome.. Thanks.

Okay ego's are starting to run wild here... Everything i say is opinion based, which is why i usually say imo.. Im not here trying to be "Mr. No it all" .. I simply have experienced things that "I" personally believe to be inconsistent with how a city realistically operates... which lead me to think that things may be broken... its not that i can't learn from other strategies...implement them... then successfully run tourism and gambling... But what i was attempting to do is specialize in multiple things... Cities do have multiple specializations lets be honest.. New york is a tourist destination of the world but its also a very successful trade, and shopping hub that is without a doubt forsure... why can't i achieve the same... i can't... so something must be wrong.. that's my thinking process...

I have a feeling you may be right.. Electronic factories prob do suck workers but demand for workers is still maintained because the game may not be recognizing that these jobs are being filled by industrial.. If you are right about stimulating industry then that would mean a minimum mount of industry is necessary for residential stimulation.. That is ridiculous tho because im still providing enough jobs technically through elec factories and thus residential should be stimulated.. But considering ive been at around 100,000 pop for several years now something is wrong.. I will do some testing.. Oh and there is another city in my region but its very small, not much regional demand to speak off.

interesting..

What "features" exactly will change the game when it comes to electronics specialization?

lost a city i spend min 30hrs on because of this bs problem... ea is getting sooo much bad hype.. and the funny thing is they can give all the games they want away for free but if the same probs just keep happening.. free games or not.. no gamer is gunna be happy... Oh and i almost forgot to mention, not having any direct support for suffering gamers experiencing such torture, is SUCHHHH a poor business move EA.. Who is running this company my god..

At one point everything was balanced quite well, but when i reached the 75k tier everything went to sh@t.. Job dispersion does not seem to be constant across the board. Shopping is definitely satisfied for each wealth class, i controlled that quite easily by integrating commercial buildings in each wealth class's zones a while ago so i could cross that off the list... My industrial is kept to a minimum because the land has been put to better purpose with electronic factories but more can be zoned if necessary not a problem. But regardless of minimum and i mean minimum industrial, residential demand still goes up which is just weird.. With regards to industry making commercial demand, well i have minimum commercial yet demand for commercial often goes up.. And freight is taken care of that's forsure another thing I can cross off the list.. Maybe the key to this mess is zoning different industry tech classes to minimize unemployment cus perhaps my unemployment is a bit high..

@Epic-nemesis thank you for your explanation, but i have fiddled around with such strategies for Sim Years in order to find such an equilibrium but i have not been able to reach it regardless of what I do.. From my countless hours of playing the game, i have concluded that at the 75k to 250k population tier Sim City demands a MINIMUM amount of residential zoning in order to stimulate progression. I have dropped my taxes to 7%, I have put parks in each and every residential zone in addition to commercial buildings at the end of blocks, I made enough jobs available for all, enough services to rid the city of crime, fires, pollution, and enough education facilities for literally every single sim to have an education AND every known mass transit system to satisfy their needs but regardless they are never happy, and density WILL NOT progress to the maximum... This game is broken simple and plain, the algorithms from which the game is based are not sufficient... Everything can never be satisfied and probably never will be..

I also went with dead space 3, both mass effect 3 and battlefield have better reviews but they also retail for 19.99 and 9.99. i rather get my money worth and get the 49.99 game.. Plus Dead Space is still a decent enough game and i'm a sucker for graphics..

Makes sense with regards to having an unnecessary amount of commuters and that is a good strategy in order to make as much use of as little space as possible because fewer residential areas would need to be zoned to support commercial and industrial jobs but how exactly can i control or know how many people are working at a building at any given time?? besides making many calculations manually.. but then i would have to estimate how many people are in any given wealth class...

What tips does anyone have with regards to increasing the commercial and residential density to the third and highest level possible? I would prefer someone who has actually achieved this to answer instead of someone speculating...

Almost lost interest after the sever failed to generate my region properly then it tried to roll it back, failed, then it got completely erased... 20hrs down the drain... Decided to give it a second chance considering I thought I learned a lot and could design the same city even better but if this happens again I doubt I'd have any motivation to continue playing... Especially after there is almost zero resources available with regards to customer assistance for this game.....

Okay so here is the deal.. I had one bus station maxed out.. 58min waiting time, which is yellow zone territory. Despite me having no traffic I saw this as a sign of the beginnings of traffic probs.. So I plopped another bus station maxed it out, waiting about 2days min.. New bus wait time, 58min... Seriously. Can someone please explain this..

Ya this is ridiculous buses follow each other making it completely pointless to upgrade past 2 bus stations.. Train stations would be a better investment I think. But my waiting time has decreased finally by ten min still pathetic but its a change none the less... Prob even only made possible because of no traffic in my city otherwise the higher quantity of buses would just further clogg roads.. Lol.. I really hope they come out with an update soon...but if there bragging about poor algorithms then the awareness neccessary to influence improvements is clearly not there fml..

I've noticed u can hold out on upgrades from an elementary as long as you want, despite crime, and tech level repercussions but happiness levels will still be maintained so long as your doing everything else right of course.

@Zspike, I respectfully disagree... It is logical in strategy yes, I would agree to that but it is not logical in design... In real life tourist attractions will attract there own tourists... That is why it is called a "tourist attraction" lol... But to have to put one tourist attraction that properly attracts tourists (the expo center) to attract tourists to another attraction (the casino) is obsurd...

I use the same strategies as you and it does work best for efficiently upgrading desity but I perhaps overlooked the importance of having each and every educational institution. I have a elementary, college, and university, and I'm at an educational level of 4.5/5 and my happines level of my pop sways between 70-80 perc. happiness level but regardless I don't yet have a high school.. I'm not sure how that could be the keystone to this all but whatever ill plop one none the less.... Now with regards to reaching a tier of 200k pop+ in order to increase density, if that is indeed the case that IMO is poor game mechanics...because I want to restrict the amount of space used for residential.. My intent in this strategy is to use as little space as possible yet maintaining the highest population possible but if what ur saying is indeed correct then I would need to use a SET amount of land at Minimum to even achieve the highest desity which seems wrong to me I dunno..

Thanks for the info guys but I have high density roads with sufficient space for max density expansion as indicated by the adjacent line when zoning certain areas, but regardless of general high happiness and high money possession from my sims in addition to full coverage of all areas by the police and despite the indication of high likelihood of density expansion as indicated by the relevant data map, I have sat for over a year with mid density buildings... Is there a specific happiness level or tax rate on buildings required for density to expand to its highest density level? Cus otherwise I'm again completely baffled by this games mechanics..

Bus station and train station are right beside the casino..... And there is absolutely no commercial buildings in front beside, or in between the bus and train station and the casino. There is tho a block of commercial behind the casino but there is a land gap between them, because the commercial building are zoned on a completely separate street.. My expo centre is not close to the casinos tho, but I thought each entity would attract there own tourists... This is very ludicrous in design if that isn't the case Imo.

Thanks for spending the time to reply @kgpurrs but I had the exact same casino set up you described and despite that I was loosing even more money which is why I turned it off in order to first generate more income from one casino... Although the casino is not situated directly on the main avenues it is literally a singe high density building size away so I doubt that would make a drastic difference but I will try that none the less. Additionally my bus station, bus terminal, and one train station are all walking distance from the casino and my expo centre does indeed have a sign on it. Also I think it would be good to note that although my casino isn't full my expo centre always sells out and I have a bus stop AND streetcar stop right in front of the expo centre. What confuses me is the purpose of turning off my tourist attractions considering that is one of the factors necessary to attract tourists. Even tho high wealth tourists are attracted, off my head I believe the amount of other wealth class tourists that can also visit these attractions are equal too or exceed the amount of High wealth tourists that can visit...Regardless I will try that as well.. The big question I have is how will I control whether a hotel will appear on a certain commercial zoning zone or not besides destroying that area until one appears lol... Please fill me in..