DHarrisG

I love your city of Augusta and have downloaded your bat file. Thank you so much. I myself was working on rebuilding Rome but couldn't find enough Italianate buildings, so I am so eager to use yours. However, I have run into a few issues that I hope you can help me with. 1. Some of your buildings have brown boxes when I plop them. On most, you can make out much of the building but see a smaller brown box when the building is plopped, so perhaps these smaller boxes are caused by the lack of the automata files that you noted in your readme file. As you offered on divshare, can I get these automata files from you? And if you think something else might be causing the problem, such as other missing dependencies, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know. I have downloaded your entire unzipped rar file into my plugins, so I don't think I'm missing anything that you uploaded. 2. At least one of the buildings has a larger brown box problem - the farmaccia is entirely a brown box. Are you aware of why this might be? 3. Most importantly, if I open the Transportation - Miscellaneous submenu (it may have a slightly different name, but it is the 4th one down in the Transportation menu), the game freezes. I'm pretty sure this is not due to any conflict, because I ultimately removed or uninstalled everything else from the plugins folder, including uninstalling the NAM mod. Do you have any idea why the game freezes when I move my cursor over the Transportation menu? I can read the Torre Civita file name when the mouse hovers but then it freezes. Removing the Torre Civita files did not help, and I can see that there are several other files contained in the Transportation section that I can't see the name of because of the freeze. What files in your rar appear on the Transportation menu? If you can at least give me a list of your bat Transportation buildings, I can remove them all and reinsert them one by one to see what the problem is. Or is it a broader problem, such as my needing some other mod to make them work? Again, thanks so much for creating and posting your bats and for building your beautiful city, and thanks in advance for any help you can give me with the above issues.

Theoretically, you can run all the cities in a region yourself and duplicate what others would do as different mayors. One person can run a region alone. The problem is with region play and its current defects.

The specializations (you used Oil) employ tons of workers, so you will have a huge spike in jobs available (or unfilled) when you build the well.

Yes, students from other cities won't come to my university either, despite the fact that I have every possible transportation connection and they desperately want to go to a university.

Absolutely correct, region play sucks. Plus you get cut off for no reason from supplies of power, water, etc. without sufficient warning. I'll be playing a city and suddenly I'll be told that city x is no longer supplying water to me, even though I know (as the only player in the region) that they have plenty. If they gave me enough warning I could build power, water, etc. without any major interruption. But inevitably, I learn about it so late that, even if I immediately build a power plant or water supply in the city, there is still a blackout or drought for a significant time before the new utilities buildings come on line. And of course the first buildings to go down for lack of power or water are the most important, such as the production facilities for my specialization. As mayor, if I could, I would be able to declare that these buildings should continue to get the utilities, and shut down less important buildings. But of course I am not given that discretion. I'd bring a lawsuit against the city that cut off the power and water if there was a court system in the region.

Morticcia, I may be wrong, and I have not sold computers, but I know a couple things about selling coal: 1. The trade depots don't pick up coal from the coal mines - only coal mine trucks can move it to the depots. 2. You can't sell coal directly from the mines, only from the trade depots. So if computers are like coal, and I don't know why the depots and product source would work differently for computers, 1. Your trade depot trucks won't pick up computers from the factory; you probably need trucks that are part of the factory to deliver them to the depots. 2. You can't sell computers direct from the factory. If you can edit the computer factory to add trucks, try that. They should then deliver the computers to the trade depots which, if you've set them to export, should be picked up for sale to the global market by the global market trucks which the region sends. Hope this works for you.

Problems with freight trains are killing the game for me. Although some have claimed that freight trains can pick up 100 tons of a product (say, coal) at a time, I can only get trains to pick up 10 tens at a time, the amount that two measly trucks can carry (athough the ports themselves hold up to 100 tons, the trains only pick up 10 tons per trip). And there is only one freight train running in the entire cluster (with only 2 freight cars) - I can see it in City View (with the Trade specialization button turned on, so the trade icon appears over it) travelling slowly around all the cities, even ones that haven't been claimed yet! And this single freight train takes about 9 hours to do its long worthless loop around the cluster until it gets to my train depot, with the result that the whole train depot (which cost me about 500,000 simoleons to get all the necessary authorizations like HQ's and to build the depot itself, with all the necessary edits) only delivers about 50 tons a day worth 36,000 simoleons in profits, which is useless when you need to reach 700,000 simoleons in profits. I have about 95 truck deliveries a day and only 3 train deliveries (a box in the lower right corner gives these numbers), which isn't remotely worth it when trains carry only 10 tons per trip. Moreover, I couldn't even get a single freight train to show up until I first blew up my pre-existing passenger station and ran a road between the trade port and the loader that touches the rail tracks (although I don't know if these had any effect or if I just had to wait until the powers that be decided to finally start a freight train running). And unlike freight trucks, which say how much they are carrying (0 out of 5 or 5 out of 5), the freight trains don't say how much they are carrying, just that they came from a train depot. I can deduce that they are only carrying 10 tons of coal by looking at the Recent Transactions chart on the Finances page, which shows 12,000 when a train stops and 6,000 the rest of the time (for the trucks). And I can see that there are only two coal cars. Anyone who has seen a freight train take five minutes to pass, with over a hundred freight cars, knows how absurd this is. This has been a major disappointment to me, since I spent hours setting up a beautiful rail system running around the outer edge of the city all the way to the mines to avoid the traffic pileups that trucks can run into and the pollution. And it is so unrealistic to have freight trains carry only as much as two lousy trucks. Maxis, please correct this so that much longer freight trains arrive more frequently picking up much larger loads.

Or maybe just generic cars that could carry anything but are already filled with, say, alloy, so you're out of luck with your coal.

Yes, it is spotty. I have seen payments listed in my Monthly Transactions chart, but not always. The city selling the utility or service always seems to get the short end of the stick. On the other hand, supplies from another city are constantly cut off without sufficient warning, leaving other cities scrambling to build its own utilities, usually with inevitable interruptions. Buying and selling utilities needs a lot of work from Maxis, which is odd given that it is supposed to be one of the main features of region play.

I think when they say "not enough skilled workers" they are not talking about the education level but rather wealth level. Check your employment figures (click on the population total) and see if you have open medium and high wealth jobs not being filled by city residents or commuters. If you do, you may need to upgrade the wealth level of some R zones by building parks or something so those jobs are filled. Of course, that will affect your ratio of low wealth sims to low wealth jobs, but that is another issue.

If you have one storage bin that has 100 tons of coal in it, why should you need 3 more in order to get a freight train to pick up more than 20 tons? Each freight train should have enough cars to pick up at least 50 - 100 tons on each run, in 5 - 10 freight cars, regardless of whether you have enough bins to store 400 total tons. The game seems to reward inefficiency. And what happens if you have another city in a cluster also shipping freight by train? Does that take up some of the train cars so that you can't ship your goods in cars that are already filled? I only have one city in the cluster with a train trade port so I don't know, but if the train that does come only has 2 freight cars I suspect it doesn't matter.

I have the same problem, a university that can't seem to attract students from outside the city, even though it has a student bus line to the other city and the other city asked for a university. I have a bus terminal and every transportation connection I can think of, students dying to travel to the university, and they still won't come. What gives?

Scotty, does the trade specialty menu show exports of commodities for the current day? I thought it was the number for your best day, usually the prior day, not a running count of that same day. Am I mistaken?

I thought that deliveries to the region were made by trade depot (or trade port) trucks that I create through the edit process. Scotty, are you saying these trucks only make local deliveries, and that an entirely different set of trucks we don't create or control pick up and deliver all goods exported to the global market? In that case, I have been adding too many trucks to trade depots and trade ports, since my only local deliveries are to my own power plant. I guess I should have figured that out, since the Monthly Transactions page keeps showing $6,000 deliveries, which is 10 tons. BTW, I find the misnamed Monthly Transactions page (because it's actually daily) to be pretty worthless, since there is no good way to get a count of the goods shipped that day. The scroll is awful, and the total number seems more a prediction of what the daily total might be at the current rate of progress.

What if you're talking about a truck? Isn't a load then 5 tons? Since the size of a load can vary, I try to use the tonnage as the measurement.

What do you mean by 20 "loads?" How many tons in a load?

With coal, I can have 100 tons in the port and the train still only picks up 20 tons in 2 cars, and only once every 8 or 9 hours. Maybe it's a bug with coal if it works correctly for you with processors. Or maybe there's something else you're doing that I'm not. KG, I've tried it with the coal bin attached to the port and also with the bin attached to the RR attachment; it makes no difference. One train with 2 cars picking up 20 tons every 8-9 hours.

Scotty, I think the 12k you are referring to is simoleons, not tons. A truck shipment of 5 tons gets you 6k in money (see the financial monthly transaction report). A train shipment gets you 12k in money, so I inferred that a train shipment is only 10 tons. My freight trains have 3 engine cars and only two freight cars carrying coal. Note correction: train shipment gets you 12k.

TuPhat, how long were the long freight trains you saw? What did you do to get them? I still get tiny trains even when I have 200 tons waiting to be picked up. And the port trucks carry 5 tons, same as the depot trucks. So I don't think they're larger, at least in terms of capacity.

Kgpurrs, I just tried something else, but it too failed (same 10 ton pickup). I bulldozed the depot rail connection, placed it further up the tracks, and added coal lots on the side away from the tracks, which I was allowed to do (since they didn't impinge upon the tracks) - in fact, I added 2 having a total capacity of 200 tons. Freight train arrived, only 2 cars, only picked up 10 tons. Any other ideas? I think this is a bug that Maxis needs to fix, not something we can do ourselves, but I appreciate all your help.

Kgpurrs, that was a clever idea, so I tried it - unfortunately, to no avail. The only snap-points to add the coal storage lot to the train station impinged upon the railroad tracks. I got the message can't place on top of road (even though it was rail tracks and not a road that it had to be placed on). So it's back to the drawing board.

But Scotty, that doesn't help if the only transport option is rail, which is true of many if not most cities. And have you been able to get freight trains to do 20 ton loads? I see no evidence that anyone has been able to hit that figure, which is still much too low to make them worthwhile. Maxis should fix the freight trains so that they come more frequently with far more freight cars. Jas, I don't think so. I added another coal lot to my train port and it didn't make a difference. If your actual experience is different than mine, I'd appreciate your letting me know. And if a single lot holds 100 tons, why should you have to add another (to hold a total of 200 tons) in order to get a freight train to pick up 20 tons instead of 10? It makes no sense.

Although Fastneasy says freight trains pick up 100 tons at a time, I can only get trains to pick up 10 tens at a time, the amount that two measly trucks can carry. And there is only one freight train running in the entire cluster (with only 2 freight cars) - I can see it in City View (with the Trade specialization button turned on, so the trade icon appears over it) travelling slowly around all the cities, even ones that haven't been claimed yet! And this single freight train takes about 9 hours to do its long worthless loop around the cluster until it gets to my train depot, with the result that the whole train depot (which cost me about 500,000 simoleons to get all the necessary authorizations like HQ's and to build the depot itself, with all the necessary edits) only delivers about 50 tons a day. I have about 75 truck deliveries a day and 3 train deliveries (a box in the lower right corner gives these numbers), which isn't remotely worth it when trains carry only 10 tons per trip. Moreover, I couldn't even get a single freight train to show up until I first blew up my pre-existing passenger station and ran a road between the trade port and the loader that touches the rail tracks (although I don't know if these had any effect or if I just had to wait until the powers that be decided to finally start a freight train running). And unlike freight trucks, which say how much they are carrying (0 out of 5 or 5 out of 5), the freight trains don't say how much they are carrying, just that they came from a train depot. I can deduce that they are only carrying 10 tons by looking at the Recent Transactions chart on the Finances page, which shows 12,000 when a train stops and 6,000 the rest of the time (for the trucks). Fastneasy, did it start slowly for you too and build up to greater volume? Please tell me it gets better, and that over time more and longer freight trains will run. This has been a major disappointment to me, since I spent hours setting up a beautiful rail system running around the outer edge of the city all the way to the mines to avoid the traffic pileups that trucks can run into and the pollution. And it is so unrealistic to have freight trains carry only as much as two lousy trucks.