micromanager

Hello everyone, I've downloaded a few ploppable buildings from simtropolis that help me add types of commercial jobs and increase the realism of my city. All of them work great, except for one aspect: in the nighttime, these buildings don't have any lights - they just remain dark. I've seen pictures of these buildings in the night with lights, so I think I might be missing something? If it helps, I have the following ploppable files: Plop-a-shop pack by Sim Goober Gobal Telecom plop JunGoldFinancial building Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

got both patches, and it works! Thanks!

is there anyway to tell if I need the update? I remember downloading an update before, but my computer crashed and I had to reinstall both programs (SC4 and rush hour) recently.

awesome - this is perfect. Thanks so much!

sorry - I was unclear in the last post. I also have pretty sizable freight-train travel between cities (I like my industry to use freight trains instead of trucks so I use the "No Freight Truck" traffic control road pieces to push my freight traffic onto the rails. It helps with congestion). If I destroy the intercity connections, my industry can't get their goods out of the city and I'll be forced to open up the roads again, which I ideally don't want to do. I guess I could build separate rails for passenger and freight, but I was wondering if you knew of any "traffic control" rail pieces that I could use to prevent passenger trains from leaving the city. You know, like the ones that allow you to prevent buses or freight trucks from driving on certain roads? This may be impossible, and I might just have to compromise, so just let me know if this is the case. Thanks again for your help!

Ahhhh - thanks for the explanation. I love Simulator Z so far because it's very realistic (I cut back on subway construction because of the higher cost), but this seems very unrealistic (it seems like most passenger train lines that cross the city boundary would be the preferred choice for sims, even though their trip doesn't end at the city boundary). Do you know of any fix that prevents passenger trains from leaving the city? Maybe similar to the "No Freight Truck" road pieces that you can use to channel freight traffic onto rails? Passenger trains play an important part in commuting inside my city, and I'd to keep them if possible.

I have a situation which I just can't figure out. I used simulator Z High (I had the 2008 NAM with Simulator A Easy) and my car usage dropped by 10,000 or so. Pedestrian and subway usage increased greatly, because I'm guessing people can now walk farther distances. This is fine, but I'd like to have sims use my highway system to commute to jobs outside of the city (my main city is bordered by two industrial cities on either side). After I installed simulator Z, my sims flooded onto the passenger trains to commute to jobs in the neighboring industrial cities. So now my highways are empty, and my sims are using passenger trains to get to their jobs in the neighboring industrial cities. Here's the mystery: while there are passenger train stations in the main city, there are no passenger train stations in the neighboring industrial cities. I have no idea how my sims are getting off the train once they cross the border. I've run my city for 10 years or so, and there is still significant passenger train usage. How is this possible? Does simulator Z make train stations unnecessary for leaving a passenger train? Any help would be greatly appreciated, because simulator Z works well in every other aspect. Thanks!

I have a city on a large-sized map. About half of the space is filled in with a mixture of residential / commercial / industrial development of all densities. I was playing two days ago and my city had just reached a population of 120K after decades of stable growth. I started seeing a fair amount of no-job zots (especially for some of the larger residential buildings) but the commute times and traffic indicators stayed relatively stable. Then, pretty suddenly, my population plumetted to around 90K. Looking at the Jobs and Pop Graph, I could see that the drop first hits the R$ population heavily (they fall around 15K). Then, a little later, the R$$ falls pretty fast as well. When this happens, my CO$$$ and CO$$ fall. Soon, I'm looking at huge abandoned residential bldgs across the map, and some of the commercial office buildings in prime real-estate (along busy transportation corridors) start getting abandoned as well. Even weirder is that most of the traffic dies down too. My trip query now shows me that my main avenues and highways carry roughly 30 cars each when they used to carry close to 3000. I ran the game on high speed to see what happens and essentially I have a never-ending boom and bust cycle. R$$ has overtaken R$ in population now, but both rise and fall about 10K every two years. CO$$ and CO$$$ demand is negative, and my population oscillates between 120K and 90K. Anybody have an idea of what this is, or how I can move my city past this weird stage? I have Rush Hour with the Network Add-On Mod, if that helps any. Thanks.

So I tried a couple of things, including the abandonment mod and the updated version of the NAM (I had the old version it turns out). The cycle smoothed out barely, but some problems still exist. I've run through the situation a couple of times (the "depression" starts in the 80's). As you can see from these graphs, the problem starts with a fairly large decline in Co$$$. This carries over to a slight drop in many of the other commercial sectors. Pretty soon, there are a fair amount of no job zots everywhere and lots of residential buildings start to get abandoned because of too long commute times. Surprisingly, commute times don't increase when this happens. This is a picture of the jobs and pop graph - you can see the drop towards the right side of the graph. This is the same graph with just the commercial lines - the CO$$$ decline happens first, and seems to start the whole thing. My population drops about 15K and oscillates back and forth. While the population drop isn't as severe, the traffic drop is still just as bad. Here's a graph of the traffic volume. You can see pedestrians greatly increasing and car traffic plummeting. This normally wouldn't be bad, except that I've laid out high density commercial office space along my busiest avenues. Without the traffic, their "customers" drop to "low" and many of them start abandoning too. You can see the drop here. I installed the NAM traffic plugin "A" mod, which increases the walking distance of pedestrians, but I did this about 10 years before this whole mess started. So I don't think the whole drop in vehicle traffic is due to the increased walking distance of pedestrians. Finally, my demand chart looks like this after the whole mess: So, to anyone whose still listening , my questions: Any idea how to get out of this? The new NAM mod seems to increase the walking distance of peds, but I remember older mods would increase the driving distances as well. Is there anyway that the new NAM mod can increase the maximum driving distances (or does it do this already?). I feel like allowing for greater driving distances might solve both problems - it would reduce the no job zots, and it would still keep lots of traffic to boost business in my commercial zones. Also, there are two other cities connected to this one. Both have pretty much all industrial zones (ie: they're mainly work-only cities). When this whole mess happens, none of the buildings int he industrial cities close, but the commuting into these cities dies down. I want to avoid plops, but if it comes to it....

thanks for the tips guys. Unfortunately, I don't know how to upload screenshots so I can't show you graphs, but before this whole situation happens, the only demand bars in the negative are CO$$$ and dirty industry. Every other sector has positive demand. I'll try the different strategies you've listed (including the abandonment mod) and see which one works. Thanks!

I have never encountered this problem before, but here it is. I have a city of about 100,000 (about 60 yrs old) on a large map. Needless to say, there is a lot of area still unfilled, and I wanted to dedicate a small corner of the map to a farming community. The problem is I have zero demand for agricultural zones, even though there are many places in my city with high desirability for farming zones. Even weirder is that I recently started a neighboring city (its about 4 yrs old) and its demand for agricultural zones is really high. My questions: Is the demand for agricultural zones in a city linked to population, so after your city reaches a certain size, you can't have farms anymore? If not, how can I increase demand for farms in my 100,000 people city? (I've already tried lowering taxes, they are currently at zero for farm zones) Thanks for any help.

I'm still able to have farms in my region, it's just that I can't build (or there isn't any demand for) farm zones in my already developed city. As SamFlash said, it's probably because the game progresses naturally from small towns to large cities.

I tried...and I failed. I dezoned every last non-agricultural industrial zone, removed connections to other industrial cities, and zoned some more agriculture in a desirable place. What happened was essentially the Great Depression - no more jobs, people start leaving, etc. I even raised taxes on other industry types - they all decreased, but the Ag demand still stays stubbornly at zero. I have given up. Thanks for trying to help.

interesting thoughts. I will try Rayden's suggestions and see what happens (hopefully not the collapse of my region's economy! )

For the sake of everyone else's information, I will try to update people on the situation as I try new stuff to get my ag demand past zero. I can't restart my city, or go back in time, so my options are limited. So far, these are the results: > Increase demand by dumbing down population - Result: Ag demand stays at zero, dirty industry demand skyrockets > Increase demand artificially by downloading Radical Ordiance MOD -Result, Ag demand still stays at zero. My guess is MOD doesn't work if the demand is zero to begin with. >Increase demand by bulding neighboring city full of poor people (by lowering taxes on R$ and taxing the hell out of everyone else), and then connecting said poor city to 100,000 people city in an effort to induce demand for Ag jobs - Result, Ag demand STill stays zero. Once again, demand for dirty industry skyrockets. My guess is the following - Once my city reaches a certain population, poor people only like working in dirty industry jobs. I'm gonna keep trying, because I really want this countryside to develop, so if anyone else has any other ideas, I would greatly appreciate them. Thanks for all the help thus far!

Wow. I just tried EVERYTHING - dumbing down my city, using the Radical Ordinance MOD, etc. NOTHING worked. I can't believe it. Thanks for all your suggestions though. It seems my dreams of a nice countryside have kicked the bucket.

Thanks for your advice. I looked at the Radical Ordinance MOD, and it seems a little too wild for my taste. Are there any rewards or buildings that you've come across that increase demand for agriculture?