SockoJr53

My universities no longer have snap points. By that, I mean the dirt roads that run along the outside of the main building, where normally I could snap the dorms and other uni buildings to are gone now. I can still plop those buildings outside of the main building, like along other city roads, but the uni's roads itself are now useless. Does anyone know of a mod that may conflict with this? I don't recall this being an issue since...probably before the update to 10.3 I did a search here an couldn't find anything, did anyone else get this problem?

It is interesting to see how big the railyards USED to be, looking at your first pic, I assume the mostly vacant area to the right was all active railyard, and it looks like they downsized over the decades once rail traffic declined in the US.

Agriculture was one of the specializations that was proposed but got cut from the final game. There were supposed to be fishing wharves, farms, and ranches all producing various resources (fish, grain, livestock, fruit) that would then need to be sent to a food processing plant. Timber was another one that was cut. The actual forests you see in the game now would be harvested and processed at sawmills and paper mills to make paper, books, toys, furniture, etc. That specialization was also sadly scrapped during development. I would love to see a DLC or Expansion to include that, as I don't know how far that would get with modding.

I want to be optimistic and think that all this quietness means theres a new expansion, or a really big patch in the works. (Farming and Timber Specializations are number 1 on my wishlist) However as I mentioned in another thread, part of me thinks the silence is as a result of all the big-wig turnover at Maxis. Ocean Quigly left, Stone Librande left, I don't know where Lucy Bradshaw even is anymore. It's also possible that some have moved on to The Sims 4 already.

Dorms do not increase classroom capacity at the University. Their purpose is to allow students to live there, and not live with their parents off campus. This way, they are close enough to walk to class and not have to jam up the roads driving into class every morning. When the first class starts, watch the education overlay, you will see them leave the dorms and go into the academic buildings to attend class. If you have 1,675 unemployed $$$ workers, you need to provide them $$$ jobs. Rich people like to work in the $$$ office towers. They will still work in smelly $ factories, but only if they can be the boss and not the assembly line worker, so there are limited spots in those types of buildings. There is a mod that allows you to see the number of jobs of each wealth level at each building, I highly recommend it. A note about that 90,000 population. That is a "fudged" number to make your city seem larger than it really is. Always pay attention to the population detail panel, as it displays the true number agents (population) in your city.

Have you assigned Recycling Trucks to the other cities? Once trucks have all been assigned, go load up the other cities, and you should see the recycling pile up in the Trash Overlay View, then your trucks from the original city should start coming in. Keep in mind they don't start their shift until morning, so if it's evening or night, you'll need to wait a bit. I know for sure it's not a bug, I have a three-city setup similar to what you are describing, and the one central city handles recycling for all three, it works perfectly, and the central city makes money off each truck as well.

I've seen that one, but it actually wasn't the one I was referring to, this chart just lists all the building populations, that's where I got the 700 number from in my previous post. Finally found it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiK1gO7pmnQEdEVkck9adUNTU2hoclJoSEpTY21sdEE#gid=2

You're welcome! Someone made a spreadsheet of actual building populations a while ago. Unfortunately I can't find where it was posted, and can't remember the author but I do have a pdf saved. Just to give an example, the chart shows a low-wealth, high density building holds 700 agents in SC2013 (400 workers, 200 shoppers, and 100 students) Now compare that to a similar building in SC4 (Think of the 4x4 residential low wealth "Hamster Tenements" or "Project Bootstrap") could hold upwards of 4000 to 5000 Sims!

It's not that 80% of your population is useless, they really aren't even there to begin with. The population listed on the bottom of the UI (100,000 for you) is a fudged number. The actual number of agents (Workers, Shoppers, Students) is displayed in detail in your population panel. For you it looks like 18,000. There is a mod here that will force the real population to be displayed instead of the fudged inflated number. EDIT: To elaborate on why it was done this way, (and this is some speculation on my part) The game's engine cannot truly handle 100,000s of agents moving throughout your city. This has been a topic of much contention since the game's launch. Add that with the small city tile size, and you wind up with what you are describing, something that appears to be a large city packed with skyscrapers...and only 18,000 people living in them. So they fudge the numbers, make it look like those skyscrapers really do support 100,000s of Sims, but behind the scenes they really don't.

I certainly hope they don't "give up". This game stumbled a lot, but I think it still has potential with expansions and mods. I too have noticed EA has been super quiet since Offline launched, and I've been wondering if that has to do with all of the turnover in EA recently. Stone Librande left, Ocean Quigly left, I don't know what happened to Lucy Bradshaw, probably more turnover I can't think of right now. I'm hoping they come back soon with news of a new expansion or patches.

That sounds like a TON of schools! I have a city of 150,000 right now, with one high school and one University at level 3 and they fulfill the education need. School bus stops are placed around one half the city, busing students to the high school, and university students either drive or take bus/streetcar to their classes. I've never had issues with Sims complaining about not having schooling, maybe post a screenshot of your city with the education overlay on so we can see?

The landfills do have a maximum capacity. You will most likely have to place the incinerator at some point. As long as it is down wind from the majority of your population, the Sims won't mind. Recycling is not a complete replacement, not everything can be recycled.

Keep in mind, the University has classes 4 times a day (I think it's 4) so when it says 800 students, it means 800 can be taught at each class time. Watch the University with the education overlay on, you will see morning class students come, sit through class, then leave as new students come in to take the afternoon classes and so forth. EDIT: A note about the dorms, they act as housing for your students, not as actual classroom seats. They allow your students to effectively leave the residential areas and live there instead, which means they don't have to commute and sit in traffic on the way to class. The 800 classroom seats come from the main round University building, and each additional school you build (School of Science, School of Medicine, etc) will increase the seating capacity by 500.

This has been my feeling since the beginning, Why not both? I like to compare the jump from SC4 to SC2013 just like the jump from Civ4 to Civ5. The latest versions are not necessarily better or worse than their predecessors, they're just DIFFERENT. For the record, I love all 4 games I just mentioned, but for different reasons. Take the game as it is, are the maps tiny? You bet they are and its a bummer. However we can do new things like resource extraction, gambling, tourism, researching at the University...etc. As for Mods, give it time. SC4 has 11 years worth of research, testing, and modding behind it. Does anyone remember when SC4 Vanilla launched back in freaking 2003? No Rush Hour Expansion, no one way roads, no avenues, no El-trains, no large schools, and no modding community, those things took time. There's no telling what this community can accomplish with SC2013 as our modders unlock new things every day. Most importantly, never think something is impossible. If you went back to 2003 and told this community about the wonders of the NAM or CAM by 2014 they too would claim that's impossible.