All neighbor deals suddenly gone

[KristopherVector]

So, I'm playing on the San Fransisco region, and I have 2 small towns, which recieve most of their income by supplying a larger city with garbage disposal and water, respectively. This worked well until it just... stopped. All my neighbor deals are gone, but neither the pipes nor any of the road connections were severed. Any help?

If it matters at all, although i assume it wont, i have NAM and some BATs files installed

[Bfloo]

If all 4 deals cancelled at the same time, I would lean towards a mod conflict or a glitch.

Make sure your landfills have capacity and there is excess water capacity in the small cities.

There could be an issue on the larger city side as well.

[KristopherVector]

Originally posted by Bfloo:

If all 4 deals cancelled at the same time, I would lean towards a mod conflict or a glitch.

Make sure your landfills have capacity and there is excess water capacity in the small cities.

There could be an issue on the larger city side as well.

Landfills have plenty of capacity, same with water pumps. The pumps are flowing, and the pipe is going through the connection, blue all along it... until you load the major city

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Just how the game works sadly, had a city as a kid have it's power import deal get cancelled along with all others at the same time, happened after around 40 combined in game years (combined as in I was doing 5 year stints going back and forth between them).

Funnily enough, on the topic a year or two ago, Bfloo was there also doing the same as now, wouldn't recommend you go looking for it, nothing approaching a solution was brought up, only worth looking back on if you want read stupid comments by Bfloo in particular, example?

Me: *explains co-dependant cities which had all deals cut while playing as the larger city which was importing power*

Bfloo: You must just not be keeping an eye on things properly, just like me and my water deals which always fail because of how hard water is to manage.

Me: Water is one of the easiest things to manage though due to u, v and w, certainly easier than power due to x, y and z, also, none of that explains how a power IMPORT deal could fail.

Bfloo: Water is hard to manage due to how small the pumps are and how they get swallowed by skyscrapers, no wonder I keep losing tack of them to check in on them before it's too late.

Me: So... a problem you wouldn't even be having if you just built the pumps on the coast like you'd have to do anyway if you were playing the older SimCity games, right...
Also, again, it was a power import deal which failed, where's your explanation of that?

And it basically looped from there from memory, so again, maybe good for a laugh if you really want to dig for it, but, not really anything else.

[KristopherVector]

Originally posted by richnathaniel9419:

Just how the game works sadly, had a city as a kid have it's power import deal get cancelled along with all others at the same time, happened after around 40 combined in game years (combined as in I was doing 5 year stints going back and forth between them).

Funnily enough, on the topic a year or two ago, Bfloo was there also doing the same as now, wouldn't recommend you go looking for it, nothing approaching a solution was brought up, only worth looking back on if you want read stupid comments by Bfloo in particular, example?

Me: *explains co-dependant cities which had all deals cut while playing as the larger city which was importing power*

Bfloo: You must just not be keeping an eye on things properly, just like me and my water deals which always fail because of how hard water is to manage.

Me: Water is one of the easiest things to manage though due to u, v and w, certainly easier than power due to x, y and z, also, none of that explains how a power IMPORT deal could fail.

Bfloo: Water is hard to manage due to how small the pumps are and how they get swallowed by skyscrapers, no wonder I keep losing tack of them to check in on them before it's too late.

Me: So... a problem you wouldn't even be having if you just built the pumps on the coast like you'd have to do anyway if you were playing the older SimCity games, right...
Also, again, it was a power import deal which failed, where's your explanation of that?

And it basically looped from there from memory, so again, maybe good for a laugh if you really want to dig for it, but, not really anything else.

Thankfully, I got the deals back, waited maybe 10-20 ingame years (wasnt keeping track) and the options reappeared, so my city isn't flooded with garbage because there's no room for landfills and drinking not-nearly-as-clean water from pumps I had to place... for now...

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Yo... 10 or so game years for them to reappear?! Sounds about right, yeah, though back then,
I didn't bother resigning them, I mean, I was already forced to build my own infrastructure for starters anyway, right? But, like, yeah, learnt the lesson the first time, they just cancel automatically after enough time passes, so, don't be shocked when it happens again, k?

Granted, I haven't actually tried again since that experience (again, lesson learnt first time) and that was with the base game, still I can't recommend neighbour deals as anything other than a short term fix like exporting garbage because you can't afford a waste to energy plant or simply aren't yet generating enough trash for one to be worthwhile at current city size.

[KristopherVector]

Originally posted by richnathaniel9419:

Yo... 10 or so game years for them to reappear?! Sounds about right, yeah, though back then, I didn't bother resigning them, I mean, I was already forced to build my own infrastructure for starters anyway, right? But, like, yeah, learnt the lesson the first time, they just cancel automatically after enough time passes, so, don't be shocked when it happens again, k?

Yeah, good to know. This is my first time building a real "interconnected" region and while I generally supply utilities separately for each city, it is helpful on small tiles to make them reliant on each other.. well, until it screws up lol

Thanks

Since you brought up waste to energy plants, I wanted to ask if you think the pollution is a good trade off for a small tile, on one hand, takes up hardly any space compared to dumps, on the other hand, as said, lots of pollution. I haven't really tried them because of that, seems like they would scare off high tech and wealthy sims on such a small tile where every square inch is useful

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

I do remember towards end getting messages like 'utilities city wants to negotiate new terms', they aren't pop ups, but in the box at the bottom, a small possibility is we needed to interact with that trash, though I also remember it just automatically accepting if you don't interact.

Either way, that's another issue with long term interactivity, the game just decides the neighbour will keep asking for more and more money making any benefits worse and worse.

Originally posted by KristopherVector:

Since you brought up waste to energy plants, I wanted to ask if you think the pollution is a good trade off for a small tile, on one hand, takes up hardly any space compared to dumps, on the other hand, as said, lots of pollution. I haven't really tried them because of that, seems like they would scare off high tech and wealthy sims on such a small tile where every square inch is useful

High Tech and Wealthy sims will be scared off anyway due to the landvalue negative aura landfills have, said aura is even larger than the pollution radius from the plant from memory.

So yeah, screwed either way when it comes to small maps, hence why I like to create custom maps without smalls. Though remember, interconnections don't have to mean shared utilities, can be jobs, that kind of interconnection isn't broken to my knowledge, so even with smalls, pollution can be just kept to one so long as you like wind turbines.

[KristopherVector]

Originally posted by richnathaniel9419:

I do remember towards end getting messages like 'utilities city wants to negotiate new terms', they aren't pop ups, but in the box at the bottom, a small possibility is we needed to interact with that trash, though I also remember it just automatically accepting if you don't interact.

Either way, that's another issue with long term interactivity, the game just decides the neighbour will keep asking for more and more money making any benefits worse and worse.

Originally posted by KristopherVector:

Since you brought up waste to energy plants, I wanted to ask if you think the pollution is a good trade off for a small tile, on one hand, takes up hardly any space compared to dumps, on the other hand, as said, lots of pollution. I haven't really tried them because of that, seems like they would scare off high tech and wealthy sims on such a small tile where every square inch is useful

High Tech and Wealthy sims will be scared off anyway due to the landvalue negative aura landfills have, said aura is even larger than the pollution radius from the plant from memory.

So yeah, screwed either way when it comes to small maps, hence why I like to create custom maps without smalls. Though remember, interconnections don't have to mean shared utilities, can be jobs, that kind of interconnection isn't broken to my knowledge, so even with smalls, pollution can be just kept to one so long as you like wind turbines.

Good stuff to know, thanks. I will probably just keep doing it how I've done it with the neighbor deals, since the cities are pretty much finished anyways. I suppose I could always download the building mod where the sims push the garbage off into the void, lol

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Maybe look up if that into the void building penalises you like the education cheat buildings did according to that test Tsubame ⭐ showed me last year.

More to consider as far as landfill verse waste to energy plant, the solution to both as far as countering the negative effects they make discouraging I-HT would be parks and plazas etc, though combined with many trees for the plant. Trees especially for the plant but parks would make the most logical place to plant the trees with the plant but, you could do without parks with the plant unlike landfill. Landfill's already more expensive (at 500 tons of trash a month) so the fact it specifically needs parks since the negative landvalue comes from the aura rather than the pollution, landfill will prove even worse than before financially, but maybe you can deal with the negative aura in a smaller space than the required forest to deal with the plant.

[Hark]

I believe deals get cancelled when there is a change to the ways the maps connect and intersect.

As in, something as simple as a Z-axis change to a tile on the edge of a city map, will change how that city connects with the city next to it, on the other side. This can cancel deals.

I could be wrong.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Logical possibility supported by the game itself, so it's probably good someone brought it up.

It would be best for KristopherVector to answer himself, though I find it unlikely that applies to his example given how he said "waited maybe 10-20 ingame years (wasnt keeping track) and the options reappeared," granted, he could've left out the fact he reconciled edges between.

In my example, it could make sense since I did build a bridge close to the edge of that side of the map, however that wasn't until after the deals were cancelled, I'm like 95% sure of that. The deals got cut while I was saving up money to launch a massive expansion across the river with the somewhat convenient timing of the cancellation happening during that time being so well remembered since that meant no loans were needed, but further delayed the expansion.

[KristopherVector]

Originally posted by richnathaniel9419:

Logical possibility supported by the game itself, so it's probably good someone brought it up.

It would be best for KristopherVector to answer himself, though I find it unlikely that applies to his example given how he said "waited maybe 10-20 ingame years (wasnt keeping track) and the options reappeared," granted, he could've left out the fact he reconciled edges between.

In my example, it could make sense since I did build a bridge close to the edge of that side of the map, however that wasn't until after the deals were cancelled, I'm like 95% sure of that. The deals got cut while I was saving up money to launch a massive expansion across the river with the somewhat convenient timing of the cancellation happening during that time being so well remembered since that meant no loans were needed, but further delayed the expansion.

I didn't reconcile edges at any point, although because it's a small tile my city takes up basically every square inch of the plot, so i suppose that could've easily caused a Z axis change. My memories of it are kinda fuzzy now because it's been like 12 days now. I do remember it being very sudden and then reappearing randomly, I feel like if it had happened after placing something on the edge, I would've noticed.

[WhatWillTheNextDowndateBring?]

Don't worry, If you didn't reconcile edges despite the deals reappearing as available anyway, that tells us the game didn't consider the boarder damaged enough for that to be the cause.

Did you end up playing either of those cities much afterwards? I'm gonna assume not since you haven't claimed cancellations to have happened again lol! But if you have and they stuck, then that suggests there was another factor not yet identified and so a far from finished topic.

[Bfloo]

A possibility I never really messed with could be if you focused on the other cities too long, the time could have gotten out of sync between tiles and glitched the deals.

Aside from garbage deals, I've never had much luck with them and rarely use them anymore.

[KristopherVector]

Originally posted by richnathaniel9419:

Did you end up playing either of those cities much afterwards? I'm gonna assume not since you haven't claimed cancellations to have happened again lol! But if you have and they stuck, then that suggests there was another factor not yet identified and so a far from finished topic.

Yeah, not particularly much. The cities had pretty much been to my liking before the neighbor deals cut off, so when they fixed I stopped messing with them lol