Death Wave

[Seabee]

I have read the guides and some of the discussions concerning death waves. I was around 98,000 population. Looking at the stats, 5-10 people sick of all ages. Medical budget is at about 140-150%. Pollution at 1% and that is around the industries which are isolated from residential areas. Traffic at 72%. No major hot red spots. It took 50+ years to build this city. I went very slow because I am learning. First city. Almost never zoned while paused. Usually never zoned more that a block of 10-15 houses at anyone time, most of the time they were sprinkled around. My death wave is even from east to west and north to south. What are your recommendations? Let it happen? Bulldoze all abandon property? I am currently at about 78,000 with a lot of skull and cross bones left. Thanks.

[Seabee]

The game answered most of my questions for me. Population is back up to almost 81,000. Abandon buildings are disappearing and getting rebuilt. Still have 100's of death icons and only about 15-20 people that are sick from children to seniors in the stats. Still wonder why this happened with the intensity that occurred. Any insight would be helpful.

[Supremax67]

Do you have cemeteries built? Are they full?
Water quality?
Then also possible one of the mods you are using broke the game.

FYI, never go above 130% budget on any of your services. You get almost no benefits going from 130% to 135%, definitely not worth the extra cost.
https://skylines.paradoxwikis.com/Economy#/media/File:Budget_vs_service_level_graph.png

[~\\Savarast//~]

Originally posted by EarlB25279:

The game answered most of my questions for me. Population is back up to almost 81,000. Abandon buildings are disappearing and getting rebuilt. Still have 100's of death icons and only about 15-20 people that are sick from children to seniors in the stats. Still wonder why this happened with the intensity that occurred. Any insight would be helpful.

Legitimate sickness is only caused by water/air/noise pollution, so if people are sick, check what is causing it. You said your pollution was 1%, so I'm assuming if they are legitimately sick, it must be noise.

Deathwaves are pretty much unavoidable, but can be mitigated to some degree by having a pretty excessive deathcare system, using the child/eldercare buildings, and boosting coverage early in the wave. I was convinced this issue was removed with the Sunset Harbor patch, but it was only flattened by some degree, not fully negated. Just be aware that deaths can snowball pretty quickly, so dropping a few extra cemeteries/crematoriums when you see it starting can help a LOT. Also, your tactic of building slow and steady and not while paused is good practice in general so I don't think it was something you did wrong that caused it.

Depending how much money have have made, boosting your budget can actually be a "free" bonus. The game will artificially lower your profitability when you hit around ~10mil (documented on the wiki) So keeping your treasury hovering around that point can let you get away with boosting stuff. Though it is true the return on investment is lower, if the game is just gonna hamstring your income anyways, might as well use it up. I tend to boost Parks, Monuments, Police, Fire, Health, and Post once the game starts throttling down income.

[Seabee]

Supermax67, thanks for your reply. Yes, my cemeteries are full at 12000 and my crematoriums are at 838 out of 1680. It was 1100/1680 during the height of the death wave. I can't find out what my water quality is located. Where can I find that stat? And I was wrong on the health coverage. It is at 117%. When a death wave hits, does it spread out like a blanket across the whole city? Thanks for the PNG. This is my first city on the original game. I a about 8 mods and some of them aren't active. Most are stat mods, TM and a couple of road mods.

[~\\Savarast//~]

In your pollution info view theres a gauge for both ground and water pollution. If your cemeteries are filling up, you probably don't have enough crematoriums, though them being more full post-deathwave is kinda expected. If you can afford it during the deathwave 150% could help mitigate the issues as well. And yes, deathwaves tend to blanket a city given the snowball effect.

If you are frustrated with always manually emptying cemeteries you could use the mod Empty It! which automates it

[Seabee]

~\\Savrast//~ thanks. Yes, pollution is at 1%, Noise is at 27% and mainly in the parks, commercial, highways and industrial areas and almost none in the residential areas.I have about $18M in the bank. Again this is my first attemptt with the original Cities:Skylines and don't have but about 8 mods and half aren't active. I am using a couple of stat indicators, TN, Move it. This death wave hit and blanketed everything. Population is back up to almost 83k, but still a lot of death icons. I am just now starting the game back up from yesterday. I thought my computer had been infewcted by Covid and I was going to have to quarantine it. Stay safe.

[~\\Savarast//~]

Originally posted by EarlB25279:

~\\Savrast//~ thanks. Yes, pollution is at 1%, Noise is at 27% and mainly in the parks, commercial, highways and industrial areas and almost none in the residential areas.I have about $18M in the bank. Again this is my first attemptt with the original Cities:Skylines and don't have but about 8 mods and half aren't active. I am using a couple of stat indicators, TN, Move it. This death wave hit and blanketed everything. Population is back up to almost 83k, but still a lot of death icons. I am just now starting the game back up from yesterday. I thought my computer had been infewcted by Covid and I was going to have to quarantine it. Stay safe.

27% noise is enough for people to complain and get sick, but I doubt its the central cause of the deathwave unless you have a lot of noise sickness. What level is your water/ground pollution at? $18m is plenty to support 150% healthcare during a crisis so when it inevitably hits again you can help with that. Be aware that during a deathwave traffic can also get higher, and thus slow down your hearses. I'm dealing with one myself right now. Usually I try to keep my crematorium capacity about 2x then number of peak deceased during the deathwave and can recover relatively quickly.

Whats important though is you made it through and hopefully your services will be able to clean up the dead before too many buildings go abandoned.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2065886051

[Seabee]

Hey folks, found the Drinking Water Pollution stat 0%. Ground is 1%.Again, thanks for all the tips and information. I am loving this game and I run it a standard speed. I'm retired and have a LOT of time on my hands, especially right now. I'll work on my Deathcare and see what happens. If my iPhone calculator is correct, I have 16 crematorium that can handle 105 each for a total 1680.

[OneJasonBradly]

Have an eye on traffic flow at the highest population point. If 72% is your best average then I would think at highest population it may be too slow in key areas and hearse are getting stuck in traffic.

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by EarlB25279:

I have read the guides and some of the discussions concerning death waves. I was around 98,000 population. Looking at the stats, 5-10 people sick of all ages. Medical budget is at about 140-150%. Pollution at 1% and that is around the industries which are isolated from residential areas. Traffic at 72%. No major hot red spots. It took 50+ years to build this city. I went very slow because I am learning. First city. Almost never zoned while paused. Usually never zoned more that a block of 10-15 houses at anyone time, most of the time they were sprinkled around. My death wave is even from east to west and north to south. What are your recommendations? Let it happen? Bulldoze all abandon property? I am currently at about 78,000 with a lot of skull and cross bones left. Thanks.

If your buildings are abandoning from dead waiting to be picked up, and no sickness icons over buildings, it is just simply not enough death coverage (maybe traffic related as well) to cover all the collection.

The problem seems from death care not spawning all of their vehicles. Usually only 1-2 hearses come out of the 7 available, so you are only getting 25% of the collection. Make sure all death care is spread out evenly across your city, not even two next to each other.

I'd remove all cemeteries and they need emptying, and when you do empty them, they can interfere with crematoriums and make things worse.

Keep your budgets at 100%, raising the budget does nothing but raise the max vehicles, it won't spawn more hearses. not only that, it charges over time pay, so if your budget is 150%, it charges 200% and still only sends out the same amount of vehicles.

When placing death care, make sure all roads are green. Job areas only need light green or better, but residential needs solid green coverage, plus high density residential can have four times the cims, so you need overlapping coverage in those areas. Likely high density residential is the worst hit, and maybe job areas with white roads.

Never bulldoze abandoned buildings, they will reoccupy automatically when demand is met. Plus if you bulldoze them, it is harder to tell where the problem areas are located.

But it is important to over provision death care as your districts will mature and grow as you expand away from the area. as the buildings mature and level up they will have greater citizen capacity and need more death coverage, which may be another thing you are experiencing.

As for your sickness, that is a very small amount for your city size, it is likely just normal noise pollution. It is mostly from heavy traffic areas in residential. Just watch out when plopping certain building in residential as they can make a lot of noise pollution. I try to only place zero noise polluting building in residential for best results. Commerce zones make noise pollution as well, so make sure commerce is a block or so away from residential for best results. Same for industry, but land pollution is a bigger deal than sound pollution so you probably already know to not zone residential close to industry.

[~\\Savarast//~]

Originally posted by EarlB25279:

Hey folks, found the Drinking Water Pollution stat 0%. Ground is 1%.Again, thanks for all the tips and information. I am loving this game and I run it a standard speed. I'm retired and have a LOT of time on my hands, especially right now. I'll work on my Deathcare and see what happens. If my iPhone calculator is correct, I have 16 crematorium that can handle 105 each for a total 1680.

So its definitely not water pollution, thats good to know. When you say they are sick is it the actual "citizens are sick" icon, or the skull?

In the healthcare info view it will also give you your total crematorium availability as well as your cemeteries. If you didn't know this already, cemeteries need to be emptied if they are full otherwise they will remain full indefinitely.

Originally posted by MarkJohnson:

The problem seems from death care not spawning all of their vehicles. Usually only 1-2 hearses come out of the 7 available, so you are only getting 25% of the collection. Make sure all death care is spread out evenly across your city, not even two next to each other.

Keep your budgets at 100%, raising the budget does nothing but raise the max vehicles, it won't spawn more hearses. not only that, it charges over time pay, so if your budget is 150%, it charges 200% and still only sends out the same amount of vehicles.

This is not the case from my experience. at 150% budget My buildings send out 75-100% of their vehicles rather than the 25-50% when it is at 100% budget.

[OneJasonBradly]

Originally posted by ~\\Savarast//~:

Originally posted by EarlB25279:

Hey folks, found the Drinking Water Pollution stat 0%. Ground is 1%.Again, thanks for all the tips and information. I am loving this game and I run it a standard speed. I'm retired and have a LOT of time on my hands, especially right now. I'll work on my Deathcare and see what happens. If my iPhone calculator is correct, I have 16 crematorium that can handle 105 each for a total 1680.

So its definitely not water pollution, thats good to know. When you say they are sick is it the actual "citizens are sick" icon, or the skull?

In the healthcare info view it will also give you your total crematorium availability as well as your cemeteries. If you didn't know this already, cemeteries need to be emptied if they are full otherwise they will remain full indefinitely.

Water, was never the issue for it was stated in the beginning that very few were ill.

[kristofburger]

Originally posted by OneJasonBradly:

Have an eye on traffic flow at the highest population point. If 72% is your best average then I would think at highest population it may be too slow in key areas and hearse are getting stuck in traffic.

I'm pretty confident this is key to your deathcare problem, and I'm not calling it a deathwave because it's not. You won't have them with careful and gradual zoning of residential. Traffic flow of 72% isn't that great and usually means there are some problems; larger roads can still have long tailbacks even when they're not red in the info view.

[Mr. Monday]

You could try using a couple of these in your city to see if it helps with the dead: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=624474022&searchtext=large

[Seabee]

Death wave is over and my population is on the rebound. Thanks for all the suggestions. I have already instituted some of them and will go back over the suggestions again. Again, thanks.