Citizen count doesn't match actual population

[DarthMorbo72]

My city reached a population of about 75k and is currently hovering around 70k. I have zoned huge areas of residential, but the population still hovers around 70k. I have hundreds of commercial buildings complaining about not enough workers and/or not enough customers. The actual population is 69,654 but I checked the limits and it is showing a population of 157,632 (210,582 citizen units). Unemployment is hovering around 2-3%. I really don't want to abandon this build, but it seems pointless to continue it right now. Anyone have any ideas? I've had 3 cities that had this problem and several others that ran fine with over 300k population. My previous city was around 340k with the same mods and assets as this one.

More info: I have traffic despawning off. Traffic is at 88%. I have several transit lines including trains, metro, trams, ferries and monorails. I have less than 10 weekly riders and about 20 tourists total. Airport shows just under 3500 active flights, 0% passenger seats used.

[MessengerOfRage]

animals are counted in the citizen stat but not as population. (edit: tourists probably too)

citizen units are the games way of saving on calculation workload, usually thats small groups of citizens currently doing the same thing like a group riding the same vehicle, or living in the same building.

I am unsure if the same citizen can be in multiple units at once... if not then you having more citizen units than citizens may hint at a problem with pathfinding...
whats your path units at?
do you use pedestrian areas and service points?

[DarthMorbo72]

Originally posted by Coookyman:

animals are counted in the citizen stat but not as population. (edit: tourists probably too)

citizen units are the games way of saving on calculation workload, usually thats small groups of citizens currently doing the same thing like a group riding the same vehicle, or living in the same building.

I am unsure if the same citizen can be in multiple units at once... if not then you having more citizen units than citizens may hint at a problem with pathfinding...
whats your path units at?
do you use pedestrian areas and service points?

Yes on the pedestrian area/service points. I have one pedestrian area with both a cargo and a garbage service point. Not sure on the path units. I started a new city until I can figure out what's wrong with that one. If it helps, considering the amount of residential zoning I have, 150k population should be about right. Also, I did have one external train connection that was getting badly clogged at the map edge, but I got it sorted out. Also had an issue with a cargo rail station where about 6 post trucks were backing in and out of the station preventing any other cargo traffic from entering the station. I deleted the 6 post trucks and traffic cleared after about 5 minutes. Not sure if any of that has any bearing on the main problem, but it did occur before the weird population issue started. Another thing, I have all 4 industries at level 5 and all 16 unique factories placed. The workforce at the industries is a bit low on 3 of them (one has about 1200 out of 1800 workers, the other 3 have around 400 each).

[caesar_andy]

Are u using asset-buildings? Many aspects of the game are roughly devided by 10, to keep population numbers low.
However, some content creators don't follow this rule and try to make their buildings as realistic as possible. This way, you might end up with assets, which offer hundreds or even thousands of workplaces and suck in your workers, which are needed somewhere else.

It also is important, that all service-buildings and uniques need workers, too. Even if they not show it. So placing services to generous might also result in a lack of workers.

[DarthMorbo72]

Originally posted by caesar_andy:

Are u using asset-buildings? Many aspects of the game are roughly devided by 10, to keep population numbers low.
However, some content creators don't follow this rule and try to make their buildings as realistic as possible. This way, you might end up with assets, which offer hundreds or even thousands of workplaces and suck in your workers, which are needed somewhere else.

It also is important, that all service-buildings and uniques need workers, too. Even if they not show it. So placing services to generous might also result in a lack of workers.

Any time I see the not enough workers icon on a building, I inspect the building and, if necessary, drastically reduce the number of workplaces. This city is using the same assets and mods as the previous city, which didn't have this problem. There is a very large discrepancy between two different population reports (rougly 2.5 times as many sims). Other cities that have had a weird population problem have had the same issue. There is a bug somewhere and I'm trying to figure out how to fix it.

[DarthMorbo72]

Originally posted by SQII:

To OP I say yes there is a difference, but it's nothing to worry about. Depending on the number of tiles you are playing with, if they don't change the way they apply the limits, you will likely fall far short of running either the population or the citizen count up to anything close to the advertised 1.04 million mark in any case. The fewer citizens you have the fewer issues you'll face.

The problem is that my population won't increase. I constantly have residential demand and have zoned huge amounts of low and high density residential, but have not zoned any commercial, office or industrial in a long tome. I consistently have about 250-300 instances of "not enough workers" or "not enough customers". The population stays around 70k. For a few minutes, it will show one or two hundred new citizens a week, then for the next few minutes, the same number of citizens lost. This just repeats. Within about 10-15 minutes, I can see the auto-bulldoze has bulldozed hundreds of abandoned buildings. Something is clearly wrong with this specific build. I can usually get a city to around 350k before the lag is just too much, so that isn't the issue here.

[DarthMorbo72]

Originally posted by SQII:

I don't dispute what you are saying or what you are experiencing. can you post a shared save of the game? There's just too much information we don't have access to without it.

That really isn't practical. I have a lot of assets (parks, roads, buildings) that I have created and/or edited myself that aren't on the workshop. The majority are buildings that I have made smaller to fit better with the scale of the city. I have used these assets in the last several cities I've built, so I know they aren't the problem, but a lot of roads would be missing and I'm not even sure the save would load without them. The problem really seems related to the disparity between the population, the citizens and the citizen units. I started a new city last night. Population is 11.5k, 14.7k citizens, about 10k citizen units and it is running fine. I've build probably 20-30 cities over the years, the biggest getting over 300k cims. I've only had the problem I'm describing on 3 of the cities. One I got up to 160k and then the problem started and the population fell to around 70k and it behaved the same as this one. Same behavior with the public transit, workforce and building abandonment. Don't know if the numbers were being reported in a similar fashion or not as I wasn't aware of any of that at the time.

[MessengerOfRage]

Originally posted by DarthMorbo72:

Yes on the pedestrian area/service points. I have one pedestrian area with both a cargo and a garbage service point. Not sure on the path units.

I was asking because there is a bug with one of the service points where pathfinding breaks down and starts blocking more and more pathunits without releasing them. it could be that the same bug also effects citicen units and you are seeing this side first.

Originally posted by DarthMorbo72:

For a few minutes, it will show one or two hundred new citizens a week, then for the next few minutes, the same number of citizens lost. This just repeats.

this sounds like the game is trying to bring in new citizens, they get stuck somewhere and despawn after a while. the game tries again.

check the posibilities where cims enter your city
have you played around with outside connections?
do you have a DLC airport? are all it's inner connections working?
is your train line connected to a multiplatform station (but not to all it's platforms)
is your airport directly under the flight path?
do you use a new workshop asset as your main port/airport/central station?
did you move around any of your harbours/airports/train stations relative to it's own street? might have broken inner connections.

tmpe has a "release stuck cims and vehicles" button under it's maintanance tab, watch the population ststistics and once you think there are alot of stuck cims hit that button... if they are stuck somewhere on the map they will walk home in a perfectly straight line ignoring all terrain... look around you map and if you see a herd of people walking in a straight line trace back their path to find the offending spot.

[DarthMorbo72]

Originally posted by Coookyman:

tmpe has a "release stuck cims and vehicles" button under it's maintanance tab, watch the population ststistics and once you think there are alot of stuck cims hit that button... if they are stuck somewhere on the map they will walk home in a perfectly straight line ignoring all terrain... look around you map and if you see a herd of people walking in a straight line trace back their path to find the offending spot.

TMPE's Release stuck cims and vehicles didn't do anything. However, TMPE "clear traffic" button fixed the problem. Clicked it and the citizen units dropped by about 150k. I let the city run for about 20 minutes without touching it and now the population is 136k, citizens is 168k, and citizen units is 132k. Also have almost 3k using transit now. Thanks for the help :)

[MessengerOfRage]

hey, glad you found a fix.

I think one of your outside connections was blocked up.
trains can easyly block up at the outside connection for multiple reasons, to short first segment (happens even on vanilla maps) or to long custom trains tend to block up at the outside. airports have problems connecting to the airpath if directly under it and I remember stories about "countless ships stacking up while trying to leave the map"

what I am trying to say: if the problem returns check your outside connections, maybe you find the culprit.

[DarthMorbo72]

Originally posted by Coookyman:

hey, glad you found a fix.

I think one of your outside connections was blocked up.
trains can easyly block up at the outside connection for multiple reasons, to short first segment (happens even on vanilla maps) or to long custom trains tend to block up at the outside. airports have problems connecting to the airpath if directly under it and I remember stories about "countless ships stacking up while trying to leave the map"

what I am trying to say: if the problem returns check your outside connections, maybe you find the culprit.

One of the first things I do when starting a new map is to go to every outside train connection, delete the last node, and make sure that the crossing is there at the new last node. A lot of maps have that first segment be way too short. There always seems to be one train connection that clogs for me, so I separate the cargo and passenger traffic on that connection with enough space for about 10 trains to queue. I turned the fog off and checked all the outside connections and there was nothing visible. Not sure where those 3500 planes were (now 287 active flights).

[MessengerOfRage]

ok you know the train thingy :)
trains are easy to spot because the ja,m gets long. ships and plains can stack, plains probably high up in the air if they are even rendered there, way harder to diagnose than trains but can have simmilar problems
3500 vs 287 planes ... something is wonky with your airport, the flightpath ort the flight-outside connection.

with the right mods you can copy the last segment at maps end and create a new outside connection, if put close to another outside connection of the same kind they count as one for limits on tourist or cargo, far enough away and its a seperate outside connection.
if need be you could redo the whole flightpath including the outside connection.

(if it's train outside connections you copy then you can even build paths between them and tourists that spawn at one can walk over to the other, that way you can seperate cargo and people up to maps edge, you also can run train lines to the outside connection.)

[DarthMorbo72]

Originally posted by Coookyman:

ok you know the train thingy :)
trains are easy to spot because the ja,m gets long. ships and plains can stack, plains probably high up in the air if they are even rendered there, way harder to diagnose than trains but can have simmilar problems
3500 vs 287 planes ... something is wonky with your airport, the flightpath ort the flight-outside connection.

with the right mods you can copy the last segment at maps end and create a new outside connection, if put close to another outside connection of the same kind they count as one for limits on tourist or cargo, far enough away and its a seperate outside connection.
if need be you could redo the whole flightpath including the outside connection.

(if it's train outside connections you copy then you can even build paths between them and tourists that spawn at one can walk over to the other, that way you can seperate cargo and people up to maps edge, you also can run train lines to the outside connection.)

The plane thing stopped once I cleared traffic. Clearing traffic fixed everything. Now just dealing with the repercussions of rapidly gaining 100k population in a very short time. I didn't know you could run a train line to an outside connection. Gonna have to try that. I use the unlimited outside connections and more network stuff mods, so no problems there.