Big city abandoned for no reason?

[Derodemus]

I have a city that got up to 78k population and now is at the low 30k pop.

No clue what happened. No demand, plenty of energy, water, waste management, while building up had issues with traffic but had it above 60% during the 78k times.

I am at a loss. Very sad to see the bank balance just drain from 4 mil to what it now is.

[MaxFX]

- Did your water supply get contaminated?
- Did you raise taxes to unacceptable high levels?
- Did you accedently enable 'Hard Mode' in the Content Manager?

[Derodemus]

Originally posted by MaxFX:

- Did your water supply get contaminated?
- Did you raise taxes to unacceptable high levels?
- Did you accedently enable 'Hard Mode' in the Content Manager?

1 nope.
2 nope 10% all taxes are.
3 nope.

[MaxFX]

Well, with the information provided it's a guessing game. Can you post your save game to the Workshop?

[caseyas435943]

Originally posted by Derodemus:

I have a city that got up to 78k population and now is at the low 30k pop.

No clue what happened. No demand, plenty of energy, water, waste management, while building up had issues with traffic but had it above 60% during the 78k times.

I am at a loss. Very sad to see the bank balance just drain from 4 mil to what it now is.

60% traffic it not good at all. That will cause people to a bit bad and leave. Or it used to.

The means you have traffic backup for days.

[Derodemus]

Took me a minute to figure out.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975343935

Any input is loved.

[MaxFX]

Yeah, your cims did not abandon the city for no reason.

I've loaded your save, and almost the entire city is complaining about garbage piling up.

Garbage piling up causes ground pollution and sick/dying cims.

Do you play with mods? If so, which ones?
If you do not play modded, then I suggest you decrease the size of the blocks of buildings in your city. Now you've got a lot of very long roads. This causes garbage trucks to fill up before reaching the end of these roads.

[MaxFX]

Only thing I did was enabling the 'Recycle Plastics' policy (considering you've got recycling centers for your garbage services) and let the game run for a while.

Population is climbing again. It's at 40K right now.

Also increased tax rates to 11%, and the city is also making money again.

Traffic remains steady at 70%, and that's with a lot of new cims moving in.

[MaxFX]

I let the game run for another while. Population is at 60K now and still climbing.

Looks like garbage was the root cause of the issue.

You've got enough recycling centers, but didn't have the 'Recycle Plastics' policy on. This increases the efficiency of recycling centers by 20%. This balances the garbage processing versus the availlable number of trucks recycling centers hold. (I find that recycling centers without this policy active tend to get filled up with garbage, which in turn causes the trucks to stay inside. By activating the 'Recycle Plastics' policy the garbage procvessing rate gets increased in such a way that more trucks are used for pick ups)

That said, the recycling centers are a long way off from the buildings that need the garbage picked up. And as I've mentioned before, your city blocks are very big for Vanilla gameplay. This means that garbage trucks are filled up before reaching the location they received the call from. In addition to this, you've also used one-way roads in locations that make the travel time of the garbage trucks unneccessary long.

My advise:
- spread out the recycling centers you have
- make the city blocks smaller. Right now you've got blocks of 10x80. I suggest you at least cut this in half by making 10x40 blocks. But even smaller would be better.
- Have a good look at your one-way roads and change them to two-way roads where necessary. (make sure there are no one-way roads along the route between recycling centers and buildings with garbage issues)

[Derodemus]

Thanks a bunch Max, I wasn't sure what was happening, perhaps should read more about the ordinance options. The long roads I favor making traffic easier. But ill reconsider some options.

Thanks again!

[MaxFX]

Originally posted by Derodemus:

Thanks a bunch Max, I wasn't sure what was happening, perhaps should read more about the ordinance options. The long roads I favor making traffic easier. But ill reconsider some options.

Thanks again!

Just added some more info to my previous comment. #8

Glad I could help.

[MaxFX]

Here's a screenshot of your city with a couple of adjustments. As you can see I've cut the length of the city blocks in half, and relocated some of the recycling centers.

It's still far from perfect, but a lot better now. Population at 77K and still climbing.

https://imgur.com/a/0USlK48

[MarkJohnson]

Originally posted by Derodemus:

Took me a minute to figure out.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975343935

Any input is loved.

From the looks of it, it seems you laid out roads first, then quickly zoned the city. This can cause a lot of issues as you city is making demands in various areas of your city.

Currently, it is garbage making all of the demands as it is a constant in the game as garbage needs picking up at all times.

Everything in this game is on a timer, so your garbage facilities need to be spread out, so they can collect by district. One a few are only needed per district.

Soon, you cims will complain other other services, such as crime, as you have no police stations on the map yet. Then it will be fire, etc.

You should be zoning one district at a time, so you can keep up on the services and happiness of your cims.

Residential buildings need education and should be a priority, so you can get a full workforce up and running to support your city.

But you look like your hands are going to be full playing catchup on everything. I'd remove the auto-bulldozer mod, so it shows you where your city is having issues with abandonment. Bulldozing abandoned buildings will just push the problem around the city and make it hard to put it back in balance.

[buda atum]

Had 800k cims in city when death waves hit twice and popopulatin dropped to 250k. Was city rebalancing as lots of old age cims died out and younger ones moved in. Knew it would happen (dezoned a lot of uneducated worker places), so made sure I had enough in bank to tide through. I expect a third at some point as I'm reducing workplaces in Industries.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975491939

[Stealthy]

Way, way too much agricultural industry, less than 1/10th is enough. And no general industry means no goods for shops. You've painted Industry DLC zone but not built anything.

Blocks are not optimal and contribute to garbage issue pointed out. Garbage trucks collect all the time from the spawning moment and long roads built on both sides will cause them to constantly collect garbage from the first buildings and always becoming full before they reach the end.

Road hierarchy needs work, everything done with 40km/h roads, no collectors, no real arterials with higher speed limits.

Good start, but lot of things to do. If you list your DLCs, I can spend couple of hours to point out some things in your city if you want. Or you can download some of my cities from the Oakdale collection which is "tutorial" towns for single DLC sets and basegame only.

[MaxFX]

Originally posted by Simon:

Max sounds like an expert at this game. Can you comment or suggest improvements for my city?

Thanks. Put your save game on the Workhsop and we can have a look.

But don't disregard comments by others such as MarkJohnson, OneJasonBradley, Stealthy, buda atum and others. They're very knowlegable about this game too, and I get corrected by them every now and again as well