Extremely high citizen instance and path unit count issue

[scheiderr7764]

It may be coincidental, but I have noticed that, since the update, my citizen instance count has skyrocketed along with the path unit count (I have noticed a few other people mention at least high path unit count lately as well). I have tried to find the source of the issue, but I cannot even find many people walking around or waiting at stops. I used to see many many groups waiting at bus stops or in parks and my instance count was much lower. I have read that sometimes cims get stuck or there can be phantom lanes and broken nodes, but I have no idea how to go about diagnosing this. I also recently downloaded the match day dlc, which I know draws crowds. I did have trouble with the match times being stuck, but unless anyone knows if it can cause a bug, it probably too has nothing to do with this.

I've never used these forums before, so I am not sure how to add a screenshot (I will add later if someone can advise)

City 125,000 aprox.
Path units almost 250,000
citizen instances over 64,000
citizen units over 250,000

I would desperately like to save my city. If anyone can help I would be beyond grateful! Thank you so much and my apologies for how long this is.

[maciek.slon]

Are you using the new DCL pedestrian areas?

[maciek.slon]

And those mods will "infect" your saves, i.e. you will not be able to load the game if you disable them. If you decide to use them, read the mod description carefully (you should always do that, but with those mod do it twice).

[scheiderr7764]

Thank you all for your comments!

@maciek.slon Unfortunately I have not gotten the new DLC yet. I was going to wait until I could get this sorted out. But the game did a basic update for everyone and added the new roads, and since the DLC is pedestrian oriented, I was wondering if there might be a connection. I've not had this issue before in any city so I'm not sure what is going on.

@Susq Thank you for the mod suggestions. I will look into that. At least it will fix the unit problem. Have you used both those mods with success?

Has anyone ever had high instance count (people on street count) but not be able to even find anyone in game walking around? It feels like this may be a bug. I wish I was more tech oriented so I could figure this out.

In any case, thank you all for taking time to respond. Any other advice is always welcome.

[maciek.slon]

No DLC means there is one less thing to debug ;-)

You have to remember, that CitizenInstances counts not only people, but also the animals in your city. Seagulls are also CitizenInstances ;-) I can imagine such a scenario:

1) you have a lot of parks
2) you have used some mod to disable seagulls, as those are quiet annoying
3) the update broke the mod and seagulls are again visible
4) every seagull consumes a CitizenInstance, and as it is moving it may be also consuming PathUnits.

[MaxFX]

My guide might interest you: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2712549268&searchtext=breaking+the+limits

[scheiderr7764]

You are all so kind and amazing to help me!

Thank you Maciak.slon and MaxFX for the explanations! I do have quite a few parks and seagulls and I had no idea they counted towards the limit. I just spent the last hour demolishing each section piece by piece and found a few areas where the count went down significantly. I noticed a couple of unique buildings seemed to have more visitors than normal but I thought instances meant seeing the people (or animals as I now know) outside and not in buildings. But when I demolished the two, the count went down by around 200. Can that be right? Some other buildings too when demolished lowered it by 10 or 20. I think they were tourist spots, but again do they count if they are in buildings? Shouldn't it be only visible instances?

I also found that deleting some underground roads and tunnels that were put in by the map creator lowered things, and one even gave me an array out of range error oddly enough. Iwill keep trying and I will read the guide you linked and re-read the numbered points about animals.

I really do appreciate all the help!

[jbc34618]

I'm having a similar issue. I'm going to end up losing a 500+ hour city if I don't find a solution. Since the P&P update, my path units have more than doubled. I downloaded the More Path Units mod that everyone suggests but I've already hit that limit. Something is broken somewhere.

It also seems like this issue isn't very common as the only solution anyone has presented is the mod that I already downloaded. I shouldn't have needed that mod with only 190,000 path units before the 1.15 update to 500,000 now.

[MaxFX]

I've seen messages like the one from scheiderr7764 where a Unique Building/Commercial building is drawing vast amounts of cims. Another user stated as if the cims were drawn towards that building and then teleported to different locations.

It does seem like something weird is going on, but more investigating is necessary. Hopefully the exact cause will be found and adressed by CO. But only if it isn't mod related. If it is mod related, the solution must come from the modding community.

[jbc34618]

Originally posted by MaxFX:

I've seen messages like the one from scheiderr7764 where a Unique Building/Commercial building is drawing vast amounts of cims. Another user stated as if the cims were drawn towards that building and then teleported to different locations.

It does seem like something weird is going on, but more investigating is necessary. Hopefully the exact cause will be found and adressed by CO. But only if it isn't mod related. If it is mod related, the solution must come from the modding community.

Do you happen to remember or did they mention which asset was causing it?

I hope CO can get a patch out or if it's a mod, I can figure out which one it is, because this really is game breaking.

[MessengerOfRage]

citicen instances are citicens (and animals) to be rendered.
citicens in e.g. parks are not on the streets but still need to be rendered, maybe that also applies to other buildings that can be visited even if the citicens are fully covered by the building?

it's weird that you have more citicen units than citicens as CU are groups of citicens that can be grouped because they share the same ride (car, tram) or share a household and are at home.

It's a wild guess but I think you may have one or more broken assets.

If you use TMPE: in it's option under the maintanance tab is a button to free stuck cims.
stop the time it takes the game to run 5 days.
hit that TMPE button
stop the time it takes the game to run 5 days, if it gets sigificantly faster this is a sign you had alot of stuck cims.
let the game run a bit and watch, do you see groups of people walking cross country or through buildings?

previously stuck and then freed cims will walk home in a straight line ignoring streets, buildings and terrain... if there were enough stuck cims you will see groups of them walking home, as homes usually are distributred across the map they will form something like an expanding circle... the offending asset will be at the center of that circle.

[jbc34618]

Originally posted by sueQ:

jbc

I understand you concern but don't panic just yet. Are you suffering any other issues? The reason I ask is that I have been told the path unit limit is not really all that important. Don't know that is true but don't know it isn't either. In the mean time you do know that it is possible to greatly reduce your path units with a well designed metro system right?

Path Units are very important, because when the limit is hit, your transit lines break and trucks are unable to make deliveries, leading to lots of problems. Citizen Instances is the one you are thinking of.

After the 1.15 update my Path Units more than doubled from 190,000 to around 500,000. It's unlikely poor transit network design would cause that so suddenly.

[CyberVibes]

It's definitely an in house error that needs dealing with by Colossal by hotfix.

[scheiderr7764]

I've seen a few posts on other sites like reddit with people mentioning these issues, that is why I too am worried it is connected to the recent update, especially considering it was geared toward pedestrians and now we are having strange pedestrian issues. My path units went from 199000 to almost the max in a short span and then down again.

@jbc34618 maybe we have some of the same assets or mods and could compare? I know that I have a few unique buildings that seem to count towards visible instance like the Hotel Leningradskaya, One Museum Park and Scotiabank Saddledome. The Scotiabank stadium gave me over 200 free citizen instances when demolished. Again, if instances are only visible cims, how can this be?

I actually demolished my city section by section to see what areas were most affected and it seemed the instances would fluctuate until I had gotten rid of almost all of my city. If I destroy a section, it goes down, but then back up until I destroy more. Once half of the city was gone, it stayed down, and I got it to around 600 instances left. There was nothing but a few cars, so I don't know if the original roads/pathing on the map has some errors (I'm using the wonderful Kiowa map). However, my path units were still high considering there was nothing left!

@Coookyman can you clarify with TM:PE, is it the reset configuration button? And is that safe to use? Will I lose any routes or other transit things I've done?

Also, it's good to know there are others dealing with this so if it is an error with the update maybe something will be done about it.

[jbc34618]

Originally posted by scheiderr7764:

@jbc34618 maybe we have some of the same assets or mods and could compare? I know that I have a few unique buildings that seem to count towards visible instance like the Hotel Leningradskaya, One Museum Park and Scotiabank Saddledome. The Scotiabank stadium gave me over 200 free citizen instances when demolished. Again, if instances are only visible cims, how can this be?

I actually demolished my city section by section to see what areas were most affected and it seemed the instances would fluctuate until I had gotten rid of almost all of my city. If I destroy a section, it goes down, but then back up until I destroy more. Once half of the city was gone, it stayed down, and I got it to around 600 instances left. There was nothing but a few cars, so I don't know if the original roads/pathing on the map has some errors (I'm using the wonderful Kiowa map). However, my path units were still high considering there was nothing left!

I did the same thing, demolishing my city bit by bit until there was absolutely nothing left. I even demolished the outside connections. The lowest I was able to get my Path Units is 250,000, which is the vanilla limit and still higher than my 350,000 population city had before the 1.15 update. I'm totally baffled as to where those units are coming from.

[scheiderr7764]

That is crazy JBC34618! I have spent all night using Rico to basically downgrade everything with over 20 residents per place and it helped me get the instances down 20,000 and path units down 50,000. It makes the city feel weird having high rises with 5 residents, but better than alternative I guess.

Do you use a custom map? I use the Kiowa one which I really like, but the roads and pathing seem off as I could not account for a number of citizens, I have nearly 50,000 more people in the city than my population yet my tourists are only 1800 a week.

It seems like it has to be the update. I guess contacting Paradox/Colossal is the only answer, It could be a mod conflict, but no one seems to be having trouble on the ones I checked. Did you have high units and instances along with the pathing?