Deaths exceed Births problem

[Wraithweave]

Hello my comrades.

It would appear my republic has a slight problem of people literally dying faster than they can reproduce. What I am saying, amount of deaths greatly exceed the amount of births.

I play on hard difficulty, only change I made was I start in the 60's. I have pretty much about average setup for a starter city; Everything is within reach of the power plant, there is 4x of the big 94% comfort houses, all as close as possible to hospital, which has 4 ambulances. Polluting industry is as far as conveniently possible from living quarters.

The 4 ambulances seem like an optimal amount, there is always one in reserve that doesn't need to go anywhere, so I assume everyone who needs an ambulance, gets one. But even still, when I check the average Health stat for the republic, it doesn't go above 60%.

I have to buy very many immigrants to keep up with deaths, I am barely breaking even. What am I doing wrong?

[TheAmishStig]

There has to be something dragging you down...do you have a University? Makes me think your doctors are dying of old age (as citizens age at about 1 year per in-game week), and people are ending up going untreated that way.

[Wraithweave]

I have "Technical University" built, which I understand educates University-Trained citizens, who can work as doctors.

My hospital is staffed on average 5/5 doctors (people with university education) and on most days, there is 2+ doctors treating 1 patient.

I agree there must be something dragging me down. None of my other republics have had this problem. Though they were on easy/normal/custom difficulty. That is the only thing that I can think of that matters. Some of my republics, their birth rate was positive even without a hospital.

[Lupus]

Do you have polution activated and have a factory near the houses of your people?
How is the life expectancy of your people?

[Wraithweave]

Yes, pollution is active. Pollution level near houses is yellow, but that is the furthest I was able to build houses away from the coal plant, which I assume is making most of the pollution.

Life expectancy varies between 60 years and 70 years, depending on day.

[TheAmishStig]

Huh. Now it's a puzzle and I really want to solve it. Houses not flooded with '[X] citizens could not visit hospital' message, I assume?

[Lupus]

Sorry for the late answer but i ran into the same problem. If you move your industry away from the houses your problem is solved. if the average life is so low the people die more often when they are young without children of their own. And thats why you cant sustain a stable population

[Wraithweave]

It would appear something like that is the solution. Looks like pollution was the "silent killer", hardly noticeable nor immediately obvious.

For testing purposes, I started a new republic, but this time I made the Coal Plant run with as minimal production as possible as far away from apartments as possible. It fixed deaths/births rate very well, 80 births for 20 deaths now.

Lesson for everyone with the same problem!

[Jon W]

Why can't you move the power plant further away? Just bus your people from the houses to the plant.

[Robin]

Check the average lifespan. If that's under 75, population will be very likely to decrease.

[MG83]

can you please screen shot overall of your city town area including where they work ?

[Wraithweave]

Problem has been more or less solved. The short explanation of solution: Delete city, start a new game.

I had already spent most of my money building all sorts of things, making a new power plant would not have been financially possible.

New city has power plant further away from people, lifespan is very well above 75, sometimes close to 80.

I tried the bus thing once, but it didn't seem to work out so well, bus stop was next to houses, another bus stop was next to power plant, but nobody never went there. Was just an empty bus driving between the stops.

[MG83]

there is permanent pollution in close distance to industries and random pollution in mid range to industries. This tremendously effects probability of emergencies in citizens that may cause them to die.

[Wraithweave]

Oh, I did not know that. But good to know. I will from now on try to build my factories at max. walking distance from living quarters.

Do you know if planting lots of trees has an effect on reducing pollution? And if having a school/grocery store in the polluted zone, where people to daily, have an effect?

[ELDodo]

instead of putting a bus stop next to the station, just select the powerstation as a bus stop. also use various minivans (in one particular color so you know which workersupply line it is ;). Multiple minivans are better at a steady rate than buses are.

[archiver213]

trees have no effect on pollution at all.