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BlackjackWidow's avatar
BlackjackWidow
Hero (Retired)
7 years ago

Re: Abandoned Buildings

@alwe15 wrote:

Hi,

Recently, I've found that Commercial buildings have become abandoned because they lack shoppers or employees. However, reviewing my population data, I have thousands unemployed and shoppers unsatisfied...what gives?

The same happened to a couple of Industrial buildings that complained of having nowhere to send their freight, despite being massively understocked.

Could be traffic - all your unemployed and unsatisfied shoppers can't get to the commercial in time to fill the need. Or it could be balancing the wealth classes needed; all industrial and commercial buildings need a minimum certain number to open. Try putting your commercial in with your residential - the best overall ratio is 3:1 RC. I find it works best to lay a road with C in the center and R on both ends. Keeps the wealth class and density the same for the shoppers and workers, and they can walk to work and shopping thereby freeing your roads.

Once your C is working, the Industrial will again have a place to send freight. When C is closed, I has nowhere to ship the freight. Also - if you have trade depots, make sure you go into edit mode and delete the default freight warehouse immediately. It's a resource sink - nothing ever gets delivered from there and the game will send all I freight to fill it first, thereby stealing it from the C that needs it. Evil warehouse 🙂

A quick fix that I sometimes do, if you can't figure out what the problem is, is to bulldoze the complaining C buildings and plop R there instead (can sometimes help to balance the need). Also, MaxisGuillaume's Extended Worker Data mod can show you whether you have the right wealth classes, and if there are Sims stuck in residences. Watch a complaining household for a couple of cycles - if the number of Sims doesn't change, bulldoze the house and let it rebuild to reset it. Happens a lot.

2 Replies

  • alwe15's avatar
    alwe15
    7 years ago

    Unfortunately still struggling with this one.

    I have found that reducing Commercial Tax to 7% stops the Commercial buildings from becoming abandoned but now I find the occasional Medium Wealth Residential Building abandoned due to "no parks or shops".

    I have an abundance of parks and according to Population Data - 2 Medium Wealth produce are not being sold so I do not know why some residents keep leaving my town. I have also adopted your City planning method so the parks and shops are a short walk away!

  • BlackjackWidow's avatar
    BlackjackWidow
    Hero (Retired)
    7 years ago

     You've been running your city (cities?) for quite a while now, and it sounds to me like you've probably hit the time/population where the game programming starts to get annoyingly buggy. In the beginning, the city planning and transportation methods you've adopted prevent the problems - it's part of the game to decipher where to tweak the population, transportation and zoning. Somewhere around 10 sim-years in, I've found that "stuff" starts happening. This includes the "no parks or shops", "no shoppers" and "uneducated population". Bottom line is something happens in the programming and the darn buildings & sims get stuck. The only real solution is to demolish the building and let it rebuild; that resets the sims.

    I have a feeling that the original developers intended that you keep expanding / growing / moving stuff around, and they didn't account for people leaving neighborhoods alone once they were working. Quite an oversight if that's what they originally thought, but maybe since it was supposed to be a multiplayer, always online game, they were expecting a lot of interaction. This is purely conjecture on my part, so no clue if it has any merit, but it sure does throw a wrench in the true city-building simulation experience for people like us. 

    What I can tell you for sure is the only way to truly fix the problem is to demolish the buildings and let them rebuild. I always end up with a problem of students becoming uneducated, or leaving the city to never return. That's the price I pay for insisting on running most cities with low wealth / medium density buildings. The game really hates it when I don't upgrade roads or expand buildings lol. 

    Wish I had better news for you, but if you find a better solution, be sure to ping back and let us know. Happy building - and Happy Holidays! 🙂

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