NO CO$$$ Development

[pluto101]

I had a fresh install of Sim City 4 Deluxe, installed NAM, CAM, and the starter packs of CAMeLOTs.

My first city is called Santa Rosa, and it has 90,000 citizens, 40% R$, 50% R$$, and 10% R$$$. Education is good, health is good, I have two other cities with plenty of connections, and am up against no caps. Crime, Fire, Parks, all that is good. I have Co-$$ skyscrapers, including one (but only one) stage 8.

Why is it then, that my CO-$$ population is 35,000 and my CO-$$$ population is 1200? Three buildings. I'm not asking why no CAMeLOTs are growing, I'm asking why NOTHING is growing. It's not desirability, since I have many areas which are bright green for CO-$$$.

What could be going on?

I'm iffy on attaching screen shots, but I'll give you any info you need.

[pluto101]

Let me add as well that my CO-$$$ tax rate is at 0%, and most importantly, my CO-$$$ demand is at 24,000 - all my other commercial demand is less than 3,000. So this is not an issue of insufficient demand.

I'm at a loss. Any theories would be much appreciated.

[morcup]

I came across the same issue recently... took a while to notice it since I was constructing a rural region.  I tried removing a few mods that I thought may be interfering in some way, but to no avail. 
I theorized a bit and figured it might have something to do with the increase in CO$$$ desirability thresholds or caps involving something such as fire or police coverage.  After loading a few cities and trying some ploppable CO$$$ buildings (withe the idea that maybe an initial boost of CO$$$ would get development started), I was still at a loss:  The CAM definitely made it a bit more of a challenge to keep the buildings from abandoning, but I was still unable to get any substantial CO$$$ growth (only about 200 jobs worth of stage 1 or 2 buildings grew), despite having sky-high demand and good desirability factors.

To make sure I wasn't crazy, I removed the CAM and ran up a few cities, each of which exploded in CO$$$ growth. 

I haven't run across anyone else that had this same issue, so my only thought is that is likely a mod that we both have installed.  I tried the latest Cleanitol list of incompatible mods, and nothing showed up.  Perhaps version 2 of the CAM will resolve this, but I have yet to hear a release date for it. 

[Indisguise]

Bar having some sort of mod issue.  I sort have the opposite problem, can't stop the CO's from growing, having more issues with RES myself


Check your cities CS development, early on you can get higher stage CS over CO, even though they are smaller building they could be higher stages and lower stage buildings won't overtake a higher level one. If you have the demand for CO they very rarely push out the CS's


I find that I have to demolish the CS building to make room for the CO's to develope, specially CS$$$'s, sometime you have to bulldoze the new CS building when it grows, they come back like weeds in your garden and you have to bulldoze them a few times, but soon or later the CO's will appear.


might try raising the taxrates on the CS if they keep coming back and snuff out the CO's.

[pluto101]

Breakthrough!

I tried datpacking the CAM_addon_module.dat (or something like that) with SimCity1.dat, changing the name of CAM_addon_module.dat to zCAM_addon_module.dat to ensure that CAM loads after SimCity1.dat, and it worked!

I now have loads of CO$$$ - my city doubled in size after the change. It's amazing to watch a city go from 250,000 and 0 CO$$$ to 450,000 and 250,000 CO$$$ in just a few years. Lots of fun.

Now I have one additional issue though - my airport is non-functioning. I keep getting popups imploring me to get a new airport, and yet my airport is currently only serving 5000 people. I'm running up against some caps, so I'd like the airport to function (getting rid of those damn popups would be nice too).

Any ideas about the airport? Could it have something to do with NAM?

[sim-al2]

You datpacked your Simcity1.dat? That's not really necessary, since anything in the plugins folder will load after it. But since it solved your problem, not a big deal. The NAM doesn't do anything with airports. I think your problem with airports is that they serve the actually commercial population and not the residential population, so those 450,000 + 250,000 are the ones using the airport. You might need to upgrade to the next size (as in from say Landing Strip to International). Or do you mean your airport is literally not working at all?

[RippleJet]

You datpacked your Simcity1.dat? That's not really necessary, since anything in the plugins folder will load after it.

sim-al2, read the thread Where are my residents!!! (including the fine print...)

[sim-al2]

Oh.

[Beckyfc]

I'm also having this issue- the CO$$$ demand is through the roof, but nothing is building. I would do as suggested here, but there's one small hitch.

I'm on a Mac. I don't have access to a PC, nor do I have bootcamp or a similar program. Am I just out of luck?

[callagrafx]

Am I just out of luck?

Hi Becky, sorry to say, pretty much.... I tried running Datpacker using the latest Crossover software, but just got errors, as the application requires supporting files that Crossover doesn't seem to understand.

Honestly your only option is to Bootcamp the Mac... You will need a copy of Windows (XP is probably the best, as it takes less space than 7).  Look here http://software-globe.com/ for cheap XP ($70)

[Beckyfc]

Ah, well. I don't have the space to put up a bootcamp partition, unfortunately. I'm a digital art student, so the CS takes up a lot of space on this dinosaur. I'm only a casual player, anyway, so it wouldn't be worth the money. Thanks, anyway!

[crushedcar]

I had a similar problem as well. My fix was simply to change the CO$$$ Desirability threshold (ilive's reader). Prior to that I had stimulated growth by plopping Peg's Small Utopian Plazas (it only worked for a small area, though).

[wyqtor]

I'm having the same problem. CO-$$$ will simply not grow. I tried DatPacking, and it doesn't work - unless I keep the original z_CAM1.0.dat and (original) SimCity_1.dat in the \Plugins folder - in which case I get multiple icons for building roads, avenues, and can't place any kind of GLR whatsoever. Please help me!

[travismking]

CO$$$ need much more desirable area to be able to grow, try placing parks and landmarks.  The desirability needs to be much higher for CO$$$ and R$$$ to grow in the cam than in RH (it helps cut the random abandonment problem) Also, you datpack z_CAM1.0.dat with simcity_1 (backup first) and place the new simcity_1 in the PROGRAM FILES folder (not plugins folder, the root folder for sc4) and it should work just fine, make sure it has the same name as the original file

[RippleJet]

try placing parks

Instead of parks (which increase residential desirability), place plazas.
They are quite efficient in increasing CO$$$ desirability.

I tried DatPacking, and it doesn't work - unless I keep the original z_CAM1.0.dat and (original) SimCity_1.dat in the \Plugins folder - in which case I get multiple icons for building roads, avenues, and can't place any kind of GLR whatsoever. Please help me!

The multiple icons is indeed a sign of you having two versions of SimCity_1.dat.

[wyqtor]

Thanks for the timely replies!

Well, I removed the SimCity_1.Dat folder from plugins and placed the datpacked new SimCity_1.dat in the SimCity 4 folder. But now all I seem to get are lots of Boutiques and other CS-$$ and CS-$$$ with a lot fewer jobs. I have quite a lot of plazas (got to try some more landmarks too), and the Desirability data view for CO-$$$ shows full green in the central areas (maybe it doesn't reflect the required desirability properly?). Should I try placing even more large parks, plazas, landmarks, even though the desirability appears to be OK?

Also, after letting the city grow at first with the original SimCity_1.dat and z_Cam.dat in the plugins folder, it really boomed with skyscrapers everywhere. deleted them, everything went back to small CS-$$ - with the datpacked SimCity_1.dat always in the SimCity_1 program folder. After the boom (and bust  ) the city has about 100,000 population. I hope I didn't irreversibly mess up my region with forgetting to delete those files from the plugins folder.

[RippleJet]

Also, after letting the city grow at first with the original SimCity_1.dat and z_Cam.dat in the plugins folder, it really boomed with skyscrapers everywhere. deleted them, everything went back to small CS-$$ - with the datpacked SimCity_1.dat always in the SimCity_1 program folder. After the boom (and bust  ) the city has about 100,000 population. I hope I didn't irreversibly mess up my region with forgetting to delete those files from the plugins folder.

It might take some time for the simulator to catch up.
After datpacking SimCity_1.dat, you especially need to allow for and wait for residentials to grow.

[diamonddog_74]

I think these issues are related to CAM's Traffic simulator, since I've been experiencing similar effects. Basically, my residents would rather walk to work than go anywhere by bus or car. Only my commercial or industrial areas adjacent to residential are actually developing.

I have an industrial "suburb" connected to the main city, and no one is taking the train there from the main city even though there's a station close to residential. The adviser keeps bugging me to zone for industrial and commercial, but there's plenty of room to grow in the downtown core that is not developed to full potential. Even though they're zoned for high density, only very low density buildings are growing. When I query the bus stops there, either there are no commuters or very few. Also, when I hover query the buildings, they say there are no workers. However, they don't dilapidate. So the demand is very high, but the sims are not finding the zones served by these bus stops. My city currently has a population of 110,000, and it's still rather compact, so I suspect the CAM "Promote walking" Traffic Simulator is at fault.

While it's very nice that the sims would rather walk than drive or take mass transit, it defeats the purpose of creating a nice downtown district that is mostly commercial. Whereas my residential neighborhoods that have a commercial strip running through them are flourishing fine.

I've decided to take out the z_CAM folder (which contains the CAM traffic simultaor) from my Plugins folder. I fired up the NAM's Traffic Simulator Configuration Tool to make a couple of small changes to the "Medium" Traffic Simulator I selected during NAM installation. This is just so I can get those Sims who live a little further away from jobs to actually get on the bus or their car to get to work.

I had originally built a subway, but hardly anyone was using it, so I demolished the entire network. Now that I reverted back to the NAM's traffic simulator, I may have to rebuild it. I'll report my findings with screen shots.

[RippleJet]

It is indeed true that people walking to their jobs do not count as "customers".
Thus, using the outdated "Promote Walking" or "Promote Biking" traffic simulators
would actually lower the commercial (but not industrial) desirability in your city.

[evilbob]

So i renamed the CAM addon dat and packed with the simcity1 dat from the game's root folder with no luck.  Is there another fix that i could try?  Someone mentioned they changed co-$$$ desirability threshold though 1) I've never done such a thing before and 2) it sorta strikes me as cheating.  If that is the only way to get CAM to function, then i suppose i could give it a try assuming i can get a few instructions as to how.

I'm willing to try just about anything at this point though because this is getting rather annoying...