Very high amount of hearses needed!

[Caprea.Berlin]

It's crazy, in general I don't have major problems with the stability of the game, but the bugs at the core of the game are a nightmare. I feel like the whole simulation is badly done, the proportions of the game are poorly calculated. I currently have almost 900 deaths per month in a town of 50,000, 4 extended crematoriums, one large extended cemetery and one small cemetery that is full.... Something is not right here...

If we assume that cims get 100 old (or 100 days/month) than an average death rate of 1% should happen, if the city is mature. That would mean for a city of 50 000 that there would be about 500 per month (or day). Such a death rate would not be constant of course. Your death rate is about double that amount. If your city has been that amount of cims for quite some time now, I would not be very concerned, but if not (and better always) have a look if there is something (some pollution) making your cims ill and after that let them die.

A crematorium ingame has a capacity of 100 per month (=day). I just read that in one of the biggest in Europe there can be 160 per day. So the capacity seems at first glance to be realistic, probably even very high. But as (for the lifespan of a cim) one day is equal to 1 year, there must be 365 crematoriums working ingame for 1 in real life.

I think, this lifespan of only days instead of years makes huge problems in deathcare. If has no effect on schools, workplaces or even healthcare. I am just wondering why CO choose to give the cims such a short life. Perhaps making them live up to 1200 days instead?
At the moment we have the problem that the number of deaths happening in one day ingame equals that of 1 year in real life. If one year of live of a cim would be equal to 12 months (or 12 days) the problem of deaths would be much smaller, because insteat of 365 times of real life it would only be 12 times of real life.

 

[Civ5rako]

If we assume that cims get 100 old (or 100 days/month) ...

Isn't that just one of the basic problems?

One day equals one month. And even if they would get 100 months old, that means just 8.33 years.
The scales in this game don't really add up.

 

[Caprea.Berlin]

Isn't that just one of the basic problems?

One day equals one month. And even if they would get 100 months old, that means just 8.33 years.
The scales in this game don't really add up.

As day equal month it would not make any difference at all if cims get 100 days or 100 months old. What would make a difference if cims would only get 1 year older after 12 months (or days, which is the same)
And if they would live for 1200 months ( oldest age 100 times 12, because 12 months for 1 year ) that would reduce the problem of deaths by a factor of about 12 because instead of all deaths of 1 year real life would not occur in 1 day, but in 12 days.

The faster aging of cims makes a problem for death care, but makes it easier to develop a city of educated cims.

And of course a city has to have reached a certain age for the problem of too many deaths a day to be virulent.

 

[rsimpson64]

As an aside to this post I would add a note that in testing Seth's city I did not see any deaths while the city was cleaning up an existing dead body surplus.


I'm convinced that there are five "bugs" in the game. In my opinion they are major in that they have a domino effect as a city develops.

1. The law of diminishing returns
2. Distance of facility to problem area
3. Poor and wretched should not be able to move into low density
4. Wealthy should not be able to move into low rent
5. Children not aging to teen

Diminishing returns

In all five cities I tested for death care as soon as crematorium capacity hit a certain level (firmly in the green bar) the crematoria reduced the number of hearses sent out. Even with a 150% healthcare budget. Maybe there is a calculated maximum number of active hearses in the game. I was patient for the pause from when a hearse returns to the deathcare facility and it being assigned a new call. YMMV

Distance

Death care facilities will rarely, if ever, send out a hearse if it is too far from: 1) the hearse call indicator; or 2) the assigned operating district. YMMV

Low density

Been in the game since launch I believe by design to increase homelessness and crime.

Low rent

Makes it difficult to address homelessness by zoning low rent as the high density is consumed as you zone.

Children

Shortly after launch the elementary school need in my early villages didn't make sense. So I parked my van outside the elementary school, opened a bag of candy, and started following the children to the maximum allowed. Half aged over to teen. The other half did not. Stayed a child. Stayed in elementary school. Same born dates. I think the game loses track of them. It certainly lost track of where they were living. But that test was a very long time ago. For as long as I played that village they never grew up.

 

[Civ5rako]

The faster aging of cims makes a problem for death care, but makes it easier to develop a city of educated cims.

And there you have it. The scaling doesn't really work.

And that seems to be true at all levels. Cims are spending more time travelling to work than being at their workplace.

As soon as you look at time related things in more detail, you start feeling uneasy as one thing may be fine but the next thing is off.

Do I have a solution to solve this problem? No, I don't.
And I think nobody will be able to solve it as it is embedded in the way the game has been set up.
You simply cannot "simulate" the day to day life and at the same time the lifespan of an evolving city. Not within a game which is meant to bring you fun and entertainment. And certainly not with any kind of hardware available to the consumer market anytime in the foreseeable future.

 

[Seth C Triggs]

And there you have it. The scaling doesn't really work.

And that seems to be true at all levels. Cims are spending more time travelling to work than being at their workplace.

As soon as you look at time related things in more detail, you start feeling uneasy as one thing may be fine but the next thing is off.

Do I have a solution to solve this problem? No, I don't.
And I think nobody will be able to solve it as it is embedded in the way the game has been set up.
You simply cannot "simulate" the day to day life and at the same time the lifespan of an evolving city. Not within a game which is meant to bring you fun and entertainment. And certainly not with any kind of hardware available to the consumer market anytime in the foreseeable future.

To piggyback on this, I believe the game needs clarification on what the time period of "has not arrived for some time" means when you get the notifications. Is that based on the computer CPU timing (e.g. ticks) or is it based on the calendar time in game? This is probably what's contributing to the completely unsustainable death rates.

There are several units of measurement that are very difficult to work with. The whole per month/per hour thing makes for a lot of misleading situations and I think guides the player in a bad direction sometimes.

Most of all to echo the issue of simulating lifespans, it was very ambitious but I think this really exposes the limitations of agent simulation. THIS is why there were the hardcoded limits in C:S1. Really if one is going to have a large city using an agent simulation for so many agents, it just HAS to be done "by spreadsheet" ala SimCity 4.

I do appreciate that there are several improvements; I am able to support a FAR greater population in C:S2 than I was in C:S1; my computer would be brought to its knees with a city of 200,000 in CS:1. I did at least retain playability (though very slow simulation) up through 1 million population in C:S2 by comparison. But the extra pathfinding is really messing things up. There's just too many agents.

And this should be the ultimate example that discredits large-scale agent simulation really.

 

[Caprea.Berlin]

And there you have it. The scaling doesn't really work.

And that seems to be true at all levels. Cims are spending more time travelling to work than being at their workplace.

As soon as you look at time related things in more detail, you start feeling uneasy as one thing may be fine but the next thing is off.

Do I have a solution to solve this problem? No, I don't.
And I think nobody will be able to solve it as it is embedded in the way the game has been set up.
You simply cannot "simulate" the day to day life and at the same time the lifespan of an evolving city. Not within a game which is meant to bring you fun and entertainment. And certainly not with any kind of hardware available to the consumer market anytime in the foreseeable future.

a game which uses real time for things happening in game would not be fun. So there has to be some scaling.

And if cims are spending more time travelling to work than at work, well I do not know. Of course if the traffic situation is bad, that might happen. It is unrealistic, yes, but also - at least for me - not a big deal for the game play.

The scaling - neither the timeflow of one hour ingame in relation to 1 hour real time - has no influence on education. It also should not have any influence on production and so. And if the scaling would only make the time needed for 1 hour ingame much shorter than in real life, the problems of too many dying in short time would not happen. But they also scaled how long the lifetime is. And that has positive and negative effects. The positive one is that the effect of education is much faster to see. I suppose it just would take too long to see effects is going to school, highschool, college, university would take as long as in real life (even scaled with the faster timeflow in game). So I think for that it is a good idea to shorten the lifespan. As cims to no have to go to hospital (or something similar) for giving birth, the effects are not visible at the begin of a city and the begin of the live of a cim. But things change when the cim is old and dies, because the number of deaths for 1 day in real life has to be multiplied by the shortening of the lifetime. So yes, now the effect is visible. Therefore we need higher capacities of cemetaries and hearses should go and take many bodies in one run, not just one.

We will have to live with some sort of scaling. The only question is, how much? 1 year (real lifetime) = 1 day in game? or perhaps make 1 year (real lifetime) = 12 months in game (= 12 days in game). That would lessen the burden of the deaths by more than 10 times. Or perhaps something in between like 1 year (real liftime) = 3 days in game, or some other factor. But I think to make the aging slower than it is now, would be better.

 

[Seth C Triggs]

a game which uses real time for things happening in game would not be fun. So there has to be some scaling.

And if cims are spending more time travelling to work than at work, well I do not know. Of course if the traffic situation is bad, that might happen. It is unrealistic, yes, but also - at least for me - not a big deal for the game play.

The scaling - neither the timeflow of one hour ingame in relation to 1 hour real time - has no influence on education. It also should not have any influence on production and so. And if the scaling would only make the time needed for 1 hour ingame much shorter than in real life, the problems of too many dying in short time would not happen. But they also scaled how long the lifetime is. And that has positive and negative effects. The positive one is that the effect of education is much faster to see. I suppose it just would take too long to see effects is going to school, highschool, college, university would take as long as in real life (even scaled with the faster timeflow in game). So I think for that it is a good idea to shorten the lifespan. As cims to no have to go to hospital (or something similar) for giving birth, the effects are not visible at the begin of a city and the begin of the live of a cim. But things change when the cim is old and dies, because the number of deaths for 1 day in real life has to be multiplied by the shortening of the lifetime. So yes, now the effect is visible. Therefore we need higher capacities of cemetaries and hearses should go and take many bodies in one run, not just one.

We will have to live with some sort of scaling. The only question is, how much? 1 year (real lifetime) = 1 day in game? or perhaps make 1 year (real lifetime) = 12 months in game (= 12 days in game). That would lessen the burden of the deaths by more than 10 times. Or perhaps something in between like 1 year (real liftime) = 3 days in game, or some other factor. But I think to make the aging slower than it is now, would be better.

I'd be very happy if even we could get a massive crematorium buff and an "empty" command for cemeteries like in CS1, or if that isn't going to work, at least ability to add a fast crematorium to the cemetery.

Another problem though I am experiencing is I am getting "Lack of labor" zots now on some businesses even though I have high unemployment. This may actually be because the workers are dying too quickly to be replaced.

I even zoned more residential and the population is still slightly down from before. So things are broken for me.

 

[unmerged(261469)]

supply and demand, has to be more hearse to cope with aging population (each citizen dead, they need to hearse), or you will have backlog.

 

[gzckrg]

The scaling is the problem here. Most things are scaled, but I think 'requirement of hearse' is not scaled at all. The game should not need hearse for every death. That should be scaled too. Most cims should just disseapar upon death and only handful of cims (relative to the scaling of the game) should need hearse/graveyard and crematorium.