SimCity 4 Game Clock Pausing

[AusBoy94]

First I would like to say that I absolutely love this game! I've been playing it since I was about 9 years old. I finally got the game to work on my new Windows 7 laptop, dual core, etc. (If you are still having problems with crash to desktop and you have a multi-core system, I have a fix.)

Recently I've been playing the game, I play on cheetah speed, but about once every [game] month, the game clock will just stop. It's very hard to make progress when the time just stops. The game doesn't freeze, just the time. I've tried lowering the settings to see if maybe it has something to do with all of the graphics but that doesn't seem to affect the situation.

I was wondering if anyone else was having the same problem and what I could do to fix it.

[Indiana Joe]

It's always been choppy for me on Cheetah Speed; I wouldn't recommend using it for extended periods of game time.  Also, you'll notice that the clock pauses every time you scroll the screen.  Could that be what you're experiencing?

[catty]

...Recently I've been playing the game, I play on cheetah speed, but about once every [game] month, the game clock will just stop. It's very hard to make progress when the time just stops. The game doesn't freeze, just the time. I've tried lowering the settings to see if maybe it has something to do with all of the graphics but that doesn't seem to affect the situation...

I'm guessing from your description that what's happening is perfectly normal, the traffic simulator is designed to re-calculate all the transit routes in your city every game month otherwise your sims wouldn't know where to go in your city, but it does mean that when it happens your game will either slow down or "freeze"

-catty

[AusBoy94]

Well, it's not freezing, but it is slowing down. The day will hang up on one day for about 2 minutes each month and slow around the days before and after, then I'll get about 20 days of full speed, but during the time it's stalled, no development takes place. Building just stop in mid-development.

And no, I'm not scrolling. I've tried everything to fix this. Maybe it's just an aspect of the game I'll have to work around? Which sucks. I'm going on 600,000 Sims in this city and it's just getting worse. ha.

[catty]

...Maybe it's just an aspect of the game I'll have to work around? Which sucks. I'm going on 600,000 Sims in this city and it's just getting worse. ha.

Yes as I said in my previous post this is the way the traffic simulator works in SimCity 4 and as your city gets bigger it will take longer for the traffic simulator to process all possible paths

-catty

[mike3775]

Its completely normal.  It starts doing that when the cities get larger and larger. 

I have been playing 7 cities at a time(running the simulator at cheetah speed for 5 yr increments in every city), and the bigger the cities get, the longer it takes for 5 yrs to pass.  When I first start a region and start playing, I can run through all 7 cities in little more than 10 minutes, but around 20 game yrs, one city may take 30 minutes to run 5 minutes depending on how much development has occurred. 

And this happens on my Windows 7 laptop and desktop equally, both dual cores.

[whatevermind]

What's been said above is correct.  The graphics can also have an effect here too.  One easy fix to this if you need to just blast through some time (ie to raise funds) and don't want to mess with your graphics settings, is to focus the screen on something that uses as little animation as possible, for example zooming in over some water or a farm field, and then crank up the speed.  Also helps when saving a large city to do this first.