CAM Ruined my City!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[JeeKTan]

  I installed CAM with an existing region which contain two cities. After playing for a while at one of my cities, the population dropped to 0 in few seconds. Now my buildings are all abandon and the reason is low desirability. I'm also losing a lot of money. There's no development and my city is in a standstill.
My city can't recover please help. ( Its my precious city. I spend a lot of hard work and time just to make this city and its now ruined by CAM ). Now my buildings are all abandon and the reason is low desirability.

[SC4BOY]

When you started out with a totally new setup (as mentioned in the documentation for the CAM.. but as you should always do for ANY change to a city that you have worked hard on).. MAKE A BACKUP before doing it.. Further as you work with a city and it doesn't seem something is right, DON'T SAVE..  Anything so completely "reworked" as the CAM will have repercussions on old developed cities.. (also mentioned in the CAM discussions.. it is recommended that you start on NEW regions).. It will eventually recover but will take a number of game-years and require that you play every city tile in the region as you alternate through the play. The reason is obvious.. there are a number of changes among the supply-demand relationships of the C, I, and R variables. After the NEW C and I relationships exceed the OLD ones, the supply-demand curves will be restabilized. You may have to use one of the various "money cheats" until you stabilize your income relationships.

You can recover your setup for all practical purposes. Copy your region and eliminate ALL CITIES (by using the "obliterate city" command) ..

Now remove all CAM addon files. With these removed and the "newly virgin" region. Copy the old developed cities into the "download" directory in the new region folder and IMPORT your old cities into your new region (again don't forget to have a backup copy of these cities as the "import" function is distructive. You will have to have deleted all CAM-specific lots before this or you will have brown-box or whatever problems

As you play your cities the supply-demand will stabilize around the old values that you orginally were using. In either case you will simply have to play until the supply-demand balances are re-established.

[Indisguise]

Well hopefully you have a saved coppy of the city before adding the CAM. Good idea to always have a backup saved somewhere before adding any now type of mods to your game, no matter which type they are, specially for any region or city that you consider your fav or put a lot work into in.


For the Cam to do something like this to your city, the only thing I can think of is that you had some sort of mod or file thats conflicting with the CAM, theres a number of mods that the Cam isn't compatiable with, could be you have one of them installed in your game. Maybe check out this thread, see if you have one of them installed with it.

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=1925.0

I have dropped the Cam into quite a few differnt older pre-CAM cities, sometimes i have a few difficulties with cities or regions til the simulator has time to settle to the new demand drives, but never have fulll and complite Res abandoment. If thats not the problem try back later. See if we cn figure this out

[ecoba]

This is why the CAM team suggested that you don't install the CAM on existing cities. It clearly states that there can be massive problesm like the one you are presenting us with if you use it in your existing cities, and to use the mod at your own risk. As Indisguise mentioned, you might have a mod that conflicts with the CAM in your plugins, and this might be the issue.

Ethan 

[JeeKTan]

OK i played the city and it stabilise to half a population but when i remove CAM the same thing happen earlier ( abandonment and low desirability ). Will this happen if i transfer my cities to another new region.

NOTE : I hate CAM and I removed the conflicting mod. I also accidentally save the destroyed city.

[Panda_Power]

Use CAM on a new region and you'll love it...it's superb!

[jmyers2043]

Thank you Panda for the positive report. I beta tested the CAM and I'm currently beta testing CAM 2 – I eventually played every preexisting city/region without incident. Upgraded from beta version 5, to 6, to 7, all the way up through the release version without problems. I've now used CAM 2 in all of those cities as well. So upgrading and using alternative 'game play rules' can be an enjoyable experience. 

One important thing to keep in mind is that all demand is regional and is based on a number of factors such as population, education, health and safety, etc. . . . The things I do in one city affects the others. You may have to 'play around the horn' using the CAM in the other cities of your region before the particular problematic city settles down. You may want to backup your region beforehand.

I don't know much about your region other than the fact that you 'hate' the CAM and that you found a conflicting mod. Perhaps the mod was some kind of Super Duper Growth mod that put your city on steroids to begin with? In that case I can see where you might have problems. Time for you to do some reading I think. Start a new region and make subsequent reports.

[JeeKTan]

I will try. Anyway I put the Super Demand Mod after my city is built. One of my friends use CAM and he say it rocks. He also says that the city is much better with CAM. As far as i know, CAM may be good when you just starting your region. However, CAM can also ruined your existing city. So I recommend that install CAM if you want to start a new region, NOT when you have a existing city.

SUGGESTION : I hope there is a patch of CAM so it won't ruined your existing city.

[wouanagaine]

That suggestion is stated in BOLD in the readme
Maybe a suggestion to read the readme ....

[Neofita]

I play all the time from the CAM and in my opinion is a very good mod.
He must, however, use a clean area and then see what you can do

[JeeKTan]

CAM is not ideal for me. I want a realistic city, though. Not a region full of skyscrapers.

[Indisguise]

Cam actually makes more realistic cities, (along with the NAM depending on the settings used). Cam is not just for super sky-scraper type regions, you can have many differnt types of cities ranging from little rural cities to major motropolis. the Cam spreads the building out over 15 stages ( less for IND) in a more realistic growth range. This makes the cities much more realistic.

The type of city you want is much more depandant of the style of play and building you put in your game.

Only want rural, only use farms and small town city feel type buildings, looking for more easy going mid range city, use only building that fit into that type (suggest simgoober's and Valks's stuff).

If you don't want a skyscraper type city, don't put sky scrapers in your plugins folder, they won't grow if they are not there, and along with the BSC Maxis blocking mod, you can control very easily the building your game will grow in your game and the type of city you invision as "your city".

[SeanSC4]

I really must agree with Indisguise on this one. CAM is not just about skyscrapers. It implements a growth pattern that is more realistic (imho) than the base Maxis one included with the game. The growth of your city will be entirely dependent on what custom content you add to your Plugins folder.

[sim-al2]

I believe that CAM is supposed to increase the time it takes to get big skyscrapers too, which would actually be helpful for you. If you don't want skyscrapers in even a large city, just don't zone for high density.

[JeeKTan]

I heard that there is CAM 2.0 beta. I hope the new version is better than CAM 1.0. Anyway, can I beta test the CAM 2.0 but this time I will start with a fresh plugin folder and a new region.

[RippleJet]

Yes!

[travismking]

wait wat, can i too? :p

[RippleJet]

Yeah, why not...
Welcome to the private board, which you should be able to find now!

[jdenm8]

Out of curiosity, what's CAMv2 beta's attitude to CAMv1 regions ATM?
I think a 'Recession' series of CJ entries would be interesting 

[RippleJet]

Out of curiosity, what's CAMv2 beta's attitude to CAMv1 regions ATM?

Steve (z) has done some promising testing on going from CAM 1 to 2.
It won't be easy, but maybe not impossible either.

I think a 'Recession' series of CJ entries would be interesting