Another thing, and I don't know if this is only me or not, but it should be easy to reproduce.
In the mod kit, it seems one of the folders in the telecom image folder is protected, not letting packall.bat run. From a fresh install, I rename modkit, and ran it as a mod. I didn't altered any file just to make sure it wasn't my mod doing this stuff.
It will crash the game when I would load a new custom game, with the error of the telecom sprite missing.
I was able to fix the issue by going to the telecom folder, and run the local pack.bat from there which prompted a Windows warning asking if I was sure tor in this file. I clicked on "run anyway" and that solved the issue.
This looks like to me that the "telecom" folder requires administrator rights. It could happen to some Windows users when you unpack the patch file that contains the new "telecom" folder without administrator rights. You may resolve this by using the Windows administrator account to unpack the patch file.
I have made an empty run on 4.4.11. Here's what I have found.
1. AI mayors are acting much better than they did before. They even spend money on University research. As a result the economy is not dying which is good but it still in stagnation which is bad. Looking at the graphs I see one good reason to this. Import is larger than Export in 12 out of 15 cities. I think that AI should be tweaked a bit to use university research a bit more.
2. Use of advertising. It was a issue that was resolved in 4.4.05. As I remember, in 4.4.10 it also was ok. Now the issue is back. some of AI rivals spend on advertising more than their whole revenue. I understand that in 4.4.05 the whole media industry became unprofitable but at least all AI companies were healthy which is more important to gameplay.
1. AI mayors are acting much better than they did before. They even spend money on University research. As a result the economy is not dying which is good but it still in stagnation which is bad. Looking at the graphs I see one good reason to this. Import is larger than Export in 12 out of 15 cities. I think that AI should be tweaked a bit to use university research a bit more.
We had a version of the game where the AI was very good in university research and the economy and the population was growing nicely thanks to the good AI. But the game was boring because the player did not have a mission to boost the economy and no longer had to make an effort to make the population grow, as everything seemed to be in an auto pilot mode. So we had to dumb down the AI in university research to make the game fun again.
2. Use of advertising. It was a issue that was resolved in 4.4.05. As I remember, in 4.4.10 it also was ok. Now the issue is back. some of AI rivals spend on advertising more than their whole revenue. I understand that in 4.4.05 the whole media industry became unprofitable but at least all AI companies were healthy which is more important to gameplay.
1. AI mayors are acting much better than they did before. They even spend money on University research. As a result the economy is not dying which is good but it still in stagnation which is bad. Looking at the graphs I see one good reason to this. Import is larger than Export in 12 out of 15 cities. I think that AI should be tweaked a bit to use university research a bit more.
We had a version of the game where the AI was very good in university research and the economy and the population was growing nicely thanks to the good AI. But the game was boring because the player did not have a mission to boost the economy and no longer had to make an effort to make the population grow, as everything seemed to be in an auto pilot mode. So we had to dumb down the AI in university research to make the game fun again.
Fair point. Looks like here we come to a point when two features should be balanced. As I told before, economy should grow or AI companies will die. But you are completely right, AI should not be too good. I see a balance point in small but steady surplus in Net Exports.
1. AI mayors are acting much better than they did before. They even spend money on University research. As a result the economy is not dying which is good but it still in stagnation which is bad. Looking at the graphs I see one good reason to this. Import is larger than Export in 12 out of 15 cities. I think that AI should be tweaked a bit to use university research a bit more.
We had a version of the game where the AI was very good in university research and the economy and the population was growing nicely thanks to the good AI. But the game was boring because the player did not have a mission to boost the economy and no longer had to make an effort to make the population grow, as everything seemed to be in an auto pilot mode. So we had to dumb down the AI in university research to make the game fun again.
Fair point. Looks like here we come to a point when two features should be balanced. As I told before, economy should grow or AI companies will die. But you are completely right, AI should not be too good. I see a balance point in small but steady surplus in Net Exports.
I think the problem is a little more about the base economy size is a bit too small even after adjustments in CES DLC (without human player intervention that is). Maybe "good AI mayors" interleave with "poor performance AI mayors" (somewhat randomly perhaps?) even without human player intervention is the way to go, so a city will has a "natural" growing tendency but goes up and down along the path over time? Or maybe we should allow a game setting option for choosing "better AI mayor appearance frequency"?
E is for Endear, all cute and cuddly L is for Luxury, longing for splendid E is for Elate, making others happy A is for Amenable, a serene nature Z is for Zeal, zest for wonderful life A is for Admirers, all of you love me
In my testing, the cities run by AI mayors did experience positive economic and population growth. Expectedly, there were ups and downs in short terms. But the growth was obvious in the run long.
Attached is a screenshot from the tested game.
Attachments
population growth.jpg (409.12 KiB) Viewed 1242 times
2. Use of advertising. It was a issue that was resolved in 4.4.05. As I remember, in 4.4.10 it also was ok. Now the issue is back. some of AI rivals spend on advertising more than their whole revenue. I understand that in 4.4.05 the whole media industry became unprofitable but at least all AI companies were healthy which is more important to gameplay.
The media firms are mostly profitable in the tested game I ran, as shown in the attached screenshot.
Maybe the settings of your game made it hard for the AI media firms to make a profit and a different set of game settings may change that?
If it persists, could you send me your save game file to take a look?
