Class Promotion/Demotion feature is Annoying

[Jman5]

One of the frustrating little problems I have been constantly juggling is an over abundance of unemployed Specialists and Rulers. This is compounded by the fact that it's very hard to find unoccupied Specialist and Ruler jobs because promotions are instant.

So lets say I build something on one planet that requires specialists. As soon as it's done, all those slots get instantly filled by the worker class leaving a shortage of workers. On the flip side if I have unemployed specialists and I build a farm, it takes years before the pop demotes into a worker. This can very easily lead to economic death spirals where you have the capacity to support your empire but not enough workers. This is compounded by any Specialist pops resettled and refugees automatically coming in.

Can I micromanage it if I really focus and carefully relocate unemployed specialists to worlds that are about to build specialist buildings? Sure. I play lots of 4x games and I can overcome finicky features like this. However, I can't imagine how much of a headache this is for more casual players who aren't constantly eyeballing their populations and carefully shuffling populations around before building something.

I think at the very least demotion time needs to be slashed in half. Although, really I think it should just be done away with for the sake of improved gameplay.

Edit: In the meantime, I found a mod that reduces demotion time to 1/10. Enjoy!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1584571997

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

There definately needs to be lag when moving up OR down strata. But I see no issue with the basic situation of people leaving worse jobs for better jobs even if this is not what the state would wish.

 

[Kinkness]

This is all part of reality. How long do you think a Dr. would take before he finally gives in that there are no jobs available for him and demote himself to finally working a 9/5 job at the closest 7/11?

Right now issues like that are hard to imagine in America, but those situations have and do happen all around the world even to this day. When you're over qualified for a job, you really don't wanna take it knowing you could be making 9x as much doing what you are good at.

That being said though.. I think pops should have a modifier both ways..

1) Pops shouldn't instantly upgrade. Just because you worked in the mines all your life doesn't mean you can instantly jump up to being a specialist..

2) specialist that demoted are the only ones that should instantly pop back up to being specialist, since they were already previously that before.

 

[Person012345]

I agree that this is in theory a problem, but I'm honestly wondering how people are ending up with so many unemployed specialists.

 

[Warchild421]

I agree that this is in theory a problem, but I'm honestly wondering how people are ending up with so many unemployed specialists.

Probably shifting them to a new world where there are only mines and farms for their scientist and to work.

 

[Warchild421]

This is all part of reality. How long do you think a Dr. would take before he finally gives in that there are no jobs available for him and demote himself to finally working a 9/5 job at the closest 7/11?

Right now issues like that are hard to imagine in America, but those situations have and do happen all around the world even to this day. When you're over qualified for a job, you really don't wanna take it knowing you could be making 9x as much doing what you are good at.

That being said though.. I think pops should have a modifier both ways..

1) Pops shouldn't instantly upgrade. Just because you worked in the mines all your life doesn't mean you can instantly jump up to being a specialist..

2) specialist that demoted are the only ones that should instantly pop back up to being specialist, since they were already previously that before.

This is one of the things I don't get, I have rarely had a pop demote, and when I do its normally due to my own fault of needing to demo a building for recourses because I completely borked my economy.

I don't agree with '2' unless its under a decade. Having a buff to promotion time would be great.

Or have it so there is a ramp up time when a pop moves up/down a strata, where they start at 0% production and ramp up to 100% over the same time it takes for them to currently move strata. With the tradition halving the time it takes them to ramp up to full production. That might be a better way to do it. Then people can stop complaining that they screwed themselves over with moving pops and the wont see the unemployed pop symbol.

 

[Roddo]

This is a result of the devs wanting to reduce "micro".
I understand the reason, but I cannot fathom why is it that I have to cope with the auto-promotion-demotion system when I'm completely contempt with just going into each and every planet and saying to each and every pop... HEY, you're gonna be a miner. FOREVER. and be done with it.
Yes. I'll repeat it a 1000 times if necesary. I don't see it as "micro", I see it as extreme administration

But oh well, I can cope with it, and already found a way to work around this annoying system. RESETTLE STRAVAGANZA FTW!

 

[Jman5]

I agree that this is in theory a problem, but I'm honestly wondering how people are ending up with so many unemployed specialists.

1. Resettled pops and Refugees seem to retain their strata when they move.

2. Specific buildings have varying numbers of jobs so if you replace one that had a higher number of jobs with one that has a lower number you wind up with specialists unemployed.

3. Unintentionally overbuilding non-districts that require basic resources. This simultaneously pulls workers up to fill them and cost Mineral/Energy/Consumer Goods as upkeep. This leads to a double whammy effect.

There definately needs to be lag when moving up OR down strata. But I see no issue with the basic situation of people leaving worse jobs for better jobs even if this is not what the state would wish.

Right now, there is no lag moving up in strata.

I think you have to be careful about justifying a game mechanic based on realism. Good gameplay needs to come first. Second, it needs to be at a level your AI opponents can handle. Right now its very easy to get into a situation where your economy plummets and you just cant find enough worker-class to right the ship. This can especially be true when you gain control of a new planet, or if edicts run out and you're unable to afford the cost of re-upping them.

It's overly micro-intensive in the mid-game. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when I get to the late game. It's also very unfriendly for new and casual players to make it so difficult to right the ship when you've underbuilt districts.

 

[Secret Master]

I think it takes 2.5 years (with the Harmony tradition tree completed) for POPs to demote.

I am okay with that timeframe.

What bugs me is that I see the unemployed POP warning all that time, and I keep seeing that POP is unemployed.

If the notifiers were smarter or more malleable, it would be less of a nuisance.

"POP is unemployed!"

or

"POP is unemployed but demoting to fill another job. Click here to acknowledge this notifier. "

 

[icon41gimp]

I'm fine with it being punishing for people who build haphazardly.

If it's a free pop you got from a refugee event either wait out the timer or resettle it somewhere that you want to create a certain job strata. Acting like a pop or two being unemployed is ruining the entire empire is just dishonest.

This is the exact same rehash of that certain segment of the population that couldn't handle putting planets in sectors because they'd miss 0.6% of a mineral.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

Right now, there is no lag moving up in strata.

I think you have to be careful about justifying a game mechanic based on realism. Good gameplay needs to come first. Second, it needs to be at a level your AI opponents can handle. Right now its very easy to get into a situation where your economy plummets and you just cant find enough worker-class to right the ship. This can especially be true when you gain control of a new planet, or if edicts run out and you're unable to afford the cost of re-upping them.

It's overly micro-intensive in the mid-game. I can't imagine what it's going to be like when I get to the late game. It's also very unfriendly for new and casual players to make it so difficult to right the ship when you've underbuilt districts.

Complaining about the new system because its possible to tank ones economy when you ignore the established rules of the new system is like complaining about the war system because its possible to loose whole plannets and things. If there is no way to loose what is the point of winning? Economy is now another thing to be good or bad at managing and that is badly needed.

 

[Delthor]

So lets say I build something on one planet that requires specialists. As soon as it's done, all those slots get instantly filled by the worker class leaving a shortage of workers. On the flip side if I have unemployed specialists and I build a farm, it takes years before the pop demotes into a worker. This can very easily lead to economic death spirals where you have the capacity to support your empire but not enough workers. This is compounded by Specialist immigrant/refugees coming in.

Let's say you have your fleet and want to take a system in war. So you bash your fleet against the strong enemy starbase, it loses and your fleet goes missing in action and you lose a third to half of your ships. This can very easily lead to spirals where you do worse and worse in the war, lose it, and lose the game.

The economy after 2.2 is just as deep and also just as punishing as war is after 2.0. You can't just build buildings wherever. This isn't Civilization where you can't end your turn unless everything is building something. You need to be disciplined in how you build your buildings, and sometimes letting one or even three or four building slots remain free is a good decision.

Before you build that specialist building, make sure you have enough of a worker base that it won't crash your economy when they promote. Consider both the costs of the building and the less workers you'll have. If you can't support it, building that building is just like ramming a 5k fleet into an 8k fortress.

People are used to just cruising in the economic side of things, but now the game is different. You have to be just as smart about it as you have to be in war. And I'm absolutely loving it. Peaceful expansion and development is now just as enjoyable as aggressive warlike stuff was before the patch.

I think at the very least demotion time needs to be slashed in half.

There's a tradition in harmony that does exactly that, actually. And if you think it needs to be cut in half even after taking that tradition, well... See above.

 

[erneiz_hyde]

All we ask is a toggle, a check box. If you guys can't handle the micro then leave the check box to stop auto promotion off, but let us micro-ers do what we want to do. Put a checkbox to stop worker auto-promotion.

 

[Jman5]

A lot of people think this is no problem. Let me just give you an example.

Let's say you're in early game where your resource stockpile and per turn aren't very high, but you're running negative on Consumer Goods. So you build a Civilian Industry building to up your CG. You spend most of your minerals to build it. It builds and then instantly sucks up 2 workers to the Specialist category.

Except you didn't have a calculator before hand and it grabbed 2 workers from your Mining district.

Now your Consumer goods is finally positive, but the building is draining 12 Mineral a month, on top of the 8 minerals you lost from transferring workers. Plus the building takes +4 energy upkeep.

Suddenly your Minerals are in a freefall, your energy which was barely stockpiled is draining away. You can't shift workers from energy because they're negative too. You can't bring specialists down because it takes years to demote. You can't build anything because you don't have the minerals.

It's easy to find yourself in an economic tailspin and unless you're sitting on a large stockpile of resources to sell off to the market your economy will crash and burn.

Now an experienced player who is used to micromanaging this stuff would be able to pull out, but what about the other 90% of the playerbase? What about the AI? Everything has to be balanced just so or else you get into these sudden resource drops.

It's just a stupid mechanic to make the demotion take ages. Just needlessly complicated.

 

[TheBloom]

I mostly disagree with this (as a law student, if I'm fifteen years into my career, I'm not going to make the decision to work a mine too quickly), but would suggest that the time to demote should be significantly reduced under Utopian Abundance and Shared Burden; if you're not losing any income or living standards, the blow of taking a lower-standard job shouldn't be so harsh. (Conversely, I'd say it would be reasonable to take a couple years for a pop to promote, ideally reduced through techs and building upgrades as automation makes a job's skill-ceiling lower; it seems very odd that a farmer immediately is able to become a roboticist without education or training time.)

 

[klopkr]

I wouldn't mind an expensive edict to immediately demote all unemployed pops.

 

[Jman5]

I wouldn't mind an expensive edict to immediately demote all unemployed pops.

Alternatively you could allow instant promotion/demotion but there is a production ramp up time. So a Specialist moving to farms initially only produces at 75% efficiency and then after a period of a year or 2 it hits 100%. Same thing for workers moving to specialists.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

I mostly disagree with this (as a law student, if I'm fifteen years into my career, I'm not going to make the decision to work a mine too quickly), but would suggest that the time to demote should be significantly reduced under Utopian Abundance and Shared Burden; if you're not losing any income or living standards, the blow of taking a lower-standard job shouldn't be so harsh. (Conversely, I'd say it would be reasonable to take a couple years for a pop to promote, ideally reduced through techs and building upgrades as automation makes a job's skill-ceiling lower; it seems very odd that a farmer immediately is able to become a roboticist without education or training time.)

Education policy, whether you are Elgatarianmaterialists or authoriarians with a serfdom... Is the 'academic privelage' living standard not about exactly that? giving people time and leasure to study? Whole lot of unmapped space to use because even I (and I'm having more fun in 2.2 than ever before) grant that instant promotion is unrealistic and a poor call.

 

[TheBloom]

This would be a lot of work, and probably outside the scale of a mod, but adding varying training time for Ruler or Specialist jobs and even, possibly, "super-strata" for each, ideally that take more education time to upgrade to, would be great; allow workers to become entertainers for standard specialist working conditions a but Roboticists take three years to train, and allow Roboticists to get a six-year education and 1.5x their typical upkeep to build faster, or Entertainers to occasionally become "stars" that get Ruler upkeep, but produce Trade. It could also make certain traits more interesting; for example, Quick Learners learn trades faster, Charismatic or Decadent pops become Star entertainers more often, Natural Engineers become better Roboticists quicker, or Conformists make better High Priests.

(Also, it'd be a nice way of boosting currently-underpowered Synths, as they don't need education, when you can just upload expertise to them.)

 

[PathoNomadic]

I think a way to preserve the realism and offset this insta-promote, long-demote problem would be:

Have the demotion time be proportional to the time that pop has been in that strata, up to a max (whatever it is for your empire and traditions). A multi-generational entrenched person is going to have a much harder time moving back than someone recently promoted.

So for example, if a pop has been in Specialist strata for a year, they take a year to demote to Worker.

Also, having a ramp-up time for production makes sense. You could simplify it by having a single penalty for a year or so ("Newly promoted -25%" or something).