Problems with raw materials and employment

[arbogli]

Hi people!

I'm having some problems in my latest city and it's becoming something annoying. Everythig were going smoothly and in a blink I started having problems with the raw materials for my industries. I checked other posts, tried to specialize some industries to get from there the stuff I need but even those industries are starting to have the same problem.

Moreover, I started having unemployment but at the same time notifications of lack of workers, I don't know if just coincidence or is related with the other problem.

So, if someone more skilled than me could just check it and give me some advices I would appreciate it a lot, because I made few cities and it's the first time I found a problem I cannot solve.

[Edit] Oh, the expansions I have installed are these (just in case you need to know): After Dark, Deluxe Pack, Match Day and Pearls from the east.

 

[barrygreybeard]

Had a quick look. First your agricultural area and oil field have no natural resources so basically you are importing just to export again producing unwanted traffic. I'd get rid of those, either convert them to conventional industry to make goods for your commercial or makes offices. You say unemployment problems? You should aim for around 10% unemployment if you can. As soon as buildings level up they require more educated workers. If there are educated workers employed in uneducated positions, they will then leave, creating a shortage in those buildings. But as your population rises those positions will then be filled.

I'd build some cargo train stations when you can that will help a lot in importing/exporting

Theres a lot of number crunching in this game and as everything is agent based things take time.

 

[barrygreybeard]

BTW if you wish to retain your oil fields and agricultural areas then there are mods that will allow you to do this.

 

[Promethian]

BTW if you wish to retain your oil fields and agricultural areas then there are mods that will allow you to do this.

Agriculture doesn't deplete normally. The mod is available as part of the base game, just need to activate it.

 

[arbogli]

Had a quick look. First your agricultural area and oil field have no natural resources so basically you are importing just to export again producing unwanted traffic. I'd get rid of those, either convert them to conventional industry to make goods for your commercial or makes offices. You say unemployment problems? You should aim for around 10% unemployment if you can. As soon as buildings level up they require more educated workers. If there are educated workers employed in uneducated positions, they will then leave, creating a shortage in those buildings. But as your population rises those positions will then be filled.

I'd build some cargo train stations when you can that will help a lot in importing/exporting

Theres a lot of number crunching in this game and as everything is agent based things take time.

Well, I just create them to see if that way I could avoid the raw materials shortage, the previous save I only had unspecialized industry despite of the trees industry so they can go away without any regrets. One problem is that I don't have railways to import products, so I focused on having a healthy traffic system (I think I made it, still have some room to improve with more public transportation) and using maritime ports to import it, it was working but suddenly all started to warn about the lack of materials. I don't think I have been importig too much raw materials.

About the employment... I usualy have workers shortage, but knowing that around 10% is fine it will stop bothering me so much. The problem that I always have is that everyone is educated in my citites (even those I told to abandon the school), so usualy I have many educated workers in uneducated jobs.

[Edit] In other city I import a insanely amout ot raw materials and even finished products, it's true that I have railways, but there I dont' have a ports. That's way I got surprised when importing just about 2000 it stopped complaining about raw materials. With barely producing a bit of farm and nothing more I never had this problem:

Spoiler

 

[Turjan]

I had a look at the city. It looks pretty nice for a vanilla work.

Most of your transport is bound up in exporting forestry products. You export nearly all of what you produce. Specialized industry is a real strain on traffic systems, and I'm not sure why you have some of them without the resources to feed them. That said, your traffic is rather quiet. A bit too quiet actually. I'm not sure why the ports hardly work. The ways to and from places of delivery seem rather convoluted. Tunnels are good for solving traffic problems, but it gets hard to judge traffic streams. Your big detour highway is not used. The ports are quiet.

What I did: You don't have enough generic industry and have to import most of your goods, which led to goods shortages. I improved some of the direct accesses to highways in order to make ways shorter and built more generic industry. I also converted some of the specialized industry back to generic industry. All that use of cul-de-sacs improves traffic, but also means that people have difficulty moving. Use more pedestrian path shortcuts. You have a good metro network, but the some parts of the city don't have enough access to public transport. People walk only that far. For what it's worth, I also needed to zone a big residential area.

The biggy was buying a tile to get access to rail, as has been suggested. As soon as I put down the cargo station, cargo streams really livened up.

I can't tell you why the ports on that map don't work well. Maybe, it's because of those convoluted ways to get there and back, which may make the ports unattractive as delivery option. Maybe, try something more convential with the ports. I'm also not sure whether it will solve all issues. Some stuff in the game seems not to work very well. For example, I have no idea why the game hardly ever supplies fuel to conventional power plants. That seems to be far back on the priority list.

 

[arbogli]

Thanks Turjan, I like playing vanilla, and going to the point... I know, all was going fine and I built the third industrial area (the one in the north of the city) and suddenly the products stopped flowing. Most of the forestry go away and come back vía underground highway, so it doesn't bother me too much now and is fluent (before I went underground it was a pain).

Ironically I do have enough generic industry, I just built the third area to develop the new part of the city but at that point I was importing without problems, all of the industries have near the port for input and output and was fine and I even was exporting, but without no reason it stopped. This is from a previous save, you can see the charts and look that it was working perfectly:

 

[barrygreybeard]

I think another factor contributing to the sluggish import/export is the unfortunate design of the map. If you notice the city has 4 outside connections, 3 go through the interchange just outside the city limits and is well congested. The other comes in from the opposite direction and export/import from all 4 has really only one way in and out of your city. For good trade flow I like my outside connections to have access directly to all four corners of my city. There may be another factor that you have to consider that's the amount of through traffic, going directly from one outside connection to another. Yes there can be a lot of through traffic and if you can that can be diverted around your city.

That's what I meant about the design of the map its not very efficient and maybe hinder the development of your city. Until you replace industry with offices then trade drops off and is not so important.

Of course that can all be adjusted with mods but if you prefer not to use them then you have to work with what you have. Dont be afraid to have highways right in your city's industrial area. Also try to get that last tile with a rail link, that will help I am sure of it.

 

[barrygreybeard]

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

I discovered by checking your ship outside connections at the edge of the map that there are a bunch of confused cruise ships blocking the way of your cargo ships. That happens when you delete a harbour that has spawned ships. The game should despawn those automatically after a while but sometimes it can take a very long time for them to disappear. I wonder if sometimes they are just permanently stuck. The only way to remove them is by using a mod. Removing them results in a stream of cargo ships importing goods. These are those who have been lining up during the blockage. You imports will then jump about 50% and maybe more.

 

[arbogli]

IMPORTANT UPDATE:

I discovered by checking your ship outside connections at the edge of the map that there are a bunch of confused cruise ships blocking the way of your cargo ships. That happens when you delete a harbour that has spawned ships. The game should despawn those automatically after a while but sometimes it can take a very long time for them to disappear. I wonder if sometimes they are just permanently stuck. The only way to remove them is by using a mod. Removing them results in a stream of cargo ships importing goods. These are those who have been lining up during the blockage. You imports will then jump about 50% and maybe more.

Oh, I think I removed a cargo port when I was redesigning the new industrial area... maybe that's why the previous version works fine and the newest dont'... I'm going to blaspheme in someone's name but I will probably need to rollback and start from the previous save and do all again... I have left two hours running the game at it's own and nothing good happened...

 

[arbogli]

IMPORTANT: PROBLEM SOLVED (without mods)

Thanks to barrygreybeard's last tip, something come out to my mind and it worked, here it goes for if someone else can use it.

I though that those ships floating around would not dissapear because even if they were stacked, the detect you have ports in your city and try to reach them. So, I removed all the ports of my city and gave them a couple of day/night cicles to see what happens. I was able to see in the horizont the ships, and they started vanishing slowly, after that I rebuild again the ports and a massive amount of ships start coming to my city again. A couple of ingame years to let all rebalance again and everything works again.

Thank you all four your help!

 

[28rommel]

IMPORTANT: PROBLEM SOLVED (without mods)

Thanks to barrygreybeard's last tip, something come out to my mind and it worked, here it goes for if someone else can use it.

I though that those ships floating around would not dissapear because even if they were stacked, the detect you have ports in your city and try to reach them. So, I removed all the ports of my city and gave them a couple of day/night cicles to see what happens. I was able to see in the horizont the ships, and they started vanishing slowly, after that I rebuild again the ports and a massive amount of ships start coming to my city again. A couple of ingame years to let all rebalance again and everything works again.

Thank you all four your help!

Good to know.
Thank you for coming back and giving us an update.
This could help anyone of us in the future, if we experience a similar problem.