Where's the middle class? Where's the 99%?

[leosmesc]

Another solution could be make an high-tech industry also for agri, oil, ore and forest where uneducated workplaces are replaced by educated or well educated.
Not so complicated.

 

[Nkrlz]

This combined with the quantum teleportation technollogy widly avaible and the fact that the simulation is 100x worse than SC4 makes wanting farming or forestry in the late game nigh impossible (i mean after some time the "need more workers" issue dissapears, i think becasue basically everybody is overeducated).

Also offices really are a b*tch to fully lvl up.

My case

completly isolated part with no edutcation created with the sole purpose in mind of having farm workers with the "correct" level of education yet they all managed to be highly educated.

and then

office building complaning about lack of services in an area choke full of them.

 

[tk-093]

I'm sure it will be tweaked over time. Everybody keeps comparing it to SC4 but this is way better then vanilla 1.0 SC4. It took patches and rush hour and mods like NAM to make it what it was. But it's still important to be discussing it.

One way for me to avoid villas with pools has been to just zone little 2x2 zones or even 1x2s. You have to leave a checkerboard pattern until they build them fill in the gaps so it's a pain. But the buildings stay smaller. No idea if that keeps value down, but at least the houses look small.

 

[IIWW]

I'm sure it will be tweaked over time. Everybody keeps comparing it to SC4 but this is way better then vanilla 1.0 SC4. It took patches and rush hour and mods like NAM to make it what it was. But it's still important to be discussing it.

Yeah, but it was done. It took years of developement to implement safety belts to cars, but I expect to have them in new model.
At very least CO knew that it can cause problems.
Don't get me wrong, I like the game, I don't expect it to be perfect from the start (or anytime, in fact). I just don't agree with that logic.

 

[danbowen]

Naw SC4 was the exact same way. The only SC game where you NEED low and medium wealth sims is SC13. And even in that one the benefits of having a dirtier city are not very high (though much higher than SC4 and C:SL)

Not true in my experiences. R$, R$$, and R$$$ all had different demand sliders and when R$$ and R$$$ ran out of demand R$ would grow even in very desirable neighborhoods. Plus, you can make historical in SC4 so it's not uncommon to have all three classes in the same street.

 

[tk-093]

Yeah, but it was done. It took years of developement to implement safety belts to cars, but I expect to have them in new model.
At very least CO knew that it can cause problems.
Don't get me wrong, I like the game, I don't expect it to be perfect from the start (or anytime, in fact). I just don't agree with that logic.

Personally I think high school graduates should have no problem working in non-office industry. Just because you graduate from high school doesn't make you smart IRL. Factories are chalk full of HS grads. I understand gameplay does come into place because in real life a factory isn't going to be full of people who didn't even go to elementary. (Talking about 1st works here)

 

[charlesnew]

One way for me to avoid villas with pools has been to just zone little 2x2 zones or even 1x2s. You have to leave a checkerboard pattern until they build them fill in the gaps so it's a pain. But the buildings stay smaller. No idea if that keeps value down, but at least the houses look small.

But that doesn't mean that they're not high wealth people.

Can't say I have encountered this problem. I have area's of my city with high land value, for the rich folks and other area's which have a lower land value where the rest live. It is relatively simple to create area's for different types.

Also, remember that when you're placing services (police, fire, school etc) it has a radius and a green "efficiency" indicator, but even if an area isn't covered, fire trucks, police cars and the like can still get there, just at a reduced efficiency owing to the distance.

With this in mind, it is easy to create area's of the city which are "well served" and have high land value, while still creating poorer area's which nominally have poor coverage but still won't actually burn to the ground. Placement of parks, district polices etc all have their role to play as well.

The same applies to the commercial and industrial area's - you can keep commercial at lvl 1 for your convenience stores and petrol stations in one area and have the super rich shopping district in another, all through clever use of districts/policies, placement of parks/plaza's and services.

And how did you manage to get this to happen. I still don't get it. I've got low wealth cims moving in, and when they move in they go to school. When they graduate university, they start becoming richer. When they become richer, they get fancy villas and stuff everywhere. Then there's no one to fill out my factory jobs or my office jobs.
And then, they abandon their houses because the land value is low. That shows that it's not the land value, it's the education. But then, I want education in my city, because there are jobs that need education in it to be filled.

(also, another little question. Is anybody getting like "mini apartments" for low density areas? Because I don't really think they should be in low density. Maybe the high rise ban policy will do something?)

 

[Boerentoren]

Ok so I zoned residential till my nose bled and added several thousand highrise residents to my city (from 21k to about 24k). I did this relatively quickly, even though the green bar in the RCI bar section was low at all times. I didn't manage to get my unemployment below 4% at any time, likely because there were too many job openings and not enough citizens to fill them. Here's what I learned:

1. The RCI bar is not very accurate at showing what your city needs. My R bar was low at most times, however I could easily add large blocks of residential highrises without issue.

2. I needed to get my education levels deeply in the red (in other words, have too few schools for way too much demand) to get an acceptable number of low-educated citizens for my farms.

3. Even with thousands of citizens not being able to get an education, buildings in my new neighborhoods STILL very quickly leveled up to at least level 2 or 3. There was no way to keep them at level 1 because at least some of my citizens would still get an education, and that is the only requirement for buildings to level up to 2 or 3.

In conclusion: it's very counterintuitive, but to keep an acceptable level of workers that are uneducated or low educated, you need to conciously keep the availability of elementary schools and high schools low THROUGHOUT YOUR ENTIRE CITY. Citizens will get an education even if you don't place schools in their neighborhoods, as long as there is enough school capacity elsewhere in your city (which could be all the way on the other side of the map). Even then, there is no way for you to prevent your buildings from leveling up and no way to conciously create low-income neighborhoods. I'd go so far as to say that most us of will never notice level 1 buildings in our cities because they upgrade way too quickly.

You're absolutely right. And it is killing immersion. This needs to be tweaked or modded. I prefer a policy option were we get to choose a maximum housing level. Also education should be nerfed big time!

 

[colonyan]

To be honest, agricultural and forestry only requiring NO educated worker at all is little uncomfortable.
There are many schools and university department that are dedicated for agriculture and forestry.

Why not give Agri/Forest industry at least one level of growth so that first level only gives much less
productivity and employment but second one give room for some educated and well educated worker
and much more employment on top of that full productivity?

If this goes unnoticed, I will start a new thread... It's too well, uncomfortable.

 

[Red_warning]

I have tried to keep some poor people around so my low skill labour industries and commercial areas can live on, but even with education in the red people just keep on getting educated and wealthier.

 

[Sparky66]

You kind of have to leave districts without education to get lower wealth buildings as buildings levels are linked to the education level of the occupants. The problem is everyone goes to university if there is one availiable, making everyone live in a mansion due to their university education. It would be better to base building levels on the wealth of the occupants, which would be linked to their job. A worker in low level industry would live in a low level house, a worker in high level industry or low level offices would have a medium level house, and a worker in a high level office would live in a villa. It would be more realistic as a good education wouldn't automatically mean you live in a mansion, but how well paid your job is would dictate your house, as in real life. That way you could have people with a high level of education, but if they can't find a job in a high level office they would have to get a job in a factory and live in a smaller house. At the moment, if a university worker has to work in a low level factory they still live in a mansion, which doesn't really make sense.

 

[stumason]

And how did you manage to get this to happen. I still don't get it. I've got low wealth cims moving in, and when they move in they go to school. When they graduate university, they start becoming richer. When they become richer, they get fancy villas and stuff everywhere. Then there's no one to fill out my factory jobs or my office jobs.
And then, they abandon their houses because the land value is low. That shows that it's not the land value, it's the education. But then, I want education in my city, because there are jobs that need education in it to be filled.

(also, another little question. Is anybody getting like "mini apartments" for low density areas? Because I don't really think they should be in low density. Maybe the high rise ban policy will do something?)

Well, I did say how I did this. I haven't had much of an issue having low value and high value area's - it seems to be tied more to the coverage of ALL services, not just education, which is only one facet.

As with most services in the game, they seem to be more efficient the closer (and easier) it is. To get the high land value I place parks, pretty roads and good services. To keep value low, I don't place anything nearby, then if school places run out, the people who live closer to the schools get first dibs, while those on the periphery of the city in my low value area's have hardly any education.

I realised this after a power cuts - the buildings furthest away are the ones who lose power first - the same theory seems to apply to all other services. As in real life, the best area's to live are the one's with the easiest access to wide variety of services.

 

[dakdak99]

Colonyan, I agree. I'm sure that's a pretty easy tweak that the devs can do when rebalancing the game.

Sparky, that sounds good in theory, but it's only part of the solution. The thing is, low-educated people and high-educated people often live in the same building and the same neighborhood. So your solution would lead to shacks of low-educated people living next to people in villas, and that is not the end result we should want... we want people to live in neighborhoods that are (mostly) poorer or richer so that they are separated as in real life. In other words, while tying wealth to education is a great idea, wealth should also be tied in some way to location. I.e., rich and educated people should be more likely to live in richer areas with higher land value while uneducated people live in other areas.

Stu - you're probably right about it being all facets, but it's hard to deny that education plays a majority role in all this. And it's kind of limiting that poorer areas should be outlying, farther away from the city with all its gleamy offices and all that. In real life, poorer people also live in downtown areas and they usually do have access to parks and schools and the like.

 

[stumason]

Stu - you're probably right about it being all facets, but it's hard to deny that education plays a majority role in all this. And it's kind of limiting that poorer areas should be outlying, farther away from the city with all its gleamy offices and all that. In real life, poorer people also live in downtown areas and they usually do have access to parks and schools and the like.

It does play a part, yes but it isn't the whole shabang. I'll see if I can tear myself away from the game tonight and post some screenies showing you what I have done. The peeps in the poorer area's do still have access to the services in the core, but they get last dibs, which seems to push up the land price nearer to this congregation of nice stuff and it get's less further away.

As for poorer area's being downtown, it does depend on the city. London, for example, is generally more expensive in the centre, where all the businesses, services and attractions are with the "cheaper" - nowhere in London is cheap! - area's being around the periphery. Conversely, the largest town near me (Reading) is exactly as you described - poorer, denser area's near the centre and the more expensive, but less dense housing around the edge. This all boils down to the design of the town and it has to be said that the newest developments in Reading city centre are expensive, high-rise apartments.

EDIT: Of course, you could invert what I did and have the nicer area's on the outside of the city in little villages with parks, schools etc and have the dense, central residential as the "poor" area.

 

[Dagon1]

Btw. the games mechanic is showing how education and career is perceived in nordic countries. Here everybody can can educated and a good job based on governmental facilities.

 

[dakdak99]

I still doubt everyone lives in a modern villa though.

 

[Reichl22]

Almost everyone forgot how is the name of this thread..
Its confirmed that high educated people can work at farms (if you have decent unemployment)..

But the main problem is that its almost impossible to keep level of resident building low. Have city filled with villas isnt realistic neither fun. Can plese some modder look at this aspect of game? (maybe district policies that forbid buildings to level up?)

 

[stumason]

Almost everyone forgot how is the name of this thread..
Its confirmed that high educated people can work at farms (if you have decent unemployment)..

But the main problem is that its almost impossible to keep level of resident building low. Have city filled with villas isnt realistic neither fun. Can plese some modder look at this aspect of game? (maybe district policies that forbid buildings to level up?)

It's not impossible - difficult maybe, but certainly not impossible.

 

[Red_warning]

Btw. the games mechanic is showing how education and career is perceived in nordic countries. Here everybody can can educated and a good job based on governmental facilities.

In Norway perhaps.

 

[Reichl22]

It's not impossible - difficult maybe, but certainly not impossible.

Can you please provide some tips how to prevent residental from leveling? They are leveling even if citizens have no jobs!