200k population and 40% unemployment – what am I doing wrong?

[lirondco]

I felt the same way until it clicked with me one morning as I was driving somewhere in town. It seemed every neighborhood had an elementary school that I had to slow down for. I didn't notice it when I would drive to work because I used main roads and they tend to not have elementary schools off of main roads where I live.

At that point I realized, the game was actually simulating the need for elementary schools pretty well. Or at least pretty close to reality. Not sure about the cost of them though.

same, i was building a new suburban block and i checked google maps for inspiration and i noticed elementary schools everywhere. I think the issue in the game is the scale of the schools rather than the mechanics. They're all too massive and not all elementary schools IRL even in the US are big.

 

[Seth C Triggs]

Please attach your 1.3M city file to this issue.

High Density Office Bug is Back? Zoned high density offices slowly lose the number of jobs they provide. Unemployment rate is skyrocketing.

Information When reporting a crash, stability or performance problems, please use the Report a Crash button on the earlier screen [CLICK] I understand Required Summary High Density Office Bug is Back? Zoned high density offices slowly lose the...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Will do, just need to finish uploading tonight's version to Dropbox (it's 455MB and I am on an ADSL connection)

 

[lirondco]

I read through this thread and will add my thoughts based on my city. These will probably be unpopular because they don't fit with people's preconceived notions of how the game works.

First, if you have high unemployment, you have zoned too much residential. Dezone them until your unemployment drops to a manageable amount (you determine this but I keep mine between 4% and 8%). This will also keep your homeless at a low rate. Keep an eye on it as you go back to expanding your city and only zone enough residential to fill the demand for jobs being created.

Second, the "office bug". I've been confused by this because I haven't seen it at all. It makes me think this is due to having too many offices zoned, and/or a mod is causing the issue. I have no offices with only 5 employees. The smallest is a low density office with 45 employees. The high density offices have well over a hundred to hundreds of employees.

Something that I was doing wrong at the beginning was zoning based on the Demand Bars which is the worst thing we can do. Ignore those bars and zone what your city needs when it needs it. The demand bars will cause you to over zone and causes all kinds of problems with cities. Hopefully that gets fixed at some point.

Keep an eye on the profitability of businesses (commercial/industrial/office). If you have a lot of unprofitable businesses, look into why that is. Have you zoned too many or is there an issue with exporting? Specialized industry seems to be an issue at this point but it's still being investigated (see this thread for more information: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/my-industrial-profitability-keeps-being-low.1732606/).

CS2 doesn't work at all like CS1. It's much more complex and takes a more nuanced approach to city development and growth. You can't sledgehammer your way into a successful city by zoning what you want. You have to manage the growth.

I've been reading through the profitability issue which leads me to a few questions --

if we can't zone more residential due to unemployment, and then companies become unprofitable if we zone more industrial/office to support a population expansion, then are we in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation? Like the city is just stagnant like that?

 

[joewagner501]

I've been reading through the profitability issue which leads me to a few questions --

if we can't zone more residential due to unemployment, and then companies become unprofitable if we zone more industrial/office to support a population expansion, then are we in a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation? Like the city is just stagnant like that?

I haven't gotten to that point in any of my cities but I haven't developed any to 500K or more either. So, maybe it becomes an issue in really large cities, but I haven't run into this problem. It does slow down city growth but that has always given me enough time to work on "beautification" infill and plan the next area with roads, infrastructure, etc. Something to keep in mind is as the businesses (office, industry, commercial) level up, they will need more employees. So, even if you don't zone any new ones for a while, the demand for employees will continue to rise as your businesses level up. Also, residential holds more people as it levels up so that is another aspect to take into account.

I think part of the problem is residential levels up so fast it throws the growth out of balance. Your residential growth outstrips the growth of businesses causing high unemployment. But the game is very forgiving of high unemployment which may be how the devs are balancing the system because actually fixing the underlying economic system is something they haven't figured out yet.

The biggest employers is high density office but they don't come until later in the city development and are the last growable zone to unlock. They also have the problem of not exporting excess production like they should so they max out their "storage" and at that point they are unprofitable and start laying off employees until they get to the minimum number of 5. The offices should export but don't. They should go out of business and be replaced, but they don't. Instead they become zombie companies and instead of employing hundreds of employees, they employ five. This just adds to the unemployment issue.

These can all be balanced once you understand what the game is doing and where it's failing/limited. Most people in the message boards don't care about that. They are only focused on "this is how it should work" but that just leads them to be frustrated. As with any game, learning HOW it works is paramount to enjoying it or at least deciding if it's not for you.

Hopefully CO patches these issues at some point. But from reading the forums including the bug reports, I haven't seen anyone discussing the causes of these issues. Only pointing to the results of them. Because finding the cause takes a lot of time and experimentation and deductive reasoning. I hope the devs have been able to decipher the underlying game issues causing these problems and know how to fix them. If they don't, I doubt this game will become what it could be.

 

[lirondco]

I haven't gotten to that point in any of my cities but I haven't developed any to 500K or more either. So, maybe it becomes an issue in really large cities, but I haven't run into this problem. It does slow down city growth but that has always given me enough time to work on "beautification" infill and plan the next area with roads, infrastructure, etc. Something to keep in mind is as the businesses (office, industry, commercial) level up, they will need more employees. So, even if you don't zone any new ones for a while, the demand for employees will continue to rise as your businesses level up. Also, residential holds more people as it levels up so that is another aspect to take into account.

I think part of the problem is residential levels up so fast it throws the growth out of balance. Your residential growth outstrips the growth of businesses causing high unemployment. But the game is very forgiving of high unemployment which may be how the devs are balancing the system because actually fixing the underlying economic system is something they haven't figured out yet.

The biggest employers is high density office but they don't come until later in the city development and are the last growable zone to unlock. They also have the problem of not exporting excess production like they should so they max out their "storage" and at that point they are unprofitable and start laying off employees until they get to the minimum number of 5. The offices should export but don't. They should go out of business and be replaced, but they don't. Instead they become zombie companies and instead of employing hundreds of employees, they employ five. This just adds to the unemployment issue.

These can all be balanced once you understand what the game is doing and where it's failing/limited. Most people in the message boards don't care about that. They are only focused on "this is how it should work" but that just leads them to be frustrated. As with any game, learning HOW it works is paramount to enjoying it or at least deciding if it's not for you.

Hopefully CO patches these issues at some point. But from reading the forums including the bug reports, I haven't seen anyone discussing the causes of these issues. Only pointing to the results of them. Because finding the cause takes a lot of time and experimentation and deductive reasoning. I hope the devs have been able to decipher the underlying game issues causing these problems and know how to fix them. If they don't, I doubt this game will become what it could be.

I'm starting a whole save because the old one which worked really well pre-patch is now up to 40% unemployment with a lot of unprofitable companies.

Do you zone new industrial/office when unemployment hits a certain value? Or how do you decide? And what's the ideal balance of comm+ind+office in the current game?

 

[joewagner501]

I'm starting a whole save because the old one which worked really well pre-patch is now up to 40% unemployment with a lot of unprofitable companies.

Do you zone new industrial/office when unemployment hits a certain value? Or how do you decide? And what's the ideal balance of comm+ind+office in the current game?

I don't have a magic formula. Because the system is currently unbalanced, I do the following:

• If your unemployment is really low and your businesses can't find enough employees, zone more residential. I've noticed businesses won't always complain right away so I will use the Extended Tooltip mod to see how many employees a business has compared to how many it "can" have.
• If you have high unemployment check to see if you could use more industrial by determining how profitable you industrial sector is. If it's not profitable (overproduction is ok because it can be exported but exports don't mean it will be profitable), look at commercial or office.
• If your commercial is highly profitable, zone more of that. The additional commercial will add more jobs and purchase product from industrial making that more profitable.
• If your office is highly profitable, zone more of that. They will sell their goods/services to industry, commercial, residential. Unfortunately, the export functionality doesn't seem to be working at the moment so plan your zoning so the zoned offices can sell everything within your town.
• Cargo terminals are for cheaper exporting/importing which increases company profits but it isn't a silver bullet that will make them magically profitable if you have over zoned them. Exporting is never going to be as profitable as selling/buying locally.
• When starting a city, you have to be methodical and plan out the cities expansion. Unemployment will be high but over time, if you are expanding businesses, it will drop. This is an area for improvement but still works.

Whatever you do, don't use the demand bars to determine what to zone next. They are not accurate and will cause you to over zone. Also, don't try and get your different businesses (industrial, office, commercial) to 100% profitability. That will never happen. Like in the real world, you will always have some unprofitable businesses. But you should be able to get commercial and offices in the 70-90% range pretty easily. Industrial is much harder. You will have to play with tax rates to help them. Early on, it's hard because you need the tax revenue to fund expansion so it will slow you down. But find the right balance and you will be good. I normally tax residential pretty high early in a game. Upwards of 15-20%. They complain but that's ok. At some point you will make enough revenue you can start reducing tax rates on businesses. Office seems to have the biggest response to tax rates so if you need more office businesses, maybe lower the tax rate on them by a couple percent.

The thread below has been really active with people and may help in getting an understanding of how industry (specialized and zoned) work. It's a pretty big thread but I've been active posting my findings (a lot of time spend just watching one thing or another to try and find out what happens and when).

My Industrial profitability keeps being low

Hi, I don't understand the profitability of my industrial zoning. Atm it is at 36% but I feel like I'm doing everything to try to improve it but nothing happens. Does somebody know how I can improve it? - My taxes are at 11%. - Water and...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[lirondco]

I don't have a magic formula. Because the system is currently unbalanced, I do the following:

• If your unemployment is really low and your businesses can't find enough employees, zone more residential. I've noticed businesses won't always complain right away so I will use the Extended Tooltip mod to see how many employees a business has compared to how many it "can" have.
• If you have high unemployment check to see if you could use more industrial by determining how profitable you industrial sector is. If it's not profitable (overproduction is ok because it can be exported but exports don't mean it will be profitable), look at commercial or office.
• If your commercial is highly profitable, zone more of that. The additional commercial will add more jobs and purchase product from industrial making that more profitable.
• If your office is highly profitable, zone more of that. They will sell their goods/services to industry, commercial, residential. Unfortunately, the export functionality doesn't seem to be working at the moment so plan your zoning so the zoned offices can sell everything within your town.
• Cargo terminals are for cheaper exporting/importing which increases company profits but it isn't a silver bullet that will make them magically profitable if you have over zoned them. Exporting is never going to be as profitable as selling/buying locally.
• When starting a city, you have to be methodical and plan out the cities expansion. Unemployment will be high but over time, if you are expanding businesses, it will drop. This is an area for improvement but still works.

Whatever you do, don't use the demand bars to determine what to zone next. They are not accurate and will cause you to over zone. Also, don't try and get your different businesses (industrial, office, commercial) to 100% profitability. That will never happen. Like in the real world, you will always have some unprofitable businesses. But you should be able to get commercial and offices in the 70-90% range pretty easily. Industrial is much harder. You will have to play with tax rates to help them. Early on, it's hard because you need the tax revenue to fund expansion so it will slow you down. But find the right balance and you will be good. I normally tax residential pretty high early in a game. Upwards of 15-20%. They complain but that's ok. At some point you will make enough revenue you can start reducing tax rates on businesses. Office seems to have the biggest response to tax rates so if you need more office businesses, maybe lower the tax rate on them by a couple percent.

The thread below has been really active with people and may help in getting an understanding of how industry (specialized and zoned) work. It's a pretty big thread but I've been active posting my findings (a lot of time spend just watching one thing or another to try and find out what happens and when).

My Industrial profitability keeps being low

Hi, I don't understand the profitability of my industrial zoning. Atm it is at 36% but I feel like I'm doing everything to try to improve it but nothing happens. Does somebody know how I can improve it? - My taxes are at 11%. - Water and...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

OK I just did this and it's working, though I'm at 20% unemployment due to education levels but it should sort it out once the first batch of students graduate. Office profitability is at 100% and commercial is lower at 60% while industrial is still struggling though not as much as my old save. Population is at 20K and expanding slowly helped me focus on smaller things too. People don't seem to be complaining about being unemployed though so I don't really care until they do lol