Underemployment

[TheOne]

After I installed CAM, every city I develop has staggered employment and underemployment. Often in large cities, all of the skyscrapers and other buildings in downtown go almost or completely unworked (such as <100 workers), and the roads and mass transit go unused. Even then, there is huge commercial demand. As the pictures linked below show, even when the roads are used, all of the workers flood into the first few buildings and ignore the rest of the industrial/business area. This isn't eternal commuters, as it happens in isolated cities.

Please let me know if there are any solutions, or if I'm not alone.

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1141/asdfui.png
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/5528/sadfq.png

[jmyers2043]

Hi TheOne

Please let me know if there are any solutions, or if I'm not alone.

Please post a screen grab of the Census Repository query. That will tell me a lot about your city as right now there is not enough information to even hazard a guess. 

If you don't already have it ... http://sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1831

Good Luck

- Jim

[Korot]

My guess would actually be the doubled workforce bug, causing you to have twice as many jobs as needed. This is a bug in CAM 1.0 which will be fixed in CAM2.0, but until then, a fix would be to merge you CAM files with SimCity_1.dat. Make a bake up first!

Regards,
Korot

[TheOne]

http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/7779/census.png Here is my census. It says I have 4000 open jobs.

UPDATE after water and medium density development, that number reduced to 182. Still half the buildings in the commercial district don't have workers.

How would I go about merging the files?

[Korot]

This should be a suitable method:

-Go to C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe and select SimCity_1.dat. Copy this file to your plugins folder into a special folder called SimCity_1. (May want to temporary empty your folder from other files)
-Go to a_Cam in your plugins folder and select ColossusAddonMod_1.0.dat. Move it into the same folder as the SimCity_1.dat file is in. Now rename it to z_ColossusAddonMod_1.0.dat
- Move you old version of SimCity_1.dat (the one still in its original place) to somewhere safe, not in your plugins. This will allow you to undo this fix, if it goes wrong, without reinstalling the game. You might want to do the same for the CAM file.
-Use DatPacker 2008 [ NOT ANNIVERSARY ] and datpack the SimCity_1 folder. Move this file into the -Go to C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4 Deluxe directory again and make sure its called SimCity_1.dat.
-Delete the folder SimCity_1.dat.

Regards,
Korot

[TheOne]

I believe that I just CREATED a double workforce glitch. There are twice as many jobs as workers and a negative residential demand. Heh. But at least the buildings are finally being worked. Thanks Korot.

[jmyers2043]

Even then, there is huge commercial demand.

Okay - having looked at the census there are a couple of things.

First rule is: Do not let the demand bars rule your life or city. Just because there is a huge blue bar graph does not mean that you need to zone a bunch of commercial property.

Rule two is: All Demand if Regional. things you do in one city affect others. In this city the R$$ demand is twice that of R$. But I wouldn't encourage them as you only have a few CS$$ or I-M jobs. I suspect that R$$ moving into town will soon move out due to lack of jobs and the home might dilapidate.

The city EQ is 32. Most of your Sims will want to work on Farms, I-D, and CS$. More Sims will wish to work at a commercial business and less on a farm as education rises but not right now.

Look at the line that says Total Workforce. There are 8,557 workers. Looking across to the drives column I see that there are 13,218 job openings for those workers. So the factories that you showed in the first post have very few workers because there more jobs than Sims. It also seems that some of the commercial buildings do not have workers because there is no one traveling on the roads to get to an available job.

Often in large cities, all of the skyscrapers and other buildings in downtown go almost or completely unworked

I always try to keep the total workforce and available jobs fairly close. I would probably unzone about half of the commercial and some of the industrial zones if that were my city. I'd also make four or five temporary farms as R$ like to pick apples and oranges in cities with low EQ. I suspect that you'll see heavy traffic on farm roads until EQ starts to rise above 100. You may have to adjust industrail zones down if you do that.

There are 3,319 Sims seeking CS$ jobs but there is a capacity of 8,455. About 2 and a half times as many commercial jobs as needed right now.

There are no industrial or commercial commuters to Sim Nation ... nor are there any workers coming to this city 'stealing' local jobs. That's good news. You'll get them eventually when you build other cities and make neighbor connections. Keeping commuters to and from low while keeping workers and jobs equalized is, for me,  a recipe for success. 

- Jim

[TheOne]

The EQ is because the city developed recently, the city is isolated as of yet, and I can't keep the workforce and the population in balance because of the newly created double workforce bug.