Ghost town

[cystof1989]

Will the infamous ghost town bug be present? You know, the bug when your citizens get old enough that they stop dying, and at the same time they are too old to work, which results in massive workforce drop and ultimately a spectacular collapse of whole city.

[Bloodsucker]

"at the same time they are too old to work"

I've never seen that in the vanilla pharaoh? I don't think age is a thing in this game. Too high in social class can result in less workers, but that's game mechanics.

[Trixi]

in my 1000 hours (i played it a lot in old days), i never expierenced this bug.

[cystof1989]

It happened at veeeery long plays. Sudden drop in a workforce can be a pain in the a%s. Game monitors age of your citizens, and old citizens do not work, when someone dies of old age (or disease, catastrophe etc.) he is "replaced" with someone else, usually younger, to maintain number of workers appropriate for your total number of citizens, housing conditions etc. There is one exception, when someone hits 100-year old mark. That's the point when game mechanic got buggy. Our elder at that point became unable to die of old age. Not working, not dying to make free spot for someone younger. When more and more citizens got there, number of workforce dropped to the point when city cannot sustain itself anymore, any spectacularly collapses. Found this explanation on a game forum years ago. Bug ain't that common, but on the other hand it's not that rare either. It's easy to replicate too, just play on one map long enough to see it happening.

[Sinsem]

We've added a check in the ageing mechanisme. Now, everytime a citizen reaches 100, he dies. Ghost cannot happen this way.
The way the system was coded in the original Pharaoh allowed for some citizens to slip through, but ve'we made sure death is inevitable.

[Bloodsucker]

Originally posted by Sinsem:

We've added a check in the ageing mechanisme. Now, everytime a citizen reaches 100, he dies. Ghost cannot happen this way.
The way the system was coded in the original Pharaoh allowed for some citizens to slip through, but ve'we made sure death is inevitable.

How did you figure out internal features like the citizens age that aren't obvious or clear (or visible at all) in the game? Do you have access to the game's code? I understood that the new developers are copying the game mechanics and I've assumed these are based on empirical observations.

[Sinsem]

Originally posted by Bloodsucker:

How did you figure out internal features like the citizens age that aren't obvious or clear (or visible at all) in the game?

Observations, tests and my general knowledge of the game.

Originally posted by Bloodsucker:

Do you have access to the game's code?

No, it doesn't exist anymore (it's difficult to say when it was lost, but everything we know point to before 2004).
That's why some mechanics will be a little bit different.

[Eisenerz]

Hey, this sounds really good. Finally big sandbox cities without worrying about ghosts.

[ricardo]

I think I remember sometimes having a really old population. Felt bad having to evict half the city.

[RestedPandy]

This used to be a problem In Caesar 3 as well from memory. It's been a long time but I think the workaround in that was to have just enough healthcare cover to need satisfactory and no more. They would die through that before getting too old. Helps to focus on some areas to villa and others to keep as worker areas with lower levels as well.

Good that the Devs are putting in a hard check to prevent it being an issue.

[Eisenerz]

Originally posted by RestedPandy:

This used to be a problem In Caesar 3 as well from memory. It's been a long time but I think the workaround in that was to have just enough healthcare cover to need satisfactory and no more. They would die through that before getting too old. Helps to focus on some areas to villa and others to keep as worker areas with lower levels as well.

Good that the Devs are putting in a hard check to prevent it being an issue.

The moment health care is too perfect.
I hope better health contributes a bit more than adding more points to the culture rating. It was just a matter of the housing level, right? A good pharaoh shouldn't put self-sustaining (fire-, crime- and disease protected) slums in a nice city.