teamsters suck

[Washout]

My entire economy is stalling because the teamsters are avoiding farms and mines.
For some reason they dont want to supply my factories.
I am sure that the teamsters are not hiding at the docks.
So why don't they move goods.

[Dave1029]

It's a glitch I've found.

[Washout]

I found the bug where the stay at the duck but that isnt it this time.

[Dave1029]

They literally become mentally retarded as time goes on. I had to start a new game because they weren't doing anything. I had 100 teamsters employed, yet only 10-15 were working.

[Washout]

Seems like reloading can fix some of the madness

[⎛⎝kingj0n⎠⎞]

destroy all the teamster buildings and most of your factory buildings. You just need like 2 production to export stuff.....

[BlackAlpha]

One thing I kept noticing is that traffic jams kill the economy because traffic jams can slow down teamsters hell of a lot. So I never create any garages anymore. Another thing I do is I spread out the docks so that all of the teamsters don't take the same road all the time and cause traffic jams themselves. And don't put your teamsters next to contested roads, because when they then go back to the teamster building, they will travel along the contested road and help promote a traffic jam. So put the teamster buildings in a bit more remote areas.

[Washout]

I keep a seperate road just for hauling goods. l
And I split up my production buildings.
The problem is that they don't empty the buildings they visite. they take a small amount of goods and the move on

[Caelo]

They don't even take goods, but just detract from the numbers. They don't even have to visit a production building for it to "sell" goods :P The game basically went from an agent system to a spreadsheet system. Ofc. you won't notice it unless you set up some specific tests. Someone even did some tests and noticed that the profit of a factory is not related to the efficiency of teamsters or the costs of input materials ^^
I'm not sure how traffic jams come into play with the economy, but it has at least little to do with the actual teamsters stuck in traffic jams. I bet the input of the buildings is based on the percentage of roads with traffic problems or something like that.

[Washout]

So making alot of teamster building in one place should be enough

[iroks1]

yes they sux http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=280168482 (more in my profile)
26 ships of freight, steel mills, car factories, refineries, tourists.

Look roads, plan traffic, think

[BlackAlpha]

Originally posted by Caelo:

They don't even take goods, but just detract from the numbers. They don't even have to visit a production building for it to "sell" goods :P The game basically went from an agent system to a spreadsheet system. Ofc. you won't notice it unless you set up some specific tests. Someone even did some tests and noticed that the profit of a factory is not related to the efficiency of teamsters or the costs of input materials ^^
I'm not sure how traffic jams come into play with the economy, but it has at least little to do with the actual teamsters stuck in traffic jams. I bet the input of the buildings is based on the percentage of roads with traffic problems or something like that.

Uh, I don't think so. Well, it's not exactly hard to follow the teamsters around when you start a new game. You can see how they pickup goods. The moment they enter a building, that building loses an X amount of goods. Then the teamster leaves the building and heads to a dock. The moment the teamster then enters the dock, that dock gains that same X amount of goods that the teamster picked up earlier. Then a ship comes along and the dock offloads as much of its goods as possible. You then gain money based on what goods and how much was offloaded onto the ship.

Traffic jams will cause serious hurt to that process, which will make you bleed money. How do you know that traffic jams are causing the issue? If you let the game run for a while and after a while you start seeing those icons above the buildings that indicate the teamsters are not doing their job. If you see those icons above many buildings, then that means your (entire) economy has collapsed because your teamsters can't get to their destinations fast enough using the roads. So you should check the roads, if there are traffic jams (usually around the docks), then that's probably what is causing the issue. Solve the traffic jam and your economy will get fixed as well.

Subways are a really good solution to solve traffic jams, so you should use them ASAP when you reach the late game. If you got a bunch of subways, the teamsters will sometimes (I guess when they decide it's faster) walk to a subway after they pickup the goods. Then when they leave the subway, they will walk to a nearby teamster building where they will pickup a truck and drive to a dock. So basically, put a subway where the goods are being produced, put another subway next to the docks, and put a teamster building right next to that second subway next to the docks. It's an awesome way to avoid traffic jams in the late game when you got a gigantic teamster army.

As for the profit number of a building, I mostly ignore it. I think it only takes in account the cost of the goods that have been picked up. But naturally it doesn't take in account traffic jams and such. So I think that the way the profit number works is that it goes down over time (I guess due to the budget, which represents the cost of running the place) and it goes up when goods are picked up by teamsters.

I suppose it can be useful to know if a building is making a profit or not, but usually I just assume that all my buildings are making a profit unless I see one of those signs above the building that indicates the teamsters are not doing their job properly. That's when I know there's trouble. Usually it's simply due to lack of teamsters, then I simply create a bunch more of them. But sometimes it's due to traffic jams. If that's the case, I spread out my docks more, that usually does the trick. You want to spread out the docks in such a way that the teamsters have to take completely different roads to reach each dock, so that your teamster army gets divided over different routes, instead of having all of them taking the same road and causing a huge traffic jam.

Also, civies are a pain in the ass with their cars, they can cause a lot of traffic jams if you aren't careful. I think the way they work is that if their workplace is further away than an X amount of distance from their home, then there's a certain percentage chance that they will pickup a car. I think a garage increases that chance dramatically. So if you hate cars, like I do, then don't give them garages. If you build residential areas somewhere nearby the workplaces, then they don't need the cars anyway, they can walk. But I haven't used the cars much, so maybe I'm missing something that would explain why the cars would be useful?

[MaxDoomSWE]

The game devs have said that teamsters are fixed. They have said so with every patch they have made so far. So i dont think they will ever fix the teamsters. I dont think they can. And with logistics not working, the game is dead.

[BlackAlpha]

Here's a screenshot that shows the problem you might run into with the teamsters and how to avoid it. For a large part, this screenshot explains the huge text I wrote above.

Read the white text, then the red, and finally the blue:

http://i.imgur.com/2gD3gen.jpg


Also, here's an addition to the white text that explains a bit more about this problem:

Another sympton of this problem is that buildings start saying that they aren't getting the required resources for production and/or their goods aren't being picked up. This screenshot doesn't really show it well but when I left the game running for a while, virtually all the buildings had those icons that indicate the teamsters aren't supplying them or picking up their goods.

You can sort of already see it a little bit in the screenshot. The sawmill in the top left isn't getting any trees and the powerplant in the bottom right isn't getting any coal. Because there's no electricity, the cannery stopped producing. I'm sure you can understand that this is causing a huge chain reaction.

At this point (in the screenshot), basically all buildings are lacking resources (the icons simply haven't come up yet but soon they will) because the teamsters aren't supplying them fast enough anymore. That is being caused by the teamsters getting stuck in traffic and so the teamsters can't move fast enough along the roads to service all the buildings in a timely fashion. Adding more teamsters simply makes the problem worse because the additional teamsters make the traffic jam even bigger!

Soon, the entire civilization collapses, all because the logistics system has broken down due to my poor planning.

Edit: A piece of information. At least in the Cold War era, tropicans will head to nearby workplaces that are connected to roads to pickup a car. For example, a priest can walk up to a saw mill, grab a car, and then drive to his destination.

[BlackAlpha]

I reloaded a savegame from a few years prior to that screenshot, before I hit the red. Then I followed the advice from my screenshot. To make space for the new roads, I had to reposition 2 farms, 2 construction buildings, a clinic and I had to reduce the size of a cornfield, but it was worth it! I then ran the town for a few years without doing anything to see if the problem was definitely fixed, and yes, the problem was indeed solved.

See here, economy healthy again:

http://i.imgur.com/1hfdAJh.jpg



EDIT: After posting that second screenshot, I realized that I forgot to build the two tourist hotels in the top right. So I built them and waited a few more years to see how they would affect the economy. The economy remained stable, the tourists had little effect on the road traffic in the long run. I then hit an earhquake that demolished a bunch of industrial buildings, so I fixed them and waited a few more years just to be sure, but the problem remained solved.

See here, problem still solved even with the tourists:

http://i.imgur.com/g3l7vG0.jpg




Summary:

The problem: http://i.imgur.com/2gD3gen.jpg

The solution: http://i.imgur.com/g3l7vG0.jpg

Moral of the story: It matters how you plan your roads!

[Crazyivan]

Teamsters have been fixed in the last patches the only bugs is our lack of understanding in how to make them work as intended.
BlackAlpha you are right on the money.
I personaly have a parking lot next to every teamster i have at least 1 teamster to every three buildings that need them'
i put my teamsters on side roads and keep them to a minuim on the main roads.
All my docks all 12 of them are on a single road way but i have another main road parrael to it as most of my citzens use that and i still have no issues.
Teamsters are not bugged anymore we the poor gammer is trying to learn what is a very complex game under the hood.