jobs, wealth, and related questions

[VayneVerso]

I'm still muddling around in the Colonial era right now with about 300 people. I noticed during the tutorial missions that that upkeep costs on bunkhouses for the broke was costing an arm and a leg, so I've been methodically putting everybody to work in my first sandbox game. I think that ensures that all workers are at least considered poor, no?

What I'm wondering now is what the downside might be to just cranking up my spending on all of my production buildings. It costs more, but wouldn't the increased efficiency sort of pay for itself. Additionally, workers draw higher incomes, making them wealthier, which means there are fewer poor and broke families that can spend more money. Which seems like it would also make them happier and like you more. Is that wrong?

Also, I noticed that workplaces have a Star rating beneath the number of jobs. How does this work, exactly? Does this indicate the required education level? Or is this just a measure of the happiness of people who work there/job quality?

I feel like I have a million questions, but I'm not sitting in front of my computer right now. These are just a few of the things I've been wondering.

[jlking3rd]

It sounds like you already have a pretty good handle on the game. The stars are indeed the education level. I usually just max out the builds for my main exports. For instance I need sugar for the rum factories, so I max out the sugar plantation so they produce more sugar. Be careful doing that with all buildings because it can get expensive.

When you increase the budget on the teamsters each teamster can carry a bigger load. In the Colonial Era that is a big plus, but by the time you get to the Modern Era, the default amount is likely bigger than any of your builds are going to produce, so there is no real advantage to paying the teamsters more.

[VayneVerso]

Good note about the teamsters--thanks!

I was thinking more about the production jobs, like plantations, ranches, distilleries, etc. Seems like mostly upside to increasing the budget, unless you don't have enough raw resources to process at an industrial plant, for example.

Related to educated jobs, do you always have to hire foreign workers specifically for those, or will educated workers just show up eventually on their own. I.e., if you build it, they will come.

[jlking3rd]

Originally posted by TheWatcherUatu:

Good note about the teamsters--thanks!

I was thinking more about the production jobs, like plantations, ranches, distilleries, etc. Seems like mostly upside to increasing the budget, unless you don't have enough raw resources to process at an industrial plant, for example.

Related to educated jobs, do you always have to higher foreign workers specifically for those, or will educated workers just show up eventually on their own. I.e., if you build it, they will come.

They will show up, but it is just a trickle per ship. I do sometimes hire foreign workers for college educated jobs. Later in the game the immigration office has a work mode that cause more educated people to immigrate.

[beardog]

Note the bunkhouse has a special working mode when it costs nothing for the people and broke people can live there

[mrxak]

Tropico 6 seems pretty good about providing you with educated immigrants. I used to have to hire quite a few in past games in the series. I actually feel Tropico 6 is pretty easy to get a high tech economy up and running quickly. Of course, you don't want to jump straight to a whole bunch of industrial buildings. Generally I start out with either sugar-into-rum, or tobacco-into-cigars, as the very first thing I do with a new game. After that, I look around and see what's doable. I'm still not convinced boats are actually as good as some people seem to think, they involve a LOT of labor and the production speed is very slow. I like dark chocolate. The cannery isn't too bad, either. As always, the key is to not over-build before you have the Tropicans to put to work in those new jobs. I keep a close eye on my vacant jobs number and keep it to no greater than 30. Services are a waste of money until you're swimming in it. I don't build any housing at all unless required by a mission (and even then I'll put it off), or I have an election coming up. The key to Tropico is just to build your economy as fast as your labor supply allows.

[VayneVerso]

Originally posted by beardog:

Note the bunkhouse has a special working mode when it costs nothing for the people and broke people can live there

Yes, but what I meant was that if you make it free to live there, you end up footing the entire bill, which eats into your funds. Whereas if everybody has a job and is at least poor, I think they pay something to live in the bunkhouses with the default housing mode, unless I'm mistaken.

[VayneVerso]

Originally posted by mrxak:

Tropico 6 seems pretty good about providing you with educated immigrants. I used to have to hire quite a few in past games in the series. I actually feel Tropico 6 is pretty easy to get a high tech economy up and running quickly. Of course, you don't want to jump straight to a whole bunch of industrial buildings.

Thanks, I've been doing all right so far, but I'm going to have to start paying more attention to these little things. Should I assume that more highly-educated citizens have a higher needs threshold, so they get unhappier faster about living on a squalid island? I mean, that would make sense, but it doesn't mean that the devs designed it that way.

With industrial buildings, I actually wasn't even thinking about this at all. I only started wondering once I got some wind in my sails and wanted to build the library and newspaper building.

Why don't you build houses? Because of the cost of it? Or is there really no appreciable advantage to letting people live in shacks as opposed to bunkhouses in the early game?

[BHunterSEAL]

This game definitely offers more educated immigrants than in the past, I didn't even know the ability to "hire a foreign worker" still existed until very recently--it's now done by clicking the silhouette, not separate button on the UI. I've never had a problem staffing up in T6, the natural education rate for immigrants is noticeably higher and the Rescue Educated raid brings in 5-10 at a time. The snowballing cost of hired workers and time / expense of educating your people was a real barrier to advanced economic development in the older Tropico games, now it barely merits consideration.

The biggest problem isn't the service demands educated citizens have (which are based more on wealth / faction than education level, but there's obviously some correlation there). I generally have far too many educated citizens, most of whom prefer unemployment to taking an uneducated job. I'm not sure exactly what determines whether they do, but having a ton of broke citizens AND dozens of unfilled critical infrastructure and basic-goods jobs makes for an challenging spiral to work yourself out of.

[VayneVerso]

Forgot to ask this question before:

First, what determines whether a character is poor or well-off, etc.? I assume it's based upon combined salary of the family members or something? But does anybody know what the thresholds are?

Second, is there any reason to prefer using apartments over 3 side-by-side houses? Because it's only one less family, but the housing quality is much better and you also earn slightly more per household. Something I'm missing? Perhaps is it really just apartments being somewhat cheaper to build and holding one more household?

[jlking3rd]

LOL! You tend to answer you own questions with the correct answer. :-) In the World War Era, the houses are a good way to go because they actually do have a bit more happiness value than the apartments do.

You are going to be really good at this game...

[Molybdane]

Originally posted by TheWatcherUatu:

Forgot to ask this question before:

First, hat determines whether a character is poor or well-off, etc.? I assume it's based upon combined salary of the family members or something? But does anybody know what the thresholds are?

...

I don't know for certain, but I think you're correct, family wealth is determined by the combined income of the parents. But if the family has children, the average wealth drops. I saw a family move from a bunkhouse to an apartment after I implemented child benefits, and edict that costs 3$ per child but disregards children when calculating the average wealth of a family.

[Lilltiger]

The issue with cranking up the pay is that well educated rich people is less happy when they do simple jobs, so the higher you pay the more likly they are to want a higher educated job or well a job with better work quality.
They also require better living standards, so more expensive houses.

So you have to keep on growing so there is always new people for the "bad" jobs, and do not activate the free housing edict, that will kill you out right if you grow fast with wealthy citizen.

[VayneVerso]

Originally posted by Lilltiger:

The issue with cranking up the pay is that well educated rich people is less happy when they do simple jobs, so the higher you pay the more likly they are to want a higher educated job or well a job with better work quality.
They also require better living standards, so more expensive houses.

So you have to keep on growing so there is always new people for the "bad" jobs, and do not activate the free housing edict, that will kill you out right if you grow fast with wealthy citizen.

Thanks. I did try cranking up the pay at my plantations and other production buildings requiring low education. Didn't properly test it, though, because I had built a second dock, which seemed to mess everything up. I've started a new game since then, though, and I'm getting everything sorted out. I'm going to re-test it.

Originally posted by Molybdane:

I don't know for certain, but I think you're correct, family wealth is determined by the combined income of the parents. But if the family has children, the average wealth drops. I saw a family move from a bunkhouse to an apartment after I implemented child benefits, and edict that costs 3$ per child but disregards children when calculating the average wealth of a family.

Yeah, I always run that edict, because it's important to me to get people out of shacks, especially, and bunkhouses, too, if possible. I think it goes down to $1 per child after it upgrades.