Orphanages: a slippery slope?

[frabac]

I started with one orphanage, then one per city, now I have 4-5 per city and they are all at capacity. Will it ever end? Is it a "thing" that will absorb more and more resources (and workers!) of my republic with no way out?

[Marcus Aurelius]

There is a very simple way out. Don't build orphanages. Destroy the ones you have.
I only have built one single orphanage in the beginning, to see what it looked like. Since then, I never built one again.
You're right, they are a burden on your economy, completely useless. I don't care about orphans, and let them escape/die if they want.

[frabac]

Yes... except: you cannot demolish an orphanage as far as it contains kids. :-(

[frabac]

Is turning on water and giving them very polluted water the only way out? Apparently leaving them without food would work too but is probably going to take longer

[webbie33]

I think orphanages are fine, but I really don't like the messages about not enough Tutors. This seems to happen when the orphanage becomes over capacity, which as mentioned above, they eventually will be.

[KJ]

Originally posted by Wartburger:

There is a very simple way out. Don't build orphanages. Destroy the ones you have.
I only have built one single orphanage in the beginning, to see what it looked like. Since then, I never built one again.
You're right, they are a burden on your economy, completely useless. I don't care about orphans, and let them escape/die if they want.

They cause quite high criminality if you dont care for them, which can overfill your justice system and prisons...

[Novu]

Orphanages need a revamp. The kids in them should have 100% loyalty even if you don't provide tutors. Tutoring should only affect education levels.

[aantono]

What is the point of orphanages to begin with? I never fully got how their mechanics were suppose to work!

[moron_with_a_gun]

Orphanages were added because before their existence, the death of the parents resulted in the death of the children as well. So it sort of acts like a drag net to assist population growth. I don't believe that there is a negative effect for not having them otherwise.
If your orphanages are constantly filling, I would check your stats for death rates and make sure that you dont have a building or two without heat or too far away from a hospital. I have never needed more than a total of 5 and have had populations over 120k.

[B4RR3TTS M1GHTY V01C3]

If your republic is working fine (low crime rate, high happiness, loyalty and health) you will not need orphanages.
Orphanages get you basically more workers over the time, as kids are not disappearing when their parents die or leave the republic.

But if everything works fine, then your workers live long enough and have a high productivity, so you don't need an additional boost to your population.
In contrary: if everything is fine plus having orphanages you will have a hard time to constantly expand your cities, building new residential areas and new industries to support them.

Conclusion:
- if you do aim on achieving a stable republic, you should avoid building orphanages
- if you want to achieve a quickly and constantly growing republic, you need to build orphanages

You could also counter the effect of orphanages by reducing or accepting a lower health level, keeping the increasing population in bounds

[4X-Fan]

Aside from roleplaying, I think there usefulness depends on the difficulty you play on - if you play on easy or normal in regard to the citizen reaction on missing needs, you might be better of with ignoring these buildings. You just don't need them likely, as you have more population growth than you handle in long run anyway.

However, at maxed out difficulty things might look different. My attempts at these settings so far ended in a constant struggle to keep my republic working at all because of constant workforce shortages (because are fleeing, dying due low health or just not getting enough children before naturaldeath), so I think in this scenario any citizen you get is a bonus (because it spares you the need to pay an immigrant). You have the challenge to care for the orphans, so you don't raise illoyal people - but my feeling is that is is worth in this case, as for the immgration fee you save you can easily buy what you need for the orphanage inhabitants and cope with what employing the tutors costs you in terms of lost workforce elsewhere.

[MrWillSS]

My current Republic is about 6 months old (real life time) with about 80000 inhabitants and I've haven't built a single orphanage, when they came out I heard that they breed crime so I just didn't build any. I haven't noticed any side effects from not buildings any orphanages, I'm playing playing on a difficulty were citizen get pissed if they don't get what they need.

[Toivo Tonton]

Originally posted by frabac:

Yes... except: you cannot demolish an orphanage as far as it contains kids. :-(

You can build a distant one. Relocate kids and let them die

[frabac]

Originally posted by Toivo Tonton:

Originally posted by frabac:

Yes... except: you cannot demolish an orphanage as far as it contains kids. :-(

You can build a distant one. Relocate kids and let them die

After talking to BBalljo last night, that's exactly what I did: built 4 orphanages away from heating and hospitals, waited for the winter to come and, boom, gone. Phew!

[Gershu]

27.000 inhabitants on one big city.

Employment 100%
Happiness 98%
Av. Productivity: 109%
Got a big *ss prison (185 inmates out of 375 cells, that's half full)
Got a big *ss court house which is pretty much all the time inactive.

5 ORPHANAGES ARE NOT ENOUGH. GAME KEEP ASKING FOR MORE.
WHYYYYYY?

[Adil3tr]

Isn't the point of orphanages to just produce more people? Never build them.