Anyone else upgrade all their houses and not have enough farmers?

[dred]

Took me a while to figure out why I didn't have any farmers. It wasn't like this in the other pre 1800 games.

[Digitalcat]

You have to keep people from all classes around, farmers to work on the fields and workers to work in the factories, it's a new thing in this anno. I kinda already knew about it because they talked about it a lot as a cool new feature.

[wizaerd]

If you upgrade their homes, the occupants also upgrade from farmers to workers. If you upgrade all of them, you won't have any farmers, and too many workers. You can downgrade them back to farmers.

[WTF IS THIS?]

kinda sucks a little i wanted a city full of fancy houses but this way there is more variety i guess.

[Chompman]

Originally posted by WTF IS THIS?:

kinda sucks a little i wanted a city full of fancy houses but this way there is more variety i guess.

You can by either shipping all the buildings that require them to other islands and keep a population there while shipping the goods back to that island or using a commuter pier to ship people between the islands if they need to work somewhere else.

[tjfrankus]

Originally posted by wizaerd:

You can downgrade them back to farmers.

I really DO LIKE that in this game you can "downgrade" houses (when/if the need arises) to make sure you have a balance (enough of each).

[Lord Bludgeon]

Yeah, this is more like Anno Online with the balance of peasants/workers/patricians etc. What I miss is not needing peasants on the island to work the industries. Until you reach Investors you have to build a little village on any island you want to farm.

[Thaumaturgist]

The commuter pier is a game changer in this Anno. Once I get my engineers covered, I'm planning to move both my farmers and the vulgar buildings (mostly the pig related buildings) on another island. With the commuter pier it seems to be possible to have islands with one or two specific classes only.
And I really think this is the idea of the devs - to make you in one way or another to progress in this time period just like how it went down in the real world. You can have a seemingly perfect city with no peasants and the smoke of factories, with the goods imported from the close islands, one of which is populated by the poor and forced to work overtime with police stations everywhere to brutaly crush the revolts. The other island can be covered in factories where the workers have to cope with the heavy smoke. Both islands are getting their production stripped away for the main island. The newspaper mechanic also comes into play - by spreading false news you can hide from the rich the truth thats going on over their fence, while the poor can be told that this is the best of their lives and any revolts will be punished.

[neutrino]

Originally posted by tomkanfrank:

Originally posted by wizaerd:

You can downgrade them back to farmers.

I really DO LIKE that in this game you can "downgrade" houses (when/if the need arises) to make sure you have a balance (enough of each).

Yeah, but the only thing that sucks about it is that you have to do it one house at a time in a two-click process: click house, click downgrade button, click house, click downgrade button, etc..

[Honorable_D]

Can you imagine? Oh hey, workers, we uh, need you to become farmers again. Sorry, back to the crappier house now!

[Martialis]

Originally posted by Honorable_D:

Can you imagine? Oh hey, workers, we uh, need you to become farmers again. Sorry, back to the crappier house now!

Kind of doesn't make sense the other way either. "Hey, you've been a farmer your whole life, but now you are a worker. See you in the steel mill!"

I think it would make more sense if you built farmer buildings first, and then when certain conditions were met you could build worker houses and then they would slowly fill as you attracted workers to your island.

At least the UI is clear enough. "Hey, where'd all my workers go?" Oh, yeah, their working on that big ship I'm building. I'm surprised there isn't at least happiness penalties for a large unemployed work force though.

[sololeif]

How to mass downgrade?

[Fuerst Fux]

Originally posted by Martialis:

I'm surprised there isn't at least happiness penalties for a large unemployed work force though.

There are slight happiness penalties when you have a lot of unemployment. I suppose they intentionally left it small since a substantial penalty would make balancing between income and minimum workforce and too big a workforce too delicate.

[Spaddel]

How to mass downgrade:

-press D and mark all the building you want to demolish.

Kappa