Joblessness

[Wveth 2]

Every now and then I get the little jobless icon popping up intermittently around certain parts of my cities.  I'm pretty new at this, although I got a city to about 25,000 people that was working decently well, but every now and then I have this ridiculous problem of unemployment.

It will have the little jobless icon.  Eventually, it will be abandoned due to commute time.  Then it will be lived in fine for a little while... then the same thing.

There's no reason for the occupant to actually HAVE long commute times.  I always put jobs right across the street and that doesn't help.  Traffic congestion is low and there are clear paths to the places of employment!  I tried buses, but I can't get those to work either.

I did look around the forums, but I only found advice that I'm already using.  I also downloaded and installed the NAM, but it didn't seem to make any changes that I could tell.  Any help would be much appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

[Wveth 2]

Alright, this problem is really starting to hinder my enjoyment of the game.  I HAVE read around, and I have tried tons of things.  I've made sure that there are all kinds of jobs for all kinds of income levels and yet I still get these stupid jobless zots EVERYWHERE no matter what kind of city I have or how it develops.  All abandoned due to commute time.

It got much worse after I installed the NAM, but I didn't do it blind.  I looked it up, I made sure I knew what I was installing and picked the components I wanted, but ever since, it's been much worse.  I can't do ANYTHING without those stupid zots wherever I go and I can't stand it.

I know nobody has offered advice thus far, but please, please tell me if I'm missing something here.  Please.

[Hahayoudied 3]

Are you providing enough jobs? Are you providing the CORRECT type of jobs to the CORRECT type of residents? Also, is there any cities that are connected to the city that has the unemployment?

It happened to me when I had some commercial and industrial jobs, with a lot of residents in this one city. I also had NAM installed.There was another city that had a lot of jobs in it connected to the unemployed city. I went running each city for few sim months and then save, then go to the other city and repeat. That allowed the umemployed residents find jobs in the other city, and that eventully solved the problem.

Another time in my main city was when about 20,000 residents went unemployed after a strange increase in commute time from 4 minutes to 20 minutes. Even though there was a LOT more commercial and industrial jobs than residents, they still went unemployed. I was unable to fix the problem and later, all of the residents packed up and left, but the commute time dropped barely. The problem continued until my main city lost another about 10,000 residents before the commute time dropped.

Often, those type of no job problems are caused by sims' stupidlty, even with NAM.

[Estanton22 0]

Make sure you have enough jobs for the population. Its fine to provide all types of jobs to all the Sim levels, but if you have a large R$ population that is uneducated and only a few dirty industrial jobs, this is going to cause unemployment. Also, try to attract the correct jobs to the correct Sims. If rich educated Sims live on one side of the city, but the jobs they want are of the other, this could also cause the problem.

For a city of 25,000 I don't use much mass transit. Make sure you have a good road system that includes a few avenues. Make sure your zones are not too big. In my main cities, I zone within a range of 4x4 to 5x8. Usually on the smaller side. Sims love to drive, and will use their cars when ever possible, so instead of trying to fight that, I try to work with it.

The thing I find easiest, and most enjoyable to play, is to have seperate cities for seperate Sims. For example, R$ and manufacturing and dirty industry in one city, R$$ and CO$$ next door... etc, and then rotate between playing your regional cities and feed off of demand created from the neighboring city.

[OrionOne 0]

i'm having the same problem. usually I never had trouble making a city in sc4, but lately I've been getting these no-jobs icons everywhere, even with enough jobs

for the population. Also something else I noticed at the same time is that the RCI demand is all messed up. the graphs aren't moving even though i'm adding more houses, businesses and industries...

the residential bar stayed up, but everything else except the I-A bar stayed on 0 ...

i tried uninstalling most of my plugins and it still does the same... I'll try a fresh install of sc4 without the plugins and see what happens...I hope someone will come up with a solution.

Someone should really find a new way of creating and distributing/installing plugins.. it's way too confusing with all those plugins not to mention their dependencies and then conflicts

between different plugins... ARGH##%!@$#$% .. please someone come up with something better!!

thanks

OrionOne

[Livin in Sim 83]

Hi, OrionOne,

Welcome to Simtropolis.  When I experience joblessness, along with many of the things mentioned previously in this thread, I usually try to make sure I don't have too many wealthy Sims, as the proportion of high wealth jobs provided by commerce and industry is less than the percentage of jobs for medium and low wealth sims.  I also make sure to zone more residential, if is in demand, so that demand for commerce and industry go up.  Most of the residential growth will be low and medium wealth, but any demand for commercial and industry will provide jobs for high wealth as well.  And I also make sure I have done some education services in addtion unless I want to encourage Ag demand.  I check my transit to make sure it isn't maxed out, too.

Regarding plugins and dependencies, this thread explains a lot about why it is done the way it is.  And here is a list of most dependency packages and the links.  Please let me know if there is something you can't find, and I  will try to help you locate it.   Most conflicts are mentioned in the readme documents, but I'm sure the creator would be interested to hear of any issues through PM if it is done tactfully.  I know it is a bit complicated sometimes.  A lot of nice generous folks have gone to tons of work to provide excellent custom content and make it easier to use, so I feel we are very lucky to have the game enhanced by it.  And there is always the option of passing it up if a person feels it isn't worth it.  Please let me know the specifics if you're in need of more help.

Enjoy the game.

--Liv

[_alphaBeta_ 6]

I'm having the same problem, here's my situation:

I have three cities in the london region (removed the cities that came with it). The big city plot size in the center holds all residential & commercial zones. Another smaller city plot directly south holds all the industry. A third city (which I haven't opened in quite a while) contains all agriculture zones (which was mainly an experiment).

I have an area in the main residential city that keeps cycling between no job zots and occupancy. The area's buildings are medium-wealth, then they'll drop to low-wealth occupancy, then display the no job zot, then abandon & finally become occupied again & repeat. The only developer types on my RCI graph positive are low-weath residential & commercial service. Everything else is either neutral or slightly negative. This was a result of me overzoning for commercial & industry just to see if this was a commute-time problem or simply too few jobs. Having satisfied all the commercial & industrial demand, I was convinced it was a commute-time issue (since there should have been plenty of jobs in the region, it just takes too long to get there).

Unfortunately, the game doesn't show you where the no-job zot buildings are trying to go, but can't get there. Between occupancy cycles I was able to determine that most of the buildings (when they do hold a job for a little while) are going to the industry city. As an experiment I created a dedicated subway line from this area to the industrial city & connected it on that end. It's getting use, but not really breaking this cycle. This trouble area now has a straight shot to the industry city. So now there should be plenty of jobs, and a dedicated way to get there, but they still can't find it.

This whole issue brings up a misunderstanding I've had about people in one city commuting to jobs in another. The amount of traffic going to a neighbor connection does not always equal the traffic on the other end in the other city. How is the game calculating the cummute-time? I've also seen strange behavior where I'll run a road to a neighbor connection (that isn't connected to anything on the other end), but sims will still use it to "commute" to the other city. Perhaps the troublesome area's commute-time is being thrown off somehow since their jobs are in another city.

Any help or thoughts on this?