Education Question

[n3cro r4bbit 1]

I have two questions here.

 

1) Is Education bugged or something? I had 3 fully upgraded Elementary Schools and 1 fully maxxed of each Community College, University and High School, yet I was STILL getting yelled at for uneducated people and to build more schools!

 

2) I built a Nuclear Power Plant and everything ran smooth for roughly an hour, then all of a sudden my town turned stupid and my power plant had 3 meltdowns back to back. How can you have so much education in your city, the plant running smoothly then out of nowhere your told that your employees are no longer smart enough?

 

Dumb remarks aside, and real help would be greatly appreciated.

[VikingPea 0]

What I found very helpful was the education map. You can tell who is going to school and who isn't. I'm not sure if it was by chance or not, but once I put taxes 1% to high and everyone stopped attending school. I find one school of each with max busses and classes can keep up with demand for quite awile. Meltdowns can happen from lack of water also FYI. Sure you know just tossing it out there :-)

[Elynole 4]

For the education question - have you made sure that you have bus stops in appropriate residential locations so that the populace can get to the schools?

[VikingPea 0]

Also the advisors are often wrong. Just go by how full classes are and education map

[n3cro r4bbit 1]

What I found very helpful was the education map. You can tell who is going to school and who isn't. I'm not sure if it was by chance or not, but once I put taxes 1% to high and everyone stopped attending school.

 

I'll have to keep an eye on that, thanks!

 

I do have adequate stops and such for all my residents, along with plenty of water for the reactors. Was just wondering why the population went stupid after an hour. I think those map and such may have played a role.

[Spatzimaus 77]

Was just wondering why the population went stupid after an hour.

 

Your population probably didn't "go stupid".  Pure speculation, but I'd guess one of four things happened:

 

1> Even with all of those schools, your town had such a high population that some of its residents still weren't educated.  Each grade school only holds 950 students, fully upgraded, and a city with a hundred thousand residents can easily overload two or three schools.  Exactly which areas supplied the workers to the building would change based on all sorts of factors, like the exact placement of mass transit systems, so the area the workers were drawn from could have shifted.  For instance, a residential building near the power plant, the one where most of the workers lived, could have upgraded its wealth level.  Most of the people living there would now be too high-class to work staff positions at a power plant, and take jobs in some commercial building nearby.  The replacement employees might have been uneducated, leading to meltdowns.

2> A residential building near the power plant, the one where most of the workers lived, upgraded its density.  That meant a bunch of new apartments opened up, and some new folks moved in from out of town.  Those new people didn't have the education level to do a good job at a nuclear plant, but got the job anyway because of proximity.  Over time they would have acquired an education, but you didn't have that long.

3> A residential building on the other side of the city upgraded its density, and some of your workers moved there because they liked the location better.  Their replacements, as with #2, might have come from outside the town and so had little or no education.

4> You just had a run of really bad luck.  It happens.

 

Now, items 1 through 3 could be avoided if the game was coded to prefer educated employees over uneducated ones, and only hire dropouts if no one else was available, but I'm guessing the algorithm for this is a lot simpler (i.e., based on proximity instead of qualifications).  So pull up the education map for your city, and see how many uneducated folks are in the residential areas nearest the plant.  It might be worth it to ensure a school (or at least a library) is right next to the plant.

[czNemesis 8]

I have a question slightly related to this problem. Do all citizens need to be covered with all levels of education (elementary, high, college, university)? Or can I just demolish elementary school after I unlock the high, and then demolish high after I unlocked university or college? Why am I asking? Cause to cover big city with elementary knowledge you would need minimum of 3-4 elementary schools, then having 2 high schools and then university. That would be a hell lot of space and money.

[nataniels3 61]

Due to the way pathfinding works, uneducated workers probably  beat educated workers to the powerplant ( since their jobs aren't permanently set).  

[Board_Marshal 104]

Was just wondering why the population went stupid after an hour.

 

Your population probably didn't "go stupid".  Pure speculation, but I'd guess one of four things happened:

 

1> Even with all of those schools, your town had such a high population that some of its residents still weren't educated.  Each grade school only holds 950 students, fully upgraded, and a city with a hundred thousand residents can easily overload two or three schools.  Exactly which areas supplied the workers to the building would change based on all sorts of factors, like the exact placement of mass transit systems, so the area the workers were drawn from could have shifted.  For instance, a residential building near the power plant, the one where most of the workers lived, could have upgraded its wealth level.  Most of the people living there would now be too high-class to work staff positions at a power plant, and take jobs in some commercial building nearby.  The replacement employees might have been uneducated, leading to meltdowns.

2> A residential building near the power plant, the one where most of the workers lived, upgraded its density.  That meant a bunch of new apartments opened up, and some new folks moved in from out of town.  Those new people didn't have the education level to do a good job at a nuclear plant, but got the job anyway because of proximity.  Over time they would have acquired an education, but you didn't have that long.

3> A residential building on the other side of the city upgraded its density, and some of your workers moved there because they liked the location better.  Their replacements, as with #2, might have come from outside the town and so had little or no education.

4> You just had a run of really bad luck.  It happens.

 

Now, items 1 through 3 could be avoided if the game was coded to prefer educated employees over uneducated ones, and only hire dropouts if no one else was available, but I'm guessing the algorithm for this is a lot simpler (i.e., based on proximity instead of qualifications).  So pull up the education map for your city, and see how many uneducated folks are in the residential areas nearest the plant.  It might be worth it to ensure a school (or at least a library) is right next to the plant.

 

What concerns me about this is this game seems to turn on a dime with almost no room for error.  Combine that with no longer being able to reload from a save and you end up with tiny decisions wrecking minutes to hours of play.  I'm not stupid but neither am I a genius.  It seems very difficult for the human mind to hold so many variables in their head at once to make one small decision that you almost become paranoid and paralyzed to do anything.  Don't get me wrong, I like simulations but I thought Maxis was trying to open the proverbial "black box" of the SimCity4 simulation which obscured what was going on so the player couldn't make very good decisions.  It seems the agent system run by Glassbox is so sensitive based on the Sims' need and pathfinding algorithms that if things such as pointed out in points 1, 2, or 3 happen then the city implodes (melts down in the case of the OP).

 

Challenge = Fun (what a player wants)

Challenge = Frustration (nobody wants)