Educating your sims...

[Nesral Sredna 62]

As a a non-US citizen, I've always been a little unsure about proper handling of those sims education.

 

 

In Norway, you start..

- Primary School the year you turn 6,

- Lower Secondary at 13

- Upper secondary when you're 16! Then after three more years, graduating students starts their celebration as "Russ"    (wich has nothing to do with the  russians..   )

 

Afterwards you can start higher education at either a university, or høyskole(university-college). As this is different from the US-based(I assume) model of education that SC4 use, could someone please explain this model to me?

 

Do only adult sims go to the libraries? Or only rich sims to the museums?

 

[RockGod92 1]

The way Simcity 4 Works is the following: Elementary schools educate younger kids, High Schools educate the teenagers. Colleges and universities educate the young adults, of all wealth groups I believe.

 

Libraries increase the education of all age groups. In fact, they are the most cost effective out of your educational buildings. 

 

As a side note, sims' education levels decrease and decay as they get older. Museums are a good thing to place because they help to slow down this decay. Without them, your older sims will be dumber than your younger ones.

[Nesral Sredna 62]

Thanks for replying, but I know that from the ingame description (though the library only mention adults) and those definitions is useless when studying graphs based on age, such as population vs. education. How old is a young sim? Is an eighteen year old sim a teenager, a young adult, or an adult? Should I build a college or a high scool to educate that group of youngsters?That is what I'm trying to get an answer to..

[Turjan 1,048]

College and university are equivalent education-wise, but the university has some cap relief function. If you build a university, you don't need a college.

 

Getting R$$$ Sims seems not to depend on education, but on water supply. It's fun to play around with these things. I had one city without any education building at all, but good medical service and police and fire coverage, and no water. The result was >99% R$$ population. Better industry was off limits, though.

 

Libraries and museums are for older people. You can see that the library gets hardly used in a fresh city. If you don't build any and only introduce it after decades, you will get enormous use right away, even in smaller cities, as population gets older.

[RockGod92 1]

Well in America, elementary schools are for children aged 4-11. America actually has a level of schooling between Elementary and High school, called Middle School, or Junior High, for children aged 11-14. SC4 omits middle schools for some reason. High schools in America are for ages 14-18. After that, we also have the option of attending colleges/universities. This usually takes us into our early or mid 20s.

 

On the education by age graph, assuming the Simcity 4 simulation follows the American model, elementary schools would cater to the age 1-10 bar. High Schools educate ages 11-20. Colleges/Universities cater to ages 20-30. Libraries educate all of them. I know it says only adults go to them, but I've made entire cities with nothing but libraries and had an EQ of ~80 across all age groups. Museums mostly educate your adults and older sims, I would guess 30+.

 

Hopefully this clears things up a bit.

[z1 566]

Here's a brief table showing what ages are affected by what educational building.  Note:  The ages don't signify the age of the students themselves, but the average age of the family in the household.  This means you don't have to worry about who's a student and who's not.  Note that all effects start at an average age of 20.

 

Building                       Target Age

Elementary School     20-50

High School                 30-60

Private School             20-60

City College                  30-80

Libraries                       20-100

Museums                     30-100

University                     20-100

Opera House               80-100

 

However, it's a bit more complicated than that, because the educational impact is not uniform with age.  In the Prima Guide, there are little graphs for each entry, charting the EQ Boost (in percent) vs. age.  All changes occur linearly.  To summarize:

 

Elementary School:  5% boost to age 30, dropping to 0.5% by age 40, and dropping to zero by age 50.

 

Libraries:  30% boost to age 60, dropping to 20% by age 80.

 

High School:  Zero until age 20, rising to 0.5% at age 30, rising to 5% at age 40, declining to zero at age 60.

 

Museums:  Zero until age 20, rising to 0.25% by age 30, staying at 0.25% until age 50, rising to 0.75% by age 60, rising to 1.5% by age 70, rising to 3% by age 80.

 

City College:   Zero until age 20, rising to 0.5% at age 30, rising to 1.5% by age 40, rising to 5% by age 50, dropping to 0.5% by age 70, dropping to zero by age 80.

 

Private School:  5% until age 40, dropping to zero at age 60.

 

University:  2.5% at age 20, dropping to 0.5% at age 30, staying at 0.5% until age 40, rising to 5% at age 50, staying at 5% to age 60, dropping to 1.5% by age 70, and dropping to 0.5% by age 80.

 

Opera House:  Zero until age 50, rising to 5% at age 80.

[Turjan 1,048]

Very interesting table. The effects seem to be more granulated than I thought. Now I understand why I should build more libraries . However, this doesn't really mesh with my observation that libraries in fresh cities have poor usage. In principle, the table suggests that elementary schools and libraries should both start out strong, but this is not the case, if the ingame use numbers have any meaning. Or does "30% boost to age 60" mean that it starts with 0% at age 20 and ends up with 30% at age 60?

[z1 566]

Or does "30% boost to age 60" mean that it starts with 0% at age 20 and ends up with 30% at age 60?

 

No, the graph shows a flat line to age 60.

[Turjan 1,048]

 

Or does "30% boost to age 60" mean that it starts with 0% at age 20 and ends up with 30% at age 60?

 

No, the graph shows a flat line to age 60.

 

 

Then there's something missing in the picture. Elementary schools start out with strongest usage in new areas with young population, whereas libraries start out with next to zero usage in the same areas. Maybe, the graphs only depict benefits, not usage, meaning that a house with an average age of 20 would benefit greatly from using a library, but they don't use it. Of course, there's always the possibility that what you see ingame has no relation to actual effects.

[z1 566]

Also, the Prima Guide has been known to be wrong...

[Nesral Sredna 62]

Sorry for the ignorance, but what is the Prima Guide?

[cogeo 960]

Very interesting table. The effects seem to be more granulated than I thought. Now I understand why I should build more libraries . However, this doesn't really mesh with my observation that libraries in fresh cities have poor usage. In principle, the table suggests that elementary schools and libraries should both start out strong, but this is not the case,

 

You should rather have a full coverage (with all educational facilities, for all wealth classes), if you are for big CO development, Putting a library in an area where it sees little usage, isn't really "inefficient" economically, because you can reduce funding and still have a high-quality service. Strangely enough, if your library has just a little more books than those checked out, the QoS doesn't drop! And it costs just pennies. It's good to have libraries throughout your R areas, and if usage is low early on, it may rise as your sims mature. Placement of those civic buildings, schools, libraries, and esp police and fire stations is one of the biggest challenges imo.

 

 

Or does "30% boost to age 60" mean that it starts with 0% at age 20 and ends up with 30% at age 60?

 

I have noticed taht for all educational facilities, the starting age (in the "School Effectiveness vs. Average Age" property) is always 20 and the biggest one 80. The 0 and 100 ages are missing. Maybe, if the effect for the age of 20 is zero, the facility has no effect for the ages less than 20, while if it's nonzero it affects ages less than 20 as well. For example, check the settings for the elementary and high schools. Libraries start with an effectiveness of 30 for the age of 20 (and to 0 as well?) and end up with 20 for the age of 80 (or to even 100?). That is, what happens with the ages <20 and >80 is a question.

 

There are some few "consolidated" (elementary+high) schools, for students of both age groups (their "Effectiveness" curve is a combination of both). I use them extensively in my cities, so placing educational facilities becomes less of a headache.I have a question: do you think that these are somehow "cheaty" (of course provided that all other parameters, like plop cost, maintenance cost per student etc, are in line with the Maxis ones)? I have made some test before using them, and found that the attendance of the combined school equals to the sum of the ones for the individual schools.

 

Another dark point to me is the private schools. I have noticed that if you have an all-R$$$ area, and a private plus a public (consolidated) school, completely covering the above area, attendance for both schools is exactly the same. This may mean two things: either your sims attend both schools (getting additional education boost), or they prefer the private school (has a higher EQ boost) but still "utilize" the public school, thus wasting you money (this means that you could bulldoze the public school without any consequences). I think both cases are unacceptable. Didn't test to see what happens if the private school reaches capacity. Any insight?

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Sorry for the ignorance, but what is the Prima Guide?

It is the guide to the game published sometime around 2004.  I think it is out of print now.  I lost my copy during a move, and have regretted it ever since.  Prima is the name of the publisher and they printed a number of 'cheat' books on PC games in that time frame.

 

If you want good documentation now, try our Omnibus.

[Turjan 1,048]

You should rather have a full coverage (with all educational facilities, for all wealth classes), if you are for big CO development, Putting a library in an area where it sees little usage, isn't really "inefficient" economically, because you can reduce funding and still have a high-quality service.

 

No worries, that's what I usually strive for. My cities end up with an EQ of 198 most of the time, except if I want to try something out. I usually start out with an elementary school and a library. I just wanted to point out that the Prima guide seems to suggest that libraries are the top priority. They are definitely very cheap.

 

I have noticed taht for all educational facilities, the starting age (in the "School Effectiveness vs. Average Age" property) is always 20 and the biggest one 80. The 0 and 100 ages are missing. Maybe, if the effect for the age of 20 is zero, the facility has no effect for the ages less than 20, while if it's nonzero it affects ages less than 20 as well. For example, check the settings for the elementary and high schools. Libraries start with an effectiveness of 30 for the age of 20 (and to 0 as well?) and end up with 20 for the age of 80 (or to even 100?). That is, what happens with the ages <20 and >80 is a question.

 

Let's not forget that z1 stressed that the ages we talk about is the average age in the household. Effectively, this means that ages below 10 are unlikely to exist, as there are always adults in the household, with household being a whole building for simulation purposes. Your explanation sounds otherwise good. I should probably make an experiment with a library in a non-growing city to see whether my observation of growing use with age is actually only an observation of growing use with growing population. On the other hand, I noticed that if you plop a library into a city that didn't have one for decades, you get ridiculously high usage numbers, more than I ever observed with libraries that existed from the beginning. Still, I have no real statistics on this, and anecdotes unfortunately don't equal proof.

 

There are some few "consolidated" (elementary+high) schools, for students of both age groups (their "Effectiveness" curve is a combination of both). I use them extensively in my cities, so placing educational facilities becomes less of a headache.I have a question: do you think that these are somehow "cheaty" (of course provided that all other parameters, like plop cost, maintenance cost per student etc, are in line with the Maxis ones)? I have made some test before using them, and found that the attendance of the combined school equals to the sum of the ones for the individual schools.

 

The main savings such a plugin school allows for is transportation costs, which usually make up a hefty part of the education bill. Transportation costs are not calculated per student, but per coverage, and every school building you save will cut down on these costs. In this sense, combined schools are a bit of a cheat. Personally, I don't care, and I even use a radius doubler, because I don't like to have a school building on every second corner. I think the "cheaty" aspect is somewhat softened, though, as most plugin schools are considerably larger than the default ones, which implies opportunity costs from missing taxes from buildings that would have occupied the lost area. All this is hard to calculate. I have the feeling, these "cheats" pale compared to the ones you won't notice if you don't have a close look at every plugin building you use.

 

Another dark point to me is the private schools. I have noticed that if you have an all-R$$$ area, and a private plus a public (consolidated) school, completely covering the above area, attendance for both schools is exactly the same. This may mean two things: either your sims attend both schools (getting additional education boost), or they prefer the private school (has a higher EQ boost) but still "utilize" the public school, thus wasting you money (this means that you could bulldoze the public school without any consequences). I think both cases are unacceptable. Didn't test to see what happens if the private school reaches capacity. Any insight?

 

Actually, I found it telling that the adviser calls the private school "prep school", run by concerned parents. I interpret this in a way that these schools are just meant to train your children for standardized tests or university entry exams, so they are supposed to supplement your normal school system. Another hint at this is that they will only be offered if you care to offer education in the first place (it's probably an EQ threshold, as it takes a bit longer to reach the point with only elementary schools and libraries). The ability to raze your schools after building a private one looks like an unintended side effect to me. On a side note, private schools are, at least for me, not free, as I usually have to replace some existing building(s) with them if I want to take advantage of the full effect.

 

If a private school reaches capacity, it will start dragging your EQ down. That's why I think the "private school fix" doesn't actually fix anything, but removes a crude way of the game to balance things. In a mature city, you probably spent enough money on education to have a good EQ without the private schools, and if not, you don't deserve their EQ boost. I always rationalized the need to demolish the private schools in mature cities with the idea that they are not needed. The personnel knows this and gets sloppy, which means the whole "private school" business is just a money scam at that point, and the school board does the right thing and shuts the whole travesty down.

[NCGAIO 562]

http://forums.simcitybrasil.com.br/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3126

Sorry for the ignorance, but what is the Prima Guide?

It is the guide to the game published sometime around 2004.  I think it is out of print now.  I lost my copy during a move, and have regretted it ever since ... 

 

You and those who are interested can download a copy of SC4 RH Prima E-guide in RAR file directly at this link

 

SimCity 4 Rush Hour Prima Official eGuide.rar - 10.67 Mb.

For those who want it in the Portuguese language exists a translation job in SC-Brasil the link below ...

 

Tutorial do SimCity 4 - PRIMA GUIDE (tradução)

 

The original manual in several languages ​​can also be obtained by this Google search ...

 

SIMCity 4 manual site:http://cdn2.steampowered.com/

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Thanks, I did.

[simcity1999 34]

 

http://forums.simcitybrasil.com.br/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3126

Sorry for the ignorance, but what is the Prima Guide?

It is the guide to the game published sometime around 2004.  I think it is out of print now.  I lost my copy during a move, and have regretted it ever since ... 

 

 

You and those who are interested can download a copy of SC4 RH Prima E-guide in RAR file directly at this link

 

SimCity 4 Rush Hour Prima Official eGuide.rar - 10.67 Mb.

For those who want it in the Portuguese language exists a translation job in SC-Brasil the link below ...

 

Tutorial do SimCity 4 - PRIMA GUIDE (tradução)

 

The original manual in several languages ​​can also be obtained by this Google search ...

 

SIMCity 4 manual site:http://cdn2.steampowered.com/

 

Thanks!