SPAM / Farms problems

[Essex 322]

G'day,

 

I want to build a farming region with very small to medium small towns with about 25 large (or more) tiles. If I use SPAM I only need 3 farms to support about 700 people, so highly unrealistic. My idea is to make it as realistic as possible (ie Maxis farms so a farm only has about 4-6 jobs). So I deleted SPAM and what happens? The farms say they have 4 jobs but there are actually 60 people working at the farm using the query tool. I tried many things, same problem. I even deleted the whole Plugin folder, started a new region and still the same thing!? Is SPAM hiding somewhere on my computer? I won't be able to reinstall SC4 as I don't have a disk anymore. Plus, are there alternatives to SPAM once this issue is fixed? Because having 60-70 people working on a farm puts me off, no matter how pretty it is. If I could use SPAM with the normal job availability that would be perfect. A large tile should be filled with farms to support about a thousand people to make my region work, some tiles with just farms and a few residential.

I hope anyone has any ideas!

Thanks a lot

[nos.17 5,150]

The farms say they have 4 jobs but there are actually 60 people working at the farm using the query tool. I tried many things, same problem. I even deleted the whole Plugin folder, started a new region and still the same thing!? Is SPAM hiding somewhere on my computer? I won't be able to reinstall SC4 as I don't have a disk anymore. Plus, are there alternatives to SPAM once this issue is fixed? Because having 60-70 people working on a farm puts me off, no matter how pretty it is. If I could use SPAM with the normal job availability that would be perfect. A large tile should be filled with farms to support about a thousand people to make my region work, some tiles with just farms and a few residential.

I hope anyone has any ideas!

Thanks a lot

 

I am pretty sure that what you are seeing IS the normal job distribution. When you query the farm building, it only shows the workers who work at that building, not all of the other workers who work in the fields. This is the same both for Maxis + for SPAM. This is not all that unrealistic, depending on the farms - many produce farms hire hundreds of laborers to handpick fruits/vegetables, especially in the Southwest. The bottom line is there is really no way to get around that problem that bothers you unless you actually mod the job counts yourself.

[Prophet42 1,502]

Also keep in mind, that the jobs available doesn't necessarily mean that all those jobs are filled.  You may have a farm with 60 jobs available but only 10 filled.  To nos.17's point, this will be the case for SPAM, Maxis or BSC farms.

 

As a side note, I like the SPAM farms, but have found that the JMyer farms found on SC4Devotion are more realistic looking.  I would highly recommend downloading them, even if you keep the SPAM.

[infamousjbe 593]

I agree that SPAM has an excessive amount of employment, but just cause there are jobs does not mean you can't still create small towns. Your R demand might be high, but that does not mean you have to create R zones because of it. 

 

Try not to think to much about what's going on under the hood and just stick to how you want it too look. It shouldn't be that difficult. 

 

And as Prophet stated, there are also JMeyers farms along with some BSC's & Simgoober's that also work with SPAM being installed. Just make sure you read the Read Me to make sure you chose the ones that are compatible with SPAM

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

If you deleted the game and no longer have the disks you get to purchase it from a licensed downloading vendor such as Amazon, GamersGate, Steam or (choke!) Origin.

 

I have never understood why people do such drastic things without backups.

[Essex 322]

@ Nonny: I haven't deleted my game, I will order it through anything but the Draconian Origin.

 

So besides SPAM looking beautiful (though a tad unrealistic) and creating (exaggerated amount of) more jobs, is there any other difference?

 

It makes sense that you have seasonal workers so the jobs go up on the fields.
 

I deleted SPAM and I can now build proper farm towns, even though it will always work a little strange in SC4.

 

Thanks for the replies.

 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Fine, but I am sticking to SPAM.  The employment imbalance doesn't bother me, I just ring the farms with 1 x 1 low density R.

[Metalpuritan 160]

Well, you could just ignore the extra demand it creates...  I mean, you could cover an entire large city tile with nothing but farms and not have a single resident living on the map or in any connected map...  Surprisingly farms don't need people to work at them, if there are no people the farms will just be fully automated, I guess.

 

besides, since you deleted the SPAM farms from your plugins folder, you will soon see how traffic negatively affects the maxis farms.  You get more than a few cars passing by a farm and it instantly begins to dilapidate.  This is one of the major reasons I went with SPAM instead, farm dilapidation, dilapidation in my cities is a deal breaker, I will not tolerate it, but with the normal maxis farms is practically unavoidable under almost all circumstances.

[His Divine Hand 244]

Also, SPAM changes the growth stages for agriculture, bringing up from three in vanilla game to five.

[APSMS 1,893]

The SPAM was designed to be able to support medium sized towns (of a couple thousand or more) with only I-Ag; this was to eliminate the need for other industry types, and make it possible to disburse RES across the city tile and still retain reasonable commute times.

 

I run the SPAM with CAM (a conflict, I know) for the main purpose of enjoying farms that put up with a little bit of road traffic and not having to power or water the early stages (very fun for pre-city establishment, and kind of neat to watch considering nothing else works w/o power). I highly doubt I will ever care about not seeing the Stage 7 CAM landmarks in I-Ag.

 

As has been said before, RES demand created by excess jobs is easily ignored. Many of the cities built by Paeng, SimCoug, and others demonstrates this easily enough: if you build it, they will come, but if you don't....

[Essex 322]

Ok, so I reinstalled SPAM and can keep building farms without building the necessary Residential to supply workers. Don't know why the last time farms would stop growing when there were not enough workers. SPAM is a lot better and prettier and now I can fill a tile with farms with just a tiny town.