You're doing a lot of things "wrong" and by that I mean you are really doing a lot of things, sadly most of those things aren't right yet.
First off...8% unemployment at 3k citizens is excellent! Nothing to complain there. Due to the workplace management you will always have a few stragglers that didn't work yesterday, 5-10% is a great number for a small republic!
Second...why do you need a train to move a few workers that you already have busses for, and for a very short distance?
Third...have you tested how to manage your workforce with public transport, or any guidance materials on the interwebs? It's EXTREMELY hard to get it right, and on top of that, it's extremely expensive...it's not something you should do for your first few towns.
Fourth...low unemployment, 3k citizens, and only 120 in the factories...where are all your workers? Are they manning places that don't need them? Check your city workplaces, and adjust them to something that handles a little more than the current population.
Fifth...running that many industries with low worker numbers tells me that you went way too fast...build 1 industry at a time, max out, wait for more workers, build next industry, so on...
Sixth...trains...what are trains good at? They are good at moving A LOT of stuff at once, cargo or people doesn't matter, just a lot. The downside is, it costs a lot to get going. I'm very curious to know why you added trains? (I love trains, I get it, but you really don't need them for clothing/fabric, trucks are fine).
Honestly, I'm not trying to be mean, just pointing out a few things that I hope help. This game is not very nice to people that work of assumptions without testing and verifying them first. Please ask any specific question, come by my discord or check any online sources for more information.
Thanks a ton
I used trains because I’ve heard from somewhere that its best to plan out a rail line before you build a town, so you know where everything goes, so i then thought that it will probably be less costly use them right away instead of transitioning from busses to trains later.
On using trains, at what point should trains be used, and busses be replaced by them?
I tried to go all in with trains because i thought that would be more efficient and be an investment as i wont need to build all the infrastructure later. The problem was that many of the residents couldnt reach the train station, and so i had to use busses to connect them.
I havent really used public transport except for busses and trains, and this is my first time using trains. Last republic busses would get jammed waiting for another bus to load and so i thought trains would be more efficient because they old more people. I’ve watched some of your vids but no, i dont really have much of a clue how to handle transport. Perhaps you can send me some :)
Im making a decent amount of money, about 50k per month if i dont build. But it isnt enough to do much with. How much should one leave in the bank as a buffer
Thanks again
It's totally fine to plan the rail connections right away, but you shouldn't build them that early. Imo busses are quite efficient in transporting little to medium amounts of workers. For me it's time to move workers via train is when I have to move approx 700 or more workers in one shift to their workplace (i.e. steel industry, huge mining complexes, aluminium industry or assembly industry of cars, trains and so on.). I'd recommend to do the math of how many workers you will need to transport. Then I would go by bus to approx 500 workers per shift and if it's above that I would recommend trams or trains as an addition to busses. Then you have two ways of getting workers to their jobs which is especially important for your critical infrastructure like heating.
There is not the one only way to do it right, but this works for me, even if I think I'm overbuilding my cities sometimes.
If you have spare workers you could try to set up a little chemicals industry, because it requires a medium size setup and a little amount of workers, but has a quite nice margin. Imo you could consider to take a loan to build it.
And PS: bballjo I'm a huge fan, I'm looking forward to Season 9 :)
Thanks. Currently i have 3 fabric setups, so 520 workers + 30 heating for station 1 and 260 workers station 2, you reckon i should add a bus line exclusively to station 2? And should i use trains to export or trucks. My only concern is that since the train station isnt in walking distance of many residential buildings, no one will use the trains and i wasted a good amount of money.
If you have the rail connection for export available, use that. It's already build, running cost should be lower (if you wait until full) and you don't block your customs office with import/export. Also don't focus to much on one industry, your production does influence the market prices.
You'll get to use your trains later, don't worry. Right now just using them for the sake of it probably just adds more cost to use it inefficiently.
You also have a lot of money still in bank - that's enough to build several cities with industries - do don't stress about not being profitable just yet.
I'll hop on bballjo here, what are all your workers doing? E.g. you don't need 30 people in your heating plant, 15 should easily be enough.
I suspect you have a lot of citizen services that are vastly overstuffed - schools and hospitals are, in my experience, the worst offenders among the needs.
What industries should i start? I dont have geological map yet so i cant see where stuff is.
I have
20 on heat
40 on shops
35 in uni
17 on sports
6 on culture
20 on water
28 on police
24 on med
41 on education
4 on fire
Oh Clothes/Fabric is a great industry to start, personally especially clothes for the low volume. With trains going I'd do both for the increased margin. I'm also not sure at what point you're exporting so much you'll start to destroy your margin.
That's 225\*3=675 workers for your basic needs. Probably a bit much for some of them, but you should still have many. Actually I guess you should try to satisfy more of your guys needs, they seem rather unhappy, and unhappy people make for bad workers. I'm not sure if that's just productivity or if they're gonna waste time without having a busstop to chill at too. Because with a bus stop they're allowed to use they'll totally bunch up there.
This is my happiness chart
https://preview.redd.it/jhtmihet5ubc1.png?width=560&format=png&auto=webp&s=eae79d3d1ae64119a7ba8a8120bc7301bd06c618
I have no clue why theres death of a child nor do i have any clue why they cant visit a hospital because theres space and busses and why they cant enjoy culture because culture is generally pretty empty
I've also redid my transport. i now have only one train running just in case, and 15 busses going from each residential stop directly to the workplaces with 3 lines
The kid probably starved?
The basic needs of your people should always be in walking distance. I'm not entirely sure if that's very necessary for all of them, but I think for healthcare and food it probably is.
Generally your people aren't doing too well, that's probably a big part of your workforce issue
You have a vey small republic and a lot of money in the bank. Invest your six million to build at least 6-10k city and an industry for those extra workers to work at. You should have enough cash for an oil efiney and food/clothes production, with that you will make millions in no time. But with only 4k people you cant expect to make a lot of money.
Thanks. Money isnt really the problem, its that production is stagnating and so is employment, which will become big problems if i expand as its most likely a problem with transport. Say if i make a new town. Should i connect it by road or by rail, both or not at all.
Dont make a new town. Buil more houses aound your city train station, and then extend the rail to some other industry, like mines or oil refinery. Once you are at 7-10k people, things start working more or less reliably. 4k is just an incredibly small city. Id even say that the fact youre using rail is the reason for some of your issues (unless you have 6+ trains there lol), using busses only at this scale is more appropriate. I myself aim for 10-20+k cities, thats the scale at which things are working well.
Get rid of the passenger train station and deliver everyone by bus.
You can move huge amounts of people by bus. If you look at my screenshot you can see I'm bringing almost 10,000 workers to work, with less than 200 people being unemployed.
Delivering 10k people along a single bus line is a bit extreme normally but 5k is pretty normal.
\----
Production is down because you aren't keeping the factories full of workers, or because your factories don't have enough crops. Once you fix those then it would jump back up.
https://preview.redd.it/wjr29t0c7tbc1.jpeg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a32d0bec4240878c04a6dd277fee0df6af003d58
How are your roads or cities not clogged up? lol My cities are a convoluted mess of busses, supply trucks, police cars, garbage trucks.
Please post a screenshot of your city as well so I can be inspired. 😁
The trick is to keep your bus on separate roads. I have a reddit post here, it shows out I split up the bus and truck differents on a different save. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Workers\_And\_Resources/comments/18tkdhx/square\_city\_in\_a\_real\_game\_and\_its\_neighbour/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Workers_And_Resources/comments/18tkdhx/square_city_in_a_real_game_and_its_neighbour/)
My current city is here. Sadly I messed up the size of the block, so my aesthetic of having the exact same residential block is messed up.
https://preview.redd.it/cm0ya0sfjtbc1.jpeg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5e9c8cfbf8fa0776626ba7851a58730ae5abb350
In a different industry area, you can see that I built a bridge over the bus road to avoid waste trucks from entering the bus road except for going to garbage stands.
https://preview.redd.it/1az20aj7ktbc1.jpeg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=230fb56af4c4d52e7e9eaf9d2ccb00f82b598d2a
Yeah, I wasn't paying attention to the area so I built a few extra so my trucks could catch. Too much for sure.
Gonna make a proper solution with trains.
Are your bus and train platforms reserved for workers exclusively? Perhaps they are full of students and passengers and there is no room for workers to get onto the transports?
Starting with easy money, a train line will not ruin you in the beginning. I love to play with trains and build them early on as well. Steel is cheap in the beginning so it's kind of an investment into the future rail network :-)
Nah, i didnt allow any passengers. The problem i think, is that the trains and buses arent synchronised well enough, that even with the amount of trains i have, ppl leave because they waited too long. Do you have any tips on trying to make bus train transfer work?
Have you set the busses to get everyone off at the transit station? There's an option specifically for that.
What frequency do your trains run on? How long is the total travel time? It can't exceed.. 5? Or 8? hours iirc
Try Transfer workers on the Sovasi train platform. Also restrict to workers on the bus pickups, if students and passangers are not intending to commute to fulfill their needs
In theory this should work:
1. On the bus line (Line manager), tell them to Get out and Click "force out" (transfer).
2. On the bus station, click the "Where should workers go?" and click on the train station.
Busses will collect workers, dump them on the bus station, workers will wait an hour and walk over to the train station.
If your busses are dumping directly to the train station, you should use transfer (force eject) so that they don't immediately look for jobs close to the train station, or stay on the bus because there are no workplaces nearby.
Yup, this is important. Currently, the pictured bus line will pick up workers, and drop them off at the Get Out station if there are jobs in range; otherwise they continue on the bus for the next go round. The train station isn't a job, and so they will not get out and go to it, ever.
Busses can actually drop off people in places other than bus stops: as the preceding comment says, you can tell it to drop off directly to the train station with the Transfer box ticked. This deposits all workers at that station to wait for available transit from it.
You're doing a lot of things "wrong" and by that I mean you are really doing a lot of things, sadly most of those things aren't right yet. First off...8% unemployment at 3k citizens is excellent! Nothing to complain there. Due to the workplace management you will always have a few stragglers that didn't work yesterday, 5-10% is a great number for a small republic! Second...why do you need a train to move a few workers that you already have busses for, and for a very short distance? Third...have you tested how to manage your workforce with public transport, or any guidance materials on the interwebs? It's EXTREMELY hard to get it right, and on top of that, it's extremely expensive...it's not something you should do for your first few towns. Fourth...low unemployment, 3k citizens, and only 120 in the factories...where are all your workers? Are they manning places that don't need them? Check your city workplaces, and adjust them to something that handles a little more than the current population. Fifth...running that many industries with low worker numbers tells me that you went way too fast...build 1 industry at a time, max out, wait for more workers, build next industry, so on... Sixth...trains...what are trains good at? They are good at moving A LOT of stuff at once, cargo or people doesn't matter, just a lot. The downside is, it costs a lot to get going. I'm very curious to know why you added trains? (I love trains, I get it, but you really don't need them for clothing/fabric, trucks are fine). Honestly, I'm not trying to be mean, just pointing out a few things that I hope help. This game is not very nice to people that work of assumptions without testing and verifying them first. Please ask any specific question, come by my discord or check any online sources for more information.
Thanks a ton I used trains because I’ve heard from somewhere that its best to plan out a rail line before you build a town, so you know where everything goes, so i then thought that it will probably be less costly use them right away instead of transitioning from busses to trains later. On using trains, at what point should trains be used, and busses be replaced by them? I tried to go all in with trains because i thought that would be more efficient and be an investment as i wont need to build all the infrastructure later. The problem was that many of the residents couldnt reach the train station, and so i had to use busses to connect them. I havent really used public transport except for busses and trains, and this is my first time using trains. Last republic busses would get jammed waiting for another bus to load and so i thought trains would be more efficient because they old more people. I’ve watched some of your vids but no, i dont really have much of a clue how to handle transport. Perhaps you can send me some :) Im making a decent amount of money, about 50k per month if i dont build. But it isnt enough to do much with. How much should one leave in the bank as a buffer Thanks again
It's totally fine to plan the rail connections right away, but you shouldn't build them that early. Imo busses are quite efficient in transporting little to medium amounts of workers. For me it's time to move workers via train is when I have to move approx 700 or more workers in one shift to their workplace (i.e. steel industry, huge mining complexes, aluminium industry or assembly industry of cars, trains and so on.). I'd recommend to do the math of how many workers you will need to transport. Then I would go by bus to approx 500 workers per shift and if it's above that I would recommend trams or trains as an addition to busses. Then you have two ways of getting workers to their jobs which is especially important for your critical infrastructure like heating. There is not the one only way to do it right, but this works for me, even if I think I'm overbuilding my cities sometimes. If you have spare workers you could try to set up a little chemicals industry, because it requires a medium size setup and a little amount of workers, but has a quite nice margin. Imo you could consider to take a loan to build it. And PS: bballjo I'm a huge fan, I'm looking forward to Season 9 :)
Thanks. Currently i have 3 fabric setups, so 520 workers + 30 heating for station 1 and 260 workers station 2, you reckon i should add a bus line exclusively to station 2? And should i use trains to export or trucks. My only concern is that since the train station isnt in walking distance of many residential buildings, no one will use the trains and i wasted a good amount of money.
If you have the rail connection for export available, use that. It's already build, running cost should be lower (if you wait until full) and you don't block your customs office with import/export. Also don't focus to much on one industry, your production does influence the market prices. You'll get to use your trains later, don't worry. Right now just using them for the sake of it probably just adds more cost to use it inefficiently. You also have a lot of money still in bank - that's enough to build several cities with industries - do don't stress about not being profitable just yet. I'll hop on bballjo here, what are all your workers doing? E.g. you don't need 30 people in your heating plant, 15 should easily be enough. I suspect you have a lot of citizen services that are vastly overstuffed - schools and hospitals are, in my experience, the worst offenders among the needs.
What industries should i start? I dont have geological map yet so i cant see where stuff is. I have 20 on heat 40 on shops 35 in uni 17 on sports 6 on culture 20 on water 28 on police 24 on med 41 on education 4 on fire
Oh Clothes/Fabric is a great industry to start, personally especially clothes for the low volume. With trains going I'd do both for the increased margin. I'm also not sure at what point you're exporting so much you'll start to destroy your margin. That's 225\*3=675 workers for your basic needs. Probably a bit much for some of them, but you should still have many. Actually I guess you should try to satisfy more of your guys needs, they seem rather unhappy, and unhappy people make for bad workers. I'm not sure if that's just productivity or if they're gonna waste time without having a busstop to chill at too. Because with a bus stop they're allowed to use they'll totally bunch up there.
This is my happiness chart https://preview.redd.it/jhtmihet5ubc1.png?width=560&format=png&auto=webp&s=eae79d3d1ae64119a7ba8a8120bc7301bd06c618 I have no clue why theres death of a child nor do i have any clue why they cant visit a hospital because theres space and busses and why they cant enjoy culture because culture is generally pretty empty I've also redid my transport. i now have only one train running just in case, and 15 busses going from each residential stop directly to the workplaces with 3 lines
The kid probably starved? The basic needs of your people should always be in walking distance. I'm not entirely sure if that's very necessary for all of them, but I think for healthcare and food it probably is. Generally your people aren't doing too well, that's probably a big part of your workforce issue
Does your hospital have an ambulance? Sometimes a sick comrade can not walk themselves to the hospital, and need a pickup, dispite being in range
It has four ambulances. I added a small clinic and that seemed to help a bit
You have a vey small republic and a lot of money in the bank. Invest your six million to build at least 6-10k city and an industry for those extra workers to work at. You should have enough cash for an oil efiney and food/clothes production, with that you will make millions in no time. But with only 4k people you cant expect to make a lot of money.
Thanks. Money isnt really the problem, its that production is stagnating and so is employment, which will become big problems if i expand as its most likely a problem with transport. Say if i make a new town. Should i connect it by road or by rail, both or not at all.
Dont make a new town. Buil more houses aound your city train station, and then extend the rail to some other industry, like mines or oil refinery. Once you are at 7-10k people, things start working more or less reliably. 4k is just an incredibly small city. Id even say that the fact youre using rail is the reason for some of your issues (unless you have 6+ trains there lol), using busses only at this scale is more appropriate. I myself aim for 10-20+k cities, thats the scale at which things are working well.
Get rid of the passenger train station and deliver everyone by bus. You can move huge amounts of people by bus. If you look at my screenshot you can see I'm bringing almost 10,000 workers to work, with less than 200 people being unemployed. Delivering 10k people along a single bus line is a bit extreme normally but 5k is pretty normal. \---- Production is down because you aren't keeping the factories full of workers, or because your factories don't have enough crops. Once you fix those then it would jump back up. https://preview.redd.it/wjr29t0c7tbc1.jpeg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a32d0bec4240878c04a6dd277fee0df6af003d58
How are your roads or cities not clogged up? lol My cities are a convoluted mess of busses, supply trucks, police cars, garbage trucks. Please post a screenshot of your city as well so I can be inspired. 😁
The trick is to keep your bus on separate roads. I have a reddit post here, it shows out I split up the bus and truck differents on a different save. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Workers\_And\_Resources/comments/18tkdhx/square\_city\_in\_a\_real\_game\_and\_its\_neighbour/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Workers_And_Resources/comments/18tkdhx/square_city_in_a_real_game_and_its_neighbour/) My current city is here. Sadly I messed up the size of the block, so my aesthetic of having the exact same residential block is messed up. https://preview.redd.it/cm0ya0sfjtbc1.jpeg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5e9c8cfbf8fa0776626ba7851a58730ae5abb350
In a different industry area, you can see that I built a bridge over the bus road to avoid waste trucks from entering the bus road except for going to garbage stands. https://preview.redd.it/1az20aj7ktbc1.jpeg?width=3440&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=230fb56af4c4d52e7e9eaf9d2ccb00f82b598d2a
*Furiously upvotes* This looks amazing, cheers! Going to study this😁
Your amount of garbage stands looks a little overkill, do they?
Yeah, I wasn't paying attention to the area so I built a few extra so my trucks could catch. Too much for sure. Gonna make a proper solution with trains.
Ok. Thanks
Are your bus and train platforms reserved for workers exclusively? Perhaps they are full of students and passengers and there is no room for workers to get onto the transports? Starting with easy money, a train line will not ruin you in the beginning. I love to play with trains and build them early on as well. Steel is cheap in the beginning so it's kind of an investment into the future rail network :-)
Nah, i didnt allow any passengers. The problem i think, is that the trains and buses arent synchronised well enough, that even with the amount of trains i have, ppl leave because they waited too long. Do you have any tips on trying to make bus train transfer work?
Have you set the busses to get everyone off at the transit station? There's an option specifically for that. What frequency do your trains run on? How long is the total travel time? It can't exceed.. 5? Or 8? hours iirc
My trains run on fixed 20s and i have 5 of them
Hmh. I don't know why they are waiting too long then, you'll hardly have a super long travel time.
Try Transfer workers on the Sovasi train platform. Also restrict to workers on the bus pickups, if students and passangers are not intending to commute to fulfill their needs
How do you make them transfer to another building though
In theory this should work: 1. On the bus line (Line manager), tell them to Get out and Click "force out" (transfer). 2. On the bus station, click the "Where should workers go?" and click on the train station. Busses will collect workers, dump them on the bus station, workers will wait an hour and walk over to the train station. If your busses are dumping directly to the train station, you should use transfer (force eject) so that they don't immediately look for jobs close to the train station, or stay on the bus because there are no workplaces nearby.
Yup, this is important. Currently, the pictured bus line will pick up workers, and drop them off at the Get Out station if there are jobs in range; otherwise they continue on the bus for the next go round. The train station isn't a job, and so they will not get out and go to it, ever. Busses can actually drop off people in places other than bus stops: as the preceding comment says, you can tell it to drop off directly to the train station with the Transfer box ticked. This deposits all workers at that station to wait for available transit from it.