Economy and teamsters?

[Sergeant_York]

OK, I'm seem to do ok with how happy my people are, but
my economy always tanks, or jumps up and down in large spikes.

At first I usually build like 4-5 farms and have 2 of them on corn and the rest on other profitable things.

They are all well staffed and placed in green areas for that crop, and they grow lots of plants.

The problem I think is my teamsters aren't taking to food to the docks and market fast enough for me to make a constant stream of money.

How many teamster buildings should I have? And is there a ratio of farms to teamster buildings or something?

I'm am pretty new and have only gotten deep enough into a game to develop other industries a few times, but I know I should do that to gain money.

But what should I do at the beggining of the game?

[Diego_de_la_Vega]

I tend to build a second Teamster's office and construction office, right off the bat.
It keeps things running smooth for me for awhile. When I see a lag in my economy, I know its time to build another.

[suedenim]

At the very beginning of the game, you've probably got enough Teamster slots to last you a while.  The best way to figure out if you need more teamsters is to check the Output levels at your various farms, mines, and factories.  If there's a lot of stuff sitting around waiting to be carried away, you probably need more teamsters.  Generally, if I frequently see more than 5 units of something sitting around as output, that's a cue to build another teamster's office.

One thing to note is that, even when you have an efficient setup, annual income tends to fluctuate wildly.  Most production-to-factory-to-dock cycles seem to take about 2 years to complete (or they do for me, anyway), so your profit graphs will probably bounce between "lots" and "zero" often.

[Coffeebean]

I don't find that I need a full office of teamsters at the start. I always block off postitions there so there are only 3-4 teamsters employed. Construction workers are more useful. I've read somewhere that teamsters are only triggered to go to a farm/mine etc when there is atleast 5 units ready. One of the first things I build is a mine (making sure I don't build near an area near a good tourist site area. A mine mixed with some farms seems to even out the income. Mines also make more money generally. The first few elections tend to be the easiest. Keeping your people happy is not so important at the begining of the game. I also usually spend all of the money I first have. By the time my construction workers have finally finished the first lot (several years- seems like forever) profits are begining to come in for a second round of building. Hope that's useful.

[bear_e]

everything suedenim said above is true.

i usually build a new teamster office whenever i find the output queue at 2 or more of my businesses stays above 8.0 for more than a few months. they will rise above that in spikes once in awhile because several businesses are sending stuff out all at once... but sadly, our teamsters aren't FedEx or UPS so we can't ship it out overnight.

speaking of, it'd be nice if a future upgrade could include cargo flights out of the airport. seems silly 2 me that you can fly turistas in and out, but not freight (or immigrants/emigrants).

[Maus]

Something else that helps is to click on the Teamster office so that the teamsters are highlighted on the map, then watch them for a couple of months to see what they're doing with their time.  Their movement patterns can reveal ways to improve the efficiency of your infrastructure.

[henry]

Freight on a plane!! Try finding out how much it costs to send a 1000Kgs by plane I bet it would be an obscene cost. My girlfriend gets parcels occasionally from her folks in Korea. We are in London, those parcels cost an absolute fortune to send.

[BananaBaron]

Everything in GB costs a fortune...what is it 2 pounds or so for a Big Mac?  Just joking to my friends across the pond.

I have had as many as 5 teamster offices, especially when I started to spread all over the island.  I've found, as years progress, I need to pay them pretty good and have housing very close to the teamster office.

Aslo, when Ricardo tells you "the peoplem, they starve" and you have a lot of food sources, the problem is usually the teamsters not getting the food to the marketplaces.  (Aside from maybe not enough marketplaces)

And those fat guys are usually one of the first that try to squat on the free housing, too.  Watch them, those teamsters are a weird lot.

[Coconut Kid]

..., but my economy always tanks, or jumps up and down in large spikes. ... The problem I think is my teamsters aren't taking to food to the docks and market fast enough for me to make a constant stream of money. ...

If you have no exports other than from farms, then the spikes are from a combination of the harvest cycles and the workers cycling through several needs modes - not just the teamster's work cycles.

Too many urban myths got into the repeated comments, and so a few facts have been overlooked.

The economy can work without any teamsters at all; the workers will carry their own goods but they are less efficient.

The Teamster's Office must be placed near to pickup points - not the delivery point. On random maps, the original one is never in a good location. But no matter how well placed they are, they can't carry goods which are not yet available.

Running too many teamsters is a fast track to making your economy tank. Add them only when you see the workers are carrying goods away from the production building.

The "starvation" warning is a real bug connected with the Ranch - the cows and goats are incorrectly counted as people. Check out your food statistics before you hit the panic button.