high initial wages?

[loverevolutionary]

I like to start with high initial wages, 8 for grunts, 12 for grads.  Who exactly is going to build all that stuff you plunk down with your initial $10,000?  Higher wages mean higher immigration, and on the harder levels anyway, carribean average starts off at 8, so I always start at that.  I give raises every year or two, up to a point.  Keeping people happy pays off in increased immegration and productivity.  

I try to usually increase the pay for grads first, to 15-18, and grunts to 10-12.  College grads get 25 at the start: there aren't many college jobs or grads at first, and the grads you have, you really want to keep.

The thing is, pay is not a set it, forget it thing.  The Caribbean average is always climbing.  Job quality decreases quite a bit if pay is below the Caribbean average, and happier people work faster and better.

As far as tourism goes, I can't see waiting, or starting up a huge tourist area all at once, as superior strategies, though I haven't tried it that way.

I usually build a pub, a single cheap hotel, close the slots, build a beach site and a scenic viewpoint, then open the hotel.

Remember, in the time you have been building up your massive, all-at-once tourist empire, my people have been learning their trades.  When I open my first luxery hotel, I have enough trained maids to staff it and keep the upscale crowd happy with the quality of service.

What I do at that point depends on the Island's suitability for mass tourism.  If it has a sizeable area of natural scenic beauty, good.  Find the flatest area on the leeward coast of the island and make a beeline for it.  At the same time, build another development thrust towards the pretty area, but take a little more time to develop profitable areas and housing along the way.  That airport is going to take a while to build.

Once at the (soon-to-be) tourist area, build a dock if the airport isn't done, some attractions to make the area more attractive to higher class tourism, and then a hotel.

I like to put most of the attractions in between the airport and the hotels.  

Another tourism strategy more suitable for mountainous islands, as it isn't as profitable, is the multiple dock strategy.  Keep building yacht only docks, keeping only two slots open, as you develop your tourism in a circle around the islands.  Forget about an airport until later.  Forget about clustering attractions between the airport and the hotels.  Build alternating clusters of attractions near the docks, then a cluster of hotels, then more attractions and a dock, and so on.  Build houses to hold the tourists inland of that, and farms to feed the workers inland of that.  Put your college, cathedral, and media in the middle.

On most islands with a sizeable and profitable tourist business, I end up with college grads getting 35-40 a month, hs grads getting 25-35 a month, and uneducated 15-25 a month.  I have no qualms with paying a construction worker at a distant site building, say, an airport 25 a month even in 1960.

Any workers at buildings set at sweatshop or special-op get more than easy-does-it.  

I have also experimented with setting a very high initial pay rate at buildings I want filled immediately, then lowering it.  As long as I'm not lowering it below the island average, the workers seem okay with it, meaning their job satisfaction level isn't any lower than it would be if I'd set the pay to the lower rate to begin with, nor is their respect for me.  They seem to understand the concept of 'signing bonuses.'

I wouldn't do it for military buildings, though.  Military types are pretty touchy about their pay.

[Coconut Kid]

And in addition, the more Dockworkers you have the more ships will come. ...

Oh! Really?  I'm sorry, but I can't accept that as a validated observation.

[Coconut Kid]

Two Points

First: It is a significant disadvantage to surrender your ability to "add to" rather than "subtract from" a significant motivator.

Second: Players go wild with pay as the only useful control over the citizens. Job satisfaction does have other factors -- believe it or not.

Original Poster

i recently tried a new approach for the beginning of the game, setting wages very high at the start (you have 10k to play with and not a lot of inhabitants so the wages won't make that large a dent). lots of early immigrants really help to kick-start your economy (and the wages will compensate lack of social facilities or housing for a few years, a clinic however is still useful).
you could also raise wages to the top whenever a freighter arrives, then lower it immediately after if you can deal with the drop in job satisfaction. this approach is beneficial to your treasury but might cause political problems on the harder levels.

I'm not sure what scale Alastar had in mind. The default setting on employment buildings is a simplistic, capitalist scale: Uneducated = 5; H.S. = 10; College = 20. I'm sure that default is not at all intended to represent any sort of "ideal" upon which players are advised to base their plans. It is most likely just a reminder to have some sort of planned wage settings. It could have been just as well set to one (1) for every building, or a communist scale of 6 for all education levels.

Probably the most important point Alastar makes is that there is NO reason to stick with the default; probably it is a good idea to change it as soon as possible no matter what your plan is.

[Coconut Kid]

in my opinion, a quick jump to industry is overrated - it often takes a while to make a profit, has a high initial cost, needs plenty of hs grads, needs upgrades to be really more profitable than yet another farm/ranch. for appeasing the capitalists early on, a little bit of tourism (medium [cheap] hotel, beach site, viewpoint) is enough.
of course you will feel some budget constraints if you follow this route, but if you build lots of cheap, highly profitable buildings (ranches come to mind) and skip on the luxuries early on, this can work out better than the usual low-wage start with regular regular pay raises (especially if you started with a low population).
i agree though, it´s probably not something you want to do in every game.

This is a very good point. Playing as if you are running from the 'hounds of hell' with the game speed set on super fast, and knashing your teeth over the "slow" construction workers because you want and need the whole map instantly covered with buildings - really throws the ambience of the game down the dumper. It's fine if "you" wish to play that way -- but please don't publish "walkthroughs" telling newbies that is the only way to play.

And please don't publish your "little red wagon" about "fixes" and other Urban Legends as if the game can't be played without "your" system.

[Coconut Kid]

personally, i have never seen a correlation between paying the carribean wage and immigration.  those suckers seem to come regardless of how poorly the tropican wage is in comparison to the caribbean average. 
does it mainly effect educated workers? also, i was always under the impression you received no educated workers unless you set (and staff) your immigration office to skilled workers.  does anyone know if this is or isn't true?

i don't know how income disparity works for immigration, but if you pay someone little for their education bracket, they are quite likely to emigrate (usually only a problem with college grads if you want a socialist island or you're a cheapskate).
i believe for immigration only the average wage is relevant because indeed you only get educated workers with the appropriate setting, and then their proportion depends on the skill of your bureaucrats rather than the relative wages.

From experience I agree that immigration has a direct link to wages.
So long as your base pay is within $2 of the Caribbean wage for unskilled workers you will, with an immigration Office and free job slots, receive 12 immigrants. This only tends to apply after the mid 60's, once your economy is bounding along.  ...

I am frustrated. I believe I have recently read a post which reported a test about this. After a couple of hours searching, I can't find it.

I don't know if there are any volunteer immigrants with education under the circumstance of no Immigration Office or an office with the Open-Door Immigration option. I am uncertain if the relation between the Caribbean Average Wage and Tropican pay for setting the immigration rate has to do with a} the Tropican "average" or b} one of the Tropican "Quintiles" -- I can't recall just this moment if an average Tropican pay is computed, so I lean toward the idea that the mid-quintile pay is used. The lowest quintile might be used account for the Unemployed.

Having admitted what I don't know, I have to suggest that it always helps to look at the "mouse over" information on building options. For the Immigration Office, here is the embelished information:

• Open-Door Immigration
  • 50% increase in the immigration level without the office
  • Base level varies according to an unknown algorithm
• Skilled Workers Welcome
  • The number of immigrants will be comprised of 60% Uneducated, 30% H.S. Educated, and 10% College Educated
  • Base level varies according to an unknown algorithm
  • Base level is probably not the augmented Open-Door policy, but the regular base
• Tropico First
  • Reduces Immigration 100%
  • The only immigrants will be Foreign Employment Agency Recruits
  • The equivalent of the Special Condition "Immigrants Out!"
• Love It or Leave It
  • Raises [Increases] Emigration by 50%
  • That means the trip-point of dissatisfaction leading to emmigration is changed
  • There are other results of dissatisfaction
    • Join Coup (Militarist Faction)
    • Go Rebel
    • Protest
    • Join Uprising
• Nobody Gets Out of Here Alive
  • Reduces Emigration by 100%
  • Increases the likelyhood of going to other results of dissatisfaction

Warning: The percentages given in the list are applicable with two employees with experience gages half full. If there is none or one employee and if the employee's skill gages are less that half full, the percentages will be less. That is particularly important for the effects shown as 100% - the employees are female, so they may (probably) vacate the job due to pregnancy. On the other hand, the less than 100% figures may be increased according to the fullness of the employee's experience gage.

Therefore, the Closed in & out Doors probably will not work perfectly. It would be interesting to see if the two 50% "increases" are raised to 100% if both the employees have full experience gages. That would be scary. Most interesting would be to know how the proportion of education\social levels would shift with two fully qualified employees.

[Coconut Kid]

I like to start with high initial wages, 8 for grunts, 12 for grads.  Who exactly is going to build all that stuff you plunk down with your initial $10,000?  Higher wages mean higher immigration, and on the harder levels anyway, Caribbean average starts off at 8, so I always start at that.  I give raises every year or two, up to a point.  Keeping people happy pays off in increased immigration and productivity. 

I try to usually increase the pay for grads first, to 15-18, and grunts to 10-12.  College grads get 25 at the start: there aren't many college jobs or grads at first, and the grads you have, you really want to keep.

The thing is, pay is not a set it, forget it thing.  The Caribbean average is always climbing.  Job quality decreases quite a bit if pay is below the Caribbean average, and happier people work faster and better.

...  Any workers at buildings set at sweatshop or special-op get more than easy-does-it. 

I have also experimented with setting a very high initial pay rate at buildings I want filled immediately, then lowering it.  As long as I'm not lowering it below the island average, the workers seem okay with it, meaning their job satisfaction level isn't any lower than it would be if I'd set the pay to the lower rate to begin with, nor is their respect for me.  They seem to understand the concept of 'signing bonuses.'

I wouldn't do it for military buildings, though.  Military types are pretty touchy about their pay.

I don't know that the Caribbean average "always starts at 8" is an accurate observation. I also doubt that happiness about pay alone increases productivity. "happier people work faster and better" is an overworked verisimilitude. It is not the Tropican game world.

The idea that playing yo-yo with pay is "understood" is not accurate. There is the game start "honeymoon" which is simply a "damping" of the ordinary algorithms during the first five years - while the player learns the game. The standard is that raising pay increases happiness gradually while lowering pay decreases happiness instantly.

This is an example of a single opinion strongly stated which can mislead a newbie.