Calling all researchers: Married %?

[Pinstar]

Back when I first played tropico I developed a pretty effective strategy for makeing sure everyone in your population had houseing without building too much of it and wasteing space/money.

Originally my rule of thumb went
Total job slots X 1.5= Total houseing slots required. The 1.5 accounts for the singles in your population who take up 2 houseing slots for 1 person. Thus my tactic assumes that 50% of the people on the island will be married at any given time. Has anyone done any research to show a more accurate %? Assumeing a normal 50/50 male to female ratio on the island.


Also once my copy of Mucho Macho arrives I'll be testing an extention to my theory: Maximizeing marrages by keeping available jobs for each gender equal to each other. If there are many more jobs

For example, if I build an immigration office and a pub I will have a +5 female job imbalance. I then build a teamster's office bringing the score to a +3 twords the males. Building a diplomatic ministry restores the balance to neutral (0). For buildings that employ either gender, they bring the total back to neutral from either side by the number of workers they employ. If I build 3 hotels swinging my female job bias to +9 then build 2 farms, the 8 jobs created by the either-gender building will bring the ratio down to +1 tword the female.

I'll post results as soon as I am able to test the effect of building with gender balance in mind. In theroy equal gender balance= more marrages = fewer singles= more efficent space use of your houseing.

[Brf]

I am not so sure about females going back to their former jobs after childbirth.... they seem to take the closest job, just like when they arrive on the dock.

I have seen Diplomats have a baby, and then go to work as a builder, even though their old job is still open.

[Pinstar]

Good call! This adds but one more node to my research: What % of females wear the mother avatar during any given time? Do you think the gender balance formula would work if an arbitrary % was added to the "female only jobs"
So for example if my research finds that 1/10 of my female population are mothers at any given time, I would simply multiply the "female only" job count by 1.10.

A good way to make sure buildings are staffed fully during flutuations of mothers would be to use the high school as a "mother bank" Keep the first couple slots as permanent workers counting normally to the female only job count...but if you start seeing unemployed females open  up a few extra slots to give them work. On the other hand if there is a shortage of females fire the extras from the highschool and X out the slots.

Can't wait to test this out, my copy arrives supposedly on the 19th

[Brf]

So for example if my research finds that 1/10 of my female population are mothers at any given time

LOL! I have seen games where 100% of the adult females were mothers.... especially at the start of a game.

[Keefan]

 I have also discovered that at the satrt of the game the percentage of mothers tends to be higher. But it's kinda odd, because the birthrate can go higher later even if I do not notice so many mothers around. Does it have something to do with El Prez Childhood Home or is it merely the fact that the more tropicano's there are running around the harder it is to notice the mothers?

[Pinstar]

I think the reason it seems more women are mothers in the very begining is
1. The game almost always starts with some of your women as mothers
2. All of your people are out in the open and in view...and the yellow dressed mothers stick out visually
3. In the very beginning theres less to do (once you plop down your initial buildings) thus are more prone to just randomly survey your population, thus makeing it more likely for you to click and notice a mother

I think later in the game you look mostly at your important industries (power plant, dock, factories etc) to make sure they are filled, thus would neve rnotice a mother. Once they have houseing, mothers generally stay indoors at home, walking around only to get food or fufill their health or religion needs. Also later on, there are so many peons it's hard to notice them from the crowd.

I'm dubious that 100% of the female population would be off baby-making, even on a full tilt birth island (contraception ban + birth setting on clinics) I doubt 100% of the women would be wearing the mother avatar.

Tho if such a baby boom happened it would be really good. Provided you had time left in the game you just keep track of time after the baby boom and save up your money. Time it so that you expand your economy right when they're all growing up, giveing all of them nice jobs rather than haveing to attract immigrants or pay for them from overseas agents.


Random observation: When a child grows up, they go from the child avatar to the "Jobless" avatar, even if they take a job right away. Sometimes I'll be looking at a building and a job slot gets filled by someone who has the jobless avatar...clicking on it, they're always 13 or so. Given that jobless are more likely to get education, I would think native born tropicans are more likely to attend school right when they grow up. I did see one "dougie houser" a native born tropican who was a doctor at the age of 16. Made sense because of his "excellent" intelligence.

[Keefan]

Are there actually any possibilities beside contraception ban etc. to make people have more babies? I mean now this kind of measures like better life conditions or higher wages, do these measures help?

[Brf]

Setting hospitals and clinics to obstetrics will raise the birthrate too.

[MrManganese]

I went into my game knowing that I had a strangely low number of mothers considering my population size... I didn't realize exactly how low! See if you can find the one mother among my people

[MrManganese]

Knowing the exact percentage of my people who are married is becoming more and more important to me. A married couple will pay twice as much rent as a bachelor. I can sort my people out into different housing classes based on how much they can potentially pay in rent, and that's something I'd love to do. It's basically free money - there are no workers involved in keeping the houses maintained, just a few required to power them. Right now the only stable game I have going is showing that 70% of my workers are married. I could REALLY use statistical data about other peoples' games... but it's sort of a difficult number to obtain since the game doesn't exactly list how many people are married.

[Severous]

Mr Manganese

The lone mother....I found her !  Had quite a chat...and her name is Mother Hubbard.  She has so many children she doesnt know what to do.  At her wits end but does receive a small fortune in family allowances each month.  

I just loaded Trop1 Tutorial and immediately stopped it. The demographics are very different.  Some observations that remained largly unchanged after one month of game time:
- all babies had a mother
- all children of age up to 8 had a mother
- all children of 9 or over had a working mum as opposed to a yellow 'mother'
- All couples living in shacks had children of one sort or another (except a pensioner couple)
- There were homeless single mothers aged 15 & 16
- There were mothers with no children or babies...pregnant?
- Only one couple both working, no children. Woman however had a thought saying 'im going to have a baby'.

Cant draw any conclusions from this but the difference is great.  All sorts of things to consider. Comparing to your island MrManganese I would consider Housing quality, wages, education, game year/mechanics.

[Brf]

A married couple will pay twice as much rent as a bachelor.

Actually, they pay exactly as much as you charge them... So if you have your apartments, for instance, set to $6/month, two single people will pay a total of $12, and a married couple will pay only $6. Therefore a married couple pay half as much as two single ones.

[Severous]

Re wages, married couples and rent.

  I think all the above posts are saying the same thing when taken in context:

- the stipulated rent is paid by each family irrespective of how many men/women/children/babies are in the same housing slot.

- a couple has a potential higher total family income than a family unit with one working person. Thus could pay more rent.

- you can collect two rents from two singles - one from each.  After all they are taking up two housing units. But this prevents two married couples taking up occupation and the higher rent you might be able to extract from each of the couples..if they are both working in well paid jobs.

I aim for:

- couples who both hold down highly paid jobs living in a property with the highest rent. Not necessarily the best.

I seem to remember I used to :

- Check each house and increase the rent to what the family unit will bear.  Easy for single family buildings and small undeveloped islands.

- fiddling with wages and rents to evict or guide certain families where I wanted them.

But...the effort it took...babies...and other events. Tropico1 can be so hard to micromanage every single aspect.

[Pinstar]

I'm interested in this, not so much due to maximiseing rent, but rather space. Space is always a premium on my islands and I'm the kind of dictator who wants to cram his tropicans into the smallest area possible, it makes my infrastrture more efficent. That and I HATE building a whole apartment only to have 6 singles move in and fill it all up.

[MrManganese]

Certainly, they only pay half as much per person. But you can increase their rent so they pay just as much per person as an unmarried individual. That equates to twice the normal rent per housing unit, since the house is effectively serving twice as many people and collecting twice as much rent.

This drastically increases the profitability of housing.. while the base rent for housing is barely enough to offset maintenance and power costs, there is no additional expense involved in housing a person's spouse. So that person's rent is all profit :-D

I guess I wasn't clear about what I meant by "twice as much rent." Sorry!

A married couple will pay twice as much rent as a bachelor.

Actually, they pay exactly as much as you charge them... So if you have your apartments, for instance, set to $6/month, two single people will pay a total of $12, and a married couple will pay only $6. Therefore a married couple pay half as much as two single ones.

[MrManganese]

lol.. some times I hate being an empiricist  

Mr Manganese

The lone mother....I found her !  Had quite a chat...and her name is Mother Hubbard.  She has so many children she doesnt know what to do.  At her wits end but does receive a small fortune in family allowances each month.  

I just loaded Trop1 Tutorial and immediately stopped it. The demographics are very different.  Some observations that remained largly unchanged after one month of game time:
- all babies had a mother
- all children of age up to 8 had a mother
- all children of 9 or over had a working mum as opposed to a yellow 'mother'
- All couples living in shacks had children of one sort or another (except a pensioner couple)
- There were homeless single mothers aged 15 & 16
- There were mothers with no children or babies...pregnant?
- Only one couple both working, no children. Woman however had a thought saying 'im going to have a baby'.

Cant draw any conclusions from this but the difference is great.  All sorts of things to consider. Comparing to your island MrManganese I would consider Housing quality, wages, education, game year/mechanics.

[MrManganese]

Yes, yes, yes! :-) You're all right, except about the micromanagement part... I would argue that rent optimization can be reduced to a simple strategy that plays on peoples' desire to live in better housing.

I've been building condominiums (quality 85) and luxury houses (quality 95) to house my people. Since I know that about 70% of my working people are married, I build my housing accordingly. I calculate the total required housing, that is 65% of the housing I would require if everyone were single (arrived at this number because out of every 100 people, the 70 married will occupy 35 housing units and the 30 single people will occupy 30 housing units.. hence 65 units or 65% of 100). Then I allocate 54% of that housing to luxury homes (for the working couples) and 46% of it to condominiums (for the working singles). I arrived at these values is by dividing 35 (marriages per hundred people) by 65 (housing units occupied per hundred people) to get 54%. Likewise, 30 (singles per hundred people) divided by 65 (housing units occupied per hundred people) gives 46%. Thus I've evenly distributed housing between married and single folk.

I charge a constant rate for the condominiums (one third of the uneducated salary) and exactly twice that amount for luxury houses. As soon as a couple is married and can afford to move into a luxury house, they will! They'll pay any rent they can afford just to move up a few quality points.

I'd say this takes most of the micromanaging out of the equation.  The only dilemma is how I should build in excess.. I've decided that I probably don't need excess luxury houses since not all married workers will be living in luxury houses the moment they get married. That'll serve as sort of a buffer to ensure against overloading of the luxury houses. The condominiums, on the other hand, will receive extra stress as a direct result. Also I want to pad the condominiums since I would absolutely loathe to have a worker living in the jobless sector. Or almost as bad, living in the retirement community and forcing the old folks out into the jobless sector!

(edit) I also just realized that if there's a big enough differential between uneducated and educated salaries (bigger by a factor of two at least), the luxury houses will start attracting wealthy single folk. One could account for this by calculating the number of educated single people and adjusting the proportion of luxury houses accordingly. But oh, what a headache..

Re wages, married couples and rent.

  I think all the above posts are saying the same thing when taken in context:

- the stipulated rent is paid by each family irrespective of how many men/women/children/babies are in the same housing slot.

- a couple has a potential higher total family income than a family unit with one working person. Thus could pay more rent.

- you can collect two rents from two singles - one from each.  After all they are taking up two housing units. But this prevents two married couples taking up occupation and the higher rent you might be able to extract from each of the couples..if they are both working in well paid jobs.

I aim for:

- couples who both hold down highly paid jobs living in a property with the highest rent. Not necessarily the best.

I seem to remember I used to :

- Check each house and increase the rent to what the family unit will bear.  Easy for single family buildings and small undeveloped islands.

- fiddling with wages and rents to evict or guide certain families where I wanted them.

But...the effort it took...babies...and other events. Tropico1 can be so hard to micromanage every single aspect.

[Pinstar]

I personally love apartments and blues. I'll stick apartments wherever I can and blues in the little nooks and crannies where apartments wont fit. My normal starting salaries are 6/12/15. I build enough apartments to house all my people. To fill with married couples I place apartments at normal maintence with a rent of 4 pesos per month. For the singles, I put rent at 2 pesos per month but set it on roach patrol (since full normal rent would operate at a loss at 2 pesos per month). Once I get father into the game shift wages to 9/15/21 I adjust rents likewise and set the singles' apartments back to normal maintenece, since 3 pesos a month can support an apartment without operateing a loss.

[Brf]

Apartments and blues work pretty well, since they keep the people happy with their housing quality. The luxuries dont take up much room either, so I throw them in here and there... The condos seem to take up too much room for the number of people they house, so I never put up more than one or two of them.... near the power plant usually.

As far as twiddling with rents... you should avoid raising the rent in an occupied building, since that makes the occupants unhappy. On the other hand, you can use the strategy of raising rent to 30 momentarily in single buildings to get people to move to more appropriate housing (closer to work, better quality).

[Severous]

In Mr Manganese's all female picture I count 50 girl babies.  Assume there a similar number of boy babies.  I bet even 8 months or even days is too long.  Must have some super creche facilities.  

[MrManganese]

In an effort to increase my number of mothers (which was at 0), I laid off a lot of female workers on my island (and closed the job slots). I previously had 1 unemployed female, and now I have about 50. Bonita Huerta was among those unfortunate folks, but then her luck changed. It's a big day for Bonita Huerta :-D She got married, got pregnant, and became a professional mother. Maybe it's just a coincidence that she happened to be without work when all of this happened, but I did observe the same phenomenon with another woman just a minute later. I would guess that women only become professional mothers if they don't have any other work. My island's male working population is under a lot of strain, so a lot of the "either gender" workplaces rely on female employees. Not to mention all the nightclubs, hotels, and power plants that only hire female workers. So most of my females are employed, and that might explain why I have so few mothers.

Also, Bonita was only a professional mother for about a year and 3 months before she got a job. It seems clear that children don't require a mother, and I think that the mother status is just a way to keep jobless women busy.  "I have a job! I'm a mother!"

[Brf]

I could have sworn they were taking the Mother avatar properly.... I will have to investigate this when I have some time.

[Brf]

I remember now! I ran into this when I was investigating for my scenerio Return to Glory.

The Mothers retain whatever icon they had when they were working... that is why you never saw many Mothers in the lists.

IIRC, in scripting the Unitisjobless flag is set, but the Unitisunemployed flag is not. Also, the UnitUIPayRelativexxxx flags remain unchanged, rather than dropping to zero... I am remembering all this from a few months back, so I am not sure of its accuracy.

[MrManganese]

I went through 200 females in my list of workers and didn't find a single one who lacked gainful employment. If I'm reading you correctly, the avatar would remain the same in this list but the job would switch over to motherhood, yes? This doesn't seem to be the case on my island..

[Brf]

No. If the mother is a diplomat, for instance, all of the lists will show her as a diplomat and she will retain the diplomat avatar. But if you select her, her home/employment detail page will show she has no job and her former place of employment will show that she isnt working there.