The Teamster malaise

[President of Parador]

I have a theory about why the Teamsters and Laborers seem to slack off as the game progresses.  It actually applies to everyone in the game but since these two job types must physically move about the island to perform their tasks, the phenomena negatively impacts their performance.  Other workers are "on the job" even when they are not physically present in their offices and so the effect is not noticeable.

The "slacking off" by Teamsters and Laborers as a game progresses seems to be attributable to growing island complexity, both societally and geographically.  When a scenario first begins, public accomodations (pubs, clinics, etc) simply don't exist.  When a worker needs religion he simply notes that there's no church and fulfills his need privately, but more importantly, immediately.  As the game progresses, more and more public accomodations exist to distract him from his duties.

This is not a problem for other job types since a banker is still "on the job" even when sitting in church.  On the other hand, a Teamster or Laborer sitting in church is emphatically not accomplishing anything.  Hence, the more public accomodations that exist, the more a player will experience problems with Teamsters and Laborers that he doesn't with other job types.

Moreover, greater numbers of public accomodations pose problems for Teamsters and Laborers, geographically, that other job types don't experience.  When a game first begins T&L move about the island pretty much in a straight line.  However, once a player responds to his people's needs by building public accomodations, he creates a maze that T&L must navigate through to accomplish their tasks.  Suddenly, going from A to B requires walking around clinics, through additional farmfields and chokepoints at the marketplace.

To make matters worse, when a player places a building on all but the flattest of terrain, he will invariably transform some of the surrounding squares into steep inclines that didn't exist before.  The obstacle to walk around becomes even larger.

It doesn't matter for a Doctor, he's still treating patients no matter how long it takes him to move from his house to his clinic.  But a Laborer taking a long detour is a Laborer not swinging a hammer.

These phenomena combine to make T&L unlike other job types in the game, in that they don't scale lineally as the population grows.  If one Doctor can take care of a population of 100, then two doctors can take care of a population of 200.

Not so for T&L.  Since a growing island effects them in ways others aren't, by the time a player has built his population from 100 to 200, he needs not one additional Teamster office, but two.  (Figures are for demonstration purposes, only, not necessarily real gameplay numbers)

And so we see the root causes for the drop in Teamster and Laborer productivity as a game progresses.  One can avoid the pitfalls that accompany such by taking into account the diminishing returns of these units and simply providing the island a greater percentage of them as the population grows.

[2ninga]

Excellent points, Presidente.  In many ways this raises the importance of roads across the island.

[President of Parador]

What's your opinion on road construction, point to point or just patches to help on those steep inclines?  I tend to be point to point myself.

[Professor Pioneer]

I tend not to build roads until after I have a good cash flow.  By that time there are paths where the teamsters have been, so it is easy to build roads where they travel.  I do build point to point, but concentrate at first where the travel is difficult because of the hills and valleys.

Add dock workers to the list of workers who must be at work for something to happen.  If they are not at the dock, the goods will definitely pile up.  Then one will show up, and spend a couple of months loading ships while his co-workers are drinking and shopping.

[2ninga]

I'm definitely a point to pointer.  Once a teamster gets on the road, he tends to stay on the road, and that really helps him get where he's going more quickly.  I've seen it somewhere, but there is a specific difference in rate of speed a Tropican travels when walking on a road vs. sand, grass, or otherwise.  I like playing the scenarios where they usually have some roads already laid out for you.  I also like putting places my islanders need to go alongside the road:  pubs, hospitals, churches, etc.  That way, when a worker is on his way to or from there, he's travelling at a faster rate along the road.

[President of Parador]

Add dock workers to the list of workers who must be at work for something to happen.  

Good call.  Make that T,L&D.

[President of Parador]

I've seen it somewhere, but there is a specific difference in rate of speed a Tropican travels when walking on a road vs. sand, grass, or otherwise.

If you (or anyone else) remembers where, please let me know.  I'd be interested in taking a gander at it.

[Peron]

 I wanna confuse this even more.

 When you add a new dock, where do your new dockworkers live? Unless you fiddle with them, they will live in the closest available housing.  Which may be miles away on an older island!

 Also true when old dockworkers die or retire and the new replacements come in.  Headaches!

 I have used both approaches on the roads issue.

 Out of sheer stubborness I have created very small roads on steep slopes that were fairly flat for some distance both at the top and at the  bottom.  I put it in between (using the grid option to show you the straightest path) the point of the resource(s) and dock.  Works well too.

 I believe the roads to be of the biggest help on inclines of any kind.  I don't see a benefit on flat ground regardless vegetation, etc.

 

 

[Malovane]

Yeah, thats the one thing that disturbs me about this game. A person can spend 2 months traveling to a doctors office, and 2 months inside... turn around take another 4 months for a pub visit. If a year is representative of an average day in their life, then that person went to a doctors office for 8 hours every day in that year, and spent the rest of the day drinking and sleeping.

Of course, this is still a better system than Caesar 3, which.. oh god I still can't believe how stupid it is In that game, the workers wander the streets to provide services to houses. This is fine in some cases, as in fire prevention, and structural engineers... but evidently romans were extremely lazy. I had a housing zone RIGHT across the street from a marketplace (which supplies food).. but because that area wasn't in the delivery girls route for a year, the people living inside demolished their houses, pitched up tents and hunted things on the land. If pizza hut doesn't deliver in your area, will you call in a wrecking ball and hunt them pesky chipmunks? In the end, that game is all about overcoming the stupidity of the programmers.

I'm not sure what would be better than the current system in Tropico. I guess services could be offered in a radius around the serving building. The only drawback you have in this case is that the oppressive militarist government would have no positive economic impact over a normal one. With militarist governments you can offer no services and therefore have people working constantly.

One question does come to mind though.... does the "Easy-Does-It" and "Sweat Shop" settings affect the T&L whatsoever? They seem to do whatever they want anyway.

[Ragingphoenix]

Yeah, thats the one thing that disturbs me about this game. A person can spend 2 months traveling to a doctors office, and 2 months inside... turn around take another 4 months for a pub visit. If a year is representative of an average day in their life, then that person went to a doctors office for 8 hours every day in that year, and spent the rest of the day drinking and sleeping.

Prescribe some Pb subcutanously, It'll cure those diseases permanently.

[Peron]

One question does come to mind though.... does the "Easy-Does-It" and "Sweat Shop" settings affect the T&L whatsoever? They seem to do whatever they want anyway.

 Not that you could tell by watching them; at least at first.  What it does do is make them more apt to stay on the job for some length of time, making them more skilled at what they do.

  Lately I have been using this setting for that reason.  I'm wondering also whether using "sweat shop" for teamsters and construction workers for an extended time might not cause the "wandering in circles" problem.

  I have also been watching where my docks are placed in relation to resources that they may be loaded with.  A dock can quickly be overwhelmed with too much cargo.  Too many docks and you will be paying too much overhead; too few and you will paralyze your economy because they will be overloaded.

 Same seems to hold true for teamsters.  Too many and the overhead could eat you alive.  Too few and your resources accumulate at their point of origin while your docks (and treasury) are empty.

 As for placement of the teamsters office, I don't believe now that it matters,within reason,  where they are placed along particular routes.  Teamsters find their own routes.

 It is when some factor changes (like the addition of a new dock, new resources becoming available to pick up) that the door is opened for things to go wrong.

 Let resources accumulate too long and when you do finally add new teamsters, you can expect that your docks will be affected.  To some extent they can handle the deluge.  Just not on a regular basis.  You have to know whether it is just a one-time event or whether it is time to add another dock.

 As an example, I had an established route going in a game with gold mines.  I built a new dock near the jewelry factory which was off this route (90 degrees off in fact).  

 Unaware that I could be causing a problem, I began planting banana groves (are they groves?  right now I don't remember).

 I was so pleased to have the money to do this, it was only when they started to produce that I realized that the jewlery factory dock and the dock closest to the bananas were the same dock.  I was soon getting 30+ units accumulating there.

 I had to bulldoze housing to make room to build another dock next to it, and this took the pressure off.

 As for wandering teamsters, I watched a teamster pick up his first load of gold and then proceed in a direction on the island exactly opposite of where the dock was located.

 Was it because the teamster wasn't experienced yet do you think?  I am guessing this to be the case.  I have seen this twice since I have been looking for it.  I only mention it here because of the mention about the wandering farmer  trying to deliver goods to the dock.  The manual says they aren't as good as teamsters.  Apparently they aren't even as good as the bad teamsters.

 President of Parador seems to be close to the mark in his observation about fewer distractions early game.  Not just in the amenities though, but in the work that becomes availble for a teamster to do.  I think that all the teamsters change their pickup and delivery patterns every time a new resource comes into being.

 I believe that watching the relationships between resources becoming available, number of teamsters, and number and placement of docks as you change them during gameplay is key. There are balances that needs to be maintained between the three (docks, teamsters, resources) and overhead vs. income.

 What?  A juggling act?  Tropico?  No!

 I lost hours of work on an island just this morning by not paying attention to all of these factors.  I got too stretched out in overhead and went into irrecoverable negative pesos before I realized it too late  
 
So what happened?  Too many construction workers.  I was stretching a supply line across the island to access gold.  Worked fine, except I didn'tfire the excess construction guys I had left over when they had done their job.  Hey overhead is overhead, Teamsters, DockWorkers, Construction Workers -it's all the same.

 Oh well.  Gave me an excuse to start again on a new island where things are going much smoother.

 

 


 

 


 

[billlava]

I haven't really experimented with roads much. How much do roads help, and where should I put them?

[Ilyich]

I haven't really experimented with roads much. How much do roads help, and where should I put them?

I'm not sure how well roads work, because despite numerous attempts, they still take about 50 years to build and by the time they are ready all my teamsters have gone AWOL 

[Malovane]

Roads generally help with inclines. Tropicans will tend to travel much faster up a hill when there is a road than if there isn't. Since not much of most tropican geography is level (even in the flattest of topographies), I generally use a grid formation... 3 spaces between buildings and a road in the middle.

You may not think it to be cost effective, but it is in most cases. People will get to their homes, churches, doctors, pubs, and work much faster.. let alone teamsters traveling to and from the docks. This means a rather large boost in happiness and work efficiency. Tropicans spend most of their time traveling from one place to another, and decreasing that time is key.

[Ilyich]

I generally use a grid formation... 3 spaces between buildings and a road in the middle.

Interesting - do you play with the grid overlay?

[WyrmMoon]

It's my suspicion that you should be VERY careful with building priorities as your island grows.

Since some of the larger buildings (if not all) seem to allow multiple workers to build them, workers can travel a very long distance to go work on a building, when you had really intended for them to work on something closer.

The effects of high prioritity in the beginning are fairly intuitive, but I recommend against it in the middle/late game.

[bhar]

A good point, but not totally true.  I heard that each priority setting equals 25 grid squares, so that is why buildings closer to the construction office with lower priority settings may get finished faster than the distant building with higher priority settings.  So priority setting may not be all that counterproductive later in the game.

[Coconut Kid]

I have a theory about why the Teamsters and Laborers seem to slack off as the game progresses.  ...  Other workers are "on the job" even when they are not physically present in their offices and so the effect is not noticeable.

The "slacking off" by Teamsters and Laborers as a game progresses seems to be attributable to growing island complexity, both societally and geographically.  When a scenario first begins, public accommodations (pubs, clinics, etc) simply don't exist.  When a worker needs religion he simply notes that there's no church and fulfills his need privately, but more importantly, immediately.  As the game progresses, more and more public accommodations exist to distract him from his duties.

This is not a problem for other job types since a banker is still "on the job" even when sitting in church.  ...

PofP makes some incorrect assumptions and overthinks the pathfinding problems.

Wrong assumption one: "Inside workers" are NOT on the job when they are not physically present; the production\through put of the building varies based on whether they are actually present or not. The player needs to try to keep all workers in their "work mode" as much as possible.

Wrong assumption two: Workers do NOT instantly satisfy religion, health care, or entertainment needs if there is no building available. There is a "default" routine to recharge the needs meter. Although the meter may appear to instantly recharge, the worker spends a "penalty" related to using the default.

If there is any complication in pathfinding, it is related to total distance and not nitpicking over small obstacles.

[Coconut Kid]

Yeah, that's the one thing that disturbs me about this game. A person can spend 2 months traveling to a doctor's office, and 2 months inside ; turn around take another 4 months for a pub visit. If a year is representative of an average day in their life, then that person went to a doctor's office for 8 hours every day in that year, and spent the rest of the day drinking and sleeping.  ...  I'm not sure what would be better than the current system in Tropico. I guess services could be offered in a radius around the serving building. The only drawback you have in this case is that the oppressive militarist government would have no positive economic impact over a normal one. With militarist governments you can offer no services and therefore have people working constantly.  ...

Well - suspension of disbelief over the time\calendar doesn't work for all players. "It's day all day and there is no night in Tropico!

The game clock is a purely arbitrary and artificial device to mark the passage of time. I have never seen any official suggestion that a "year" is supposed to represent a "day" or any other linkage with "real" time. The discovery that the units\people rotate among "modes" further divorces the game clock from any connection with real time scaled or otherwise. Although, the life time of a NPC roughly matches the calendar years.

[Coconut Kid]

...  I heard that each priority setting equals 25 grid squares, so that is why buildings closer to the construction office with lower priority settings may get finished faster than the distant building with higher priority settings.  So priority setting may not be all that counterproductive later in the game.

Someone was paying attention to Steinmeyer's interviews; even if not understanding the information exactly.

Phil described the normal action of construction Laborers. They start at the Construction Office and normally go first to projects within 25 tiles, second to projects within 26 to 50 tiles, and third to projects within 51 to 75 tiles. The priority settings on the construction window allow you to juggle those distances. If there are no projects within 75 tiles of the Constuction Office, the Laborers will go to the nearest beyond 75 tiles - but their walking time there makes them very inefficient. Therefore, the rule of thumb is that Construction Offices should be no more than 100 tiles apart.

If you watch the pathfinding arrows, it is easy to interpolate that the 25 tile increments with a 100 tile limit is applicable to all unit movement. That is, the people are most efficient when their tasks can be accomplished within a 100 tile radius. They will go further, but they do so in 100 tile stages. Their "Rest Need" meter is exhausted faster when they are moving from point to point.