Ageing people and Workforce losses.
I upgraded at once another block of 14 full fancy residences (Jan. 1366) to manor. Workforce loss was only 36 per house, compared with 39 for same other block in Jan. 1369. As these blocks are the oldest in town, the ‘3’ difference may be due to the presence of more residents already retired. In 1981, aged 50+ people were 20 (3% pop.), in 1369 they are 1000 (8%), knowing that half the population had not yet come in 1373. This was one of my aims : to get rid of part of the ageing population problem through setting first the blocks to be upgraded to manors+ status. This also means that, for 1369 (705, 7%), the 39 workforce loss per house has to be reevaluated compared with a young block and figure could reach 44-45 workforce loss per house.

Tryhard,
Demographics has been a hot topic a few times in the Game Help forum both here and at Caesar III Heaven. I don't recall whether or not it was investigated extensively, but I think the consensus was that demographics apply only to the city as a whole (not individual houses). In other words, if a city has lots of fancy residences, some full for many years and some recently created and filled by immigrants, then I'd expect the same (allowing for possible randomness) change in worker count from evolving any of the fancy residences.

A simple, and conclusive, test could be made by first evolving the oldest housing block to manors, and noting the changes in demographics and workers. Next, reload the game and evolve the newest housing block in the same year. Both blocks should be the same size with the same population. Some randomness will likely occur, but if Brugle is correct, the change in demographics and workers should be similar in both cases.

Are you set up to run this test Tryhard?

Hi VitruviusAIA
the following was written before seeing your message (I try not to be too hard on my phone bill now)
hi Brugle again,
Your past experience suggests that demographics would be uniformly dispatched within the population. I could determine it by building a huts block of say 1000 people, let it live 30 years, then build a young one the same size, let people flow in then erase selectively and check the look of the demographics graph and the workforce changes. I should do it because I tend to forget I am also playing : pretending to contribute a useful way to this forum requires some efforts. The ground here is littered with statistics (it reminds me it is the way I did with good old Tycoon, spending 1 hour playing, 2 hours on my financial tables).
But you made me check for my populations : I realized that workforce loss in both cases was by far above the workforce/population ratio. I also checked before that part of the flow of people coming happen to reach working age in the city. This would kind of confirm what I was thinking first : a house is granted an age-index for its population as a whole, say on 1 or 2 bytes. This index itself would be correlated to the global demographics. This could explain why figures changes are rather consistent during upgrades and why some upgrades cause no loss of workforce at all (Nero suggested these houses could be filled with retired people). I tried to go further in my checks but my screen evaluation margins of errors are too high when dealing with those small percentages (50+ people are 6-8% of the population and upgrades affected 10-13%).

As I had no special problem winning a scenario even at V.Hard level, except learning how to manage tough financing, I had not realized how complex the game could be too for entertainment in big cities. And I would like to believe that I can manage a complex network of pavilions and dance schools by simply moving/removing them (Cartouche Bee is far more rigorous).

[This message has been edited by Tryhard (edited 07-10-2001 @ 06:41 PM).]

Another way to test this is to place perhaps half a dozen 1x1 vacant lots on an empty map. As soon as they fill, save the game and note the demographics. Then start deleting the houses, noting the changes to demographics, and reload. The key question would be "do I always lose the same people (by where they fall in the age distribution) when I delete 'this' house but not when I delete 'that' house".

Another thing I've recently wondered, after following the posts about aging populations, is: the city's people age and die, but are they also born? Or are the deceased replaced only by new immigrants? I suspect they aren't born. After all, one of the problems of having an area cut off from the Kingdom Road is that it 'stagnates' as new immigrants can't arrive. But if anyone knows whether citizens can be born, I'd appreciate knowing.

Hi Tryhard,

I just tried to increase the Bradius game to a 40000 pop. I added one new bock no problem. The next block about 3/4 done ('for sale' signs hung), with messages on, says "Reached data limit, - see README"

And from the read me!!!

"DATA LIMIT REACHED"
Pharaoh has limits on how many buildings, walkers and point-to-point walker routes it can handle. These limits are quite high, and you should never encounter them in the missions that we included with the game. Some of Pharaoh's "Custom Missions," though, let you build much larger cities, and you might reach one of these memory limits if you build a city of 35,000 or more people. If you do see this message, your only recourse is to resculpt your city for greater efficiency. Populations in excess of 50,000 are possible if you build very efficiently.

Moral, if you go for most population, go for fancy residences [highest density of population; ask Max or Elf: ooops: edit : frugle Brugle should be on this list] not spacious homestead. Plan real careful!!

Hey, I'm still learning

Bee

[This message has been edited by Cartouche Bee (edited 07-10-2001 @ 10:19 PM).]

BTW, I see you there!!

Bee

Ilion, my impression is that:
- people coming give birth in town the following years, beginning of the game there is always a <1 year-old peak (you can even have a huge 0-1 peak one year without immigration) , next year you have a new 2 years-old peak, and so on.
- people retire first, new workers are then hired. Before I used to start a game with a huge flow of people to get industries working faster. So these people were reaching retirement and dying age at the same time. I had tremendously infect periods (say years 15-25) when I was suddently missing 250 workers at once, say twice a year. I had to shut down industries for a while and make people come. Now, I try to live with flat demographic curves: I make enough people come to fill the gaps between population peaks, especially between the first aging immigrants and their children. But there is still the disappearance of workers. This time, I only have to wait one month for people to replace them, though the town population remains constant. It was particularly obvious in 30000 big Heteps with no more immigration.
People die the same way, though population does not change. If I understood you well, it would explain why isolated blocks stagnate. People are replaced. But who replaces who? I am not sure. In these 4 games on the same map, I noticed anormally high peaks of newborns when big numbers of aged people die. The newborns peaks are higher than usual, higher than birth-rate trend. At it is also the period when my demographics flatten best, I think aged people dying are replaced by young adults who give birth like new settlers.
Anyway, people who die of old age are not replaced by people of the same age-class. Some cities that have long term stable Palatial Estates that represent a big part of the population would look like Nice or Miami, the ratio of old people would be 50% of the population or more. I have never seen that. So either Brugle is right suggesting that demographics are spread over the whole population, whatever the social class (type of housing), or young adults get the free room. Same result anyway.

I could try the same if I do not have accidents in 20 years: erase a full block of PE (2800 people) and see what happens to the demographics.

BTW, FYI, in this Bradius test if I delete a single statue I can build another building like a water supply! FWIW.

Bee

Hi Tryhard

Ooohhh! A roadblock does not count but a garden does toward the total objects in the city! But a garden or a block of gardens don't count as much as a statue cause I can delete part or all of a 2X2 garden and not be able to build more buildings. But drop a statue; can build a new building. So in hindsight, I use gardens instead of statues cause they don't count as much toward the city limits. lol Press the limits!!!

Bee

Double Ohhooooo!!

You can add the statues back in after deleting them; after adding more buildings; without hitting the wall!!! There are holes to exploit here..

Bee

[This message has been edited by Cartouche Bee (edited 07-11-2001 @ 01:52 AM).]

It seems that someone is having great fun. Cartouche Bee, I am not surprised that the game has limits, exactly like Civilization where you could also cheat with some.

Sth happened that I had not expected and is in contradiction with what I said to Ilion before: I did not noticed I mistakenly destroyed a road (sometimes, computer is so slow that when you hear the 'click' you are already on another part of the map) and 4 full palatial estates devolved. Big population loss was amongst the 0-10 years old, not at all demographically consistent.

i tryed loading tyrhards hetep and my machine spit it out coughing and hacking...133mgh 32ram dinasaur...

I finally decided to do it. I built a city made of 2 blocks of sturdy huts. All 1120 people came within 12 months.
Plan now is to build another 560 people block, on year 11 and not in January but in July, in case populations could be allocated a month.
Someone did sth similar to check the workforce. Didn't he said "and then I got bored..."

Ilion and Tryhard,
I think that all babies are born on the first day of Jan, and only in houses that have vacancies! I think you'll see no births in a city with no vacancies. (I documented the population jump at the beginning of the 2nd and 3rd years of my Baki, and expect to continue.)

Cartouche Bee,
In Caesar III, statues counted toward the building limit but gardens (or anything that can build multiple units with a single click, such as roads, walls, and aqueducts) did not, and a warehouse (like a storage yard) counted as 9 buildings. Caesar III only gave a "DATA LIMIT REACHED" warning when you hit the building limit (walkers simply weren't created when you hit the walker limit), but Pharaoh might be different.

“I think that all babies are born on the first day of Jan”
Makes you wonder what is going on in Egypt on the first day of April.

“and only in houses that have vacancies!”
Makes since to me. I had to build on a room for my second child. (Add a vacancy.)

Vitruvius,
Well, even in Egypt, the first of April is still April Fools Day. With all that beer our citizens guzzle, I suppose they get foolish on April 1.

Tryhard,
I did a small test today, just two houses and maybe 28 citizens. With such a small demographic, I could count exactly how many people were of each age. I deleted the same house twice and different 'individuals' vanished. For instance, there was one 10 y/o, who vanished one time but not the other.
I pretty much expected that the game doesn't keep track of the demographics by house, and certainly not by individual citizen. That would be a lot of numbers to track and compute as they age (the PC would die trying to do that).

Hi, all : I spent some 11 hours on sth that was quite boring at first but which results revealed fascinating. The research topics were:
- who replaces retired or age-dead people?
- how is the demographics repartition in town: per house, overall, else?

METHOD
EXPERIENCE 1
I built a city of sturdy huts, 2 blocks (nb. 1 & 2) of 560 people (total population 1120). All houses were set in early January of Year0 (set at 0 A.D. to make things more simple). The city was full as soon as mid-January Year 1. I saved every game in February for the following 11 years and checked the demographics. I printed demographics charts.

On year 10, in July, I drew another block of 560 people (nb. 3), which was full in december (total population 1680).
Game was set at hard level, maintenance was perfect for all blocks (apothecaries, physicians, water supplies). Unemployment was maintained around –1% to 4%, all unemployment devoted to camps. No food was given (no bazaar).
On Year 12, the two older blocks were erased and after a laps of time, I checked the demographics and printed the results. I did the same erasing only the new block.
Unexpected events occured during year 11 & 12 (see below) that forced me to make other tests.
EXPERIENCE 2 Block 3 was never built. Block 1 was erased and houses replaced
EXPERIENCE 3 Block 3 was never built. Block 2 was erased and houses replaced
EXPERIENCE 4 idem Exp 3 (to compare)
EXPERIENCE 5 Block 3 was never built. Block 2 was erased and houses replaced fast enough for former people to come back before new immigrants.

RESULTS
Demographics were based at Year 1 on a major peak for the age-class 20-30, a smaller one around 12 and a widespread presence of people between 40 and 55. Babies were very few.
EXPERIENCE 1
1. During 10 years, the demographics curve moved along the age axis without major change in its shape. Babies (necessarily born in town as no immigration was possible) were replacing aged people dying (aged people bars vanished progressively, replaced with “Youngs” bars). It seems that no people were added who were not babies (some bars that were checked remained at same values). Population remained officially constant, set at 1120.
2. People’ probability to die increases with age after 50 (what a surprise). As population was stable, I could avoid any bias.
3.Workforce changes occured only in January. My theory was that a block of houses could be given a birthmonth. But, for all experiences, workforce changes occured only in January during the next years.
4.The people immigrating on Year 10 for block 3 had the same age pattern than the former ones on Year 0 BUT there was a huge peak of 0-1 year old the following year (105 of them, 800% more than normal). This peak did not exist without adding the new block.
To my surprise, in none of the other experiences, the newborns peak occured.
5.I compared demographics in Dec 11 and Jan 12. Peaks were exactly the same, I could superpose the two printed graphs. But 100 more babies were added to the January graph. These babies so take no part in the population.
6.On Year 11 and 12, hygiene was deteriorating quickly, though disease and malaria peaks were at 0. I added water supplies, apothecaries and physicians but could only gain some time. Overseer said: “Hygiene is bad, plague risk”. Plague risk bars were switching from 0 to low levels every month, I could not avoid plague anyway (note the plague did not happen nor threatened my city without building the new block. Overseer kept saying: “hygiene is good”). The population decreased one month by 70 in the 1680 city, though no plague occured. Newcomers rushed in immediately and went into 3 distinct houses, which Health reports were consistent with other houses during the whole period. Afterwards I could not avoid the plague and experience 1 had to stop there.
I was worshipped as a God with the 1120 people, only adored with 1680 (all coverages were the same, including desirability)
The two demographics graphs (one with 1120 people removed, one with the other 560) did not superpose to give the 1680 graph. I particularly noticed that:
- the 100 0-1 babies remained anyway
- the aged (52+) vanished in both cases
-some age classes vanished in both cases: people aged 33 (50 p.), 39 (70 p.). Many age-classes amongst the young were reduced to 0 though the others decreased little.
So in EXP 3 and 4 I erased a block and checked the demographics. I reloaded, erased the same block and compared both situations, that should have led to the same graph. Graphs were looking similar but were not identical. Note that graphs were more alike than when erasing block 1 and block 2.
In Exp 5: “the return of the refugees”: apparently none left the map, all came back. But only some 150/560 reintegrated their homes and their population had the age pattern of new immigrants, not the age pattern that could have been expected: the one of those who were expulsed.
7. In all experiences with block 1 or 2 erased and replaced, and contrarily to experience with third new block, there was no peak of babies the following years.

My theory was that houses are given an age class index based on global demographics. This would explain phenomenons I observed in other Pharaoh games (recently No loss of workforce in 3 houses upgraded to manor but losses in the 9 others) and why distinct age classes are missing though others remain. This parameter would have a geographic reliability (here, erasing the same block gave globally the same results, erasing a different block gave very different trends) correlated to global demographics but is not strictly house by house determined.
It does not explain why the babies remain anyway. And where they will fit in the future if they are not part of the population.

CONCLUSION
Nothing definitive...
All games are saved, ready for news experiments.

[This message has been edited by Tryhard (edited 07-11-2001 @ 10:55 PM).]

Bye Cartouche Bee,
I will see the Ocean this week-end (yes, the other one).
I hope some people will bother reading my long post about demographics. I am sure I will get some reactions...
Year 25: 46 PE operational, 54 ready for upgrade (some will probably give a Desirability problem, I miscalculated the space available between two blocks so no room for 3x3 statues). Population is 21500, workforce still at 24% but nasty “oldies” peak coming, I add new immigrants on a slow pace to flatten my demographics.
Some comments related to demographics and previous notes:
- once again an upgrade to manor with no loss of workforce, next upgrade 1.5 months later caused a 49 loss.
- Cartouche Bee, sure you know that: your block can stand various minor alterations without forbidding the 14 PE. I also removed the apothecaries in these blocks, malaria risk still at 0 (thank you VitruviusAIA). I also removed the second fireworker. It worked 3 years without trouble (could fancy residences be more fire-proof than common/spacious?) . I would like to set one zoo instead of the Senet in one block. Next week.
- I generated the topic, so I confirm that artists and librarians going to the festivals do not add any coverage to houses they pass along, contrarily to artists “at work”
- I could not check with my experiments, but in this huge city where blocks were set at different times, I have 2 months for workforces changes: January and March/April. This could come from the fact that I lose workforce in January (retirement, deaths), I wait for part of this workforce to be regenerated spontaneously (without population change, another thing I could not confirm with my experiments), let some new people come. When I see that I am still short of workforce/population, I add some new houses, what leads me to March/April: most of my blocks are set in January and March/April.
- I was so busy that I did not have time for Bast blessings. I have more time to concentrate on this. I still do not have a decisive rule but at least I know what I am doing: when I see that the God opinion is on the increase, I add a shrine every half a month. Best blessings start to come back in a row (I can get as many as 3 ankhs in 2 months, generally 2 in 3 months).

One question, sure very old topic: who are the invisible red ghosts that wander on your map and you see moving when trying to build sth?

Tryhard, it is possible to make a city in which the polulation is replaced automatically. This can be done by periodic evolving and devolving of housing. This can be done by importing or producing less than just sufficient pottery and beer. So at least one of your housing blocks will devolve periodically and then re-evolve once the block gets those goods. It is likely that some other block will devolve only to evolve again. Of course this is not easy thing to do and you will have to play with the amounts to be imported or produced. In the sense of local stability(in time) such a city is unstable but over a longer period of time this may prove useful. I myself haven't perfected this sort of housing but I am working on it. May be I will test it in Rostja or Hetep but I must find motivation for it.

All this may not necessarily apply to your city as it has a huge population. But given the amount of thought you give to your cities it can be managed. Also note that the PEs can be kept stocked by clever placement of blocks and number and settings of a block.
The population problems seldom start before 25 years of game play in my experience. May be it is because of my timing of entry of people or whatever.
Your tests are interesting. In the Grumpus's sight there is some data about this but the methods are different.

BTW I downloaded your hetep but could not run it. I have PIII and 64MB RAM and win2K. I have tried closing all the processes(not all can be closed) but it did not work. I have also reduced my resolution but to no avail. Can you or someone help me?

Invisible red ghosts?!?!?!?!

I have no idea what you're talking about. I have a suspicion that sleep deprivation is starting to get to you though...

Tryhard,
Those ghosts are invisible homeless. Why they're invisible, I have no idea.

And if they're invisible how can you see them?

Warrior, Hi,
Your computer is newer than mine (PII, 64, 266). So it should run without any problem. I work on a 1024x768 window, only desactivated automatic saves to get faster.
I used to say demog. pbs start to occur at Year 15 because I make lots of people come soon. But worst period is around Year 25.

I should have added to the Hetep challenge rules: do not kill off your population. I know how to handle it. But it is the most interesting part of this challenge...

Are you playing Pharaoh or Cleo? This Hetep is a Cleo. Do you have the patch? It won't run without it.
The uploaded Hetep was my first Hetep (and my first upload ever). It was won and that is it. The following ones were far better on everything. Current one looks great... (a bit messy, but it is my way)
I think, after 4 tries, I found the best places for the pyramids...

Thanks Ilion. These homeless should not exist most of the time.

Ah that explains it! How silly of me not to check whether the city is Cleo based or not!
I guess the only way you guys can help me is by gifting me Cleo!

I will be allowed to buy Cleo only in Nov end when my semester ends otherwise I am sure I will draw Cleo structures and housing blocks in my exam papers!