Where are the unemployed?

[Diogenes183]

I'm right here!!

 

[Jon Shafer]

I think you grossly oversimplify things. An unemployed citizen is not the same as a citizen unhappy with overpopulation.

Why are they unhappy then? Just because the city is BIGGER?

The bigger a city is without certain faciliites, the more people get upset. Those facilities include, among other things, JOBS.

 

[sir_schwick]

While I think that unemployment is something worhty of modeling, it would create a lot of problems. First, if you model unemployement, you have to create a model for employment. In Civ it is assumed that the skill and labor required to do projects are avaliable. This could get hairy and messy, unless you made it intuitive and strategic.
Second, this really starts to touch UET territory, which is something no one but Economics majors really want.

 

[crimson238]

Personally I think that unemployment is best left to the imagination and as an explination to why some of the people are unhappy. Another suggestion, perhaps every unhappy citizen in every city costs 1gpt to "upkeep" (a way of having them on welfare perhaps?)

 

[dh_epic]

I'm just aggravated by the one-size-fits-all approach of building cathedrals to shut your citizens up. Seriously, imagine trying to do that in America today.

 

[sir_schwick]

It worked in Medieval Europe. Now its shpping malls. I know those were both generalizations, but history has proven that some form of "Bread and Games" has always been a useful approach to unhappiness.

 

[dh_epic]

There are some fundamentals, however. Stalinist Russia was a failure in this respect -- "my people are upset because they're hungry? build another statue!"

(That's sort of a joke, but not too far from reality.)

People get into those extra things when they have time and energy to care about those things. Think Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- people want survival and quality of life first. Food and shelter, then jobs and safety from crime and good health... the temple can only hold down a worker revolt so much.

Again, it's about fundamental needs first. And then any unhappiness that comes from those "higher" problems can be cured by bread and games, dogs and ponies, smoke and mirrors, whatever euphamism you want.

 

[Jon Shafer]

That's why this is a GAME.

 

[sir_schwick]

So you're saying that Civilization is just a way to distract us from our meaninless and pointless lives so we won't rebel against our masters? Where's the bread?

There are some fundamentals, however. Stalinist Russia was a failure in this respect -- "my people are upset because they're hungry? build another statue!"

That also remind me of Marie Antoinette - "The people complain that they don't have bread. Well let them eat cake."

 

[dh_epic]

A fundamental of games is "choice". When the problem is lumped into one huge 'unhappiness' category, that means there's only one real solution. A lack of choice is a less fun game.

Do I help big business and hope for a trickle down?
Do I help the middle/low class, and hope that it invigorates the economy?
Do I pull a Stalin and pacify them with another statue?

Right now, the only solution is the last one. Not to say unemployment is the most exciting thing in the game to model, but there needs to be more choice in the game on the whole on how to settle your problems. ... instead of "build a happiness-generating improvement".

 

[sir_schwick]

Like I said earlier, if you model bad economies and unemployment, you have to model where labor comes from and filling jobs in a good economy. It could actually be an interesting and good play-balancing thing in the early ages, when labor was a problem.