Traffic 201 - Industrial Strategy

Industrial Life Cycle

The Industrial Production Chain

The production chain by /u/DerMef

The Bad Icons

Specialized Industry

Not Enough Workers

Unemployment Rate and Demographics

Level Up Industry

Rush the Level Up

In this guide you will learn how industry works, how to keep industry working, and strategies for tackling the traffic challenge. A big part of handling industry traffic are trains and harbours which we will cover in Traffic 202.Unlike the lessons in 101-102, I don't have rules for industry. Because you can build a city with a million people using only office and residential, how much industry or what types of industry you build is entirely a creative choice. Your only restrictions are the game's mechanics and your imagination. While there is no one way to build industry, in a classic progression game, you will experience some typical ebbs and flows.As your cims average education increases it becomes harder to keep them in crappy jobs. If you have a bunch of educated workers labouring on a farm, the minute you unlock and zone office, your cims will quit the farm for a chance at a cubicle.Often your first industrial sector is not in the ideal location. Since I know I am going to move my industrial sector, when I start zoning office I dezone the industry buildings which start complaining about no workers until my original site is empty. Once I have unlocked all the tiles, I can move it to a better location. The specialized industries, farming, forestry, coal and oil produce raw products. The raw product is then transported to a specialized processor building in your specialized industrial zone. If you run out of oil or coal, or if you zone farm or forestry without fertile lands or trees, all your buildings will be processors.Processed products are delivered to generic industry. They turn it into Goods for sale in your commercial sector. At each point along the production chain you will have heavy trucks coming and going to different industrial buildings, with light trucks make deliveries to your commercial sector. The above flow chart made by /u/DerMef (Original post http://redd.it/2yxfez) lays out the production chain in detail. While it may look complicated the concept is simple, anything you don't produce enough of locally will be imported, up to a point. Anything your industry produces in excess of what is needed by commercial will be exported, up to a point.If you are wondering where that point, at which you can't import enough or export enough is, I don't know. If you can make use of all the highway, rail, and ship connections, (and your map has all 4 of each) your point will be higher than if you don't have those things. You will know you have reached that point when the bad icons -not enough goods, -not enough buyers, and -not enough raw products begin to appear.Unlike the not enough smart or dumb workers icons, which are easily solved, the bad icons can quickly cripple your budget. If you see these start popping up, pause and diagnose the problem. Traffic will probably be your first one, but even if you have a solid road network you might have reached a capacity limit on your external connections. Or a harbour burned down and you didn't notice. Or you placed a harbour to close to a shipping line and the boats are getting confused and stuck. Or you have found a new way ♥♥♥♥ can go wrong. To set up a specialized industry which produces raw resources, you have to create a district over the appropriate resource then select the matching district tab and click on on your newly created district.Oil and ore will run out eventually (without using the infinite oil and ore mod) while farm and forestry are renewable resources. NOTE: Planting trees on fertile land will soak up the fertility resource and you can't get it back.A 4x4 farms or forestry plot will create 16 low education jobs. When you first see the -not enough workers icon, DON'T PANIC!You have a good problem and there are 3 easy ways to fix it..1. Do nothing2. Zone more residential3. Level up industry To figure out which fix you need, check your demographics info tab. This will tell you the unemployment rate, the size of your workforce, and the size of your upcoming workforce.In this picture, the solution to the not enough workers problem is to do nothing. Half the city are kids in school. When they graduate they will need a job. If I don't zone any more industry or office, those jobs will get filled and the unemployment rate will start to go up.Highly educated cims will take lower education jobs, eventually. From my experience, a 10% unemployment rate will get them to work in generic, 12-13% for coal and oil, and 14-15% for farm and forestry.If you don't have a ton of kids and unemployment gets too low, you will need more residential. If you don't have demand for residential, level up your existing residential buildings and you will increase your population. A great way to level up residential is to add schools, which means one solution to not enough uneducated workers is to build more schools! If you have a highly educated population and unemployment between 6-10% then adding more residential might not work. You have enough workers, they just want a better job. Leveling up industry will increase your available jobs and provide jobs for people with higher education.A 4x4 Level 1 generic industry building has 16 uneducated jobs, while a 4x4 Level 3 generic industry building has 32 jobs, 16 of those being highly educated positions. If you need to rush the level for industry, drop a cargo station nearby. You don't need to connect it to anything to get industry to level up. In fact, while cargo trains can be great, if you build a kick ass road network, you don't even need them.