The High Level Worker Crisis, - To Andy, and Players

Andy, GMs, and Players,

Many players are experiencing chronic and persistent High Level Worker shortages, that do not get better over time. These shortages are resulting in extreme levels of unemployment, in the effected counties.

High Level Workers are critical to the games functionality, as no Corporation can function without them.

These shortages effect countries with populations achieved by natural growth, as well as countries that have increased their populations through transfers and purchases.

Shortages of educated professionals can be resolved by players increasing their Education Index, or adjusting their Education Priorities. Shortages of Low Level Workers can be solved by players reducing their Education Index.

On the other hand, Shortages of Medium Level Workers, and High Level Workers, are the GM's responsibility, because players have no power over the rate at which they are promoted.

The current system, where players must manually demote educated professionals, to Medium Level Workers, and High Level Workers, is not functional. It requires far too much micromanagement on the part of the players, and players with large countries can't demote workers quickly enough.

In short, the current situation is unacceptable and needs a solution.

The GM needs to solve this issue by increasing the rate at which the game promotes Low Level Workers, to Medium Level Workers, and Medium Level Workers to High Level Workers. To a rate fast enough that countries with unemployed Low Level Workers, no longer experience ongoing Medium or High Level Worker shortages.

This solution does not risk high unemployment of Medium and High Level Workers, because promotions stop when there are too many of those workers unemployed.

Andy, and GMs, please make this bugfix that will dramatically improve your player's experience.

If this solution is unworkable, please implement another functional solution, so the game is no longer crippled by this ongoing bug.

Also the population for free players should be capped at 100m, not 30m.

Hi Andy,

I fully agree with Daniel's observation about the current issue concerning high-level workers. It has become increasingly unsustainable. Personally, I believe that I should be able to leave my country for a few days without the need to demote workers to the high-level position. Even if there were an increase in the number of workers that can be demoted, it wouldn't be a sufficient solution. Unfortunately, I am unsure which game update introduced this problem, but the reality is that I simply don't have the time to constantly micromanage worker demotions on a monthly basis. I hope the developers address this issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Thanks,

Joel

I agree,

The current system is unsustainable.
https://sim05.simcountry.com/cgi-bin/cgiw?coccupation&miCountryName=MELICHOR

I am short "8.5m MLW and 4.5m HLW".
It would take me 43 game months(7.5 real days) to manually convert all workers needed based that I logged in every four hours without skipping a single month.
You can see I have enough workers to fill EVERY other job with excess worker so it is purely a MLW/HLW issue.

I almost wonder if in a future update instead of the being a "GM imposed limit" on worker levels if it should be up the the players?
I almost feel like we should be able to set the educational priorities levels like every other profession.

That way people have more customization over nations and it would allow them to better plan or adjust for these issues without having to constantly bother the GM?

Same here - Shadow Coast on KB - I would like to add one additional note - The recent game updates has cost my empire hundreds of trillions of dollars, which has taken me 8+ real months to accumulate, and now have been completely washed away in less than 2 real weeks. I am typically not one to complain because I understand that this is an extremely complex game that allows players multiple avenues to accumulate wealth/power. However, I feel as if there is this large of a problem, that is effecting multiple real players (both free & paid players) running multiple states, a resolution needs to be found quickly. Paying (and free) customers should not have to wait this long for a major aspect of the game (labor force, which is the lifeblood of a country) to be fixed. Each game month that passes without correction is costing your clients real money. Please issue a new update to resolve theses errors soon, and please do more extensive testing in a QA environment prior to issuing any future updates. This will save us all a lot of headaches. Thank you for your support.

Is there a recent change that affected the Medium and high level workers? We aren't aware there were any and as far as we can see the system hasn't changed in years.

Borgqueen,

Yes, there have been changes to how Medium and High Level Workers are created, as well as changes to how and when automatic demotion moves unemployed professionals to other worker groups.

Combined with the pre-existing structural shortages of Medium and High Level Workers, this has driven unemployment to very high levels. Effected Countries often see their Employment index reduced to 75-80, causing significant economic harm.

Is this problem only experienced by massive populations? Seems like countries with stable populations are relatively unaffected.

Yes Ethelred. I don't have any issues, worker or supply.

Daniel, would you mind telling us when the time was of the change aprroximatly, so we can check out the 'change-post' by Andy?

I'm a relatively small country and I'm experiencing this as well, at extreme levels.

Ethelred,

The issue is more severe in countries with artificially large populations. However, countries with 80M-100M population are also effected, such populations happen due to natural growth.

Borgqueen,

I believe the changes were mentioned in the thread

"W3C - Game News Augus 3 and some previous, recent updates"

Throughout the discussion below the original post, Andy mentioned changes to High Level Worker numbers being 'structural' and that it was intended to improve shortages of High Level Workers, however many players experienced far more severe high level worker shortages afterwards.

There was also mention of a reduction in automatic interventions in player countries. Since some of these automatic interventions are demotions of professionals to workers, and often happen without the players knowledge, I suspect that the removal of these interventions, removed a key source of High and Medium level workers in some players countries.

Personally, I almost never had to manually demote professionals before this update, but after it, I've had to do demotions every day just to keep my employment index from collapsing due to High Level Worker shortages.

Given the vague language Andy used, in the original post, and follow up discussion, it's impossible to tell 'exactly' what was changed, but it's clear that there were changes, and players have been experiencing serious problems as a result.

Daniel,
we can't comment on the automation as we usually aren't below game level 4. Is your empire at game level 4 or above? If so maybe forcepush it below to activate the automation to look if it helps while the problem persists.

Andy,

Have you seen this thread?

Is there a better way for players to contact the GMs?

It would be a great reassurance to hear that you are aware of the severity of the problem and a fix is coming.

It's too early to be certain, but I've seen signs of increased promotion of Low and Medium Level Workers, to Medium and High Level Workers.

I think the GMs/Andy have taken action.

Andy, GMs,

Thank you so much! The situation is improving, unemployment is falling in effected countries, as the increased promotions enable Medium and High Level Worker numbers to rise.

Players,

The rise in Medium and High Level Workers is gradual, so if you have a large number of unfilled Medium and High Level Workers jobs, it will take time to fully resolve. However, as long as your Medium and High Level Worker numbers are increasing, the problem should now correct itself, over time.

The system requires unemployed Low Level Workers to promote to Medium and High Level Workers. If you don't have enough unemployed Low Level Workers, you'll still face shortages. In that case, the solution is to lower your Education Index, or reduce your Education Priorities below a total of 120, so that your country has enough uneducated workers to fill the Low, Medium, and High Level Worker requirements.

Thank you again, to the GMs and Andy, for helping solve this problem.

My observations are I got fairly caught up to the extreme shortage through demoting professionals about a week ago, since then my countries have held fairly steady without much interventions.

As we wrote elsewhere on the forum, we are determined to halp countries to balance they job market.

education priorities are the main way to do so but in extreme cases and mainly in countries with population under 50 or 60 millions, the game will try to help.

this is done by allowing more workers to move to a different profession if the number of unemployed professionals is declining very low and endanger the functioning of corporations.

we had many countries in such situations and the numbers have improved a lot.

we keep checking very closely and are looking at many countries.

Mailing the gamemaster is always a possibility.
we always answer but it can sometimes take several days.

we also see countries with too many corporations.
you can see how many are unemployes and how many are needed for corporations to hire all the workers they need.

if the number needed are higher than the numbers available, you can better close a corporation.