Not defending it, but they did talk about this.
From the reddit comments:
“It’s not like each Sim has a specific job that’s his, and a specific house that’s his,” says lead designer Stone Librande, like this knowledge might mitigate the situation. Instead, each Sim that will inhabit your thriving metropolis (or crime-ridden housing project, as the case may be) will wake up each morning and start the day by looking for a new job – if they’re not sick, that is, in which case they’ll look for a hospital. And every evening, that same Sim will leave work and take a moment to look for a new place to live."
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03/28/first-look-simcity/
Probably old, but perhaps the title can be changed to "It is not the size that matters, it is the GetFudgedPopulation".
Code:
simcity.GetFudgedPopulation = function (a) {
a = "undefined" !== typeof a ? a : simcity.gGlobalUIHandler.mLastPopulation;
if (500 >= a)
return a;
if (40845 < a)
return Math.floor(8.25 * a);
a = Math.pow(a - 500, 1.2) + 500;
return Math.floor(a)
};
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5133829#file-simcityui-js-L8510
Must have gotten missed, but Acorn posted this a couple pages back:
"I have been trying to figure out why my percentage of pop that works/shops etc keeps dropping as my city grows and did some testing which seems to explain it.
Basically I made basic power, water and waste then built a block of houses and counted the workers, shoppers, tax, and utulity usage. I then added another block, then another etc and counted up each time.
First block : 186/124/62 total pop/workers/shopper (a 2/3 to 1/3 split of pop between workers and shoppers)
Second block : 372/248/124 - Exactly double, so far so good
Third block : 630/372/186 - Same increase in worker and shoppers but a bigger increase in total pop
Fourth block :1232/496/64 Again same increase in effective pop but displayed pop has virtually doubled
By sixth block displayed pop was over 2600 (14 times one block) but actual workers/shoppers was exactly 6 times higher.
I also checked tax income and utilities and these increase in equal steps for each block too, so the phantom pop in the display seems to have no effect on gameplay at all.
This explains why a 100k pop city seems to have only 10% workforce - its actually a 15k pop city with a huge amount of phantom pop added to the count.
So far I haven't been able to figure out if all this population creates traffic but for the key metrics of workers/shoppers/tax/utility usage the numbers displayed in the details tab seem to be correct and the total pop value irrelevent."
http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9359265.page
