David wrote: ↑Wed May 01, 2024 7:30 amIn survival mode, should the number of AI competitors increase or decrease the difficulty rating, or have just no effect on it?
That's a good question actually.
Generally speaking I have always found Survivor Mode harder when there are fewer companies around. The reason largely has to do with investment capital, the more of it the city starts with the easier it is to get the economy going as the many companies will spend huge amounts of money providing jobs, city tax/land purchase revenue as well as semi-products/raw materials that other companies can buy for their own supply chains.
An example of what I mean (I have tried some experiments):
Start Survivor Mode with 5 companies.
Then with the same settings start with 20 companies.
With 20 companies the city can build itself up to nearly 1 million people within only a few decades with little human intervention (only providing public services as mayor).
With 5 the city still builds up reasonably quickly (but not as fast) to a few hundred thousand.
Start with 0 and it's a hard slog as it's only you alone, to build up the city.
So yes I think inverting the difficulty settings for competitors in Survivor Mode is a good idea (not sure to what extent). A similar rule I think should be introduced for AI Expansion Aggressiveness and AI Starting Capital as these also make it easier to expand the economy when set to higher levels.
Generally the strongest settings for economic growth are:
- Number of Competitors.
- Expansion Aggressiveness (set this too low and the companies don't build much at all and the city stagnates and goes bankrupt).
- Starting Capital (can still get decent growth when set to very low but it still slow things down).
The other settings such as Expertise, Local Competence, Tech Head Start and Price Aggression might also benefit city growth to some extent but are probably worse for the human player. It is therefore probably best to leave those settings alone.
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On the other hand once the city has been built up more competitors do add to the difficulty as well as now you will be competing against AI players in an established and developed economy, just like in a normal game. However considering that the Survivor Mode goals are generally associated with either building up the city (which the AI will do the heavy lifting for you) or with launching products (which isn't that hard to do, as you only have to launch the product, not necessarily try to dominate the market) the extra competitors actually don't make it too much harder to do those goals.
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So, yes more competitors (and starting capital + expansion aggression) on Survival should lower the difficulty level but only if Developed City = No.
[quote=David post_id=41328 time=1714548651 user_id=67]In survival mode, should the number of AI competitors increase or decrease the difficulty rating, or have just no effect on it?[/quote]
That's a good question actually.
Generally speaking I have always found Survivor Mode harder when there are fewer companies around. The reason largely has to do with investment capital, the more of it the city starts with the easier it is to get the economy going as the many companies will spend huge amounts of money providing jobs, city tax/land purchase revenue as well as semi-products/raw materials that other companies can buy for their own supply chains.
An example of what I mean (I have tried some experiments):
Start Survivor Mode with 5 companies.
Then with the same settings start with 20 companies.
With 20 companies the city can build itself up to nearly 1 million people within only a few decades with little human intervention (only providing public services as mayor).
With 5 the city still builds up reasonably quickly (but not as fast) to a few hundred thousand.
Start with 0 and it's a hard slog as it's only you alone, to build up the city.
So yes I think inverting the difficulty settings for competitors in Survivor Mode is a good idea (not sure to what extent). A similar rule I think should be introduced for AI Expansion Aggressiveness and AI Starting Capital as these also make it easier to expand the economy when set to higher levels.
Generally the strongest settings for economic growth are:
- Number of Competitors.
- Expansion Aggressiveness (set this too low and the companies don't build much at all and the city stagnates and goes bankrupt).
- Starting Capital (can still get decent growth when set to very low but it still slow things down).
The other settings such as Expertise, Local Competence, Tech Head Start and Price Aggression might also benefit city growth to some extent but are probably worse for the human player. It is therefore probably best to leave those settings alone.
--
On the other hand once the city has been built up more competitors do add to the difficulty as well as now you will be competing against AI players in an established and developed economy, just like in a normal game. However considering that the Survivor Mode goals are generally associated with either building up the city (which the AI will do the heavy lifting for you) or with launching products (which isn't that hard to do, as you only have to launch the product, not necessarily try to dominate the market) the extra competitors actually don't make it too much harder to do those goals.
--
So, yes more competitors (and starting capital + expansion aggression) on Survival should lower the difficulty level but only if Developed City = No.