AI won't leave the market

[brandon2525]

I have set up multiple company's for instance telecom i set up max budget for expanding customer capacity and set internet price to .10 to get all the market then hoping to raise it the AI will have a price of $9.00 and still have a easy market of%30 or so they lose millions every month and wont pull out and i to keep my price low but never pick up any more customers why and the same goes for some internet company's like stock trade car rental etc max market i can get is %30 even if in the 7 cities no one has one but me and i advertise in ever city on many platforms cant figure it out

[David]

We will investigate the problem.

Could you please provide us with your save game file and let us know the following?
1) Which version of Capitalism Lab you are using. You can see the version number on the top-right of the main menu.
2) The exact steps for triggering the bug with the save game
3) If your savegame uses a MOD, please let us know the name of the MOD and the MOD's version number.

You can find save game files of Capitalism Lab from the C:\Users\<your user name>\Documents\My Games\Capitalism Lab\SAVE

You may provide us with your save game file by posting it here on the forum as a ZIP file attachment or emailing the save game file to us at info@enlight.com.

If your save game file is too large for attachment, you may check out this post about how to send us large files: https://www.enlight.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2473

[Brutus]

If we're talking about Telecom, I completely agree with opening posters issue.

The AI doesn't seem to think logically when it comes to setting up telecom businesses and the game doesn't seem to function all that well around this service either.

I have one city where there are 8!!! other Telecom businesses aside from my own and the initial starter ... so 10 in total ... at this point I think the AI just builds one if it has enough cash to do so Meanwhile the other 2 cities in my game don't have any telecom competitors. The AI just build them all in 1 city. Granted it is the BEST city with the largest population but having 8 other competitors doesn't make any sense. They are all bleeding money. The cities, Paris bestest city with 4 million (good wage rate) has 10 total, Rome with 2 million (same wage rate) only has 2 (1 is mine) and Kuala Lumpur only has the 1 the AI builds in the beginning and no competitors.

Even as I built a telecom myself pretty early on it just never got much traction no matter what I did with the prices. In Rome I set the price to half that of the competitor. Still the numbers barely budge each month. It's like people don't want internet for half price or something.

Then in the end I just set it to 10 cents in Paris to see what would happen ... and let it run for something like 10 years and I finally got 50% of the market share ... yay ... the first ai competitor that the game spawns in initially to build a telecom still sits at a comfortable 30% (with $9 sub) and the other 8 telecoms have the remaining 20% to split between them.

[Edit]
I tested some variables and even when I set the price to 10 cents, I can at best gain 1% market share per month at best. But more likely roughly 10% per year ... that's ... disappointing ... for free internet mind you ... well $0.10 (I'd given it for free at this point lmao)
[/Edit]

To summarize:
> AI's too eagerly build telecoms in one city, regardless of pre-existing competition.
> AI's don't pull out of a failing telecom/media business causing them to bleed money.
> Consumers don't switch provider nearly as fast as they should and are barely price sensitive.
> Increasing infrastructure spending also is ludicrously expensive and slow to build up. It takes decades to provide service for a large 5 million pop city. If I set the slider to max, I expect to provide service to the entire city within 10 years, heck 5 years is totally realistic.

> Another big problem I just noticed is that when you have expanded your infrastructure it increases the overhead costs (that's fine) BUT you can never get rid of this overhead again. This means that even if you fix all the previously mentioned points, if you suffer from too much competition and market share loss, your telecom will implode on itself because it has to pay overhead for consumers that no longer exist. Your only option would be to delete your telecom and build it all over again. That again makes no sense. Instead of have the infrastructure spending be ''upgrading Infastructure'' only it should be more of an ''expansion AND maintenance'' slider. Set the slider to max and the telecom will try to expand to the max population that can be serviced. Set it to half for example and it will expand to half the city population. If you already have more capacity then you can service (due to competition for example) have your actual infrastructure degrade back down if you set the slider down. This way you can actually slim down your telecom and reduce overhead costs.

[brandon2525]

i will try to attach a saved file but im sure you can set up a telecom company and do the same thing i have the most updated version of the game it may just be a bug i like competition but some times i like playing just to crash other companies another issue i have had is i buy the tech for multiple products for instance i did it with headache pills the research was 2k all most no one was even close it for instance cost $1.00 to make the pill i tried selling ti for $1.01 to crash the market or try to take income from that sector. i had the monopoly on all media firms and internet companies but my e commerce site was at no reach and my pills never sold no competitor even tried to buy them

[David]

In response to your request, the following script variable for Telecom has been added to the latest version 6.6.02.

[Digital Age DLC]
Telecom Customer Stickiness = <1 to 1000>
(default value: 100)

If you think your telecom gains customers from rival telecoms too slowly, you may use this variable to change the speed at which it gains or loses customers in relation to rival telecoms.

A value lower than 100 means that customer stickiness in telecom will be lower than the default setting and the gain or loss of customers will happen faster. A value higher than 100 has the opposite effect.

The formula is:
<the original rate of gaining/losing customers> X 100 / <this Telecom Customer Stickiness variable>

For example, if Telecom Customer Stickiness is set to 20, then
The new rate of gaining/losing customers will be 100 / 20 = 5 times of the original rate.

-----------------------------------------

The next step is to you guys' feedback on what Telecom Customer Stickiness value strikes the best gameplay balance for the game.

Please suggest that the value that you think is the most apt and I will then create a poll with choices of different values suggested by different users (assuming that users do suggest different values.)

Then the value with the most votes will be implemented into the game as the default value, provided that there are sufficient votes cast at the poll.