I can't actually disable all competitors

[voicedgamer]

I have all DLC enabled, no mods, no scripts, release version 8.2.14.
Custom game settings turning everything to do with ai or competitors to none or 0 but yet when I start the game there are 1 or 2 competitors. Sometimes 0 and then after a year or two there's a majorly profitable company spawned in with 500 million hogging all the land with AI: All despite that being turned off too. Usually I want competition cause it's fun, but I want something different for now.

Tried messing with most of the settings to see if any of them change the spawning but no, If I set competitors number to 0 it should be exactly that.
Even if I set competitors to 1, 3 or more will get set up with hundreds of millions of dollars completely ignoring my competitor settings.
I'm just going for extremely low money start with no competitors but its seeming like that's impossible to do.

Is this a bug? It's gotta be a bug right... Not sure where to post this so into tech support it goes.

Exact ui settings:
0 competitors, comp start capital very low, ai expansion aggro very low, ai expertise none, ai tech headstart none, ai friendly merger none, competence of local competitors very low.
Adjusting realistic money supply on/off changes nothing for their spawn rate. venture capitalists 0

I've also tried the beta 9.0.05. The game also doesn't seem to pay attention to scripts I've written per the websites instructions either. All the settings just get set to lowest possible.

Any info would be greatly appreciated, Been a life long fan of this game and its predecessors. Impressed it's still being updated.

[Pietro]

Hey, i'm playing with the version 9, so there might be small differences, but the situation seems somewhar similar, I think there will be a minimum of 2 companies that will be created unless you choose the "survival mode" from the city simulation DLC.

One of them will create "OS" and will use the import to create computer and start making/selling some so that they can start selling their OS too.

The other will do telecom company.

I think both are part of the Digital Age DLC, and are necessary to balance the game. Is that the situation in your games too ?

I found it difficult to compete for the first OS due to that one AI always having the expertise in "OS", but you can compete for the computer market to prevent that AI to get monopoly with high margin, to limit the snowball, and then try to compete for softwares while catching up in "OS" tech. You can also lower the software revenue index this will make the whole software market shrink to represent less volume and cripple this software AI.

Doing a telecom company in every city with cheap access would cripple the other telecom AI.

I saw sometimes the "OS" AI switch to "ALL" for its management policy and start selling other products that is not software , but i found it rare and it occured 30 years or so in the game when all software where sold already. This AI is the one that has the worst potential for potentially taking all the land because it will make many factories for many software products, and many software firms, and retails stores and R&D centers even with "software" specialization.

[voicedgamer]

Even on version 9 and survival mode being turned on, 3 ai's are spawned in despite me choosing 1. It's like, Why even have settings at all in a sandbox game if the settings mean literally nothing. Never had these issues years ago.

Can't be a balancing thing because its a sandbox game. As such, The player chooses the balance. Otherwise why include sandbox options at all y'know.

[Pietro]

Maybe i wasn't clear, if you set 1 AI, then you will have 3 total, 1 regular competitor and the 2 that are always there, one for OS and one for Telecom.

In version 9 in survival mode i can confirm if you choose no competitor there will be 0 AI not even the 2 mentionned earlier. But settings should NOT be "developped city at the start". Because this will cause 2 AI to spawns.

If you disable digital age DLC, then you won't have those 2 additional AI that are necessary for the game balance.

You can post a savegame that will help show your settings, there must be a mistake because i can confirm to you that it is possible to play without any competition in survival mode, that is one of my favourite game mode, the closest to a sandbox i found.

See following pictures of no AI spawning after 6 years

no_compet.png (783.6 KiB) Viewed 1409 times

Without the Digital Age DLC, having a developped city at the start doesn't cause the 2 mentionned AI to spawn :

no_compet2.png (1.12 MiB) Viewed 1409 times

[voicedgamer]

After 245 years doing all dlc on, survival mode on, developed city off. Eventually the two ai will spawn (the two that are with digital dlc as you've said) but regardless, Thanks for showing me some way to get around the ai always spawning thing. I have enough funds in game to just buy their public company outright or sink them into the mud. It actually turned out to be more of a challenge than I expected seeing as there were no customers to sell to for a few years.

Still though, setting 0 competitors shouldn't be overwritten by a dlc, I will die on that hill.

I appreciate your replies and time. Hope to see this game stay in developement for another 10+ years.