Post Release Beta - Civic Donation Amounts don't appear to make sense

[Stylesjl]

So I am just looking at this new Community Engagement Department and as you can see the Donated Percentage (Lifetime) is over 100%

DonationPercent.png (144.27 KiB) Viewed 651 times

This seems very strange as my annual profit is over 5 billion but the amounts donated are along the lines of 9 million per year (maybe this is the insurance company profits not counting?)

It seems to make more sense if I demolish the insurance company - but I think it is also counting the Lifetime Civic Donations as being part of the percentage? Is that the intention? That might explain why it is over 100%.

More more thing: Lifetime Civic Donations are only counted if I construct civic buildings - but the 10 million annual donations I am making per year are not being added to that total. I think that is a bug.

Download the save here and see for yourself:
https://file.io/w6FvohST0yVb

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Also: Not a technical support question but more of a gameplay thing: What advantage do the donations give my company? Is it brand recognition, political support or something?

[David]

This seems very strange as my annual profit is over 5 billion but the amounts donated are along the lines of 9 million per year (maybe this is the insurance company profits not counting?)

It includes the donation for building the civic buildings.

It seems to make more sense if I demolish the insurance company - but I think it is also counting the Lifetime Civic Donations as being part of the percentage? Is that the intention? That might explain why it is over 100%.

It is based on the operating profit of the corporate income statement.

operating_profit.jpg (241.27 KiB) Viewed 627 times

It is over 100% because it includes the donation for building the civic buildings.

More more thing: Lifetime Civic Donations are only counted if I construct civic buildings - but the 10 million annual donations I am making per year are not being added to that total. I think that is a bug.

I loaded your savegame and there are no annual donations for funding the operations of the civic buildings on the income statement.

Then I built a new university and it started to show the donation amount in the income statement. The Lifetime civic donations in the HQ also started to increase.

It is possible that the city government has set the operation level of the civic buildings you donated before to zero, so that there were no recurring donations.

If this is not the reason, please provide the exact steps for testing this issue.
[/quote]

Also: Not a technical support question but more of a gameplay thing: What advantage do the donations give my company? Is it brand recognition, political support or something?

The feature was implemented upon the request of one of our institutional clients which is a university using CapLab. The students are required to achieve the goal of meeting a certain civic donations as a percent of operating profit.

As for the additional gameplay implications, we are open to suggestions. Do you have any suggestions?

I've created this post to explain these in more detail://www.capitalism2.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9492

[Stylesjl]

I did build some more buildings and yes it is starting to make the numbers go up now but it still doesn't seem to make sense to me - do any of these donations show up in the city's balance sheet or actually reduce it's costs?

CityBalanceSheet.png (161.06 KiB) Viewed 616 times

I don't really notice any difference if I stop or resume the donations. I attached another save game where I added some additional profits and added a huge bunch of civic buildings (I also have a mayor running the city as well).
https://file.io/ryN7Evey4rE4

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I'll also make some comments in that other post for improvements.

[David]

I don't really notice any difference if I stop or resume the donations. I attached another save game where I added some additional profits and added a huge bunch of civic buildings (I also have a mayor running the city as well).
https://file.io/ryN7Evey4rE4

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I clicked on the download link you provided but got the message "The transfer you requested has been deleted."

I built a new university from your last time and changed the donation % slider to 0% for one month, and then 100% to another month and I saw a difference in the educational expense on the city's income statement. The company donated to the city for that university's operating expenses, so that the city didn't have to pay for it and the city's overall educational expense decreased as a result. You may test the same and you should see the difference.

[cantdownloadit]

but can this be exploited, as i posted on the other thread its literally possible to donate dozens of unwanted buildings to a city - surely there should be some limits/restrictions to this.

Why would a city that has a university at 5% capacity let you build 3 more in the city ?

I think there needs to be some sort of limit - whether that is the city wont let you "build them a free one" unless the cities exciting buildings of that time are nearing maximum usage.

There should also be limits on changing funding rather than just being able to change the amount you donate on a literal daily basis as i cant see any cities would sign up to a deal where the funding could literally change daily.

[Stylesjl]

I don't really notice any difference if I stop or resume the donations. I attached another save game where I added some additional profits and added a huge bunch of civic buildings (I also have a mayor running the city as well).
https://file.io/ryN7Evey4rE4

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I clicked on the download link you provided but got the message "The transfer you requested has been deleted."

Try this one, it says that it should expire on the 4th of June, don't know why the last one deleted as it should have had a few weeks:
https://file.io/hJYyus0xy6x1

[David]

It is likely that you didn't have any recurring donation because the buildings you donated have been set to "zero operation" by the city government, as shown in this screenshot. You can view the ones you donated and see if they are all having 0% operations (the bar at the top of the civic building info window).

[David]

but can this be exploited, as i posted on the other thread its literally possible to donate dozens of unwanted buildings to a city - surely there should be some limits/restrictions to this.

Why would a city that has a university at 5% capacity let you build 3 more in the city ?

I think there needs to be some sort of limit - whether that is the city wont let you "build them a free one" unless the cities exciting buildings of that time are nearing maximum usage.

There should also be limits on changing funding rather than just being able to change the amount you donate on a literal daily basis as i cant see any cities would sign up to a deal where the funding could literally change daily.

Since the city government can simply set the operation levels of excessive buildings you donated to zero, thereby eliminating any operating expenses on them, as shown below, there should be no adverse effects or exploits to the city. If you can think of any exploits, please let me know the details.

If the exploit is mainly about occupying land, then it is similar to buying land plots and holding them. For building civic buildings, you need to pay for both the land costs and the construction costs, so it is actually easier just to buy land plots if that is the intention of the exploit.

[cantdownloadit]

to be realistic, even a building at 0% operation should still have maintenance costs and expenses otherwise it would gradually deteriorate to a point it had to be demolished.

[Stylesjl]

It is likely that you didn't have any recurring donation because the buildings you donated have been set to "zero operation" by the city government, as shown in this screenshot. You can view the ones you donated and see if they are all having 0% operations (the bar at the top of the civic building info window).

I see but this implies that the city pays for everything - so even if I donate the city doesn't have any of their expenses reduced as they still have to pay for all of the buildings I donated to them?

It would be an interesting way to help improve a city's finances - if I need to lavishly fund the universities, etc to benefit my company without having to worry about running out of tax money.