Insurance Company Balance Changes

[Stylesjl]

This is related to a comment in this thread:
viewtopic.php?t=9664

What does this mean in particular? Is that to make them less profitable?

Yes, the profitability of insurance companies is now more in line with other types of business.

The dev team didn't provide specific on the gameplay balance tweaking. I think the general goal is to make it more fun.

Maybe you could give it a try. If you think further tweaking is needed or it turns out that the gameplay is not better than the previous version, I would forward your suggestions and comments to the dev team for further improvements.

I gave this a try - the balance seems to be okay for the human player. The start is a bit rough but once the stock/bond market returns kick in the profits start coming in and are not too high. What I have noticed is that the AI now appears to be at a greater disadvantage, they seem to struggle to make themselves profitable and once the first big stock market downturn occurs they tend to get wiped out and bankrupted. To be fair this will also happen to an unwary human player as well.

I think the big difference is that since the Underwriting Profit is lower the Stock/Bond returns are much more important. This means that it is much easier I think to run into a problem with the Equity level falling below 0% (which triggers a demand for a cash transfer). This is something the AI does not seem to handle all that well (I must admit it takes me by surprise sometimes).

It should be noted that Stock/Bonds returns frequently fluctuate due to bond/stock price changes and inflation.

It should be noted that this issue is for the following settings:
Moderate Numbers of AI Insurance players.
Moderate Stock Market Performance/Insurance Claims.
Normal Global Stock Market starting level.

Obviously you will get different results if you tweak these settings, but since this is the 'Standard' level that most players will use, it is worth balancing this out.

Here is an example save game I have to this effect:
https://file.io/V5PpuVz1elz4

You will see that my two competitors are struggling to stay above 0% in their equity levels, which is basically killing them:

HumanInsurance.png (106.02 KiB) Viewed 986 times

SpeedyAvionInsurance.png (106.8 KiB) Viewed 986 times

MattStylistsInsurance.png (104.49 KiB) Viewed 986 times

[David]

Thanks for testing it. I've forwarded your save game to the dev team.

In the other save game you provided regarding the IPO market cap question, most of the AI insurance companies are profitable.

Did AI insurance companies deliver mixed performances in different games rather than consistently doing poorly?

[Stylesjl]

In the other save game you provided regarding the IPO market cap question, most of the AI insurance companies are profitable.

Did AI insurance companies deliver mixed performances in different games rather than consistently doing poorly?

This is hard to say as I started the game before the insurance company balance had been added so they might have accumulated enough assets to make themselves profitable. All of them in that game were diversified, so it appears that their other businesses were propping them up. I recall that a few of the stand-alone insurance firms had gone bankrupt but I don't remember it clearly.

I tried a new game and ran it for about 20 years. This one is different in that I gave the AI companies a higher starting capital (Very High) and they are also struggling to remain profitable (I thought the issue might be that they needed a higher capital base, but it doesn't seem to be the issue):
https://file.io/uklCHiAFBvtO

[cantdownloadit]

Would it help to limit forming insurance companies until a certain amount of capital is available?

[David]

We have released the new version 10.0.24 with improved AI in running insurance companies. Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

[Stylesjl]

We have released the new version 10.0.24 with improved AI in running insurance companies. Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

It is better now, the AI does not go bankrupt as quickly and one of my competitors seems to be doing okay-ish. But the AI is still underwhelming on the standard settings. Even after 30+ years they still are not making much money and one the companies went bankrupt around the 30 year mark (which is a longer period than before):
https://file.io/Z7gjwt8VTS7L

Still better then before but I still think it needs improvements. Generally speaking my strategy was to go stock heavy in the early game, but I have noticed that the AI seems to favour bonds more. This I think tends to reduce their long term income quite a bit as the bonds don't seem to be enough to get them going (especially since the premium income is not very high for them).

[David]

Still better then before but I still think it needs improvements. Generally speaking my strategy was to go stock heavy in the early game, but I have noticed that the AI seems to favour bonds more. This I think tends to reduce their long term income quite a bit as the bonds don't seem to be enough to get them going (especially since the premium income is not very high for them).

The new patch v10.0.32 has improved AI in running Insurance companies. They now allocate a larger percentage of their assets to stock investments.

[Stylesjl]

Still better then before but I still think it needs improvements. Generally speaking my strategy was to go stock heavy in the early game, but I have noticed that the AI seems to favour bonds more. This I think tends to reduce their long term income quite a bit as the bonds don't seem to be enough to get them going (especially since the premium income is not very high for them).

The new patch v10.0.32 has improved AI in running Insurance companies. They now allocate a larger percentage of their assets to stock investments.

This seems to have made them a lot more financially stable now. They first burn through a steady amount of capital for several years, then the investments start bringing in the profits. I have also noticed a number of other behaviour improvements such as better pricing of the insurance premiums to compete against one another. This helps to attract more money which allows them to investment and generate returns, so they are now reasonably profitable.

In general however I have noticed that when I run a company for more than 30 years the life insurance policies start declining sharply in profitability. It seems that the AI struggles to handle this, some of them end up going bankrupt as a result. Even as a human player I find handling the life insurance payouts difficult. It isn't necessarily fatal if you are careful, but it does start to become a real drain on the company.

Example of how this is going in one of my games where my Equity Capital is being eroded and I am trying to be careful as I am still stock investment heavy, however one of my major competitors went bankrupt and my other one Star Ultima has been bleeding cash for many years and might go bankrupt in a few years.

I have linked to this save game here so you can have a look:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/126n9o_ ... drive_link