How to Survive Bust Cycles

[Jojo_ba]

Hello all,

I've been playing CapLab for a couple years but have been away from the game from some time. Last time I played it was version 8.something and I don't remember bust cycles being this harsh.

It's the second campaign I'm in this version and the bust cycle in all cities just kills my annual revenue. Not enough to actually kill my company but enough that my "numbers must go up" brain gets startled. Going from ~300 kk a year to 60kk in ~3 years seems quite a punch to take, especially when the numbers don't go back to normal when the cycle ends.

Maybe retailing can only take you so far, and that's okay. It could be that my strategy worked great from the 1990s to '05 but not after.

So, how do you guys survive bust cycles? And what can I do to come back from this?

Thanks for reading. Cheers!

[Stylesjl]

Not sure about the cycles, I haven't really noticed any major differences between the versions.

What kinds of settings are you playing on? When you say the second Campaign do you mean the Real Estate Mogul scenario? I don't really notice any major fluctuations for income in that scenario.

[Jojo_ba]

Not sure about the cycles, I haven't really noticed any major differences between the versions.

What kinds of settings are you playing on? When you say the second Campaign do you mean the Real Estate Mogul scenario? I don't really notice any major fluctuations for income in that scenario.

This is not a scenario, just a custom game! The difficulty is set at 4, and the only change is starting from 1990 instead of 2000.

Maybe city competition kicking in? I'm not sure what would cause profits to drop that much as my market share and profit margins per product don't seem to be affected.

[Stylesjl]

Okay, in that case I don't know. I would have to see the savegame I think but if it is difficulty 4 then I don't see any compelling reason that the boom-bust cycle would be a problem.

Diff4.png (7.77 KiB) Viewed 1802 times

[Jojo_ba]

Oh, well. I will mess around in the game and try to figure it out. Maybe there is something obvious I'm missing.

I've tried to attach the save file here, but it says the file extension is not valid.

Thanks for the replies, tho!

[cantdownloadit]

I've tried to attach the save file here, but it says the file extension is not valid.

you need to zip it with something like 7zip first, and limit is 5mb for posting on forum, if its larger use googledrive or drop box or something

[whiskiz]

heey this may've just solved a question i had and was about to post, which in turn may solve your question

i was going to make a post asking if there's a point to making anything other than things like new tech (phones/computers etc) and automobiles, because they seem so insanely more profitable than 90% of the rest of the things that it unfortunately made most of the stuff seem obsolete

but then i saw this thread, looked at those highly profitable products "necessity index" and saw they're mostly low

an answer to my question may be "there is a point to making other things because they have high necessity index, for bust cycles" and the answer to your question "you survive bust cycles by making sure you also sell important/high necessity index items, not just highly profitable (but low necessity) products - for when the bad times hit"

if the above is true, then that was a great way and idea to balance things, adding that much more depth to the game

P.S due to seemingly no bust cycles in base game scenario's? the last scenario (15) was way too easy even on hardest difficulty, i just spammed a basic automobile industry and won in 5 years (which is why i was about to make the above post) but any number of the above mentioned highly profitable things could've been made. it's great it's open ended (instead of a specific dominance goal) and that it's overall profit and market cap targets as a way to end the base scenario line, but at least on the hardest difficulty the targets should be alot higher than what 150M annual profit? should have to build a veritable empire to end the base scenario's on, at least 500M profit and 5B market cap (instead of 2B) but still enjoyed and can't wait for the DLC's!

[David]

should have to build a veritable empire to end the base scenario's on, at least 500M profit and 5B market cap (instead of 2B) but still enjoyed and can't wait for the DLC's!

I've forwarded your suggestion for increasing the goal targets for the "Multinational Corporation" scenario to the dev team.

If you have suggestions for adjusting the goal targets for other scenarios, please let me know.

[David]

Oh, well. I will mess around in the game and try to figure it out. Maybe there is something obvious I'm missing.

I've tried to attach the save file here, but it says the file extension is not valid.

Thanks for the replies, tho!

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