when an AI sets up a factory / mine / retailer or whatever then a few days later they set up another mine / factory / farm etc whatever cant keep up with demand
on mines/timber camps / oil wells
they should wait a bit as a mine just setup got to start realizing its potential, or could add a few more harvest/mine units as a single timber camp i.e. can more then sufficient oversupply a single leather boots factory but the AI starts 2 or even 3 timber camps for 1 single factory
same with farms each companywith a single factory got endless farms of same product and each of those farms crazy extended oversupplying them in a month time by 385 trillion %
that counts for every single raw input for factories
now this is going on then towards semi products and final products everything double tripple or more just because in the first days the demand of the produced good cant be met because a new factory or a new shop is of course draining heavily on a brand new company just starting its production.
as an example ... i set up a timber camp and 1 logging unit would be enough to supply a single factory of leather boots for a long time
now .. i had to set em up with 4 logging units and full training to satisfy the AIs demand after the i think 7 days until he wanted to see his minimum accepted supply shortage. and it takes about 2 month with 4 logging units now at lvl 2 to get supply equal demand but now the demand gonna drop as factory only needs about 5k timber a month for the sold units they produce and 4 timber units lvl 2 push out 3.333 x 1.2 x 4 = 15.998 units a day / 479.952 units a month!!!! by 5.000 units demand so alone the wages and overhead will make a unit of timber cost 44.600 a month with training turned off + 0.50 for reserve thats a whopping $9.42 a month per timber as cost of production while a single logging unit in a timber camp will be $4.36 per timber as cost of production with a monthly supply of 120k timber by 5k timber demand
now if the AI would own the timber camp he would ve 3 or 4 camps by now with a 100.000 a month overhead (if only 1 logging units each camp) thats $20 a timber unit as production costs for the AI
going to the leather ... 1 large farm processing unit lvl 1 will squeeze out 22.500 leather? 10k boots = 20k Leather by about 530k for the large farm - $8.83 per leather given that the AI gonna use the remaining 6 units of the farm effectively for something else.
now the AI got already 3 large farms open up in fiorst month only leather thats a whopping $79.50 per unit of leather he uses makes it $170 total cost of rawmaterial + factory expenses for those leather boots sold at $28.50 ... perfect by 10k boots the AI will make a whopping loss of $1.400.000 a month - i d sack him immediately for incompetence if thats be my company
maybe set a the AIs "supply demand expectation" check for new companies on a waiting time of 30 days instead of the about 5 or 7 days for regular firms, so that the usual check if supple meets the AIs expectation is delayed as a company of anytime rolling on does need about 2 month to get utilization to 100% and in case of the supply is owned by AI ... then AI should setup more mining/oil drill/logging units ... more farm units on farming products + if enabled extension of farms ....more manufacturing units by semi products before they clutter the city with more unneeded mines/farms/factories that will leech the AI millions of overhead a year
the last ... retail stores ... AIs which tend to sell their crap in their own stores have another superb ability of 1 Factory ... and as sales aint going up ... set up 385 trillion retail stores for the product instead of adding a new factory to keep up with the demand of their stores.
here i would maybe make the AI a check like
If (produced units < sold units in retail), (Then (factory maxed out=no,increase production slots in factory), ELSE (set up new factory)), Else (setup new sales purchase/units in store or open new store)
though in a 1 city game this wont be the case as i modded/scripted the game settings to make a single factory beeing able to met demand on most products for a single city as a measure to help the AI behave better / as a measure to save space on city map as with all the DLCs theres just not enough space for more then 3-5 farms and factories + 3 RnD per company per city even by 100 products thats not enough space to produce all