Two Methods To Beat The Game

[Duckruck]

Method 1: Subsidiary Credit Fraud

1. Pause
2. Set up Subsidiary A with some capital
3. Have Subsidiary A borrow as much as possible. A bank loan may be used, but bonds are preferable.
4. Set up subsidiary B with that cash again
5. Repeat 2 to 4 until you are satisfied or your borrowing capacity is (basically) exhausted.
6. Have the last subsidiary Z do an IPO (if you set up a real money supply, then be careful not to make subsidiary Z too big.
7. Have subsidiary Y, the company that holds Z, sell off all of Z's shares
8. Use the parent company to acquire 50.1% of Z's shares, and then have Z issue shares to the parent company until the parent company holds 75% of Z's shares. Or just let the parent company acquire 75% of the shares.
9. Use the parent company to merge with Z. The parent company can use borrowing to pay for the cost of the acquisition.
10. Repeat 2 through 9 until you are satisfied or until the borrowable funds are (essentially) exhausted.
11. Profit,

This method can greatly, if not infinitely, expand your capital without using any time at all, and can be utilised to borrow to crush a competitor who has opened a bank that you are trying to destroy.

Method 2: Bond Fraud.

You need to have the appropriate DLC as well as the bond feature enabled.

1, Pause
2. Issue bonds up to the limit if possible.
3. Cancel the suspension.
4. The price of the bonds you issue falls extremely low.
5. Buy back the bonds.
6, Profit.

This can also be executed until you are satisfied or until your borrowing capacity is close to the cap.

The downside is that it's best to have some history of original profitability to minimise inputs, and it requires more inputs and takes real-life and in-game time.

Bonus 1: Political corruption.

1. Win the mayorship of one or more cities through elections.
2. Borrow as much money as possible in your governmental capacity.
3. Sell government-controlled condominiums, commercial buildings and media companies to your company. These companies are often a good source of cash flow.
4. Use your company to buy some low-priced land in the area.
5. Increase the value of the land by building or moving public or private buildings in your capacity as a government.
6. Sell these lands.
7. Repeat 4-6 until the city runs out of its cash.

If you want sustainable extraction, then increase the government surplus through high taxes + low government spending, and then extract that surplus to your company in a similar way.

Bonus 2: Planned obsolescence.

The most profitable products are not electric cars or smartphones, but softwares (especially the OS) that reaches the latest technology and are updated every 6 months to attract a buying frenzy.

[Stylesjl]

These are some pretty interesting exploits.

1) The borrowing limit problem I think is partly due to the game treating cash as assets you can borrow against, even if that cash came from the loan in the first place. Normally the game only allows you to borrow up to 100% of your assets (bonds have a higher limit potentially), which makes sense if you already have cash, but then you can borrow up to 100% of that borrowed money, which is not the right way to do it I think. By just excluding borrowed money from asset calculations (including subsidiary borrowed money) this loophole could be closed.

2) I think the one with bonds lowering in price is interesting because in real life it makes sense for bond prices to fall if the credit risk is too high, but I think this exploit could be fixed by simply introducing a delay factor - maybe make the credit rating change take some time to occur or maybe just make it so that companies can't buy back their own bonds too quickly.

3) The political corruption part is great, I love exploiting the public treasury to raise the value of my land. Its an indirect way of extracting money from your competition. Kind of like real life. I suppose removing this exploit (if you would call it that) would be kind of difficult as it would involve a whole lot of controls on political authority. I suppose however that an option to disable running for Mayor on certain game modes/scripts might be a good idea.

4) Yes, software every 6 months is a great way to make money. Best way to fix this is to lower the benefit of updating software every 6 months and increase the benefit of longer intervals.