Beginner questions

[maddy83]

Hello,

I just bought the game and I am loving it so far. I have a few beginner questions though. I am having hard time with the basics such as how to price my products and how to operate retail stores, and I am struggling to make a profit. I am playing with the 2.1 beta version.

I usually manufacture a product myself. The usual scenario what happens is that my products have good demand and my sales units have maximum ulitization, but I am still not making very much money.

1. How should I price my products? I usually set it so that my product rating is slightly better than the city average. And I always adjust my price lower at the beginning to increase the demand bar, and raise the price after the product has a solid demand. So the question is, is there any benefit for setting lower prices than this, and getting a significantly better product rating than the city average?

2. Does the 100% utilization of a sales unit work as I understand it to work, meaning the sales unit is selling at maximum capacity, and cannot sell any more regardless of price, product rating and other factors? How can I sell more? I have used training to upgrade my sales units to levels 2,3 or 4, but it has limited effect.

3. Is it better to sell many different products in 1 retail store, rather then the whole store selling just 1 product? I seem to do better when one store sells multiple products. However, even if I have a store which sells just 1 product, and demand is STILL very high, according to my logic that store should still sell a lot since it should be based on demand. So, as long as there is heavy demand, shouldn't 4 sales units of the same product sell 4 times as much as 1 sales unit does?

4. What is a good balance between opening new retails stores / advertising / training existing retail stores to higher level?

Like I said, I am still very beginner, having played only 2 days or so. Thanks in advance for any help.

[magiclight]

Hi there,

firstly, you should check out this post:http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... f=11&t=475
I find the amount of training to be rather important, its one of the bigger expenditures. If your not fully utilizing your shops/factory then slash it!
That said, in regards to question 2 I think you're right, though when you get level 8-9 it seems at least doubly as effective as a base level 1 unit.

The three things to influence the profit of a product in my opinion are price, brand and size of market. Products like food seem to be profitable from the start, whereas laptops are not. For tech items I R&D my tech to 100 before entering the market, then take my brand to 100, which results in a large profit. This allows me to increase my margins by 150%+.

I've not been playing so long myself, but I hope I've helped in a small way.

Regards,
Magic

[Esoteric Rogue]

Hello,
1. How should I price my products? I usually set it so that my product rating is slightly better than the city average. And I always adjust my price lower at the beginning to increase the demand bar, and raise the price after the product has a solid demand. So the question is, is there any benefit for setting lower prices than this, and getting a significantly better product rating than the city average?

2. Does the 100% utilization of a sales unit work as I understand it to work, meaning the sales unit is selling at maximum capacity, and cannot sell any more regardless of price, product rating and other factors? How can I sell more? I have used training to upgrade my sales units to levels 2,3 or 4, but it has limited effect.

3. Is it better to sell many different products in 1 retail store, rather then the whole store selling just 1 product? I seem to do better when one store sells multiple products. However, even if I have a store which sells just 1 product, and demand is STILL very high, according to my logic that store should still sell a lot since it should be based on demand. So, as long as there is heavy demand, shouldn't 4 sales units of the same product sell 4 times as much as 1 sales unit does?

4. What is a good balance between opening new retails stores / advertising / training existing retail stores to higher level?

Well, first I would recommend to anybody would be play through the cap2 tutorials / scenarios, which provide a generally smooth progression of AI skill level. Although your questions do sound more advanced I'm curious what level of competitors you're play on ... My personal experience has always been that too easy is too easy and too hard is too hard.

#1 I think you're pretty spot on. There is one "game" aspect, where you might set a much better price in order to take a loss, forcing your competitors to take a loss, with the hope of driving them bankrupt before you go bankrupt... but I think that doesn't works as well as it used to. The AI rarely seems to put all it's eggs in one basket these days.

There is a point that if you're selling as many products as you physical can, but there is still more demand, you can probably raise price. Usually you're still going to continue selling as many as possible, and frankly the increase in profit is good. I will point out that it's somewhat risky... when you finally raise the price so high that they stop buying them, they seem to stop buying any at all. Full stop. If you're play in a manner where you don't babysit your retail stores, I would not suggest this.

#2 Yea, I think you're think of it right. Just increase training. I generally always end up with retail stores at level 9 but I'm not-over zealous of training either. Training is fairly cheap, tho. It's not a 1:1 ratio, that is a level 2 unit does not sell twice as much as a level one. The specifics are given in the manual, I believe. (Yea, level 9 sales sells 5times as much and has 5times capacity) Actually, I realize one off my personal rules is that I never do zero training unless I'm fighting against impending bankruptcy. Maybe as little as 1%, but since training has no loss even a mere 1% per month will eventually add up. (Unlike advertising, where I realized if you not advertising enough to make a noticeable change, it's just being wasted)

#3 Well, tho only thing there is the obvious intonations of diversification. If you're only selling one product, if there is a slump, your whole store will suffer.; whereas with multiple products you have a buffer that should prevent complete revenue collapse. Yes, I do believe 4 sales units sell 4 times as many products under high demand.

#4 Well, that's kind the key to the game. Allow me to say I don't think there is a magic ratio dictating any kind of balance. I mean, the decision on building a new store is not based on my advertising or training. If demand is high, my training is high. If my competition is fierce, I advertise more. I open new stores as often as my profit margin an market opportunity will allow me. If there's a significant piece of whitespace left in the market pie chart, I intend to build a new store as soon as I can afford it ... but I'm not going to drop training or advertising to do it, that would be kind of too extreme micromanagement.

Hope I helped.

[maddy83]

Thanks for the helpful answers.

I am playing on easiest difficulty with few custom changes. I started a new game, this time focusing on retail sales instead of manufacturing, and food products seem to be really good as suggested. This time I did really good, beat out all competitors quite easily and reached my goals in just three years. I will have to try medium difficulty setting next.

For me it seems that my retail stores work best when I don't have multiple sales units selling the same product. With 2 sales units selling the same product, it seemed as if another one didn't sell anything at all (utilization was at 100%, but the inventory of the sales unit never decreased). The non-working sales unit also was never trained and stayed at level 1, while the another one trained to level 3. So, at least to me, it appears if the 2nd sales unit is not working. For now I will not create multiple sales units for the same product inside the same store.

[Esoteric Rogue]

With 2 sales units selling the same product, it seemed as if another one didn't sell anything at all (utilization was at 100%, but the inventory of the sales unit never decreased). The non-working sales unit also was never trained and stayed at level 1, while the another one trained to level 3. So, at least to me, it appears if the 2nd sales unit is not working. For now I will not create multiple sales units for the same product inside the same store.

Yea that definitely describes the situation where you don't need a second sales unit -- although I'm puzzle why the utilization was at 100. I'll have to keep an eye out for that. But hey... with two sales units I use two purchasing units.

I took a shot from my video to show when multiple sales units do work, which is pretty much when the opposite of everything you said is true. Inventories are constantly decrease and the training of all units is fairly even.

Have fun!

[azxcvbnm321]

I've also noticed that one sales unit will advance faster than the other, but it's usually only one level behind. I've done experiments and having two sales units both running at 100% definitely sells more than just one unit alone.

The above layout is the most efficient if you want to advertise one or all of the products. I usually only have one or two retail stores in each product category with the above layout. The other stores stock 3 products and are all linked to double sales units.

The problem with retail alone is that you don't have control of quality and the competition is brutal as competitors will always move in and sell the same stuff you're selling. I'm playing at harder difficulties. To limit competition, you need to manufacture a superior product which takes R&D and then build up the brand. I hate advertising products that aren't manufactured in house as it builds up the brand of the manufacturer who can sell their product to anyone.

[WilliamMGary]

I hate advertising products that aren't manufactured in house as it builds up the brand of the manufacturer who can sell their product to anyone.

Private label while you prepare to start manufacturing the item. That way you gain something.


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Now in this thread I've seen a few people talk about training until the unit is at lvl 9. I don't understand that ideology. I only train when utilization is at 100% (however 80% would be a good point to start). As in the example of the two sales unit one had a higher unit number and one had a lvl 1 and wasn't moving units, this to me shows that the store is overstaffed in sales and the lvl 1 sales unit can be remove without any affect on the retail store. Also Retail is a "margin" business you want turn over as high as possible. The higher your unit lvl is the more product that is being brought into the store which is an expense (not an asset). Is my logical in this wrong headed?

[azxcvbnm321]

Good tip, thanks.

[pengchuande]

Nice.

[Timofmars]

Also Retail is a "margin" business you want turn over as high as possible. The higher your unit lvl is the more product that is being brought into the store which is an expense (not an asset). Is my logical in this wrong headed?

Haha, is this a brainfart or some kind of typo? You will have increased expenses from buying more product, but also increased sales volume.