Suggestions from players

[LennyLeak]

My most wanted features of the Addon are these:
1. More products
2. Increased number of cities in a game
3. Corporate taxation
4. Possibility of naming individual firms
5. Possibility of naming individual brands



A more flexibile way to manage labor and output would also be nice.
Something that would be really cool, is if you could have an operational state in each firm.
Like a 3 setting option:
option 1: Force overtime (increasing output for a short period but unproportional to cost.)
option 2: Normal (business as usual)
option 3: Force time off (decreasing output for a short time but unproportional to the decreased salary expense).
The timespan could be say 3 months, and then the setting would default to normal and remain fixed for say 6months, simulating that you can not expect your workforce to work continued overtime.

[kaleckton]

Edit: I removed what was here because when I submitted what I was going to add, it deleted everything and barely left a paragraph. I think I wrote something too long, I'll retry it differently next time.

[Webby64286]

The scope of Capitalism in the real world is so vast that to attempt to re-create it would be too complex and daunting so my suggestions are based on what has been done already. There’s a lot to talk about so I’ll try to put these in several posts that don’t get too big and stay on topic. First, let’s talk about Capitalism 2 “the Game”. It should be noted that my favorite game of all time is Civilization 1(not 2,3 or 4). 20 years later I am still challenged by this game at the hardest level because of some very basic game concepts, which can be incorporated into Cap 2. They are:
There should be a definite way or ways to win the game, an objective to beat your competitors. If you don’t achieve these objectives you lose the game. What keeps me playing Civ 1 20 years later? the fact that I often lose. I know I can set up objectives myself in Cap 2 but the AI is so terrible (more throughout all posts) that my only opponent is time. While this makes for a pleasurable activity, the fact that I never lose to an AI competitor makes for an unchallenging and thus unfulfilling game. Some ideas are; achieving x amount of money in a given time, going from a public company to a private company in a certain time frame or on the more fantastic side, being the first to build some futuristic product like a flying car or time machine (major R&D resources needed).
Change the way the game is scored. Too much of the score is based upon wealth and not enough on dominated products or industries. With proper AI it should be very hard to dominate these. I play where I control everything from mine to store (in the real world unrealistic but in the game the best way to make the most money) and because I play to beat my competitors (why else do you play a game?) I ‘internal sale’ everything. As it stands now, the AI competitors will produce leather wallets and livestock products and a few other simple items, maybe they’ll open a mine and even build a semi-product or two but I have never seen them build any complex products and once their mine is depleted, they don’t build another.
Lower the amount of competitors. All good or great games cap the amount of competitors to 6 or 8. This would also help with the poor AI problem, which I’ll talk a little about now. I’ve noticed in most great games the AI competitors are very good but each tends to have a flaw that is put in there on purpose. Part of the challenge is to exploit these flaws and use it against them. In Cap 2 it could be one competitor doesn’t spend enough on R&D, another doesn’t brand very well or changes brand strategy too often, another may expand too quickly and that hurts them in some way. Once the competitor goes under another one does not take its place.
For me, the one question I would ask myself if I were developing a game like this that has competitors is, "At it's most basic level would this make a good board game?" If the answer is no you don't have a good 'game'.
One final thing for now which goes back to my first point. Stop treating this 'game' as some sort of comprehensive business simulation or capitalist simulation game. You can't. If you took everyone at Electronic Arts and had them devote every waking hour to that purpose even they couldn't do it. It's too complex.

That’s it for now until the next post

[Webby64286]

I've decided not to post the ton of things that need improving but to limit it to 3 major things,

1. Drastically improve the AI
2. Improve the interface. In a nutshell, decrease the amount of clicks necessary to find or do something.
3. As noted in the previous post, improve the 'game' aspect. 90% of the problems I have with Capitalism II stem from this problem. If my goal is to eliminate the competition, then problems like the 'Auto Link Supplier' logic get fixed and that would really fix the interface problems.

Build a good foundation of a game and then make changes to the realism of the game. The trick is to make meaningful improvements that the player can easily understand and implement while not overloading them with minutae (which can be a very easy trap to fall into given the scope of the subject of the game).

After having looked at some of the proposed changes from other posts, I fear that Enlight is focusing on some very unimportant changes. I used to work in the marketing department of a business newsletter company and as print media started to wane, they branched out to online executive education. The marketing manager of that new division (a very smart guy) got so hung up on what the plaque or certificate (I forget which one they received upon completion) looked like that the important things like course selection and content fell by the wayside. They fired him. I mention that story to say this: You have the foundation of an all-time classic game but from what I've seen so far, you're getting hung up on the plaque.

[Webby64286]

AJ you're playing the game wrong. You wrote:

"Thus far, I have found it far more cost effective to dedicate one store to a single product. For example, I would build one store to sell socks, then another store to sell shoes. The reason I do this is because the engine gives me greater demand for my product and I can push a lot more volume. Now, if I build a store up so that all the 3x3 squares are at a training level of 9, I can still have enough demand to justify opening another store. When I build a store (right next door) with the same product and the same price, the overall sales dramatically decreases to the point where I can shut down one of my factories.

This model has a lot of advantages for me. First, all of my sales for a single product within a city are in one place. I can put like stores together (i.e. Shoes/socks) to make them easy to find. And I have a simple supply chain where three large factories can provide enough product for 4 sales units within the store. There is enough profit in this model where I can make $3-4 billion / year in profit."

Let me explain. There is a limit to how much you can sell of a given product in each city. That's what the market share is. You can't sell 4 million pairs of socks in a city of 1 million. Your idea of devoting 1 product per store is ludicrous. If you have one purchasing unit and one sales unit at level 9 in your retail store you get what I call a retail ceiling for each product (provided your factory supplies that purchasing unit properly). The whole way you play the game is to work backwards from that retail ceiling. The retail ceiling of socks is 630,000 per month with the layout I described above. In cities of around 2 million that will give you approximately a 2/3 market share in that city. Which means the market cap for socks in that city is roughly 1 million. You could open another store and each would sell 500,000 or add another purchasing and sales unit for that product in your current store and that store would sell 1 million but that's all. I can satisfy that 630,000 number with 1 farm and 1 small factory. Look at the red demand bar in your large factories, they're probably barely visible, this is the first sign that your set-up is way too inefficient. You are spending more than 10 times the amount than I am to achieve the same number. I have an annual profit of $20 billion because I make every product and sell it in every city. The challenge of this game isn't to make money, anybody can do that. The challenge is to maximize profitability by figuring out factory size and layout, the type of stores to sell your product in and to minimize shipping costs . When you know what the retail ceilings are you can then manage your products (not your stores) from the product detail report screen to make sure you're hitting your numbers.

[Webby64286]

Some idea for the expansion:

Possible to build warehouses to solve the issue of manually having to load balance between multiple large factories all producing the same product. You might have a number of large factories all producing cars in the same area. As you build more automobile outlets you have to carefully balance which factory each of them purchase their cars from to ensure optimal utilization across all the factories and a steady stream of cars to all locations. Supply problems and other issues that cause fluctuations in the production flow of one specific car factory means that you have to manually switch around some or all of the automobile outlets that purchase from this factory. A warehouse could be a special purpose factory-like firm that only allow purchase, inventory, labelling and sales units and those units have extremely high throughput.

Multiplayer co-op. Two or more players can play the same company. If you take over another player controlled company you have the option to share control of the company (full control) with this player or possibly delegate only certain types of work (in charge of raw-material production, manufacturing, control of all firms in Sydney).

More in-depth simulation of transportation and logistics.

Better AI.

Game replays.

You can do Game replays just save the game as soon as it starts then save it under another name once you get rolling. Your ideas about better AI and logistics to me are spot on. If they fix the freight charges where you don't price yourself out of the market when shipping from city to city (try shipping an Air Conditioner from China to New York) then it would make sense to have large factories producing enough for the world and a warehouse (more than just a 3x3 grid) in each city to distribute goods and materials from your far-flung empire. Overseas shipping would have to be cost effective from an economies of scale perspective. In other words, you would have to load the cargo ship with at least 3 months worth of product before it sets sail. I wouldn't send 2,000 Air Conditioners (or whatever the capacity is for the factory sales unit at level 9 although I think that's pretty close) at a time but more like 100,000. You could go to the seaport and see the progress on how far your ship is to being fully loaded. This is more realistic and would be one way to fix the freight charge problem(s)

[pshawny]

I would like to have a simple transportation company that I can own so that shipping costs can be reduced and I can make money off of the competition similar to advertising.

[David]

1. It's a bit too easy to get rich by starting the game with trading stocks only. For many times I've owned over half of the total stock value of all players with only trading stocks and buying out advertising firms etc. It works more often than not. Something in the game engine makes computer corp stocks too volatile. A 50-year old succesful AI company still does those rock-bottoms and highs at least once in a decade, like from $200 to $4000 stock price variation back and forth, and a rich player can make lots of profit on that. Somewhat unrealistic but not impossible in reality, perhaps not as repetitious and predictable. I don't remember having seen any corp in the game without that volatility.

Media firms are now more much more expensive to acquire.
The crop growing capacity of farm growing units has been increased, allowing a larger amount of crops to be stored. Farm’s profitability also improves a bit thanks to this change.

4. So far there is only goods to produce, except advertising companies. Could add some more services to sell but I don't know how to categorize them. There should perhaps be a comprehensive list of services like there is of goods or then just some 'general' things similar to the advertising companies, with similar simple settings like how much money to put into developing the service etc.

The new features on real estate development should add varieties to the gameplay.

Check out this topic:
http://7kfans.com/capforum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=222

5. Perhaps an option to donate to different charities to help the world.. rainforests, areas in famine, things like that. Just a few options of which players could choose and it could work as PR stuff for the company. It also gives a sense of morality which doesn't hurt if the game is used as an educational tool as well. There could be a possibility to view statistics about how much players have donated to different charities. Computer players could also make donations. Nowadays we all have to take into account common good, why not in business sims.

You are now given the option to donate to the city by building and funding the operations of public community buildings and sports facilities.

6. An option to let computer players start a certain amount of months/years before the player. It's easy to make, just fast forward the game at the beginning with a loading screen for example.

You can easily produce a similar effect by letting the game run at the highest speed for a few years and let your computer remain idle during the period.

7. When I begin many 10-year R&D's with max training funds, the stock price drops. The game could take into account the ongoing projects, otherwise it's one too easy(exploit) way to buy my own stock. There could be other similar ways found to lower stock price in the game, those should be changed. R&D projects results should be subject to random chance, like 50% variation in the tech rate raise for each project.

This has been addressed. Please see these threads:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=231
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=237

8. 'Local' competitors could buy tech too, so that it's easier to get tech sold if a player wants to concentrate on R&D for example. Computer players can be quite hesitant on making those offers.

In the new version, computer players are now more willing to buy tech.

[David]

12. When trading stocks, the price and percentage adjusting function is too fast, can't use it accurately.

This has been fixed.

15. When the game has been going on for decades and some computer players go bankrupt, the newcomer corps never seem to be succesful. Perhaps the game should grant them a couple of free techs equivalent to highest current tech, or some other advantage.

This has been improved. Newcomer corps will buy tech from tech-focused companies, making them in much better positions to compete with established market leaders.

17. Why can't I supply retail stores straight from farms. Shops sell strawberries and other veggies in real world too.

In supermarkets, you can already sell frozen meat orderd directly from farms.

18. Computer players don't make use of natural resource sites. Many times there is a huge demand for them whenever I build any kind of mine/oil well/etc.. It's not about cost-effectiveness at least, and computers usually have large cash reserves which they still don't use for this so it's not about them not having enough money for the sites. It's currently way too easy to make money by buying out the resource sites, there should be much more competition for them and perhaps a possibility to always make an offer to a computer player to buy out their resource site (and other firms?) even if they are not on sale, and they should always have some upper limit on the buyout offer which they always accept, a very high one though.

This has been addressed. You may see details at:
http://7kfans.com/capforum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=254

19. Selling price for resource sites could be determined by the game like this: All resource sites could be owned by the city or government at the beginning of the game, also those newly discovered sites, and government always builds a mine to it, uses an effective layout and sells at rate 20 for example, and the site is always for sale after one year of operation in which time the selling price is determined by the basic site value and the last year average demand for that industrial good. If the selling price can be determined effectively without all this crap, all the better. The bottom line is that many sites go much too cheap. Players could also place bids for a few months after the first bid for a site is made, to bring up the price even more.

This natural resource issue has been addressed with this solution:
http://7kfans.com/capforum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=254

26. Computer players make offers to buy my tech too often for same tech. There could be a limit, one offer per tech per three years for example. No offers should be made on same tech from 'several' AI players on the same year, only the highest offer. Another good idea is an option to block those offers completely. Sometimes I'm clicking 'forget it' -button 20 times per game year while I have no intention to sell anything. As I've said before in this post somewhere, I don't mean that it's always easy to get tech sold. I've sometimes concentrated on R&D and tried to live off that, and then AI players(10 of them) don't seem to make enough of those offers and I go bankrupt often. So I would decrease only the too often repeating offers for same techs, not decrease them in any other way.

The AI of the computer players in buying new tech has been improved in the new version.

[David]

16. In retail stores, the product images sometimes disappear for some products which have active sales units in the firm. I could have sales units selling 4-5 products and two images visible. So I can't change prices from there etc. The image should stay as long as there is one purchasing unit with a supplier linked to it or sales unit which has stock left.

This should have been fixed in the new version.

21. When I own over 75%(even 100%) of some other corp's stock, the CEO of that corp (computer player) can still sell the stock of other corps that his corp owns and issue new shares. It's a pain in the ass if I want to use the cash of that corp to buy some other corp's stock (computer just sells them away). Sometimes I owned 100% and then it's back to 15% - computer CEO went trigger happy with the 'issue new shares' button without my agreement. The game could ask an agreement for it first. In reality, I believe, that the majority (75% or so) vote of stockholder(s) decide of all stock-related things, not CEO. I could solve the problem with a merger but I don't want to because the computer does all the management for free, and it makes the corp profitable/easy to handle.

In the new version, your subsidiary companies will not trade stock on their own. But they will still issue new shares, as they may run out of cash from time to time and need to issue new shares to raise funds.

25. When the training level of any unit reaches level 9, it still continues training but does not affect anything I think. There are those red guys turning to blue guys at level 9 too but the game considers only the level, according to manual. When all units reach level 9 the training costs should be halted even if the training slider is at max.

Any units that have reached level 9 will no longer incur any training costs, regardless of the training slider’s settings.

26. Computer players make offers to buy my tech too often for same tech. There could be a limit, one offer per tech per three years for example. No offers should be made on same tech from 'several' AI players on the same year, only the highest offer. Another good idea is an option to block those offers completely. Sometimes I'm clicking 'forget it' -button 20 times per game year while I have no intention to sell anything. As I've said before in this post somewhere, I don't mean that it's always easy to get tech sold. I've sometimes concentrated on R&D and tried to live off that, and then AI players(10 of them) don't seem to make enough of those offers and I go bankrupt often. So I would decrease only the too often repeating offers for same techs, not decrease them in any other way.

The AI of the computer players in buying new tech has been improved in the new version.