Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

eleaza wrote:

donaciello wrote:Great stuff there, your link to the patch works well.

As for the R&D issue, I've bought many R&D centers from my AI-competitors, who were selling their R&D's close to the CBD.
Everything else was already taken, so I figured it would be a good deal to buy them up, demolish the firm, put a convenience store in their place and enjoy a foottraffic index up to 98.

The R&D centers themselves aren't quite special; all of them are 9 units connected per firm, researching for 10 years.
I've also bought tech from AI competitors, when I decided impulsively to manufacture stuff myself, so as to get my farms closer to break-even, in which case a 10 year wait for a decent tech rating is too cumbersome.

I don't think I ever run any game this far into the future before. I think I only go as far as about 2040 when I basically dominate every products (or control subsidiaries dominate them), then got bored and tired of micromanaging everything. I don't usually update every tech or research every one of them with fully connected 9 units, when the tech level is high enough, and no one is competing against me. And tech level goes into crazy high without tech disruption ON.

Normal inflation make everything so expensive when running for a century, I think it inflate the price like 10 times or higher already?

I personally love taking a game far into the future.
In fact, I played a Cap II game beyond the year 4000, without doing the dirty stockexploits, but never owning even a single firm, just speculating my way into total domination of all assets.

CPI was close to 10x original in the savegame I posted, but I'm not sure, because I haven't taken my saves into the new version I got from you.

Dominating all products seems like a tough challenge :p, but I might give it a try with caplab, since the game is much better balanced than the CapII I had, where things like paper/dyestuff/citric-acid would send any AI into ch.11

The CMO actually turned out to be a great help for pricing too.
What's your take one those C-suite hires?
Do you use them all?
What are they best at?

Thanks in advance!

donaciello wrote: The CMO actually turned out to be a great help for pricing too.
What's your take one those C-suite hires?
Do you use them all?
What are they best at?

Thanks in advance!

I've recently post my take on naughty CTO in one of my post, http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... f=7&t=3825

As to CMO, it depends on brand strategy, for range or corporate brand, there's no need for CMO using these brand strategies for the most part, and if I have total control of media firms, then there's also no need for CMO. I think CMO only being helpful with unique brand, and early on CMO's salary is cheap enough that its boost in advertising outweighs its expense.

As for COO, I don't actually use it much, since I like to micromanage every detail. However in the past, before subsidiary DLC to split different sectors for subsidiary CEOs to run independently, COO can be somewhat helpful managing retail stores and its expertise level can provide immediate boost to unit level, especially useful for retails, manufacturing, or even raw material production (like crop level, directly affects quality and profit). However I feel its salary is unreasonably high in the core game, sometimes its salary outweighs the profit gained (although there's a way to change their salaries with scripts I think, never big on script myself, so not too sure what's the balancing point).

donaciello wrote: The R&D centers themselves aren't quite special; all of them are 9 units connected per firm, researching for 10 years.
I've also bought tech from AI competitors, when I decided impulsively to manufacture stuff myself, so as to get my farms closer to break-even, in which case a 10 year wait for a decent tech rating is too cumbersome.

I finally found the AI subsidiary that causing the ai_rd crash - "Revolver" (the last red color one on the corporate list).
If you merger it (by borrowing some cash and gain 75% share), or purchase it's in-line skate tech before it finishes the research in May, 2092. The crash won't trigger.

https://openload.co/f/NpOR_sJ4s6E/WOUT_004.SAV

eleaza wrote:

donaciello wrote: The R&D centers themselves aren't quite special; all of them are 9 units connected per firm, researching for 10 years.
I've also bought tech from AI competitors, when I decided impulsively to manufacture stuff myself, so as to get my farms closer to break-even, in which case a 10 year wait for a decent tech rating is too cumbersome.

I finally found the AI subsidiary that causing the ai_rd crash - "Revolver" (the last red color one on the corporate list).
If you merger it (by borrowing some cash and gain 75% share), or purchase it's in-line skate tech before it finishes the research in May, 2092. The crash won't trigger.

https://openload.co/f/NpOR_sJ4s6E/WOUT_004.SAV

Wow,, some digging on your part!

Should be easy enough, although I've started a new game (very similar) where I start farming for frozen meat product, then expand into a com.RE mogul by buying everything surrounding the CBD; very amusing.

This game just doesn't stop compelling!

donaciello wrote: Should be easy enough, although I've started a new game (very similar) where I start farming for frozen meat product, then expand into a com.RE mogul by buying everything surrounding the CBD; very amusing.

This game just doesn't stop compelling!

Livestock products are easy money, but competitors can also enter the same market easily, and their profit margin usually isn't that good, the investment isn't trivial either, need many farms in many cities since the freight cost between cities for livestock products is significant.

Real estate is also a safe bet, but the profit margin is also not that great (sometimes can't even catch up with inflation), and the initial investment is quite steep. Especially need to watch out for commercial buildings, their profit (occupancy) is heavily dependent on economic state (if economic realism is set to high ofc), at boom time they make a lot, but in recession drop down quite quickly.

eleaza wrote:

donaciello wrote: Should be easy enough, although I've started a new game (very similar) where I start farming for frozen meat product, then expand into a com.RE mogul by buying everything surrounding the CBD; very amusing.

This game just doesn't stop compelling!

Livestock products are easy money, but competitors can also enter the same market easily, and their profit margin usually isn't that good, the investment isn't trivial either, need many farms in many cities since the freight cost between cities for livestock products is significant.

Real estate is also a safe bet, but the profit margin is also not that great (sometimes can't even catch up with inflation), and the initial investment is quite steep. Especially need to watch out for commercial buildings, their profit (occupancy) is heavily dependent on economic state (if economic realism is set to high ofc), at boom time they make a lot, but in recession drop down quite quickly.

Thanks for the heads up on comm.RE, I just saw that I forget to set inflation strength to reduced, which I find more realistic in the current condition of the world economy (dead-man walking anemic growth).

With inflation strength set to normal, the crises/recessions hit hard as you describe, leading me to believe the main good use of these investments is to take a firm hold of the CBD area as quickly as possible.
When you buy up the land the month before building, you can really take advantage of the landvalue skyrocketing and the subsequent eagerness of the bank to expand your credit position, thus allowing the player to take control of the CBD in another city (I set 7 in my current game).
Still, it remains a race against the clock, even with AI-competitors with low start-up capital, I figure when they start up deep-pocketed, there's no winning said race.

My strategy if to start with farms, making products that directly feed stores, such as the frozen meats I mentioned.
After that, I expand my farms to make products that need few resources to manufacture goods, providing me a quick leg-up into manufacturing; works like a charm!

Still have yet to achieve a full dominance game, like your games, but with some effort and a bit of know how, I might get there...

Any intel on how I can get into the manufacturing game so fast, it renders my AI competitors inferior?

donaciello wrote: Still have yet to achieve a full dominance game, like your games, but with some effort and a bit of know how, I might get there...

Any intel on how I can get into the manufacturing game so fast, it renders my AI competitors inferior?

Glad to hear my advices can help. Give me more confidence about writing a guide to CES DLC (eventually ... )

As for the core game or with just Subsidiary DLC, dominating one megaclass of product is essentially the same as dominate all products. Since the profit from dominating one megaclass can essentially let you do anything in reasonable time (especially like food and beverage megaclass, they are recession-proof for the most part, or fashion megaclass which also use mostly farm raw materials, electronics are more dependent on economic status but when business is good, they are really really good)

So it is a good question how to get to the first dominance. It's a good idea to find your expertise product class first, if you are lucky, you might be the only person to have that expertise, although normally with many competitors setting (like >20), there's a good chance another AI person has the same expertise as you are and probably higher level, or even more than one (but sometimes you might get lucky, where those AIs are in stock focused corporation, or real estate, or media, than normal production focus). Livestock products are easy, but also since there's no expertise, as long as they are profitable, almost all AIs with enough cash will try to enter that market sooner or later (usually after they dominate their own expertise class, unless it's food related expertise). Hence another good ways to start, is to survey all the AIs, and see what kind of product class is avoid of any AI expertises, even though it's not your own. Also some product is heavily depends upon raw material quality than technology, then you can use either good materials better than default seaport provided, or just out right using warehouse to buy out any raw materials from seaport for yourself. When entering a market, try to expand to all cities, and try to share factories as much as possible to cut down overhead. Also don't hesitate to issue new stocks, the stock price during the expansion phase will not perform well anyway, so just gather as much capital to expand as quickly as possible, only get personal wealth from salary, and buy back at the point where your company start to jump on massive profit. Finally, never afraid of using more money to make more money. Product heavily depends on brands, use full advertising as soon as possible. Good quality for farming products, using intensive training in HQ and boost the farm unit level up immediately. Even hiring expensive COO, to boost them from day one, or outright using high level manufacturing unit to out produce any competitor.

Normally, I think you need to choose a great risk and great reward route, if you take the manufacturing expansion way. It always has some kind of risk, and you need to gamble the risk to get the reward, instead of divided the limited capital. They might feel a bit safer invest in steady income assets, but it will seriously dilute the capital you can use in expansion. And don't be afraid of losing the game or go bankrupt, since this is a game after all, and you can always reload and restart. I learned more from failing than small success. They will tell you what's the boundary and where is safe to step in.