We will fix this bug in the next patch v4.2.11.
Welcome to the forum, Hope to see more of your posts in the future.
Just want to add if you did find an exploit with the latest DLC, then you really should make detail report here, so the developer team can help eliminate the bugs. CES DLC is still a beta release, there is still time to perfect the game play and fix the stock market loophole. (I presume it has something to do with Subsidiary DLC, so perhaps you could also try a game without Subsidiary DLC and see if the exploit is still applicable).
Thanks , I will do a proper explanation after i answer about the money creation mechanic, mechanism of the exploit works without subsidiary DLC , but it need precise starting parameters to do it 01/01/1990, you can't always do it but you will be able at some point of the game , which gives an incentive to achieve a state of game that allow infinite money before doing anything else
it Works very easily with subsidiary DLC because you don't have to use AI corp as your tools , you can create then from scratch so no matter the ratio between your starting capital and AI market cap.
Have you try offering a higher premium price to buy her stock? The CEO of a corporation usually ask some ridiculous 300% to 400% premium price (even 500％).
I should totally have done that , but i would still find that weird , it's like we have corporate meeting , every CEO of subsidiary is like " yeah we gonna buy back our share so in case they increase in value we won't make someone else rich "
susan CEO: " i have a problem , i can't buy back the last 3 % "
me CEO of susan's parent company : " Why is that ? "
susan CEO : " owner won't sell unless 5 X market price "
me CEO of susan's parent company: " who's that owner ? "
susan CEO : " Myself
"
me CEO of susan's parent company : " try paying yourself more "
Then I might need to said i ran a survival mode game with all product unlocked
From what I've gathered so far, not all citizens work for your corporation, or AI controlled corporations. Majority of them don't work for corporations
And there are labors working for the civic facilities, and the hidden local private sector not related to corporations. And they pay most of the taxes (like corporate profit tax), and income tax to the local government
this is what i forgot , and the number of employee is displayed , i'd call them " barbers and cafés " but they actually represent a lot more it makes perfect sense
But triggers question about the effect you have on employment, how are you suppose to have an effect on a 8 million inhabitant nation , when as your example show a big company can have 20 K worker , if roughly 50 % of those 8 million are able to work , that's 4 million worker if there's 10 % unemployement , it represent 400 K person so can we understand that as if when you create 10K jobs using your company , it reduces unemployement for 100 K person ??
As if the number of people you give wages to can support 10 times more business creation such as barber and cafés that would make money from people living nearby , but would re-inject that money into the reservoir or let say when you build media firm it reduce unemployement a lot more than just the people you'd give wage to as it will create jobs for invisible business in relation with it , like the kiosk where newspaper are sold , and printing press , and ink maker or even when you build stuff , you sort of pay a construction team that will buy to your retail store , go the cafe and have their hair cut ect.
that is a confirmation to me that there is a money creation process every month, it is the money which is the most straightforward to gain since it is from citizens that " traditionnal " money is earn to one's company , by selling products to citizen in retail store.
The import/export amount is mostly related to competitiveness rating of each product class compared to the global average. The "local business" will import goods when it's competitiveness is less than global average, and export when it's higher than global average, and the combined import/export amount of all product classes determine the net import/export total.
I had wrong understanding of that i had that view in mind where government money would decrease if the city has deficit regarding import/export, but the money represented by " import " is not money that come from governement account i now see it more as an index showing if you succeed developping sort of a comparative advantage in the sense Ricardo.
Which would allow company in the region to produce for more than the sole nation , allowing another source of money , from citizen that are not part of the nation , we could in theory have a nation of 8 milion person producing 50 million cola bottle per month , though only having an internal market of 8 million bottle a month in the nation ; the 42 million sold to seaport for export.
Is that correct ?
you could in theory still import a lot as a city while owning full market share of every product in the game with your company in that city , if you have low competitiveness on all of them in the city , you will read neutral export = 0 and a import value very high , in this situation however you would not have to find profit to compensate that import since it will not be substrated to any account you can read , such as the company , or the government or the party ect
right ?
this changes my view on the game , i found some exploit i will develop now based on some mis-interpretation of the game that were a bit explained now
the views i had before made me thought i had to find a way of filling the " reservoir " from outside because i thought no manufacture and retail could be worth if i were to sell them to citizen i would also have to pay 100% of wages either from governement overall expenses or company
so i thought about the borrowing / real estate strategy, based on some things i read on the forum and experiment , you can borrow the maximum amount at day 1 , then buy some real estate and i buy stock too usually and keep some cash , you have 100 you borrow 100 you spend only 50 % of cash you borrow half of it in stock half of it in real estate , and every month you can borrow more and more , as long as the profits increase more than the mensual debt it is ok to never pay back , it is even easier to start with a few retail store , preferably those who have the fastest return on investement.
it has to do with keeping inflation , wage rate , cpi , gdp growth , and average stock price growth ABOVE the interest rate
Same thing could be done with government bonds.
The only problem would be if interest rate is at 10 % despite the recession, if world bank don't want to help my poor nation by decreasing their rate then i'm going to face bankrupcy or even worse structural reform , aka selling public properties , media firm , appartment , and all those goods are losing their value with time , you can't have stock as the governement ( no sovereign fund ) , and you don't have a stock price , so the only criteria for bond emission i
guess are the actual cash you have on account , and the value of national property, both of them going down at the same time in case of recession it would prevent government to issue more bond.
But there is a mechanism to borrow infinite money from banks ( so in recession i would have use that to transfert cash from private sector to public ) , with the subsidiary DLC when you have 20 million you can create one subsidiary, that will have 20 million borrowing limit, so you do that and borrow it all,
let's call them Main corp , S1 , S2 , S3 , S4 ect , Main corp has 20 million , borrow 20 , so S1 has 40 million , and can borrow 40 , so S2 has 80 million and can borrow 80 , ect
this was 1 step
another one is to transfer money from private to public or the opposite
and step 3 will be on avoiding responsability for debt ^^
the transfert from private to public can be done buying overprice media firm , your company propose to the government to buy a media firm you just build for the transfert for 2 billion and your company can destroy it just after transfer.
The opposite way is less usefull to my opinion but can be done with the land purchasing thing , for example in a 5x5 block of road , your company buy the middle 1x1 cross , and you build 4 appartment or commercial building 2x2 in the 4 corner with the governement , land value is usually multiply by 2 and when you sell the land back it takes the government money , you can then destroy the building and do the same to another place. In this process you lost the money needed to build the real estate , indexed on wage rate , so not that big of a deal early game.
then to avoid debt i see 3 way :
1) public share-holders
to get rid of the debt of S1 S2 S3 ect , to avoid paying it and the interest , once you've transfered billion to the goverment , we can get rid of S1 S2 S3 S4 ect via introducing the last one in the stock market , borrow all money , sell all asset , give all to the government via overprice buying , and then S3 sell all your participation in S4, S4 is no longer our responsability , do the same for S3 then S2 then S1 , and now let the others deal with your mess ^^ privatize profits , mutualize debt right ?
2) Bankrupcy
if you feel bad about the public share-holders , you don't have to sell those S1 S2 ect , you can just let them go brankrupt once all money is transfered , bad banksters , they should have checked if your business was solid before lending billions now they will have to tell their bosses they financed billions for a new nation but they choose the bad companies to do so ^^
3) repay debt
and this is core of the exploit , there are 3 ways i found to transfert this artificially generated cash back to the main company ,
3a) once you have generated billion of cash in the government account , you use the land purchasing system to give back some of it to the main company so it can repay its debt ( while all sub goes bankrupt )
3b) there is a trick to generate money out of public shareholders on the very same account of the company that needs it , in order to do that you just have to create a subsidiary of the company that needs money , you make it go public with minimum dilution => so you remain in control of 80 % of shares that worth 10$, you sell 5 %, this gives you a bit of cash and lower the price of all actions from 10$ to 9 $ for a 20M subsidiary , or 9.50$ for a 120M sub for example , and then you merge => you buy the 25 % remaining shares at the price of 9$ or 9.50$, it is a small amount that is gained , but if you repeat it is still money out of nothing.
3c) this mechanism is the most complex of all explained here , the basic structure would work without subsidiary DLC
but it would require taking control of many AI corporation
Here i'm going to explain a not fancy way to do things , i know it can be done with less steps but i can't find the theorical description , only in practice so maybie later a fancier version of that
this is a way to inflate the stockprice of a company that will end up being owned by your main corp , before you sell it to public share-holders to win the jackpot
despite the terrible paint skill that were used we can still recognize some rectangle that represent companies
TBM stands for To be Merged , it is a company that is you but the SEC don't know it , it can be a corporation you take over or a subsidiary you create , you need to be able to merge with it when you want , the easiest way is to use the minimum amount of cash for a subsidiary , which seems to be 20 million , so you create that subsidiary, or you take control of a AI corp that has a very low market capitalization.
then this TBM ( you can choose that name for the sub to make it easy ^^ ) needs to own 80 % of tbi , To Be Inflated , TBI is the corporation you will manipulate the stock price , you need to own 80 % of it , roughly
The easiest way to do that is to create a sub from TBM and NOT from your main corp
the 20 % left needs to be available for you to buy with other corporation.
Once you've done that you need to lose control of TBM
you can sell share so your main corp owns 49 % or TBM which owns 80 % of TBI
Now the SEC don't know you own 80 % of tbi with your main corp because TBM is not you nor your sub , but you know that you can merge with it easily , ( 20 % of 20 million = 5 million if TBM is a 20 million sub from main that went public )
if you merge with it you own 80% of tbi , and no matter how TBI stock price increase you'd still be able to merge with TBM and tale control of TBI for few cash
so now you need another mechanism to inflate the price of TBI , this justifies the arrow n3 , the creation of BU , that stands for buyer , but could be SWI for switcher , because it is a company use to switch ownership
BU could be your subsidiary or a AI corp that you take control of , it should be able to own 51 % of 2 company , FBU 1 and FBU 2 that could be subsidiary of BU or AI corp you take control with BU
what you want is first to control FBU1 at 51 % at least , so you can use its cash to buy some TBI stock from the 20 % public , NOT from the 80% owned by TBM
SEC sees no problem because you lost control of TBM , so you can invest with FBU on TBI , increasing everytime the price of TBI, once you own 20 % or when you don't have anymore cash , you use BU1 to lose control of FBU 1 , you sell 2 % so you only have 49 %
and you take control of its twin FBU2
SEC sees no problem your main corp at this point only control BU1 which control FBU 2 , so you can buy som TBI stock to FBU 1 , 20 % or till you don't have anymore cash
and then you go to BU1, and you lose controll of FBU2 , and regain controll of FBU1 ( 49 => 51 => 49 => 51 ) FBU 1 is really wanting to buy back those TBI stock , from FBU 2
and you can repeat this process till stock price of TBI 1 is around 100 K
then once you've done that enough , you can merge your main corp with TBM , you find yourself in possession of 80 % of TBI as the stock are now directly yours , the first 5% you sell could be worth 20 billion that could be enough to merge your main corp with BU 1 , you can sell 5% of TBI , maybie for 18 billion , and merge your main corp with FBU 1 and FBU 2 , this can cost billions it's ok at this point , just sell some TBI if you need more cash you will have FBU 1 and FBU 2 shares of TB1 by merging with them.
At this point you can transfert all TBI cash to the governement , sell all your stock and have it disappear from bankrupcy , or merge with it but it cost a huge amount of cash.
here is another paint art to show where you can add some sort of russian doll sub to increase the money with which you'll be able to perfom the whole stuff
this picture is a mix of all tricks , from S1 to S2 to S3 , you use the infinite borrowing trick , once you have enough you use a " proxy main corp " which will be the first company to have 2 distinct sub , TBM / TBI stay unchanged , but you can add another layer of subsidiaries so the equivalent of BU , SWI , has for example 10 billion cash , aka 5 for each FBU , so they can transfert the 20 % for a longer time , because every time ownership is transered the market cap of the 20 % increases , if you switch 100 time ownership , at the end you'll end up only transfering lower and lower percentages , for same amount of money.
and at the end when you want to integrate everything you can use the trick to sell 5 % of the 80 you control before merging
this means when you create a sub from a sub from a sub from a sub ect , you have to think about how much it will cost to merge , so you have enough cash , example : a sub created from a 20 million donation , goes public in a way that 20 million = 80 % because of the 20 % dilution, so you need 25 million cash to merge with a sub if you give it 20 million , but what you will really do is sell 5 % of those 80% and buy the 25 % with a little discount due to selling the 5 % before.
And if during any of those steps you find yourself short on cash to perform next step , you can still use the public / private transfert to refill in cash a bit a company you'd have forgotten to leave enough cash to merge with its sub ( this happens somehow ^^ )
I think this is it for this one , i know in game i found a way to perfom the same trick about inflating a stock price where you would have the two corporation that exchange stocks of TBI under you controll at the same time , but i found it by mistake , i think it involves that at some point of a serie S1 S2 S3 S4 the S4 would buy S1 and it would make weird things but i don't have the whole picture of it clear yet , so maybie later ^^
This was very long if anything is not clear let me know i'll try to do better
