Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

First i'd like to say how much I like this game , i've been playing for years , only a couple of month here and there when I get bored of all others , because this one has a special depth in it , lvl hard is really hard and not following the trend of making games easier and easier to give the player the impression of being good while not really thinking and giving the best of him/herself.

I finally catch-up with the latest version and patch , and bought all DLC's recently

Though there is a still a problem on the stock market , i read some other topics about it , how it is hard to make effective regulation , but I still wanna add my voice about the fact that it is broken , there are exploits in it so you can start and pause the game, staying 01/01/1990 ending with infinite cash and 90% control on every other corporation.

It's tedious to do ( and therefore to explain ) and i think issue is known and is being treated so i don't add more (unnecessay ) details but i have a method that does'nt involve being in negative and can work with the minimum cash start , which basically forbid me to play with stocks to keep the fun .( ask me if need more detail )


Then i found one bug that occur when you don't belong to a politcal party , and you go on the " person " screen and try to short people using " my party only" here is a screenshot



not very impactful , but it can still make you go back to previous save ^^


now here is an explanation of a " weird thing " , when you create a subsidiary , you hire a CEO for it , i choose a random guy, and from that subsidiary i made another one, so i hired another person, Mrs Susan Bredeck , borrowed all money i could , then went public with max dilution at IPO , i did that several time as it part of the exploit for infinite money , and i was doing some experiment , but at some point , this lady decided to join the trick and bought shares by herself in the company she was CEO in, ( CEO's boxes to tick for parameter were set so she shouldn't do that with compagny money , so she used her personnal cash )

and she wouldn't want to sell her 3.45% to my main corp " Omni " , nor did she want to sell to another sub i had " FBU2 " who were supposed to be sharing ownership of BU3 , at this point all is ok for me , but fact is that BU3 was a subsidiary i created , and i have control over 96+% of share so i can use it to buys back its own share, which lead to the situation where Susan Bredeck CEO of BU3 under my order try to buy shares of BU3 to Susan Bredeck , private investor , not wanting to sell here is a screenshot :



i have nothing else to say that this made me feel weird , how should i understand it ?

i got rid of the problem buy paying cash while merging that company with another to get rid of susan but i was a bit sad because such a pesky CEO would have been wonderful to run a stock oriented subsidiary ^^


Finaly i have a sort of theory i'd like to receive confirmation of , about some game mechanics , here it is :

From a very abstract view i was trying to define where the money is created during the game ,

Experiment 1 was running a city from scratch, with no competitors , mayor was set to do nothing , so i was owning everything , real estate , media , raw materials , manufacture , retail absolutely everything

Therefore everyone in the city was working for me , through company or government , and very low unemployement

Then i thought : 100 % of the domestic money is coming from the wages i gave them , so the best i can do without export , is being at equilibrium , 100% of wages should come back to my pocket in the retail store if i sell all the good bought , if i don't , then some of the money i give as wage would leave the nation/city for people selling tobacco product before i can harvest , for example.

But i was wrong i could be profitable selling only half of the existing good , government was making money and company too, though i would still read in the city graph that i was importing stuff.

This lead me to think that citizen could be understand as if they were given X amount of money every month that they would spend to buy some goods and pay rent , this X is bigger when average wage is high meaning there are more revenue to be made on same quantity of good sold.

i say " they are given " to point out the thing my question is about : money is " created " this way , if there are 100 K citizen in a city and they all work for you , they will still spend more money in your retail store and real estate than the money you give them as wage.

Am i right on this point ?

this is making a state of economy with high wage and high consumption price way better than a state of economy with low wage and low consumption price
because more money is created ( no matter the quality of the goods )

Another way money is created is through borrowing money , a compagny can even borrow money , being in a production chain so that another one gets it all , 1rst company goes bankrupt , at the end the amount of money available is bigger . ( still works without bankrupt if profits > mensual debt service )
same goes for government , it can borrow and build media or real estate that it can sell right away , leaving your company without debt , with some assets the governement will fail to serve the debt and will be forever in debt unless you use citizen money to bail out mwahahaha


and last one is through IPO, money from public shareolder is not taken to any agent of the game but is brought to them and never leave your city/nation if you don't buy back shares , or if they have lost value when you do , or if company goes bankrupt.

Am i missing something ? or mis-understanding something here ?

it is my way to try and come up with original strategy , looking at fundamental and trying to use or abuse them , i do not know much about business in general , my thing is more video games, so is my approach driven

i have plenty other things to say but it is more unorganized question and suggestion so i'll try to catch a few bugs if there are still some and make my mind clear before i speak again.

feel free to correct my english or ask for meaning or whatever if i didn't made myself clear
i hope it is of some help , i can join a save, if needed but being kinda lazy about it i'd wish to know if it's really needed^^

good luck

Pietro wrote: Though there is a still a problem on the stock market , i read some other topics about it , how it is hard to make effective regulation , but I still wanna add my voice about the fact that it is broken , there are exploits in it so you can start and pause the game, staying 01/01/1990 ending with infinite cash and 90% control on every other corporation.

It's tedious to do ( and therefore to explain ) and i think issue is known and is being treated so i don't add more (unnecessay ) details but i have a method that does'nt involve being in negative and can work with the minimum cash start , which basically forbid me to play with stocks to keep the fun .( ask me if need more detail )

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).

Pietro wrote: and she wouldn't want to sell her 3.45% to my main corp " Omni " , nor did she want to sell to another sub i had " FBU2 " who were supposed to be sharing ownership of BU3 , at this point all is ok for me , but fact is that BU3 was a subsidiary i created , and i have control over 96+% of share so i can use it to buys back its own share, which lead to the situation where Susan Bredeck CEO of BU3 under my order try to buy shares of BU3 to Susan Bredeck , private investor , not wanting to sell here is a screenshot :

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％).

Pietro wrote: Finaly i have a sort of theory i'd like to receive confirmation of , about some game mechanics , here it is :

From a very abstract view i was trying to define where the money is created during the game ,

Experiment 1 was running a city from scratch, with no competitors , mayor was set to do nothing , so i was owning everything , real estate , media , raw materials , manufacture , retail absolutely everything

Therefore everyone in the city was working for me , through company or government , and very low unemployement

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. Even a very large corporation with hundreds of factories and stores, employs less than 100k workers. For a single small town of 100k population I doubt even 10% of the population would be employed by just one corporation.

This is my corporation with over 100 retail, and 79 factories (and a lot of media firms) and still employs less than 20k workers in total (and it's spread across 8 cities, with more than 8 million combined population) You can check exactly how many employees you hired in the Corporate Details, Ranking page.

Pietro wrote: Then i thought : 100 % of the domestic money is coming from the wages i gave them , so the best i can do without export , is being at equilibrium , 100% of wages should come back to my pocket in the retail store if i sell all the good bought , if i don't , then some of the money i give as wage would leave the nation/city for people selling tobacco product before i can harvest , for example.

But i was wrong i could be profitable selling only half of the existing good , government was making money and company too, though i would still read in the city graph that i was importing stuff.

This lead me to think that citizen could be understand as if they were given X amount of money every month that they would spend to buy some goods and pay rent , this X is bigger when average wage is high meaning there are more revenue to be made on same quantity of good sold.

i say " they are given " to point out the thing my question is about : money is " created " this way , if there are 100 K citizen in a city and they all work for you , they will still spend more money in your retail store and real estate than the money you give them as wage.

Am i right on this point ?

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. 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. Money "created" by borrowing from the bank doesn't count into GDP at the point of creation, but when being used to create goods, investment in facilities, etc (when actually "spending"). Money sitting in a corporate bank account is just a number, and doesn't contribute to the whole economy. It is just a reservoir with future potential use. Hence the stock market game is just a number's game, simply adding more "water" to the financial reservoir. Pass certain point, it won't matter, since you won't be able to spend it all in actual production/services.

Then i found one bug that occur when you don't belong to a politcal party , and you go on the " person " screen and try to short people using " my party only" here is a screenshot

We will fix this bug in the next patch v4.2.11.

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

Pietro wrote: 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.

Appreciate the effect, and hopefully we can all make the game better without exploits ruin the fun.

Pietro wrote: 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

AI is stupid, or is it too smart for its own good? Personally I feel it's just simpleton, but thinking itself as very important like Homer Simpson.

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.

I think my corporation at this point has very little effect on the overall unemployment with population over 8 million, but in early game or in a small town less than 100k people, excessively build more media firms (like not just 3 each type, but several of them each type) can produce many thousands job opening, and it is one way to artificially reduce unemployment (and you don't have to build them with your corporation' fund, but using city fund). However this trick has its limit. First, with millions of population, this is will not make much impact later on. Second, media firm isn't free, they have very high overhead cost, high content developing cost, and they compete with each other for ad revenue (and local ad revenue is limited), they will make less and less with each new media added, and eventually making huge losses for every media in a city with tons of media firms.

However you did make a good point, how much impact a firm actually has to unemployment? I do feel there is some kind of spillover effect (exactly how much I am not sure). And I think it's more concrete and complicated than just a multiplication factor. I think the reason why firms like media has so much impact is due to its high overhead cost which translate to more labor hired. High content development cost can also mean hiring production team/company to produce tv shows, hiring actors/actresses, etc. And sometimes I feel the spillover effect isn't just coming from your corporation. It's probably like hiring local services that already there, and we spend more to "expand" their revenues, and they will in turn demand more capital and expand their businesses with investments, which might means conceptually these invisible businesses also borrowing money or use some kind of financial tools to increase money demand of the city in general. I feel a lot of economic simulation is more abstract in macroeconomic activity, than a complete ground up approach.

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 ?

Ya, I think not only our corporation is just a very tiny fraction of the nation, but also our nation is just a very tiny fraction of the world. The import/export is not a government controlled business, but all contribute to private sector. And in my late game, GDP consists most from consumption, with export contribute much smaller portion (even though most my cities have very high competitiveness in most products).

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 ?

In theory probably, but I am not sure if you actually has total domination of the product market, when the pie chart is completely full, the import will still "count". It might as well be, the so call "local competitors" no longer "manufacturing" any goods at all, but are all "import/export companies" which hires very few people, and even though local competitors do import some goods, they are not getting sold, and losing money all the time. We simply don't have a full picture of how the background mechanics work yet. At this point this is mostly still guess works. Your theory is as good as mine.

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

The high leverage expanding strategy would work for quite some time, until run out of room to expand. The real estate has its limit, building excessively and over supply them, their profit will drop, even going into negative. The same goes to buying stock, depend on how much start-up capital set for AI competitors, the public trading stocks will run out eventually. And all those AI corporation has nothing to expand to will start to lose money every day and their market value plummeted. There is just some much we can do with pure capital and no production. But we as human players can do this much quicker than AIs. Even the most aggressive AIs with very high starting capital doesn't expand that quick. I feel it's a lack of design in AIs to deal with the newly added content in CES DLC and subsidiary DLC, AIs simply don't know what to do, so just sit there with their "traditional" manufacturing expansion strategies while hold a lot of cash at hand. (Imagine how exciting and much more competitive a game could be if AI competitors are a little better at leverage their assets to expand really crazy early on).

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.

I do agree it's a lot to desire with current government bonds system. Right now bonds is just a loan for city without much impact of the whole economy (maybe it does, I am not very certain. I rarely issuing bonds with my mayors after getting very good at balancing city budget, it's not that hard). I think "the city government" is just a special type of corporation modified from the existing cooperation framework. And with current mechanics there's a chance a city can enter a death spiral, where there's no way out of the debt. And the bond limit is related to the total asset I assume (balancing the city income is quite crucial to prevent such death spiral, that's why I got better with the balancing act), and if it does happened when a city went bankrupt there will be a relief fund out of nowhere (from "central government" the description says) to start over with a new mayor. However the debt will still pill up higher and higher. And I assume there will be a day where a month's interest payment instantly bankrupt the city's relief fund.

BTW, I feel there's a link between economic status and overall spending and expansion of both public sector and private sector. In my game, I never experience any recession at all the whole time (almost always boom time and expansion, not even static). I feel if I can maintain a high GDP growth in every city, then the recession will never happen. So if there's a recession happening in CES DLC, I think there must be some underlying reasons with using exploits or simply poor city management causing it (instead of treating economic cycle like random phenomenon as I used to think).

Pietro wrote: 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.
...

I think this is point where the exploit happens. The selling price from corporation to government has no upper limit, it wouldn't be the case in real life. People would immediately notice in public record there's an anomaly in transaction in city budget, and suspect an illegal agenda, especially when we are talking about 100x times overvalue of a single asset. This is quite easily fixed I presume. Just set limits on both end of undervalue and overvalue in a firm transaction. We already has a soft undervalue limit where the seller will not sell with the price too low (unless desperate for cash). I would say a similar mechanic for price too high, where some penalty, even completely forbid excessive overprice. Or more simply just like transfer media between subsidiary where it's always fair market price at all time between private/public sector.

Setup nesting new subsidiaries with exponential asset growth from borrowing cash is also another exploit already known in subsidiary DLC. But I don't think existing patches handle this exploit properly. Subsidiary DLC alone is problematic already without CES DLC. The reason why using government funds in CES DLC becomes "easier" is the simple fact of unlimited over price asset transfer and the tedious way of transferring money back with land plot price exploit (this is known for a long time back in the day before CES DLC came out, by using private built civic buildings to inflate the price, also never got fixed).

And I am surprised that the whole scheme is eerily similar to real world money laundering. Sell something worthless but with overvalue price to transfer money in a legit account, and the dirty money goes into a "washed" account, and then using many legit businesses activities to move cash back to the targeted "personal account" bit by bit to avoid detection.

Pietro wrote:
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 was very long if anything is not clear let me know i'll try to do better

I think I've seen a similar exploit very long time ago. And it has the same basis of inflating a stock's price by selling it between subsidiaries, and I though it has been fixed.
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... t=20#p5713
But with the added subsidiary DLC I feel it's coming back again with much easier time to take control nested subsidiaries (and introduce even more loopholes). There are tones of replies in that post, I wonder how many of them are still applicable with CES DLC and subsidiary DLC?

Also, how would the step 3b and 3c get money back from the government fund? Or is it just 3a is useful for getting some money from the government account? Why even both to hide money in the government account in the first place, if you just want to have tons of cash in your own corporation? I feel 3b and 3c are separate exploits from using government account of laundering borrowed cash.

I think this is point where the exploit happens. The selling price from corporation to government has no upper limit, it wouldn't be the case in real life. People would immediately notice in public record there's an anomaly in transaction in city budget, and suspect an illegal agenda, especially when we are talking about 100x times overvalue of a single asset.

it is actually the other way , governement don"t want to buy overprice , it can only sell overprice , in public people think my company is stupid but they don't say it because they like the ton of cash i give their mayor to build school and healthcare, i own 100 % share of my company so no chairman complain about how i waste my money ^^

This is quite easily fixed I presume. Just set limits on both end of undervalue and overvalue in a firm transaction

this would still apply though as some sort of anti-corruption measure i guess, goverment accepting billion of cash from a private company as a deal to lower their taxes and open 12 university researching on this company expertise , all of this hidden through a media firm privatization , to my point of view no-one has interest into denouncing the fraud ( nor public nor private no citizen )

it's like philanthropy right ? Public Relation tells me we could have add the creation of a landmark of myself as part of the deal governement would have done it ( it happens before ^^ )

Also, how would the step 3b and 3c get money back from the government fund? Or is it just 3a is useful trick for getting some of the money from the government account? Why even both to hide money in the government account in the first place, if you just want to have tons of cash in your own corporation?

step 3B is not really a step , it is a mechanism that by itself provide infinite amount of cash in a company
3C is a way to have cash on the main company
3a is a trick to get money from governement ( but not very effective at laundering the money )

, and 3C is not about taking governement money for company both 3B and 3C are ways to get money onto company account

you don't need to hide money in the governement , and take it back after , but you can if you want load your government of cash , or you can load your company , or both using different method , as cash can go from one to another quite easily , though it is easier to transfert from private to public

the 3B trick generate 22.5M out of 1 billion if performed once or something like that , so you can do it 3 times and then buy a media firm from the government , but let say you buy the media firm for 1 billion , and you forgot to keep 20 million to set up a sub , then you can use the 3 or 4 million you'd have left , and using the land purchasing method you will double them twice or 3 time making them from 3 to 6 to 12 to 24 million

if you fail calculating the correct 80 % of cash to inject in the sub and 20 % to keep so you can merge with it while performing trick 3B it's ok you can use 3A to get back a couple million or tens of million so you don't get stuck , having to reload or deal with the mess.


it cannot gives you 50 billion , it would take too much time , using trick 3B or 3A a lot of time therefore trick 3C is a better method to achieve several billions into the main corp account

All of this is done while time is pause ( 01/01/1990 or not ) , it was not said but it is needed ^^

I think I've seen a similar exploit very long time ago. And it has the same basis of inflating a stock's price by selling it between subsidiaries, and I though it has been fixed.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=278&start=20#p5713
But with the added subsidiary DLC I feel it's coming back again with much easier time to take control nested subsidiaries (and introduce even more loopholes). There are tones of replies in that post, I wonder how many of them are still applicable with CES DLC and subsidiary DLC?

I have read this topic , hence I discovered that everytime it is fixed it has another exploit is found , and it is fixed , and another exploit occur ^^

i'm just participating in the process ^^