Mid-game feedback

[mwyeoh]

Hi David

I managed to get a chunk of work done before a deadline, so Ive managed to squeeze an evening of Capitalism in
I was well on my way to an early victory, earning 733 million operating profits by year 10 (Level 6 difficulty)- However, a recession hit and my profits have fallen by 200mil

Here is a link to my saved game
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23145017/MAT__002.zip

Here's some preliminary feedback

*So far, when the AI gets their brand and quality right, they are quite formidible: Maple Five and United Array in particular!
*Retail AI are still king. They still make the most money in the game.
*To boost retail AI further, they need to look into expanding their best and most profitable products to all cities ASAP. (Eg- Shining Stars is making alot from Washing powder and tissues, brand is good and quality is amazing, but they are only selling them in Chicago- They should expand to other markets)
*Another possibility that the AI does not utilize is private labelling. Perhaps if the retail AI buys high quality products, privately labels them and then markets them as their own in a location that still has little presence
*Another thought- A retail AI which only focuses on a single (Or a couple) of cities. If they switch to coporate brand and market that well, they could buy all sorts of products from other companies overseas, privately label them, and sell them at home where they enjoy a large brand awareness bonus

*Real Estate AI, although not turning over much of a profit, are seeing huge increases in their balance sheet and income statements due to asset appreciation, which is looking good (However, this way they would never win an annual operating profit game)
*I believe that real estate AI should build more retail outlets in their little piece of land, particularly those sold by other companies through a price agreement (Those are usually the most profitable). The high amount of customer traffic would benefit them.

*Tech AI are still struggling quite badly and the only way they will be successful is if the cost of technology increases x5 or x10 because frankly, its not worth it to be a Tech company at the moment
*Stock AI are not going bankrupt, but at the same time are not making much money.
Also I noticed that eyewatch (Stock AI) actually did not buy any shares for the first 10 years of the game and only started buying stocks after that. Is this intentional?

[Inarius]

Specialized AI lacks, also.

A leather-only or car-only, or food-only...

They should then build specialized retail shop (they are many) and would stick on these products.

[mwyeoh]

I have now finished this game. 15 years in total to get to 1,000 million profits

When the market went into depression, I was only earning 120mil a year (Down from 720 mil). However as soon as it was over, my profits shot through the roof and went up to the required 1 billion

Heres the save game
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23145017/MAT__003.zip

This time I was playing with cosmetics, which was quite different. It was fun.
My early money maker was my leather farm. Made me huge bucketloads of money very quickly. At the end it was making me 20 mil a month, and 169 million in the last 12 months. Lifetime profit of 1.26 Billion

Another suggestion is that an AI making large amounts of money from specific goods should sell it in more than one store in the same city. This way they will get the new demand bonus for chain stores (Which I was able to take advantage of) and sell even more of it

[David]

You were doing really well in this game.

As far as the AI goes, we want to make the AI challenging, but at the same time, we want the player to be able to win the game after some efforts. After all, it is a game and being fun is the most important of all. So it is not a goal to make the AI always smarter than the human player.

It seems that the AI is now capable of delivering a challenging game to the player and yet lets the player win eventually. So it is in line with our design goal. If any of you experience otherwise, please let us know.