Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

Just bought the beta and found some issues or maybe features that are confusing.

1) After about 30 years into game all of the stores go into negative revenue according to details screen and company screen, while all of the production buildings (farms and factories) go into "green" and produce money even though they supply mostly my stores. People still buy my produce and company makes money but the game seems to confuse production buildings and retail stores statistics so it counts as if i was buying products from myself and making profit. Also - pressing small P and R buttons in any of the stores clearly shows that each product makes a lot of revenue and profit. Sounds confusing but that happened twice in a two different late game scenarios.

Screenshot:

http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/7865/dwah.jpg

2) Corporate branding seems to be broken or needs more explanations. I have been focusing exclusively on food products and i know about addition of "mega classes" but the fact is - as soon as you manufacture something (not sell, but simply start producing) outside of that "mega class" (for example cigars and cigarettes) your brand rating plummets to 0. Brand awareness still grows, brand loyalty goes into negative while brand rating never goes up. This seems excessive.

There also should be an explanation on how advertising affects corporate brand. As i recall there never been a tutorial in original cap 2 that covered that part. Do you suppose to have an advertising unit in each store? Do you have to connect all of the sales units to it same as with unique branding? Or you don't need advertising at all and just need "public relations department" at HQ?

Number 1 happened to me when I hired a manager who sets the factory price to more than 2x the cost. I would suggest having a margin setting on your factory (and retail) such as setting pricing to 5% above cost. If it is all internal I'd set it to 0% at the factory and use the retail report to determine my profit on the products.

As for 2 I want to be for example a Sony. Let me decide if a product will have its own brand or by default use the corporate brand. If I introduce a new low quality product it will have its own brand otherwise it would hurt my corporate brand. I won't do corporate branding or role play as Sony as-is since I can't for example go TVs and Gaming systems since those are under Toys and under the current rules that would hurt my brand.

@ aurelis:

I never use corporate branding so i dont know all about it. But from what i have read troughwhole the years playing cap2 and now caplab i can tell you this:
You need to see it as this: With corporate branding all your products are called for exsample: "sony (product name)", so Sony video game station, sony leather wallet, sony eggs.
If one of those is of low quality people think the rest is aswell. Thats the con side. The pro side is that you dont have to advertise every product seperatly, you can use the public relations department at you HQ which will spend set amount in every city to advertise your products. This ofc is much cheaper as with unique brand.
With Unique brand on the other hand you have to see it as: every product has its own name, like; Playstation, PSX, PSP etc. The people will look at every product seperatly for pricing, branding and quality. Thats the pro side, since 1 low quality product doesnt make people worry about your other products. The con side of this is that you need to advertise every product seperatly in every city. That ofc can be very expensive.

So in a nutshell: with corporate branding, make sure you either buy technology or do your own R&D when you want to produce something new, to not hurt your branding on other products. With unique branding your quality doesnt effect your other products branding.
In between is range branding, which the same as corporate branding (as far as i know) but branding will be looked at per range (mega class) as the name suggests.

I hope this helps

ps: as for your first issue Aurelis, pls post a screenshot and the savegame (via dropbox). I have never seen that happen, so it might be a bug. In anyway, with a screenshot and the savegame, David and the Devs can take a look at it

Purifier wrote:@ aurelis:

I never use corporate branding so i dont know all about it. But from what i have read troughwhole the years playing cap2 and now caplab i can tell you this:
You need to see it as this: With corporate branding all your products are called for exsample: "sony (product name)", so Sony video game station, sony leather wallet, sony eggs.
If one of those is of low quality people think the rest is aswell. Thats the con side. The pro side is that you dont have to advertise every product seperatly, you can use the public relations department at you HQ which will spend set amount in every city to advertise your products. This ofc is much cheaper as with unique brand.
With Unique brand on the other hand you have to see it as: every product has its own name, like; Playstation, PSX, PSP etc. The people will look at every product seperatly for pricing, branding and quality. Thats the pro side, since 1 low quality product doesnt make people worry about your other products. The con side of this is that you need to advertise every product seperatly in every city. That ofc can be very expensive.

So in a nutshell: with corporate branding, make sure you either buy technology or do your own R&D when you want to produce something new, to not hurt your branding on other products. With unique branding your quality doesnt effect your other products branding.
In between is range branding, which the same as corporate branding (as far as i know) but branding will be looked at per range (mega class) as the name suggests.

I hope this helps

ps: as for your first issue Aurelis, pls post a screenshot and the savegame (via dropbox). I have never seen that happen, so it might be a bug. In anyway, with a screenshot and the savegame, David and the Devs can take a look at it

Hi purifier

Just one thing to clear up, range branding applies to each product range (Not megaclass)
So computer will be separate from photography which will be separate from communication devices

Purifier wrote:@ aurelis:

I never use corporate branding so i dont know all about it. But from what i have read troughwhole the years playing cap2 and now caplab i can tell you this:
You need to see it as this: With corporate branding all your products are called for exsample: "sony (product name)", so Sony video game station, sony leather wallet, sony eggs.
If one of those is of low quality people think the rest is aswell. Thats the con side. The pro side is that you dont have to advertise every product seperatly, you can use the public relations department at you HQ which will spend set amount in every city to advertise your products. This ofc is much cheaper as with unique brand.
With Unique brand on the other hand you have to see it as: every product has its own name, like; Playstation, PSX, PSP etc. The people will look at every product seperatly for pricing, branding and quality. Thats the pro side, since 1 low quality product doesnt make people worry about your other products. The con side of this is that you need to advertise every product seperatly in every city. That ofc can be very expensive.

I know about quality and how it can affect brand under corporate branding. That wasn't an issue. The issue was that if you simply manufacture something outside of the "mega class" you currently sell (i was focusing on food and snacks and then accidentally manufactured beds) your brand score instantly plummets to 0 and never goes up. I know that "mega classes" are the new feature of caplabs but that does look like a bug. Generic "sony" brand that had been focusing on electronics for years might not be the best manufacturer of chocolate bars, but the mere fact that they made couple of them should not instantly drive their brand into ditch, i think.

Regarding the issue with revenue and profit - the guy above already confirmed it. It seems that AI manager sets factory prices too high so essentially you buy stuff from yourself for a higher cost than you sell it. You still make money but they show up in factory revenue instead. Confusing, i know. I have posted a screenshot and i did not make any save games.

To be honest i really need an AI manager in late games, there's just too much stuff to handle on your own and even those managing options that exist are never enough for me. In late game i usually prefer to play with stock market rather than micromanage every single factory and store.

The issue was that if you simply manufacture something outside of the "mega class" you currently sell (i was focusing on food and snacks and then accidentally manufactured beds) your brand score instantly plummets to 0 and never goes up.

Could you provide me with your saved game via Dropbox? I will ask the devs to look into this issue.

You may check out this post about how to send saved games via Dropbox:
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =291#p1612