Tips and Tricks

[mwyeoh]

Hi all

These are my tips and tricks into paying capitalism (Many of which also work in the real world)
THE GOLDEN RULE for a game such as this... Think.... How would a greedy person act?

1) Be aware of market saturation: You can only make so much out of one line. After that, you will need to expand into other markets to keep making money. A single product range (With 3-4 products) can usually make you 600-800million depending on the product, if you are completely dominating the market that is
2) Take advantage of the new "Product expertise" and "Chain store" bonuses. Although having more than one store may partially cannabalize markets, the chain store effect will make up for alot of this. Also, the effects of advertising then can be spread over several stores
3) You never have to do everything yourself. Quite often, I buy several semi products from competitors. You dont have to make everything yourself. This can sometimes be cheaper too (Especially for minerals)
4) The key to profits are your contribution margins. If you can increase the quality and brand of your goods, your margins will be much better. Ensure you keep them high!
5) Avoid competition at the beginning. Competition results in price wars and lower margins. Expand to unserviced areas first
6) Consider the cities. Population size and wage rates should affect your early decisions as to what you will produce. Also think about the necessity index of your goods
7) Consider rates of return when deciding on financing. If you borrow too much, your loan payments will increase. However if with a loan, you can make more money than the interest being charged, then go for it!
8) Share capital should be considered carefully. Issuing new shares costs more in the long term but is cheap in the beginning. With shares, you dont need to pay interest, dividends are optional (So it can be viewed as free money). But be careful that you dont issue so many shares that you lose control of your company! (That will cost you ALOT more!)
9) When going into a new product line where competition exists, buy the tech first! Its very cheap and allows you to start competing very quickly. (I still think technology is too cheap- Tech AI dont have a chance)
10) Use warehouses to consolidate your production (Including for semi products). Often a single factory is not enough to service all your shops/factories. Use warehouses to accomplish this (Have a look at my automobile line- especially cars for an example of this- I have 9 factories producing cars- They are going into two different warehouses which then transer to goods to a third warehouse which services my outlets: It would be good in the throughput of warehouses and factories could be increased further or even an XL size added). Warehouses do increase your overhead though, so watch out for that!
11) Think supply and demand. If the demand for your goods outstrips supply, increase prices! You will make more per item, and its not as if you are decreasing sales since you cant sell any more anyway!
12) Be careful about advertising. If a line is only making you $200,000/month in profits, dont spend $500,000 in advertising!


Anyway,these tips are for retail. I havent really done the real estate or stock market thing yet. I am also planning on a tech game (Only research) and see if I can be successful, as I have never seen a successful Tech AI.

These are just a few tips I can give.
I encourage everyone to perhaps share their tips & tricks

[City Builder]

Hi all

10) Use warehouses to consolidate your production (Including for semi products). Often a single factory is not enough to service all your shops/factories.

Hi,
I don't understand this. How could a single factory not be able to service all my shops/factories AND a warehouse would help that?

Is a warehouse not simply a storage unit? So...

If I have a factory making shoes, and a 2 shops in town selling shoes, how does putting a warehouse in between them do anything other than store some shoes?

Thanks

[mwyeoh]

Hi,
I don't understand this. How could a single factory not be able to service all my shops/factories AND a warehouse would help that?

Is a warehouse not simply a storage unit? So...

If I have a factory making shoes, and a 2 shops in town selling shoes, how does putting a warehouse in between them do anything other than store some shoes?

Thanks

Hi Citybuilder. For shoes it would be ok, but try it out for slower production goods such as cars. Im my current challenge game, I have 10 factories producing cars. I consolidate these in the warehouse so that my retail outlets only need to buy from two warehouses rather than 10 different factories.

Its a strategy I use, but not necessarily everyone needs to use it, nor is it an effective strategy for all types of goods

[Purifier]

what mwyeoh said...

A warehouse is to connect several factories, to make it easier for you and retail shops to get the goods from 1 location instead of several. The selling departments of a warehouse can sell more units then the same department in a factory. Also the use of warehouses will even out the goods flow from factories to stores, so you dont have to micromanage that yourself.

If there is need to use them depends on several things, like the number of stores, the demand vs supply. So at the start of a game it wont seem you need them but later on for most products you probably find them very handy :p

2 good examples in my game:
I started with 1 leather wallet factory (large) to supply 1 shop in each of the7 cities, which was enough then. quality and brand went up so demand went up. training was at highest in that factory but it couldnt coupe with the demand. I had to build a second factory. Then i already build a warehouse, to make it easier to distribute the wallets to every shop according to their needs. (Otherwise i would have to keep track of supply/demand for every shop and connect them to the factories accordingly. All the way demand still went up, so i had to build a 3rd factory. Now here is where the warehouse becomes real handy... instead of having to switch some of purchasing departments in the 7 shops to the new factory, i simply connected the factory to the warehouse and poof the wallets where distributed to the shops automaticly from there on

The same thing happened with 4 farms (to produce the 4 kinds of frozen meat..) for my supermarkets. Atm i have 12 farms connected to 4 warehouses, supplying 11 supermarkets.
All the farms are at max lvl so i wont open new farms (demand is still higher as supply lol) cus that would drop the quality of the goods considerably, but if i wanted it would be very easy to get the goods from those farms to the warehouses, by simply connecting them to the warehouse of that product.

I hope this gives you a good view of how usefull warehouses are later on in the game (with i guess 4 or more cities).
Warehouses are distribution centers, not just a storage unit

[City Builder]

Yes, very good explanation. Now I can see how they would function in my game, I've just been doing it the "old" way instead, but will have to implement a few warehouses in my game for sure.

[Purifier]

Yes, very good explanation. Now I can see how they would function in my game, I've just been doing it the "old" way instead, but will have to implement a few warehouses in my game for sure.

I know what you mean i did it the old way for a while when warehouses were already introduced, but after i had build my first one... i saw the light (so to speak) :p

[chrishaas61]

Stock Market Manipulation

Raising capital is the most critical part of your business. Starting with a single small shop and slowly growing your empire might be fun, but it will not give you dazzling scores. To top the leader board in the challenge games (and to dominate competitors) you need a lot of cash...quickly. So how do you do it? Manipulate the stock market.

1.) First off you will need a profitable business in place. The easiest way to do this is to buy from sea ports and sell in one or two carefully placed shops. Try to have at least $1M annual profit, but don't wait too long or your stock price will be too high for the next step.

2.) From the beginning your goal needs to be 100% stock ownership. Buy all the public shares of your stock, and any stock owned by other players.

3.) Buy all of the stock you can back from yourself. I like to leave about 200 shares in existence.

4.) Once only a few shares of your stock exist, its time to ramp up profit. Your stock price is determined (mostly) by your profit divided by your number of shares in existence. High profit and low share count will leave your stock price in the millions.

5.) Once you get your stock price up, its time to issue shares. Issue as many shares as possible at the maximum price. Consider: a stock price of $3M issued at a qty of 2,000 will give you $6B in cash! Imagine the possibilities.

From here its up to you to do what you wish. I like to tank my stock price by creating a ton of factories, R&D centers, and farms, then performing max training in the Human Resources dept. The resulting annual loss will begin driving the stock back down. Once youre ready to make a move (the stock is bottomed out) buy some shares with the cash your player made during the initial buy-back, then buy up all of the stocks with your company cash. An ideal situation is you own 100% of your stock again, and you still have billions or trillions of dollars.

In the real world, this kind of "insider trading" might land you a stint in prison. I am also sure that the loophole will be fixed in the near future, since the stock market manipulators will always win the challenge games. Until then, I want everyone to know how some of us obtain so much cash so early in the game.

Happy Hunting

Chris Haas

[David]

Stock Market Manipulation

Raising capital is the most critical part of your business. Starting with a single small shop and slowly growing your empire might be fun, but it will not give you dazzling scores. To top the leader board in the challenge games (and to dominate competitors) you need a lot of cash...quickly. So how do you do it? Manipulate the stock market.

1.) First off you will need a profitable business in place. The easiest way to do this is to buy from sea ports and sell in one or two carefully placed shops. Try to have at least $1M annual profit, but don't wait too long or your stock price will be too high for the next step.

2.) From the beginning your goal needs to be 100% stock ownership. Buy all the public shares of your stock, and any stock owned by other players.

3.) Buy all of the stock you can back from yourself. I like to leave about 200 shares in existence.

4.) Once only a few shares of your stock exist, its time to ramp up profit. Your stock price is determined (mostly) by your profit divided by your number of shares in existence. High profit and low share count will leave your stock price in the millions.

5.) Once you get your stock price up, its time to issue shares. Issue as many shares as possible at the maximum price. Consider: a stock price of $3M issued at a qty of 2,000 will give you $6B in cash! Imagine the possibilities.

From here its up to you to do what you wish. I like to tank my stock price by creating a ton of factories, R&D centers, and farms, then performing max training in the Human Resources dept. The resulting annual loss will begin driving the stock back down. Once youre ready to make a move (the stock is bottomed out) buy some shares with the cash your player made during the initial buy-back, then buy up all of the stocks with your company cash. An ideal situation is you own 100% of your stock again, and you still have billions or trillions of dollars.

In the real world, this kind of "insider trading" might land you a stint in prison. I am also sure that the loophole will be fixed in the near future, since the stock market manipulators will always win the challenge games. Until then, I want everyone to know how some of us obtain so much cash so early in the game.

Happy Hunting

Chris Haas

Please try version 1.981 and see if it fixes the loophole:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=880&p=3873#p3873

[Dordanov]

Ah, so THAT was how some people were able to earn ridiculous amounts of money in the early years where I was struggling. Mind you I rather neglect the stock market altogether if possible, I find it more fun to just focus on the business side. I suspected it was some stock "trick" people used to make lots of money, but didn't care enough to find out how it was actually done

Great to hear there are some people that are not only keeping info like this for themselves, but also share it for others to use, or for developers to fix.

This fix in 1.981 should make Challenge games more "fair" I think

[Wesley]

It's interesting that some people use market manipulation in this game. It's fun to experiment but to persistently do it leaves questions.