Persons in the game, including the player character and AI persons, may possess expertise in certain product classes. The expertise will give the person the following advantages in running a company:

o  There will be an increase in R&D effectiveness for products in the expertise product class, boosting the company’s competitiveness.

o   When applying a higher level technology to an existing manufacturing unit producing a product in the expertise product class, the manufacturing unit’s level will not be affected. (In the original Capitalism 2, the manufacturing unit’s level will be downgraded when applying a new technology to the manufacturing process.)

In the original Capitalism 2, when the game has run over a long period of time (e.g. 80 years), it is likely for a corporation to dominate most of the markets. With this new feature of product class expertise, it would be significantly harder for a single corporation to dominate a large number of markets, as companies led by CEOs with product class expertise will be a much stronger force to reckon with.

From the player’s perspective, when it comes to hiring COO and other managerial positions, it will be preferable to pick persons with strong product class expertise.

This new element changes the game dynamics in a significant way and offers players new challenges.

This option can be disabled in the new game setting by setting “Competitor Expertise Level” to None, for those players who prefer the old style of gameplay.