Ranged brand too powerful

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ba127
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Ranged brand too powerful

Post by ba127 »

In thinking about new DLC ideas, one thing I realized in how I play is that "ranged brand" (and probably individual brands) are way too powerful and just let me dominate everything. For example, I use ranged brand and can easily be the market leader in both frozen beef and cars -- which just doesn't make any sense.

A couple different ways to solve it:
1. Make ranged brand much much harder to increase
2. Have a script option to only allow corporate brand
3. (my preference) Have a script option to only allow companies (player and AI) to produce products within a single mega product class (http://www.capitalismlab.com/mega-product-class.html). Even further, only allow companies to invest in other companies, or have subsidiaries, in the same mega product class. To make this work, each company would need to pick a mega product class when founded or before building anything. It also seems like you'd need to allow companies to pick "real estate" or "stocks"/holding company as other possible focuses. I think this would really force players to do everything they can in their limited space. It also would create a market for "semi-product" and "materials" companies as well (or companies of any mega product class can do those I guess). It also would be nice to have a way for the player to sell their company completely and be able to start a brand new company -- for example, I create a dominant fashion company and feel like I've done all I can do, so now I want to sell out completely and start a new company to do computers.

(I think this is more appropriate as a suggestion over DLC idea, but please move if not)
megapolis
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Re: Ranged brand too powerful

Post by megapolis »

ba127 wrote:In thinking about new DLC ideas, one thing I realized in how I play is that "ranged brand" (and probably individual brands) are way too powerful and just let me dominate everything. For example, I use ranged brand and can easily be the market leader in both frozen beef and cars -- which just doesn't make any sense.

A couple different ways to solve it:
1. Make ranged brand much much harder to increase
2. Have a script option to only allow corporate brand
3. (my preference) Have a script option to only allow companies (player and AI) to produce products within a single mega product class (http://www.capitalismlab.com/mega-product-class.html). Even further, only allow companies to invest in other companies, or have subsidiaries, in the same mega product class. To make this work, each company would need to pick a mega product class when founded or before building anything. It also seems like you'd need to allow companies to pick "real estate" or "stocks"/holding company as other possible focuses. I think this would really force players to do everything they can in their limited space. It also would create a market for "semi-product" and "materials" companies as well (or companies of any mega product class can do those I guess). It also would be nice to have a way for the player to sell their company completely and be able to start a brand new company -- for example, I create a dominant fashion company and feel like I've done all I can do, so now I want to sell out completely and start a new company to do computers.

(I think this is more appropriate as a suggestion over DLC idea, but please move if not)
I think that your suggestion is about a different game. There's a lot of games focused on different markets. Pizza Tycoon, Theme Hospital, Park Tycoon, Game Dev Tycoon etc. Capitalism is about something completely different ;)
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David
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Re: Ranged brand too powerful

Post by David »

In thinking about new DLC ideas, one thing I realized in how I play is that "ranged brand" (and probably individual brands) are way too powerful and just let me dominate everything. For example, I use ranged brand and can easily be the market leader in both frozen beef and cars -- which just doesn't make any sense.
The brand awareness of "ranged brand" increases at a rate that is about 50% of that of "unique brand" if you do advertising with the same budget.

According to the Capitalism 2 manual:
Range Brand
Under the strategy, products in the same product class are labeled with a
single range brand.
The range brand strategy enjoys the same benefits and drawbacks as the
corporate brand strategy, but to a lesser extent. These effects are limited
because the number of products a range brand covers is smaller. The range
brand strategy is preferable to the corporate brand strategy if the quality of
your corporation’s products varies substantially across different product
classes. On the other hand, if you are confident that the quality of your
products can be maintained, then the corporate brand strategy may be a
better choice.


So your brand will suffer from low brand loyalty if the quality ratings are inconsistent.

This mechanic seems balanced to me. Could you provide more details as to why you think it is not balanced?

For example, I use ranged brand and can easily be the market leader in both frozen beef and cars -- which just doesn't make any sense.
Please provide more info about how exact you used advertising on frozen beef and cars. The range brand effect from frozen beef actually has no influence on cars. You may provide a save game file if you want and I will look at it.
Spac3y
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Re: Ranged brand too powerful

Post by Spac3y »

I cant say ive ever really found the ranged brand op.

The unique brand however is overpowering, its the only brand I ever use as I feel its the quickest and best to 100 brand rating.
ba127
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Re: Ranged brand too powerful

Post by ba127 »

Thanks for the clarification. I was going by the brand rating of products in different ranges, that I was able to raise very easily.

The frozen beef / cars example was just an example of two different "range brands" where I could get both high quite easily, even though they are really contrasting products that a single company would never produce both. But megapolis certainly has a fair point that could be a different sort of game at it's core.

I'll look into it more and read the manual.
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eleaza
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Re: Ranged brand too powerful

Post by eleaza »

ba127 wrote:Thanks for the clarification. I was going by the brand rating of products in different ranges, that I was able to raise very easily.

The frozen beef / cars example was just an example of two different "range brands" where I could get both high quite easily, even though they are really contrasting products that a single company would never produce both. But megapolis certainly has a fair point that could be a different sort of game at it's core.

I'll look into it more and read the manual.
In its core, ranged brand is designed to make covering wider range of product classes "more isolated" than corporate brand. The things you described as not producing wider range of products may have been that the default brand strategy in real life is more like corporate brand in the game. If I had to say, it's corporate brand strategy is too limited and weak instead of ranged brand too powerful. There has to be an advantage for the "default corporate brand" than the most flexible individual brand. And honestly individual brand really did offer the best c/p for advertising, and probably the only way to play pure retailer, since players have no control over what the upstream wholesalers provide.

Personally I feel ranged brand is fairly cheap to run at early stage of the game, and later on if you tried to cover wider range of products, individual brand + your own medias is more effective and let you expand much quicker and easier, since a lot of time products share same raw materials might not be in the same class, like socks and sweater if you produce wool, ranged brand is a wasted of money, and it's likely other products in certain class are already taken mid-game, and not easy to expand to, individual under that situation is relatively cheaper comparably, this is why individual brand is most flexible. And corporate brand + subsidiary firewall with mixed brand strategies between megaclasses makes less micromanaging effort and most cost efficient in the end if you know how to balance it.
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meRlinX_AT
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Re: Ranged brand too powerful

Post by meRlinX_AT »

Spac3y wrote:I cant say ive ever really found the ranged brand op.

The unique brand however is overpowering, its the only brand I ever use as I feel its the quickest and best to 100 brand rating.
i understand your point

there are many pro's and contra's..

unique brand (rarely used)
pro:
- quickest rating for 1 product
- 1 product with bad quality will not ruin your brand loyalty for others
- most times in short games the best option

contra:
- you have to pay the advertising for each product
- products in the same class begin with 0
- much micro management without an delegated CMO
- much to control when using an CMO
- slow rising (and maybe limited) brand awareness


ranged brand
pro:
- up to 4 times (?) better cost/use
- quickest rating for the whole product class
- much less micro management without an delegated CMO
- much less to control when using an CMO
- better rising brand awareness (~4 times?)
- better option for long games
- better option when you launch many different product classes
- good quality of independent products in the same class will have an positive impact to brand loyalty
- much fewer entries in the brand overview

contra:
- 1 product with bad quality will ruin your brand loyalty for the whole product class
- slower brand rating


corporate brand
- best choice just for the "aunt emma business" (very small business)
- the cheapest
- with Sub DLC quite some possibilities - but atm half baked


contra for the whole brand strategy
- they cannot be set independent for the product classes or products
- with Sub DLC - you cannot give a class to an Sub, without losing the brand


for sure i have missed something
Win 7 Pro / Cap Lab 4.4.19 + Sub DLC

* I'm not an native English speaker - maybe some phrases or words are not the "yellow from the egg".
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