Competitors and cities

General discussions about the release versions of Capitalism Lab
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oblade
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Jan 07, 2012 6:19 pm

Competitors and cities

Post by oblade »

CapLab "only" have now 7 cities... but can be 30 competitors!

I would like to choose more cities, like 15 or 20.

I'm sure the game will become much more complex 8-)
Esoteric Rogue
Level 6 user
Posts: 413
Joined: Sun Nov 18, 2012 8:18 am

Re: Competitors and cities

Post by Esoteric Rogue »

oblade wrote:CapLab "only" have now 7 cities... but can be 30 competitors!

I would like to choose more cities, like 15 or 20.

I'm sure the game will become much more complex 8-)
Hmm. I also run 30 competitors. But I've been wanting to discuss cities. I'm not trying to hijack your post :D If my discussion starts to go too far, I'll make a new thread :D

I usually run 1 city.

I preferred Cap+ to Cap2. One reason is because it was one world. Cap2 and CapLab feel more like I'm playing 7 different games that happen to share the same cash, stock and technology resource.

I am also confused because of 'Import' products. If we all have corporations in other cities, shouldn't "we" be importers/exports? Well, we are usually "exporting" a few things as the game progresses, but where are we importing these products from?

Say I am importing Oil in Pittsburgh. But when I play Cincinatti I cannot export Oil directly from the exporter? It's just silly, to me. We could pretend the supplier is boycotting everywhere buy Los Angeles, but that's just silly. Another way to look at would be that my "docks were full", but frankly that's a pretty thin explanation too.

So, personally I do not like how cities are implemented. I would rather have a mostly open world, like Cap+, but that would be a major rework. (I guess "open region" better explains it. There's all the cities on a single large section of map... the exports come from off the map, of course.) Hmm. Actually, maybe I would be fine if CapLab was using a fake map "section" instead of a map of the world. I could go back to imagine we were regional rather than global corporations, and the exports would come from simply off the map. Since our cities and map are worldwide, there is no off the map, unless were Iiporting oil from Mars, I guess.

Related, I think I usually ran 0 imports in Cap2, but Cap Lab seems to have a minimum of 1. Oh well, I just change it so it's low quality and inconsistent and thus of no consequence.

I understand that David or the devs, I believe, has suggested future possibilities for moving to new cities with superior competition as the game progresses. I have to drop a note in that thread sometime. That's moving away from the open world that I would want by making the game more feel more segmented, so I am dismayed.

Just my two cents on the subject. Thanks for listening.

I would support oblade's request for more cities, however, because why not? :D (Other than slow computers.) It's a low priority for me though.
Belisarius
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed Dec 12, 2012 2:22 pm

Re: Competitors and cities

Post by Belisarius »

Not sure if I understand you correctly, but you sound like you don´t have discovered yet, that you can get goods from other cities by switching the filter from "Current City" to "All cities" in the Linker-menu.

In my current game, for example, Guangzhou in China produces all the computers and other electronic equipments I sell worldwide (I established it as my electronics center thanks to the fact that its import habor had silica and oil in its stock).
Panama produces all furniture for sale in south america (although I had to open a warehouse to import wood from other logging camps, due to the fact that one logging camp just isn´t enough) and Rio de Janeiro currently is being established as food producer (although I probably establish a 2nd food producer in asia, to have less freight costs).

So my game definitely plays "world wide" and not just as 6 disconnected cities.

I would wish, however, that there were regional differences in the quality of the resources mined in the different regions ...
for example, that one of the cities is the best wood producer, another city is the best one for Silica ... and so on.
At the moment it seems to be totally determined by the RNG ... my first logging camp in Panama, for example, produced wood with the qualkity of 87 (which is why I established the city as furniture producer) ... the 2nd resource that appeared in this city (and which I had to use after the 1st ran dry) however just produced wood with the quality of 59 ... similar for other resources in other cities ... so there seems to be no difference in the RNG rolls for the cities.

Also I would wish for the cities to have climate variations, so that not all crop could be grown everywhere (and the computer would select the cities from start on, so that you have at least one city for every crop). Growing cocoa and sugar cane in Warsaw (for example) sounds a little bit strange :D

Regional differences of the cities with regards to resource quality and crop definitely would enhance the game
SettleR
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2012 8:40 am

Re: Competitors and cities

Post by SettleR »

I am restarting this thread. I was wondering if it's possible to have more than 10 cities? Would be a great new feature in a upcoming update! :)
azxcvbnm321
Level 3 user
Posts: 95
Joined: Fri Dec 07, 2012 9:13 am

Re: Competitors and cities

Post by azxcvbnm321 »

I've found that 7 cities is more than enough for me. I'm currently playing with 5 cities and it's already hard enough to keep track of everything. I'm not sure how adding more cities would improve the fun or game experience. Basically another city just adds a couple of more stores you have to open and keep track of per product category. It also dilutes competition, but then you can just reduce the number of competitors if you don't want that much competition. At some point, adding more cities becomes a non-factor, think about adding 10 cities to 100 cities to 1000 cities. A game with 100 cities would be a management nightmare. I think 7 cities is enough already.

As a previous poster said, you can import from anywhere in the world. Now there are ports that "import" goods and resources from off map. That's necessary to keep the game going and to allow the player and AI access to materials that otherwise would never be developed due to lack of initial capital or lack of technology, etc.
SettleR
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2012 8:40 am

Re: Competitors and cities

Post by SettleR »

Well i see it as a fun way to expand your electronic store brand for example.
I guess it depends on how you play the game :)

But i still want to know if there is any way to add more cities? :roll:
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