Lessons learned from my first public challenge game

General discussions about the release versions of Capitalism Lab
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Falkon
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue May 24, 2016 4:43 am

Lessons learned from my first public challenge game

Post by Falkon »

I was looking forward to spending tonight and tomorrow finishing out the challenge game I was playing, but had to update and now it's gone. But hey, there are new challenges for a new year, and I learned some things from the last one:
  • How to get a brand rating of 99 across 4 cities to plummet to 0 in an instant: sell beverages, advertise and build up lots of brand recognition, then diversify to sell toilet cleaner and detergent while still using the same corporate brand. Facepalm when you suffer the wrath of loyal customers who recognized the label and are not happy with your new beverages.
  • Plan any farms that might be needed and get them going well in advance. This to avoid suffering a year-long shortage waiting first for sowing and then harvesting and processing time when your supplier cuts you off.
  • My standard layout of one purchase to one sales unit in retail wasn't optimal; the warehouses had too much supply even while retailers had too much demand. I read somewhere that purchasers can purchase enough for two sales units. Going to try that next time, will just need even more stores.
  • It's much easier to control product prices from the product detail reports than by going store to store, especially once you have a lot of stores and products. Also, you can see the change it makes to the overall rating instantly instead of having a time delay.
  • I used to avoid the autolink suppliers setting, but it's really helpful when you have a lot of firms and some supplier decides to cut you off. You can always doubleback to check and change the suppliers if you want, but you don't have to drop everything to deal with the crisis right then.
Something that'd be a nice-to-have in a future version: when you hover over a farm, factory, warehouse, or store, it shows you what products that firm is handling. Research centers don't. It would be nice if they had that on hover as well.
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eleaza
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Joined: Sat Jul 09, 2016 2:40 pm

Re: Lessons learned from my first public challenge game

Post by eleaza »

Falkon wrote: [*]How to get a brand rating of 99 across 4 cities to plummet to 0 in an instant: sell beverages, advertise and build up lots of brand recognition, then diversify to sell toilet cleaner and detergent while still using the same corporate brand. Facepalm when you suffer the wrath of loyal customers who recognized the label and are not happy with your new beverages.
Don't cross more than 2 megaclass with corporate brand (unless you can make sure all your products have the best tech, around the same quality, and overall rating, it's very tough), I find if you want to use corporate brand stick to one core megaclass and then branches out with subsidiaries (if you have sub DLC)
Falkon wrote: [*]Plan any farms that might be needed and get them going well in advance. This to avoid suffering a year-long shortage waiting first for sowing and then harvesting and processing time when your supplier cuts you off.
Farms are very long term investment, and if you plan to use any farm related product as raw materials, always try to plant them early in the game, or suffer the risk. A lot of time using warehouse to buffer them will be very important. And even if they are not in growing season, the training will continues, and the quality depends on the growing unit level. Usually with max training, they will still take like 5+ years to reach top level. Always be prepare and be careful about farms' high overhead and salary cost.
Falkon wrote: [*]My standard layout of one purchase to one sales unit in retail wasn't optimal; the warehouses had too much supply even while retailers had too much demand. I read somewhere that purchasers can purchase enough for two sales units. Going to try that next time, will just need even more stores.
At low purchase and sales unit level (like lv 1 or 2), one-to-two ratio can make all utilization of both higher, and take way less space when you don't have enough "floor" for all the products. But later on you will run into the opposite problem when sales unit level reaches level 9, by then one-to-two might be a waste, since you might have more stores, and one sales unit at level 9 have very high throughput, so one of the two might be idling, waste space and salary. The balance is quite difficult to find, just be flexible, and prepare so switch to different layout (like set the sales unit at the corners only and make sure they can be relinked to new purchases units of different products)
Falkon wrote: [*]It's much easier to control product prices from the product detail reports than by going store to store, especially once you have a lot of stores and products. Also, you can see the change it makes to the overall rating instantly instead of having a time delay.
Glad someone actually find the Product Details screen on their own. A lot of players never find it for some reason. It's probably one of the most important management screen. And remember it's hotkey 'R' like in the back of your head, (and double click he product image to quick jump, helps a lot)
Falkon wrote: [*]I used to avoid the autolink suppliers setting, but it's really helpful when you have a lot of firms and some supplier decides to cut you off. You can always doubleback to check and change the suppliers if you want, but you don't have to drop everything to deal with the crisis right then.[/list]
Auto link can be setup manually. I find it's best not to set in the game option for all, but only to those firms that needs them. For the most part autolink for factories are bad, since they might switch to bad supplier or even change the production (when some products share the same raw materials composition). Retail store is probably fine if they sells product you didn't produce. The warehouse is in between depends on if you use private label or not.
Falkon wrote: Something that'd be a nice-to-have in a future version: when you hover over a farm, factory, warehouse, or store, it shows you what products that firm is handling. Research centers don't. It would be nice if they had that on hover as well.
I'd like this feature too. :)
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