Totally New - Basic Question

[Gargoyle]

Okay, I set up an Aluminum mine, a Sugar Cane Farm, and a Factory to make Cola. I even advertise. No one buys any Aluminum, Sugar or Cola.

If I do not want to retail the cola myself, would there not be some interest in any of these products?

[therealevan]

If I understand you correctly.. If you're not trying to retail your cola, the only way to make a profit from it would be if other AI players are wanting to sell it in their store, they would buy cola from you.

[Gargoyle]

If I understand you correctly.. If you're not trying to retail your cola, the only way to make a profit from it would be if other AI players are wanting to sell it in their store, they would buy cola from you.

Well, I did put it up for sale for the factory, no takers for a few years, gave up.

[therealevan]

From what I can tell let the game run a year or so and let the AI setup their firms, check the product market share after a while. It's dead money if there is no revenue for a specific product, unless you're going to retail the cola.

[BigWolf]

Its more than possible the AI is seeing better profit opportunities in other products

You'll also need to commit to R&D to make the product quality better as well
It may be worth opening a single retail store to sell some of the product to keep at least a small amount of money coming in

[Gargoyle]

Thanks for all the responses.

Now that I see what you are saying, I see how that is actually quite realistic. To set up manufacturing without previous demand is very unlikely to success, unless you just get lucky.

But if you wait to see what products are being retailed before developing one, then your competition are already supplying it. So then you need to R&D and uncut price to get a AI to switch. Sounds pretty hard.

Looks like I may have to switch to retailing and work back to manufacturing to survive.

[BigWolf]

Actually, most AI companies normally starts off selling consumer goods from the seaports first, then once it has income starts to produce its own product lines