Re: Manufacturing, trying to better understand salary expens
Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2016 9:27 pm
@ Diche Bach
A seaport retail only strategy is definitely the easiest way to get started in almost any game, and I found that to be true even in my in game situation. The problem that you generally expect to run into against 15-20 AI is that the demand for seaport goods can start drastically outpacing supply in the first 5 years. In my game where there was only 1 seaport per city it happened sometime near the end of year 2 I believe, and at that point all retail stores started seeing a decline in profit and it wouldn't have made any sense to build any new stores because there wasn't enough supply to keep them profitable.
What I had going for me was the benefit of a couple low RWR cities to manufacture in if I sold the right products. I did some scouting and realized I had 5 other CEO's who had an expertise in beverages so I decided that wasn't an area I wanted to initially compete. Instead I used the money I had to R&D gold rings and leather wallets to start.
I was able to get land for cheap in Lagos, I opened a medium leather farm, a warehouse to utilize it, and a large factory to make wallets. Even though they were offered by the seaport I was the only one producing them and was able to sell a ton of them at thin margins even at low quality. After building branding in London and an R&D later I was able to make a killing off the wallets and a fair margin in my other cities. I was able to open a gold mine and took over as the only seller of gold rings, which I made a tidy profit on. I also expanded into the other leather goods, briefcases eventually became my best product.
I played through about 10 years and managed to pull a best yearly profit of 200 million without any stock investments to inflate the number. I actually want to do it over again without being stingy about borrowing money and diversify into real estate as well.
A seaport retail only strategy is definitely the easiest way to get started in almost any game, and I found that to be true even in my in game situation. The problem that you generally expect to run into against 15-20 AI is that the demand for seaport goods can start drastically outpacing supply in the first 5 years. In my game where there was only 1 seaport per city it happened sometime near the end of year 2 I believe, and at that point all retail stores started seeing a decline in profit and it wouldn't have made any sense to build any new stores because there wasn't enough supply to keep them profitable.
What I had going for me was the benefit of a couple low RWR cities to manufacture in if I sold the right products. I did some scouting and realized I had 5 other CEO's who had an expertise in beverages so I decided that wasn't an area I wanted to initially compete. Instead I used the money I had to R&D gold rings and leather wallets to start.
I was able to get land for cheap in Lagos, I opened a medium leather farm, a warehouse to utilize it, and a large factory to make wallets. Even though they were offered by the seaport I was the only one producing them and was able to sell a ton of them at thin margins even at low quality. After building branding in London and an R&D later I was able to make a killing off the wallets and a fair margin in my other cities. I was able to open a gold mine and took over as the only seller of gold rings, which I made a tidy profit on. I also expanded into the other leather goods, briefcases eventually became my best product.
I played through about 10 years and managed to pull a best yearly profit of 200 million without any stock investments to inflate the number. I actually want to do it over again without being stingy about borrowing money and diversify into real estate as well.