Lessons learned from my first public challenge game
Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2016 3:44 am
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.