Greater Control over Subsidiaries

When you start a new game with the Subsidiary DLC enabled, you will be able to control any subsidiaries of which you have 75% or more ownership in the following ways.

Direct Subsidiary Control at The Corporate Level

  • Hire c-suite executives for a subsidiary company (COO, CTO, and CMO.)
  • Set up new departments in a subsidiary company’s headquarters.
  • Change policies at the human resources department, the investor relations department, and the PR department in a subsidiary company’s headquarters.
  • Build new firms for a subsidiary company. When you open the Build menu, there will be a new window listing all of your subsidiaries as well as your own company, allowing you to build a new firm on behalf of your subsidiary company (see the following screenshot.)

Direct subsidiary control when you have 75% or more ownership

  • Replace the CEO of a subsidiary company by clicking on the [Hire New] button in the CEO office at the headquarters of the subsidiary company, as shown in the below screenshot. However it is not a decision to be made lightly as a new CEO may demand a high salary whereas the existing CEO may be contented with a much lower salary if he/she is the founder of the subsidiary company.

Hire New CEO


Subsidiary Company’s CEO Management Policies

You will have access to a new list of expansion strategy options that you can set for the CEO of your subsidiary company, as shown below.

Scope of Production

In addition to the “Expansion Strategies” page, you may switch to the “Scope of Production” page and set a list of product classes that you do not want your subsidiary company to produce.

You may do so when you do not want your subsidiary company to compete with you in the same product classes.

Please note that these policies will only keep your subsidiary company from starting production on the affected product classes. However, if your subsidiary company has already engaged in the production of those product classes, these policies will have no effects.

The “Management Policies” page of the CEO shares the same list of options with the COO’s management policies. For consistency of management policies throughout the company, whenever you change any of the options on the Management Policies page, the changes will be applied to both the CEO and the COO.

CEO and COO share some of the options


Direct Subsidiary Control at The Firm Level 

  • Change the 3×3 layout in a subsidiary firm using the Layout Plan Library.
  • Directly set up or modify individual functional units in a subsidiary firm’s 3×3 layout.
  • Change the training budget in a subsidiary firm.
  • Close down or relocate a subsidiary firms.
  • Change the brand strategy of a subsidiary company.
  • Change product prices and the internal sale status in a subsidiary firm.
  • Change the advertising price and the content development budget of a subsidiary media firm.

Changing the Firm Manager

When you get involved in the micro-management of a subsidiary firm, as stated above, the effect will be short-lived as the AI manager of the firm will make his/her own decisions which will supersede yours. (for example, the AI manager will change the price again based on his/her judgement soon after you have changed it.)

If you want your decisions on a subsidiary firm to have lasting effects, you may assign yourself, who is the chairman of the subsidiary company, to run the firm directly and release the AI manager from his/her duty as the firm’s manager.

To do so, click the Assign Manager icon (as indicated in red outline in the below screenshot), it will bring up a window allowing you to assign a different person to the manager role. Now simply select yourself (the Chairman).

Assign Manager

Transferring Firms Among Companies Which Are Under Your Control

To do so, go to the firm detail window, and click on the original Relocate/Demolish icon at the top-right of the firm detail window. There will be a new option for transferring the firm. (see the screenshot below)

Firm Detail Window
Mass Transfer Firms
To transfer a group of firms in a single process, please see: Mass Transfer Firms

Closer Trade Relationship with Firms of a Subsidiary Company 

  • You will be able to buy products from firms of a subsidiary company even if the products are set to Internal Sale only.
  • Likewise, your subsidiary company will be able to buy products from your company regardless of their Internal Sale settings.

Pricing Policies for Individual Products 

The Management Policies section on the Person->Career screen allows you to set a general pricing policy for all products sold by your company.If you prefer to set pricing policies for individual products instead, you may now use the new sliders on the Corporate Details->Products screen to adjust pricing policies for individual products, as shown below.

Corporate Details->Products screen

To do so, first click the Show Pricing Policy checkbox at the bottom of the screen to enable this feature.

A slider will appear underneath each product on the list, as well as a checkbox for each product. As show in the below screenshot, the checkbox determines whether an individual product should follow a custom pricing policy or the general pricing policy you set on the CEO or COO screen.

If you want to set a custom pricing policy for an individual product, simply click the checkbox and adjust the slider.

3 options in Pricing Policies

Showing Your Subsidiary’s Cash and Profit on the Bottom Menu Bar

If you own subsidiary companies, the corporate logo of your company will be shown next to the cash display on the bottom menu bar. You can click on the logo or press the hot key Ctrl-X to see a list of your subsidiaries and select one.
 
The game will then display the cash and profit of the selected subsidiary on the bottom menu bar instead of those of your main corporation, allowing you to keep an eye on your subsidiary’s cash as you expand its business.
In relation to this, when you open the Build Firm menu, it will select the same subsidiary by default. This streamlines the operation when you are focusing on building a series of firms for that subsidiary.