Improved Gameplay Balance
Several parts of the game have been revised for better overall balance.
Freight costs
Buying from another city now costs three components, added together:
- Freight between the supplier firm and its nearest seaport.
- Freight for shipping between the two cities.
- Freight between the nearest seaport and the buyer firm.
Seeing the breakdown
Select a Purchasing Unit and hover over the cost+freight display.
Maximum capacity of functional units
Adjusted to a more realistic level. The change is most noticeable on units trained to high levels.
R&D progress
Technology values now increase more per project once the market’s Top Technology exceeds 100.
The problem this fixes: at very high Top Technology levels, R&D improvements had almost no effect on product quality — so continuing to research stopped being worth doing.
Training
Functional units at level 9 incur no training cost at all, in both normal and intensive training, whatever the training slider says.
Random events
When the Technology Breakthrough event fires, the research in progress completes instantly and the resulting tech lands 20–60 points above the original target.
Merger mechanism
A target company’s brands can now survive a merger, which they previously could not.
If both the acquiring company (parent) and the target (child) use the unique brand strategy, and both conditions below hold, the child’s brand ratings are retained:
| Condition | Test |
|---|---|
| 1 | The child’s brand rating is greater than the parent’s. Brand rating is brand awareness plus brand loyalty. |
| 2 | The child’s brand loyalty is ≥ 0, or is at least 10 points greater than the parent’s brand loyalty. |