Guide to Completing the First 3 Scenarios

Author: Stylesjl

This guide is written for the purpose of finishing the first few scenarios in the game. Each of these scenarios introduces you to a new challenge or concept. With the advice given in Gameplay Basics you will hopefully be able to navigate through these first few scenarios without too much difficulty.

Home Comforts Co.

This is the first and easiest scenario outside of the tutorials and it introduces the concept of dominating two different product markets at the same time, in the first objective your need to dominate the Furniture category and after this you then need to dominate this plus the Home Appliances category at the same time.

Both objectives are easy to achieve despite the relatively short timeframe you are given (20 years for each objective):

Begin this scenario by checking if you have all of the available resources to produce all of the furniture types. You will need Timber, Linen, Leather, Cotton, Glass and Steel. The most important of these resources is Timber, which you will need in very large quantities.

Start by building a large factory for each furniture type (Beds, Chairs, Sofas and Tables) and a few retail stores in the same city, to make your enterprise profitable you will need to use economies of scale by selling a large amount of furniture.

If there is no Timber sold at the seaports then take out a loan and build a Lumber Camp using the lowest quality Timber you can find (as it will have the least expensive land). Build medium sized factories or farms for any other missing inputs.

Run an R&D program for all four furniture types to improve the quality of your products and use discounts and advertising to push the sales of your furniture to customers until you start making profits. If the demand in the stores sales units reach nearly 100% and you have already put a store in the busiest parts of the city then raise prices to increase your profits.

You will probably not have very much competition at this point, except possibly a few competitors selling furniture from the seaports, which should not be difficult to beat in terms of quality and brand so don’t be afraid to set relatively high prices compared to your competition.

Once you start making a profit you can grow your furniture empire to all of the other cities by setting up retail stores there and soon you will dominate the Furniture market:

Once you have achieved this goal you will then need to make a larger amount of revenue/profit and dominate the Home Appliances product category.

To dominate the Home Appliances industry you should start by running an R&D program for all Home Appliances (Air Conditioner, Coffee Machine, Refrigerator and Washing Machine) and building large factories for all four products. If you can afford it would also be worthwhile to construct a large Steel factory and a medium sized Electronic Components factory as your appliances will require large quantities of these resources.

Don’t worry about the other resources in your supply chain (Glass, Silicon, Plastic, etc.), as you can mostly just buy these resources from the seaport at a reasonable price; in the rare case that you can’t buy these other resources then construct a small factory to produce them.

Once you are producing Home Appliances you should construct Electronics stores in every city and run an advertising campaign to build up the brand. Your competition won’t be much of a threat if you move quickly, but if they give you any trouble then make sure that you are producing enough units in your factories and that your product ratings are higher than the competition (brand and quality are your two most powerful tools to achieving market dominance).

Once you have dominated both the Furniture and Home Appliances categories and are making a net profit then you will win!

Fashion Venture

This scenario starts with a big problem – your competitors get a five year head start. This causes a number of different issues you will need to be aware of:

Your competitors will have time to establish themselves in the Apparel and Leather product markets.

Inflation reduces the value of your starting capital.

Your starting technology is reduced due to the Technological Disruption rule being on for a five year period (also your competitors get a head start in R&D).

Good places to build retail shops might already be taken.

All of these are disadvantages for you, but it is possible to overcome them and beat your competitors to dominate the Apparel and Leather industries without too much difficulty.

When you first start you will not be allowed to do anything but quietly observe until January 1st 1995 (if you want to rapidly skip ahead, put the game speed at the maximum level), take this time to look around and see what the other companies are doing, including what they are producing and what cities they are establishing themselves in.

You should also check the first objective:

When the date has reached 1995 you will be able to start production. Start by taking out a loan and building four medium sized factories in the lowest wage city, one for each Apparel product. By this point you should have all of the inputs available for your Apparel products on the open market, but if not then build a small factory to produce whichever input is missing (i.e. a small Dyestuff or Linen factory).

Build retail stores in the highest wage city (preferably one where there is little to no existing competition) and start selling your Apparel products, using price discounts and advertising to drive sales revenue until your brand becomes more established, R&D will also help but it will take a while to catch up. Your competitors might be producing their own Apparel, but even with a five year head start they will not be very far ahead of you.

During this time you will be spending a large amount of money, but soon enough you will start to become profitable as long as you avoid trying to do too much too quickly, one common way to fail this scenario is to overextend yourself in trying to catch up to the competition.

Once you are starting to make a profit, you will end up with your first goal achieved, and a second goal to make even more money:

Use the knowledge point rewards to shore up your training or R&D expertise, either of these will prove quite useful as they can help out with increasing quality or production levels:

Use your profits to expand your Apparel business into all of the other cities and to build bigger factories. You should also start an R&D program into Leather Goods and the various product inputs (Textiles, Dyestuff, etc.). Aim to produce your own semi products and run your own farms (you will need Leather, Wool, Cotton and Flax Fiber, be sure to put the farms at the maximum level of training to increase quality). You should not bother with making your own raw materials like Timber or Oil; these are too expensive for this scenario and someone else will almost always supply these at a reasonable price.

Your profits and revenue should grow much bigger, especially if you start raising the prices of your high quality Apparel. The second objective should then be completed without too much trouble.

At this point you will be given a third objective: Dominate Apparel (and achieve a higher profit/revenue goal):

This objective should be easy to achieve if you are already making substantial profits and you haven’t waited too long for your competitors to gain a foothold, but if you are struggling to achieve dominance then some issues you might be having are:

Factories are not large enough to meet demand; once you are selling to all four cities you should have two large factories for each product at maximum training levels.

Inputs for some products are running low, for example Wool for Sweaters or Dyestuff. Check these supply bottlenecks and if necessary expand production to ensure that there are no shortages. Wool can be an especially big problem due to the seasonality of wool production and the huge amount demanded by Sweaters. You may need to connect several farms to a warehouse to resolve this problem (i.e. storing enough Wool in inventory for the next cycle).

Competitors are gaining market share. Try lowering prices or increasing advertising spending if the brand is below 100. Make sure that your product’s Overall Rating is higher than theirs and that you have good retail coverage (if your sales units are at 100% and near level 9 you should build more stores nearby to handle more customers).

Once you have dominated Apparel you will receive a fourth and final objective: Dominate the Apparel and Leather Goods categories at the same time. For this objective there is a time limit of 20 years:

By this point you should already have a good R&D program for all four of the Leather products (Wallet, Bag, Belt, Briefcase) so build the required factories and shops and advertise heavily to rapidly build up the brand. Be sure to open some additional leather farms as you will need a lot of good quality leather. If you have enough money you can try opting for an intensive training program for your entire company in order to quickly level up your farms and factories.

Once you have dominated both product categories and are making a good profit, you win!

Real Estate Mogul

This scenario has a very different goal to the previous two scenarios, in this scenario you will be investing in Real Estate and not products.

To beat this scenario you should first read the Real Estate and Media guide which will explain the basics of the Real Estate industry in Capitalism Lab. Once you have read that guide you will be have a basic idea on what you will need to do to win this scenario.

The first step is to check the goals and sub goals of this scenario, which are the following:

Dominate the Real Estate Industry

Have 1 billion of revenue and profit of 100 million

And the optional sub goals are to have an 8% return on equity along with a high revenue/profit and market cap.

When you first begin the scenario you should borrow as much money as you can and start constructing Commercial Buildings in all cities where Commercial Building demand exceeds supply. Build as many of these as you can in areas close to the CBD until the supply matches or slightly exceeds demand.

If you have any money left over from your construction of Commercial Buildings then you should next build apartment blocks in cities where the supply is lower than demand; preferably in areas without many retail stores or community/sports facilities.

Make sure that you have at least 30 million in cash left over when you unpause the game as you will need to wait several months for your buildings to fill up with renters.

During this early stage you won’t have enough money to purchase land or buy community buildings; you should instead focus on matching supply with demand.

Once your Commercial and Residential buildings have exceeded the level of demand you should refrain from building any more of these buildings and instead start buying land near your Real Estate assets (leave some room for others to build shops next to your buildings).

Once you have enough cash you should start adding Community Facilities on this land in order to boost the ratings of your apartment buildings and increase the rents and profits.

Eventually you will get to the point where you have maximised the ratings of your apartments and commercial buildings, paid off all of your debts and you are still short of the Revenue goal. This usually happens when you get 200 to 300 million in revenue.

In this scenario it is not actually possible to win using only Real Estate; you will now need to spread to other industries that can generate the required amount of revenue. Some recommendations are Media or retail (especially if you can build the stores next to your apartments). You only branch out into these other industries once you have sufficient cash flow from your real estate assets.

Once you have reached the 1 billion in revenue requirement you will win!