Capitalism Lab – Goals

Author: Stylesjl

Overview of Goals

At the start of every scenario you will be given one or more goals, these goals are important to understand as it will shape the strategy you will need to use in order to win. Typical goals often include:

  • Product Category/Industry Dominance
  • Revenue/Profit goals
  • Market Capitalization
  • Corporate/Personal Net Worth

There are other goals as well such as Return on Equity, Number of Employees, controlling companies, etc. but this guide will only focus on the above as they are the most common in the built-in scenarios.

Most of these goals are straightforward but some may be a bit confusing to understand. I will provide overview of what these goals mean:

  • Dominance of a product category – this means that you need to be the biggest manufacturer of this product category. If you need to be dominant in Furniture for example then you must be the largest producer of Tables, Chairs, Beds and Sofas all at the same time. Being the biggest purchaser of these products from another company or a seaport does not count towards being dominant.

Note: In the case of seaports, the ‘Manufacturing’ share is credited to the seaport itself based on how much all companies buy from it.

  • Dominance of an Industry – this means that you should be number 1 in revenue for that particular industry, such as being the biggest Retailer or having the largest Real Estate or Media empire.
  • It should be noted that for all cases where dominance is the goal, it means that you must have the biggest market share compared to your competitors – if you have 20% of the market but your competitors individually have less than 20% then you are considered to be dominant (this is true even if all of your competitors shares add up to 80% of the entire market).

Likewise if you are required to dominate an industry such as manufacturing or retail, then you don’t need to be dominant in any products or product categories at all, you just need to be the biggest producer/seller overall. You don’t need a majority of the market to win; you just have to be bigger than your nearest competitor.

  • Profit/Revenue is straightforward, in the case of revenue it means the total amount of products/services you are selling to your customers. If you sell a million dollars of furniture in a year, even at a loss then this counts as a million dollars of revenue. Profit is how much money you make subtracted by your costs. Note that profits will exclude certain gains/ losses such as interest payments, inflation/deflation, asset price changes, new buildings and many other ‘One Off’ expenditures/gains.
  • Market Capitalization is how much your corporation is worth on the stock market, this figure can change depending on how much the investors value your corporation. If you have a history of making profits, paying dividends, owning valuable assets (including land, technology, branding and shares in other companies) and you have not been diluting the value of your shares than the share price will be higher.
  • Corporate net worth is how much the actual assets of your corporation are worth in total regardless of the actual share price. This number could be higher or lower than the Market Capitalization.
  • Personal net worth is similar to corporate net worth. It counts all of your personal net worth, including personal cash, mansions and the percentage of shares you own of your company. So if your company has a market capitalization of 1 billion but you only own 50% then your personal net worth will be 500 million (plus any other assets you own).

The best way to increase this number is to either make your company worth more or to gain a greater share of your company (such as by paying your CEO a salary or buying back shares from everyone else).

Achieving Goals

When you first start a game you will need to check what goals you have been assigned along with the sub-goals. Sub-goals are typically optional and the rewards from them can be used to help you along the way to finishing the main goal. If a sub-goal is the only goal you have available then finishing this typically means that a new goal will be unlocked after this.

Here is a straightforward example from the scenario Corporate Leadership:

The main goal is to raise the stock price to $500 and achieve a billion in revenue and 100 million in profit within 80 years.

The sub-goals in this case are smaller versions of the same goal (achieving smaller profits, revenue and share price in 10 years:

In this case you are rewarded for achieving the sub goal (and penalised for losing). The rewards of gaining expertise for your senior executives and knowledge points will boost your ability to achieve the next goals after this.

In the case where there is a sub goal and no main goals, this means that another goal will be unlocked after completing this sub goal. A good example is in the Toys & Gadgets scenario where you are given an unlimited amount of time to dominate the toy industry (but then after this you will need to achieve another goal):

Each scenario has its own unique goals, but the main ones will typically be for Profit, Revenue and dominance of an industry or product category.