CES DLC Issues Review

[megapolis]

Hi All,

I have played several games in CES including a 120 years run without any actions.

All the games were started with 10 cities with max population script (a bit edited for my purposes and max difficulty)
Here's the list of issues I have encountered.

1. Number of competitors. It is set to 50 by script but I have never seen more than 30 of them. In most cases there is about 15-20 competitors. (I have seen a post that this issue is resolved in the latest patch but I have seen the same problem in the empty run on latest patch)

2. No company specialization. All rival companies start as diversified.

3. CBD. In CES I have to start with Commercial buildings because of smaller cities. After a couple of starts I have found out that CBD changes its position after day 1. Also it is not an information center building anymore.

3.1 By the way Map Generator became worse. I have seen a lot of cities without Information Center building, with Stock Exchange in the field on the outskirts of a city. I don't even mention things like 5 Grade Schools or other civic buildings next to each other.

3.2 City Map Seed mentioned here: http://www.capitalismlab.com/script---c ... -seed.html is not working anymore. Unfortunately right now when map generatior creates such ridiculous maps this function becomes important.

4. Central bank is run by Inflation Hawks only. together with Mayors tendency to accumulate ridiculous smount of money it puts economy in permanent deflation and almost permanent recession.

5. Mayor's position is permanent. if your party member wins the race the only way to leave office is to bankrupt the city.(the other way is to increase taxes and lower subsidies but it is counterproductive)

5.1 Mayors never use Universities. A research project that was started by a player will run forever. Even when my party member leaves the office.

6. Political Parties. In most cases I have only 3 out of 63 AI players in my party. Even when it was started on day 1. Other parties are overcrowded.

[David]

1. Number of competitors. It is set to 50 by script but I have never seen more than 30 of them. In most cases there is about 15-20 competitors. (I have seen a post that this issue is resolved in the latest patch but I have seen the same problem in the empty run on latest patch)

2. No company specialization. All rival companies start as diversified.

The above 2 issues will be fixed in the next post-release beta versoin 4.4.04.
FYI, the post-release beta forum is at http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=10

3. CBD. In CES I have to start with Commercial buildings because of smaller cities. After a couple of starts I have found out that CBD changes its position after day 1. Also it is not an information center building anymore.

This is intentional. It was changed to behave like this after user feedback.

You may find the old posts related to this from:
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =16&t=3892
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =16&t=3758

3.1 By the way Map Generator became worse. I have seen a lot of cities without Information Center building, with Stock Exchange in the field on the outskirts of a city. I don't even mention things like 5 Grade Schools or other civic buildings next to each other.

What are your game settings? Is it a new city built by the AI or is it a city already in existence at the beginning of the game.

I just ran a test game with 7 cities and the buildings seem alright.

Maybe you could provide me with your save game file to take a look.

3.2 City Map Seed mentioned here: http://www.capitalismlab.com/script---c ... -seed.html is not working anymore. Unfortunately right now when map generatior creates such ridiculous maps this function becomes important.

4. Central bank is run by Inflation Hawks only. together with Mayors tendency to accumulate ridiculous smount of money it puts economy in permanent deflation and almost permanent recession.

Please try the post-release beta 4.4.03 which is currently available and let me know if the problem still occurs.
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=10

If the problem still persists, please send me your save game file for investigation.

5. Mayor's position is permanent. if your party member wins the race the only way to leave office is to bankrupt the city.(the other way is to increase taxes and lower subsidies but it is counterproductive)

Hmm.. we didn't want to make it too difficult to the player. It seems that most players would prefer being able to continue running a city as long as they are doing a good job.

5.1 Mayors never use Universities. A research project that was started by a player will run forever. Even when my party member leaves the office.

Will forward this to the dev team for improving it.

6. Political Parties. In most cases I have only 3 out of 63 AI players in my party. Even when it was started on day 1. Other parties are overcrowded.

New members will join your party when all of your party members are already mayors, allowing you to run for mayors for even more cities.

[megapolis]

1. Number of competitors. It is set to 50 by script but I have never seen more than 30 of them. In most cases there is about 15-20 competitors. (I have seen a post that this issue is resolved in the latest patch but I have seen the same problem in the empty run on latest patch)
2. No company specialization. All rival companies start as diversified.

The above 2 issues will be fixed in the next post-release beta versoin 4.4.04.
FYI, the post-release beta forum is at http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=10

Did not know it was a general problem.

3. CBD. In CES I have to start with Commercial buildings because of smaller cities. After a couple of starts I have found out that CBD changes its position after day 1. Also it is not an information center building anymore.

This is intentional. It was changed to behave like this after user feedback.

You may find the old posts related to this from:
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =16&t=3892
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... =16&t=3758

Then it's either a day1 bug or there should be an explanation of CBD movement mechanisn.

3.1 By the way Map Generator became worse. I have seen a lot of cities without Information Center building, with Stock Exchange in the field on the outskirts of a city. I don't even mention things like 5 Grade Schools or other civic buildings next to each other.

What are your game settings? Is it a new city built by the AI or is it a city already in existence at the beginning of the game.
I just ran a test game with 7 cities and the buildings seem alright.
Maybe you could provide me with your save game file to take a look.

I start with 10 pre-built cities with 1000000 population. Unfortunately I did not save most ridiculous configurations. Tried 3-4 starts right now - all with Information center and Stock exchange in normal places. But I see clusters of same civic buildings every time.

3.2 City Map Seed mentioned here: http://www.capitalismlab.com/script---c ... -seed.html is not working anymore. Unfortunately right now when map generatior creates such ridiculous maps this function becomes important.

4. Central bank is run by Inflation Hawks only. together with Mayors tendency to accumulate ridiculous smount of money it puts economy in permanent deflation and almost permanent recession.

Please try the post-release beta 4.4.03 which is currently available and let me know if the problem still occurs.
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=10

If the problem still persists, please send me your save game file for investigation.

Stupid me. I used released version, not Post-release beta. Maybe it's the root of most of my problems.

5. Mayor's position is permanent. if your party member wins the race the only way to leave office is to bankrupt the city.(the other way is to increase taxes and lower subsidies but it is counterproductive)

Hmm.. we didn't want to make it too difficult to the player. It seems that most players would prefer being able to continue running a city as long as they are doing a good job.

I only did this because I had no spare members in my party. By the way with 40 cities, 50 rival corporations 5 political parties amount of AI Persons should be increased from 63 to at least 255.

5.1 Mayors never use Universities. A research project that was started by a player will run forever. Even when my party member leaves the office.

Will forward this to the dev team for improving it.

Also I request a more detailed explanation how it works. I found that I have to have an R&D center in a city with 99% rating just to stay on par with technology decay and have to train it to lvl9 to make some progress. It is normal, I don't have any objections against it. I even like it.. I just want to understand dependencies.
By the way there is one drawback in this mechanism. Spending money on factory training becomes a waste of money.

6. Political Parties. In most cases I have only 3 out of 63 AI players in my party. Even when it was started on day 1. Other parties are overcrowded.

New members will join your party when all of your party members are already mayors, allowing you to run for mayors for even more cities.

Does not work in 4.3.12. I had long 4-8 years runs with all my party members except for me busy being the mayors. Maybe the game thinks that if I am not the Mayor then there's no need to expand the party but I cannot test it in my setup. I start with 10 pre-built cities and cannot create a new city to become a member. Also I cannot run for Mayor in existing cities because I am running a business.

By the way AI uses advertizing like crazy. it was ok when the cities had 4-5m citizens but with 1m cap AI never have significant profit and always runs into debt except for a couple of AIs that have a monopoly in Smartphones or Apparel.

[David]

But I see clusters of same civic buildings every time.

We will improve this in the next post-release beta patch 4.4.04.

Also I request a more detailed explanation how it works. I found that I have to have an R&D center in a city with 99% rating just to stay on par with technology decay and have to train it to lvl9 to make some progress. It is normal, I don't have any objections against it. I even like it.. I just want to understand dependencies.

Did you mean you want to have more info about the university research? Here is the link:
http://www.capitalismlab.com/university ... ation.html

By the way there is one drawback in this mechanism. Spending money on factory training becomes a waste of money.

Could you please explain this in more details?

Does not work in 4.3.12. I had long 4-8 years runs with all my party members except for me busy being the mayors. Maybe the game thinks that if I am not the Mayor then there's no need to expand the party but I cannot test it in my setup. I start with 10 pre-built cities and cannot create a new city to become a member. Also I cannot run for Mayor in existing cities because I am running a business.

Could you please provide me with your save game file with this issue? We will check it and will try to come up with a solution.

By the way AI uses advertizing like crazy. it was ok when the cities had 4-5m citizens but with 1m cap AI never have significant profit and always runs into debt except for a couple of AIs that have a monopoly in Smartphones or Apparel.

I ran a test game with CES DLC and most of the AI are profitable (see the attached screenshot.)

The advertising expenses are also very reasonable.

Please provide me with your save game file and I will look into it.

5.1 Mayors never use Universities. A research project that was started by a player will run forever. Even when my party member leaves the office.

In the next version 4.4.04, the AI will cancel research projects started by the player.

But as for whether the AI should start university research projects on its own and what industries it should focus on, I would like to get your inputs.

Basically, this is a feature that lets the player strategically pair the university research with the business that the player is running to boost the industry's competitiveness. Not sure if it is a good idea to have the AI mayors do the same. If yes, which industries the AI should set university research for?

[megapolis]

Hi David,

Sorry, did not have much time recently. Will try to explain things in two words.

1. By explanation of university research I mean more than was written on main page. The difference is like between installation manual and technical manual. The page on site only explains in two words how to set up research and nothing more. I need to understand for example how university research affects research levels, local competitors quality levels etc.

2. Unfortunately I did not make any manufacturing in my recent games. But as I remember, production level drops with every upgrade in technology. Except for player's speciality, of course. As I said before, spending 3m on university research starts technology race and you have to upgrade technology on your factories every year just to stay on par with Technology level 100. As a result all the money spent on factories training will be wasted because of yearly factory upgrades.

3. Link to save game where I did not have enough party members because everyone was busy mayoring: https://yadi.sk/d/SJWLuBBl39ssfV

4. Link to save of 120 years empty run (release version). You can find there that several commercial buildings built on the day 1 can do the same profit as all other AI companies because of high advertising spending. https://yadi.sk/d/KM_lTc0f39srdQ

5. It is probably good news that AI Mayors will cancel research projects setup by player. It will stop unneeded technology decay caused by research projects. But generally University mechanics and their usability for AI are a big question. Neither AI nor player will move factories to another city because of high costs related to such move and because of additional micromanagement involved. I am afraid that University research is born dead.

[David]

You may take a look at this thread which has discussions about university research and city competitiveness rating.
http://www.capitalismlab.com/forum/view ... 886#p17645

As eleaza wrote:
"The key is to keep the city to have job-opening constantly, with unemployment rate at minimum 2%. To achieve that, build universities early on to get industries competitiveness high (and use media firms for smaller starting towns, to get initial job opening boost, etc). Also using landmarks to boost competitiveness and lower civic building running cost to balance the city budget. Since the higher the quality of life, the higher natural population grow, 100 QoL can boost growth to maximum. Civic building's location convenience need to be very high as well, best to be 100% coverage, except the difficult ones like large sports facilities, and it's best to lower apartment rent to raise housing quality, as well as make sure supply/demand indexes for all civic buildings are constantly above 100. You'll need to intervene all aspect of the city management, AI mayors do very poor job in planning or running cities. "


University research is actually one of the keys to GDP and population growth.

2. Unfortunately I did not make any manufacturing in my recent games. But as I remember, production level drops with every upgrade in technology. Except for player's speciality, of course. As I said before, spending 3m on university research starts technology race and you have to upgrade technology on your factories every year just to stay on par with Technology level 100. As a result all the money spent on factories training will be wasted because of yearly factory upgrades.

Actually the university research does not increase the top technology of an industry directly and thus it will not make your existing tech obsoleted faster.

About the other issues: I will download your save game files and take a look at them.

[eleaza]

I actually haven't tested the new beta release of the CES DLC, the conclusions in the past is using older beta versions. Maybe there were some new changes along the way (there certainly were a lot of changes). Perhaps it's something else changed causing issues you observed? I'll also take a look at your city in the weekend and see what it's about.

[megapolis]

To be honest I also don't see advantages in University research over other civic buildings. They all provide workplaces

[eleaza]

To be honest I also don't see advantages in University research over other civic buildings. They all provide workplaces

It's not University Research itself providing a lot of job opening, it's the research leading to higher competitiveness to certain product class, making city export much more products of that class, so the city's "local businesses" in term hire more workers to produce these products leading to more jobs. And because of this, it's not an immediate effect, only when the city's competitiveness exceed global average when you start to see the result. It might take months to years, and really start to show when competitiveness of many product classes far exceed the global average.

[megapolis]

To be honest I also don't see advantages in University research over other civic buildings. They all provide workplaces

It's not University Research itself providing a lot of job opening, it's the research leading to higher competitiveness to certain product class, making city export much more products of that class, so the city's "local businesses" in term hire more workers to produce these products leading to more jobs. And because of this, it's not an immediate effect, only when the city's competitiveness exceed global average when you start to see the result. It might take months to years, and really start to show when competitiveness of many product classes far exceed the global average.

Unfortunately that's my problem with Capitalism Lab in general. There's too many assumptions in one single statement and no raw numbers. If the things you say are true (please don't be offended) then there are certain numbers that are hardcoded in the game and are not described. I use to ask David for the numbers of this kind but unfortunately never have the answers. Without detailed explanation from David with dependencies, numbers, formulas and all that stuff I see this University research thing rather useless.

Will try to explain it another way. We are playing Capitalism. Not planned economy, not philantropy, only capitalism. In this game if I invest in something, I need to understand outcome of this investment and measure it. In case of University research outcome I cannot measure it. As a result this investment is useless.