Something im thinking of trying

[klasanov]

Start a game with zero competitors. Go into real estate as a main focus, and create subsidaries who focus on one product class each. The goal of course is to grow the nation as much as possible.

It seems the AI flounders with a smaller population, and now that one can buy government real estate buildings, a real estate empire becomes a huge money maker.

Thoughts? Im thinking this would be a great way to just macromanage everything, or as much as possible. Im still not sure how i could macromanage the mayors though, as they dont seem too keen in growing their cities.

[eleaza]

Start a game with zero competitors. Go into real estate as a main focus, and create subsidaries who focus on one product class each. The goal of course is to grow the nation as much as possible.

It seems the AI flounders with a smaller population, and now that one can buy government real estate buildings, a real estate empire becomes a huge money maker.

Thoughts? Im thinking this would be a great way to just macromanage everything, or as much as possible. Im still not sure how i could macromanage the mayors though, as they dont seem too keen in growing their cities.

Back in 4.2.02, there once was options to let AI mayors to decide how much percent of the civic buildings requirement to meet as a slide bar, but later it was removed due to AI mayors under player control build civic buildings sporadically, and excessively regardless of city budget, causing things like building a hospital in the middle of nowhere, bankrupt a positive balanced city overnight, etc. So right now only mayors not under player's party will still build civic buildings on their own, but if you watch them closely, you will notice they still does poor jobs, unless the city already has enough population and fundings to begin with.

So I think right now the only option is to get elected, reorganize the city into a better place, and get all the real estate within the 4 years, and lose the election for AIs to run, and come back after another 4 years, etc. Or should we bring back the incompetent AI mayor automation option?

[klasanov]

Inplement a planning module for civic buildings to be built at a later date or something.

Real life planning takes years

[klasanov]

How do you think the ai would handle itself with no competition?

[klasanov]

I actually would like better options for macromanagement in general. I dont want to have to constanty sift through my products to make sure im not losing marketshare or whatever.

Even with just 4 (beverages) it gets tedious

[eleaza]

How do you think the ai would handle itself with no competition?

What do you mean no competition? Only 1 single AI corporation on its own? I think there's a way to assign how many AI with what focus. Personally I think if there's enough population and local competitor competent isn't too high, AI corporations generally do well, even with one or two competitors when set to very aggressive.

[eleaza]

I actually would like better options for macromanagement in general. I dont want to have to constanty sift through my products to make sure im not losing marketshare or whatever.

Even with just 4 (beverages) it gets tedious

Apparently that's what COO are for. And you need to pick a person with very aggressive character trait and good retailing expertise. Also need to set to maximize market share. However I need to warn you high market share definately not means high profit margin or better profit at all. When you have very high quality goods and sell it at cheap (COO with maximum market share slider will do that), you will need a lot, I mean really a lot of production to fulfill the demand, sometimes it's not worth it due to the operating expense will be too high. Better let AI to fill the rest market with low quality ones (and make a lose), while you take on a healthy chunk with decent price without breakbone manufacturing (I saw a lot of people spam factories everywhere in every city just to meet the demand, with very low profit and profit margin, not very good business practice during expansion I would say). Unless you can eradicated competitors completely, and unless you wish to kill competitors with price war, forced high market share really hurts more than helps. There are other ways to prevent competition though, one easy way is to make the key semi-products, or high quality raw materials exclusive to your own company. Like 100 quality milk for bottle milk, or 100 grape for wine, etc. (but farming products usually wasn't easy to cut off and dominate in the long run, a better example would be like CPU for computers, semi-product techs for some products are quite crucial, and why tech monopoly is key to dominate markets). And of course with high brand rating with constant plenty advertisements when you can dominate the media, that would usually cut most brand concern products from any new competitor who doesn't have brand awareness of their own.

With subsidiary DLC, obviously you can outsource the retail to subsidiaries, and let them manage it if you don't want to. But fair warning, a lot of time you need to help them with building more factories, and pick better location for their retail store, even relink some insufficient supply raw materials. AI corporations really not that smart for the most part, and human players can easily exploit and find their weakness.

[klasanov]

How do you think the ai would handle itself with no competition?

What do you mean no competition? Only 1 single AI corporation on its own? I think there's a way to assign how many AI with what focus. Personally I think if there's enough population and local competitor competent isn't too high, AI corporations generally do well, even with one or two competitors when set to very aggressive.

As in you set the game to have no competitors and then make a sub that focused on one product class.