New feature ideas: Strong competitors from foreign cities

[David]

Some ideas came up internally about this potential new feature:

Strong competitors from foreign cities which are out of your reach and invisible to you initially. As your corporation gets bigger, you can enter the foreign cities to compete with the big guys.


Strong competitors from foreign cities which are out of your reach and invisible to you initially. As your corporation gets bigger, you can enter the foreign cities to compete with the big guys.

There are 3 methods suggested for implementing this:

Method A
-A corporation is required to get a business license in order to set up business in some cities.

-As such, the player may not be able to set up firms in certain cities in the first few years of the game, thus the AI will have an advantage.

-There should be rules governing how a corporation can get a business license

-This can be linked to event triggers – the player can get the business license to operate upon triggering certain events, or meeting the current goals, or upon reaching a specific game date.

-This will increase the game’s difficulty.

Method B (psychologically the player will like this method better, as method A may be deem as unfair)
There are some AI groups focusing on a specific city that is hidden from the player initially. The AI groups are also hidden from the player.

Such AI group will not be visible on the stock market too.

So when the player has become the biggest corporation, the game will open up the hidden cities and the player will face new challenges from other corporations.

There will be an announcement for this and the hidden corporation will become visible.

Pros: The gameplay is like a new level to be unlocked – the player will have an anticipation for it.

Cons/Issue: will AI having monopoly on a single city more profitable than other AI who compete in multiple cities? The consumer demand from a single city may be too weak.

Solution to the issue: if the local competitor of that city is low, then the AI will become very profitable in that city and thus become a strong competitor.

Programming: there will be a lot of code related to this that need to be changed. e.g. the ranking of companies will have to be changed so that it won't process the hidden ones. And there is no guarantee that the hidden companies are more powerful than the player group, in order to give it a challenge.


Method C
Just keep it simple: as a Challenge Game where the player is not allowed to set up firms in City 3rd and 4th until 10 years later.

Settings: there are 3 visible cities and 2 hidden ones. After 10 years, one of the hidden city will become visible. After another 20 years, the last hidden city will become visible too.

[mwyeoh]

Some very interesting options
I would say that if event triggers are to be added in the future, if this is a new feature, the event triggers would be easier to add now, rather than later on

I would like a mixture of option A and B, where cities and certain AI are hidden from view, and they cannot interact with certain cities.
At the same time, a licence requirement to buy into these cities (rather than once you become biggest) would be good

Perhaps the AI can be subject to these too? So when they are large enough, they can buy into cities you can see. Thereby, suddenly a large AI enters your cities perhaps even well before you are ready to go into their markets

One of the things that concern me though is that even now, with 30 AI, often you can find an industry that you can monopolize or have just a single competitor in. If suddenly half of the AI are outside your range, you would be able to find more monopolies early on.In my experience playing, the real profits come not from dominating a city, but monopolizing an industry (Profits from a city with no competitors can outstrip profits from 2-3 cities with competition).
Perhaps further increasing the maximum AI to 50-60 would help in this regard, but its up to you.

[David]

Perhaps further increasing the maximum AI to 50-60 would help in this regard, but its up to you.

I would suggest that you set up a poll for this.

Potential downside: The list of companies will be longer though and it will take more time to browse through them and find the one you really want to see in the company list.
Upsides: as you stated in your post.