Wealth factored into population DLC

[baz]

I'm trying to create a real company in real life, A classic car company and this isn't up against Aston Martin but it is as niche in that regard as Aston Martin as only a small part of the pop. will ever buy a classic car, the prices will determine that you could buy a new ford rather than an old sports car, but others buy them for investment, others for fun, so I'm looking at a pop. of middle class upwards and only a small percentage of each group.
All I have is to go by is graphs, pie charts, indices ect on who buys cars, what cars and reasons. It's so niche that even if I tried going around a city of 100,000 pop. with a questionnaire I may only find 1 or 2 people that actually are interested. In London I would find far more but it does have a finance centre and designated extreme wealthy areas that would help but other towns and cities aren't so clearly defined. Personally I would prefer to do a questionnaire in London than my local towns, as I would get better results but then they may be to far out of my catchment area, or other classic car companies are closer, so the info. may not be that relevant other than establishing that there is a market. Obviously my advertising and been able to transport anywhere in the UK does help.

So the reality is that If I see Wealthy house's and they surround me and see people with designer fashion and driving expensive cars, then i'm more likely to setup a high class business in that area, than say an area that is low/working class and has issues and deprivation around it. I would also be concerned about the social issues of having expensive cars that others would want, and possibly take. Caplab, Capico or whatever it is could have this element allowing for more business strategies and by these classes potential changing due to Recession ect then your business will have to change accordingly. It would also mean for example in Caplab you would stick more with the industry you started with, rather than moving into other industries
as quick as you currently can, and the AI could really work more aggressively and stay in certain industries making for a more compelling experience. It would also make you buy complete companies, rather than setting ones up to compete. Perhaps there is a switch for more detail for those interested in wanting to work in one industry, rather than having many different industries.

My only issue with Caplab is when you have far to many industries, you are forever buying and removing mines for example and looking at 1000's of shops, factories to see why something has gone wrong. And you only went into other industries in the first place as your original industry had market share and couldn't do much more, In this model the market share could and would fluctuate with the pop, making you concentrate on your original industry and looking to expand it into other city's and just concentrating on that.

This ties in with another post about, closing down factories ect that could lead to mass unemployment, changing the dynamics of the game as they may have to leave or find cheaper accommodation? It also ties in with them not been able to afford certain type goods.
This was part of a Capico discussion I had with David, but will put it out there regarding a DLC or update? Perhaps it should be under Caplab suggestions?

[saffgee]

Interesting points - I think you forgot one though, which is just good old fashioned taste. Tastes evolve over time and can differ substantially between regions and cultures. It would be interesting to see how the game may be able to provide customisable frameworks for scripting these differences. Some presets would be necessary of course and can be as simple as say automobile brand mattering more in say Europe than it does in North Africa, where price might be the dominant core motivation. Or for example Rice based products might sell better in Asia and certain internet business types are more popular in China than the US. These preset scripts would be customisable by the players so they can "keep up" with evolving tastes themselves. Eventually some sort of dynamic taste evolution may be possible, but maybe a simple script is easier to begin with. Gives a lot of room for randomisation and experimentation as well.

I've long argued that the CES logics should be applied to real world games - which means building a factory in a lower tier city should be cheaper than building it in a higher tier one. In most of my games I try to role play this myself, by focussing production of certain goods in certain cities - software in Tokyo, furniture in Moscow, Food in London, high tech goods in Berlin, etc. I don't necessarily have a reason for picking those cities or allocated goods because the game is not simulating that area of reality, so its completely arbitrary and just something I do. It would be great if I had to change this behaviour because the game actually simulated it properly - maybe then I would build all my high tech goods in China and my furniture in Scandinavia or Canada......

[David]

Would you like the population broken down into wealth, ie Low, Medium and Wealthy, Mega Wealthy?

This is a good suggestion. I think we just have to think about what kind of effect it would exert to the gameplay.

Take Tropico 6 for example, different income groups are simulated. Do you think that has a real impact on the gameplay?

In CapLab, the Real Wage Rate you see below the mini-map tells the overall wealth level of the citizens, which is a simplification and does not take into account of wealth inequality. But in my opinion, the advantage of this design is that the player doesn't have to deal with too much detail and just have to make decisions related to labor costs and purchasing power of citizens based on one variable -- the Real Wage Rate.

On the other hand, if we can dissect the gameplay effects of having different income groups in games like Tropico 6 and reach a conclusion that they do have meaningful gameplay impacts, then we may take the next step and try to come up with a suggestion on how to augment this aspect of gameplay in CapLab by simulating different income groups.

[David]

Or for example Rice based products might sell better in Asia and certain internet business types are more popular in China than the US. These preset scripts would be customisable by the players so they can "keep up" with evolving tastes themselves. Eventually some sort of dynamic taste evolution may be possible, but maybe a simple script is easier to begin with. Gives a lot of room for randomisation and experimentation as well.

This is a good idea. Besides rice, any other products you can think of that exhibit such consumer preferences? If you can come up with a list of products and their consumer preferences in different geographic locations, I will pitch this to the dev team.

I've long argued that the CES logics should be applied to real world games - which means building a factory in a lower tier city should be cheaper than building it in a higher tier one.

FYI, besides labor costs, building costs are also affected by a city's Real Wage Rate in CapLab.

[saffgee]

FYI, besides labor costs, building costs are also affected by a city's Real Wage Rate in CapLab.

Does that work effectively outside of CES ? My experience is that the difference is marginal at best, but its a bit hard to see as its difficult to isolate the actual full yearly cost of a factory.
I suppose eventually it would be nice if your COO "suggested" moving production to Shanghai (along with a proposed location) as the company would save $10 million/year by doing so. That would be a nice feature and would make COO's more useful. I'll take a closer look when I play next as to how much this is affecting overall cost.

[colonel_truman]

Would you like the population broken down into wealth, ie Low, Medium and Wealthy, Mega Wealthy?

This is a good suggestion. I think we just have to think about what kind of effect it would exert to the gameplay.

You could create one extra population category (i.e wealthy). I believe there would be (at least) 3 fields affected:
1- consumer demand: extra boost to brand requiremen and quality, and higher price, in the city, plus added demand to some articles (cars, watches, jewels...)
2- housing: an extra bar for appeal depending on land values, access to facilities; less influenced by price.
3- extra cash for investing globally: each city could have one extra character, as *city* investors, with its own money, that would invest in the stock market like the avatars do.

[colonel_truman]

In CapLab, the Real Wage Rate you see below the mini-map tells the overall wealth level of the citizens, which is a simplification and does not take into account of wealth inequality. But in my opinion, the advantage of this design is that the player doesn't have to deal with too much detail and just have to make decisions related to labor costs and purchasing power of citizens based on one variable -- the Real Wage Rate.

Yes, but in the CES you are playing to develop the cities and you end up caring about them, so you want the people to prosper. Adding a wealthy class (whatever that might be) where you can see it grow will give us that.

[David]

Yes, but in the CES you are playing to develop the cities and you end up caring about them, so you want the people to prosper. Adding a wealthy class (whatever that might be) where you can see it grow will give us that.

Sounds good. Let's discuss the possibilities and assess the feasibility together.

[baz]

I'm glad to see conversations taking place regarding my post, always pleasing.
regarding "for example Rice based products might sell better in Asia" I personally would look at Japan for example, 100 years ago you would agree that it's main dish was rice based and still is, as it's a traditional food but now for example there's a some much Western variety and cultural miss match. So I do agree that rice could sell well in Asia, but I think it could somehow show how other influences can change the nature of the food choice. As that's what big business/minorities from other regions introduce. I think I heard/read that by selling alone, Indian food via take away and restaurant's was the most popular food's sold in the UK. All minorities together work out to be about 5% of the population. So in this case, maybe rice sales could start increasing more in the UK.
You could also look at Vegan and Vegetarian food choice options making farms start selling, more but that maybe to specific.

[baz]

Your opinions and analysis as normal, are spot on David.

"Take Tropico 6 for example, different income groups are simulated. Do you think that has a real impact on the gameplay?

In CapLab, the Real Wage Rate you see below the mini-map tells the overall wealth level of the citizens, which is a simplification and does not take into account of wealth inequality. But in my opinion, the advantage of this design is that the player doesn't have to deal with too much detail and just have to make decisions related to labor costs and purchasing power of citizens based on one variable -- the Real Wage Rate.

On the other hand, if we can dissect the gameplay effects of having different income groups in games like Tropico 6 and reach a conclusion that they do have meaningful gameplay impacts, then we may take the next step and try to come up with a suggestion on how to augment this aspect of gameplay in CapLab by simulating different income groups."

The problem with Caplab is that it's catered to high volume sales, and not specific to niche markets IMO. If we had a wealth demographic then there would always be competition, as my company is based on quality and that makes my products more expensive, which in turn should only cater to less of the Wealth demographic. If I use an example of Dacia, they sell vehicles for £15,000, in caplab Dacia would end up like Range Rover, but then a new company like Dacia would step in, as there is always a market for cheaper vehicles as that's the largest demographic to work within. Range Rover don't try and compete, as it wouldn't make sense for there brand. They could obviously create a subsidiary but then Tata which owns Land Rover, cater for that market via vehicles that they sell within Asia. If we tried to create Tata in Caplab we couldn't, as it wouldn't be able to recreate a company with high tech and quality vs a brand that also caters for low quality and cheap vehicles.
I think my point is, that you would have companies that would have to think of the market there after, and by moving between high quality and higher prices the less population you have to work in. I also think that you could then have companies catering for cheap, low quality, high volume items vs companies that make high quality high tech items that have less population to work within.
By seeing this in the game, you can then determine where you would then build your car show room for example. If you created a company that dominated a city which paid poorly and made expensive items, then it should impact the sales of the company.
My personal opinion is that caplab would move to the next level and become more interesting as you would now have to think of what your company does, are you after the masses or the minority, these choices alone would make the game more interesting, You would either build for mass production having more factories or low volume and high quality tech and could keep you more in that industry.
Reflecting on my Caplab experience, the first 10-20 years are the best, after that if successful, you can do anything and build/make anything, My idea would allow a Semi industry to work, make you think of your market that you want and then work out a strategy to make it work. When I move from low quality to better quality another competitor steps in to that area. It would then mean I need less factories as I sell less but I always need to make sure that the market I'm moving into has the capacity for another of that business type. In semi turns I could make tyres/ batteries ect and i'm always thinking about that market, as my tech grows and my quality increases, my prices increase, meaning that another competitor steps into the void I left.
Perhaps it needs market share broken into wealth demographics, as I have found that I can keep my market share whilst my business continues to move from Dacia to Range Rover for example.