The seaports are there to offer more competition and to help the AI which can't be as smart as the player. The low-quality setting is ok, sometimes the quality will be higher than what the player can produce initially, but quantity is limited enough so that the player can always still sell his product. The more seaports, the more challenge, without them even hard settings with max competitors wouldn't be enough.

I personally like seaports. If they're making the same product, then they act as another competitor. I start games with low cash and can't build my own mines so have to rely on seaports for raw materials early on. AI competitors certainly need them to be more competitive against human players. Some AIs use a retail-only strategy and having seaports is essential for their survival, especially early on when there aren't many products. Similarly, some players may wish to start out with retail to get some income started before making their own products or even do a retail-only scenario.

With that said, I could see some improvements made with seaports. If their industrial goods were of lower quality and perhaps more expensive, that would still give the player access to those raw materials early on, but would also give more incentive for the player to eventually farm/mine their own. Seaports already switch out imports, so you already can't rely on them in the long run for anything particular. Commercial products could be of higher quality than industrial, but the price of those goods should also be higher making retail profit margins lower to incentivize creating your own products instead or purchasing from other AI competitors. If a seaport is importing a product that is being manufactured, then seaport products should be priced to compete with those manufactured products, but not too aggressively.

So in short, I would like seaports there to help you marginally when you need them, and to also act as another competitor to you to make the game more challenging.

Actually import prices too. Quality around 40, but dirt cheap goods. This kills current production, specially raw material. I never play with seaports anymore, current seaport is game killer.

Sea-ports could disappear from the game and it wouldn't bother me. I think the AI should work together and not depend on the seaport. I see they already do this in the game now. I see some making stuff and some selling stuff that they do not make so I do not see a reason for the seaports.

Yes I agree the quality seems too high on low setting.

error.

joseluis wrote:Hello.

I put in the custom game: "low quality imports", but imports are still of much higher quality than local competitors' products.
I like playing with a hard level, but being all that good quality products not worth producing your own products and you'll always have good quality imported products.

There are disadvantage of importing products from seaports:

Seaport products do not have brand ratings. If you do private labeling on them, when the seaports stop the supply, you will lose your investment in building up your brand. So there are still incentives for producing your own products.

In addition, when more companies are buying from the same seaport for the same products, it will drive up the import prices, thus lowering your profit margin.

The low quality is always between 36-78 at my experiences

True. The quality is always between 30-50 but mostly over 40. This need to be fixed.

Hello.

I put in the custom game: "low quality imports", but imports are still of much higher quality than local competitors' products.
I like playing with a hard level, but being all that good quality products not worth producing your own products and you'll always have good quality imported products.