rulepha wrote:
1- decreasing sales: i had a scenario where i sell about 1 million frozen chicken each store but after several years that decreased to 400.000 i checked the population and market share but there isnt a difference neither of them so what should i look for when i encounter sale decrease ? inflation ? wage ?
Way too many possible situations can cause this, perhaps you could upload your saved games before and after the situation so it would be more easier to understand what happened.
rulepha wrote:
2- inflation: i have a little bit hard time understanding the inflation how and why inflation incease/decrease and how to counter that. the only think i noticed if i make my prices too high in my dominated markets inflation increases. and what the inflation % really mean ? i mean what should i understand when i see %7 inflation ? is there a any preperations for certain inflation ratios ?
There are short answers and really complex answers, short answer is you need to have higher than 7% of profit return to just keep up with the inflation, otherwise the "actual market value" of your corporation will shrink in its real value.
The more complex answers are it's just like real life inflation, nominal price of goods increase 7% comparably to a year ago, so a product is now $107 has the same value as it was $100 a year ago. But the money itself doesn't change since it's the measuring medium. So say if you had spent $100 in expenses in exchange for a product in warehouse inventory a year ago and giving the nominal amount $100 money to the whole economic system, then you sell it now to a customer and get $107 back from the system, in this situation, you only reach a equilibrium balance where nothing is gain and lose, one thing came in, one thing goes out, the only thing different is the "number" on your account (let's just leave where the $7 came from, maybe we will discuss this later). However, since you can set whatever the price you'd like to sell this product, and if there's a customer willing and able to pay more than $107, say $110, and you set the price $110, the customer give you $110 instead of $107, then you break the 7% inflation equilibrium. All the customers demand for the extra $3 will drive up the money demand, central banks have to somehow increase the money supply for this increase of money to pay, and the inflation rate becomes higher than 7% as a result of the extra money floating around. On the other hand when you as a company gain the extra money, making your cash goes up, you could spend more and this time produce more than the $100 real value (now $107 in nominal price) of goods to future customers (i.e. you can spend $110 instead of $107, the real value of 110/107=$102.8 real value of product. 2.8% more products compared to a year ago), reaching toward another equilibrium. The real trouble will start if you don't spend and invest the extra $3 back to the system, and let the money sit in your cash account and do nothing, this will take money out of circulation and the system need to work extra hard to provide more money supply and at some point it will drive down the customer's ability and willingness to pay at higher price, thus decrease the money floating around and decrease of inflation rate (even deflation might occur). Hence in general, a healthy not-to-high inflation rate is good for businesses where it just keeps up with the economy growth, customers will pay higher in nominal price and your business will gain profit as long as you keep the circulation going. But too high of the inflation rate will cut down the real profit your corporation can make, and people may not have enough money to buy the same amount of goods (the overheating of economy). It will usually be even worse if it goes to deflation where the economy itself might literally shrink due to lack of goods and money, no growth no profit (most likely end up with recession).
rulepha wrote:
3- dominating the retail market: ok thats a hard one i encountered that issue while playing the farm scenario and i really had a hard time dominating the retail market should i literally spam retails around i mean is it just about the number of the retail stores you have ? because no matter how many retails i build i could only reach 3rd place
No, spamming retail stores doesn't work if there's no more demand from customers (downstream), and more supply from upstream. It will just drive up expenses on overheads and salaries. You need to put retail stores with the right amount and at higher traffic index location. You probably could drop the price, increase the product's quality, or increase the brand for more competitive product. But by doing so there might be extra costs as well. Hence the difficulty lies in the balance of how to find the spot where increase in revenue outpaces the increase of expenses, and you gain more profit in between. Expand too far or not enough will both net less profit. However if the goal of a game is to dominate a market, then you might need to take a hit on profit margin, and simply make a move on the competitions, where you either gain the profit from somewhere else, or just simply merger the competitors to gain their market share (or if you know how to do it, just drive competitors out of business).
rulepha wrote:
4- insane price wars that ai makes: in the fashion scenario i really suprised about the ai because they sell prices that makes - income just to increase its market share. i dont exacly remember the prices but i will make an example: i was selling blazers with 1-2 dollar profit (say the cost is 6 and im selling it for 8) and the ai corporations selling it for 1.90 while the cost is the same thus making a huge negative profit for them but still manage to fight. in that kind of issue what you guys do ? making profit from other products and selling the another with negative profit just to gain the market share ?
AIs are usually a little insane at price war. If they have enough capital, they can stand quite a hit on profit, even goes into negative just to stay on the market. And AI's tendency toward suicide is one of the weakness you can use to drive them out of business, no one no matter how deep in pocket can stand pure losses forever (ofc unless they have other source of income to make up the losses in one front, in that case, you might also want to take the fight to their other fronts). But remember that not all corporations have the same "cost" in their production. Some might have better and cheaper sources, even cheaper freight cost due to better location, even their own vertically integrated production where the "cost" is not a problem since they produce all their materials internally (if they have enough market share to provide revenues they can stay at a very cheap selling price). My advice is either copy the competitor's strategy so you'd be able to also compete at that level, or if the product is not the game goal, just abandon the lost cause (unless you are aiming other than profit, like just drive down competitor's profit, at the expenses of your own profit, or to exhaust materials where they can not use them on other crucial products you are truly aiming for)
should i spread them all over the place ? because what im currently doing is grabbing all the factories (both mine and ai's factories) to a designated district far from populated areas and stack them there.