Can't believe i need to take the time out to make this, but...

[whiskiz]

how are you meant to achieve dominance goal in scenario 4, when RnD doesn't let you unlock new techs (which you need DLC for, which is disabled in scenario's) in products the AI has researched but won't sell to you?

i even tried placing 10 stores down to buy off and outsell them, but due to "price agreement" i barely get any market share over years andi don't think that counts towards dominance anyway

i feel like it's too early in scenario's to be needing to spend billions on buying out and taking over a company, just to get a dominance goal done

am playing on hardest difficulty if that matters, and otherwise i feel like this is a pretty big oversight so i must be missing something else

P.S if needed the product/tech in question is camcorder, goal the electrical products industry dominance

P.P.S i'm also currently on 10.0.15 beta (if that matters) and found a bug where my COO/AI keeps switching mobile phones to camera phones in my retail stores, even though they aren't set to change anything at all

won't sell mobile phones at all, either stops selling them and/or randomly switches one of the inputs to camera phones (even though supply etc is completely fine, no issue when i take control of the store myself)

[David]

how are you meant to achieve dominance goal in scenario 4, when RnD doesn't let you unlock new techs (which you need DLC for, which is disabled in scenario's) in products the AI has researched but won't sell to you?

The products actually do not require any techs. You can just research them in the R&D centers. If you see otherwise, please capture a screenshot and explain the issue in detail, so that I can look into it.

i even tried placing 10 stores down to buy off and outsell them, but due to "price agreement" i barely get any market share over years andi don't think that counts towards dominance anyway

The dominance goals in the game only count the production from factories. In the "Products" page of the "Corporate Details" screen, you can see your revenue from Production and Retail for each product.

am playing on hardest difficulty if that matters, and otherwise i feel like this is a pretty big oversight so i must be missing something else

I recommend that you start with the normal difficulty and try the hardest difficulty later after you have won it on the normal setting.

P.S if needed the product/tech in question is camcorder, goal the electrical products industry dominance

You can invent camcorder without techs. I just tested it, please see the attached screenshot.

P.P.S i'm also currently on 10.0.15 beta (if that matters) and found a bug where my COO/AI keeps switching mobile phones to camera phones in my retail stores, even though they aren't set to change anything at all

won't sell mobile phones at all, either stops selling them and/or randomly switches one of the inputs to camera phones (even though supply etc is completely fine, no issue when i take control of the store myself)

It is because mobile phones have become obsolete. For more info, please see: https://www.capitalismlab.com/new-conte ... imulation/

[whiskiz]

Ah i of course did indeed miss something else

in RnD you need to select "RnD new product" not "start RnD" on yellow squares

what threw me for a loop is in pre-defined setups, there're yellow "product" squares and orange "tech squares" i thought the latter were required for new techs/products, which are the ones not available in the base game. but it's a second option on yellow squares that're needed

was my mistake, thanks for taking the time to clear that up

good to know about product obsolescence, how does that work with dominance goal? won't i still need to dominate the obsolete tech, especially as it appears AI are still selling them/have market share? for scenario's specifically i guess

also the hardest difficulty is fine, i've done the first 3 scenario's on hardest already and had all the other dominance done, it was just the singular product out of the 3 required categories (first toys then comms and electronics) that i needed - i start by taking a loan, buy back company shares, then either get into the car industry for probably way too much early $$$ lol or whatever other/dominance goal is required, seems to do the job so far

i usually play games on harder(st) difficulty, i feel it really makes a game's mechanics shine, you actually need to know them and use them well, they aren't just an optional thing :p and i'm really enjoying the kind of many multi-faceted business-like data analyzing, strategizing and development here

looking at a products total revenue in each city for an idea of profits/sales, the amount of population in a city (that it takes to attain it), current/local quality/rating of a product in a city, freight costs, slowly but surely developing the entire chain of production and ever increasing supply, going with and developing products based off customers weighting (such as investing in advertising/brand first on clothing) etc, and i guess i apparently still don't even know some other basic stuff as well as all the DLC content, can't wait

[Stylesjl]

good to know about product obsolescence, how does that work with dominance goal? won't i still need to dominate the obsolete tech, especially as it appears AI are still selling them/have market share? for scenario's specifically i guess

You don't need to dominate an obsolete product or rather if nobody is selling them then it does not matter, you still gain dominance.

Also obsolescence does not happen all at once, when the new tech appears the old items will still sell but decrease by a certain amount each year so I think it takes several years before market demand goes to zero. So yes some AIs might still be holding on to Mobile Phones for a while but eventually they will stop.

[whiskiz]

i wish the obsolescence mechanic was explained in the scenario suited for it, and/or shown visually in products/manufacturers tab or something, because i think it makes AI/COO control of retail of older tech products weird in general and i just spent a lot of time and energy in a couple runs trying to figure out something else that just started going on

i think i came across another AI/COO issue that can be explained by the whole obsolescence thing - i was selling both cameras and compact cameras and even though the demand was still there for the former, my COO would only have the rating at half the demand, losing alot of profit

the profit-to-market-share prio bar on my COO was set to about 60% (bit to the right) and it was setting around that rating on the 3 or so other products i had, but seemingly only half on cameras, leaving the demand bar at only around 50% fulfilled

supply wasn't an issue either, with "view supplier" showing 100% supply 10% demand at that level

i took control of the camera retail store, boosted the rating from around 60 to 90, which still only filled the demand bar from around 50% to 75%, and it increased the profits of the store from around 0.25M to 0.6M almost tripling it instantly

sure overall profit generation was low anyway due to outdated tech and so waning total product revenue in the city, but there was still plenty of demand and plenty of supply that could've been used to eek out a bit more total profit, or more importantly exponentially increasing % profit - that otherwise went to waste (or while most importantly exhibiting super odd and seemingly random and unexplainable behaviour)

seems like the AI felt there was much less demand than there was, just because technically obsolescence is a thing. maybe not taking into account increased demand from foot traffic score (was 92) and/or electronics specialty store demand bonus (was 2 stars with 3 electronics stores) or something, because again while overall revenue was waning, it still would've taken like 125 rating i tested to fully satisfy the demand bar (while making cameras for cheap roughly $35 and selling for $350 so the more sales where there's demand the better)

a main mechanic like that and that seems to mess with AI, should really be better (or at all) displayed, saving alot of time, confusion and aggravation lol

P.S good to know you don't really need to dominate older techs because AI will of course stop selling them too (though it seems if no1 sells obsolete things you still need to create at least 1 unit of it to count towards dominance goals, interestingly

[whiskiz]

i'm no longer sure it's due to tech being outdated because

1 - it's only 1994

2 - the city revenue drop might actually be due to the COO majorly killing off supply from demand, affecting city sales and so revenue. thinking a much minor part of revenue drop at '94 is due to outdated tech

i also think the profit loss is a lot more than i initially thought

but i'm not sure why it would be then, otherwise

here's some examples of how the AI is treating that one product specifically, in comparison to others

market share to profit bar is set around 55%, with 75% market share in other products - but not even 25% in cameras even though it's only like 30% of the demand bar. same situation in another city too

https://imgur.com/a/FbZqc9B

i don't get it