Capitalism Lab Mastered? 6 Ways to Amp Up the Challenge

[David]

Capitalism Lab is designed to offer a challenging and rewarding experience for players of all skill levels. If you have found the game too easy, we have prepared an article introducing various methods to increase the difficulty. You can read the article at https://www.capitalismlab.com/amp-up-challenge/.

If you have any additional ideas for making Capitalism Lab more challenging, beyond those mentioned in the article, please share your suggestions here.

[Stylesjl]

These are all great suggestions for increasing the difficulty. My comment on this is the first part:

1. Crank Up the Difficulty
The most straightforward way to increase the challenge is to select a higher difficulty level on the New Game Settings menu. This adjustment will make the AI competitors more formidable and economic conditions more volatile, requiring sharper decision-making and strategy. Only a very small number of elite players have managed to triumph at the game’s most extreme difficulty setting.

This could use a bit of fleshing out - what kinds of difficulty changes would be good for players looking for a challenge?

Some ideas:

1) Increasing AI Price Aggressiveness, Expansion Aggressiveness and Competence of Local Competitors. For very high level challenges setting expertise and Tech Head Start to a high level and playing with all 50 competitors.
2) Reducing your own starting capital to force you to do business on a low budget.
3) CES Only - Increasing Public Expenses, Donations to Rival Parties to make politics as town mayor harder.
4) Banking and Finance only - raising the AI competitiveness and number of banking/insurance companies.

There are other settings that also raise difficulty but these are I think the main points that will have a big impact on gameplay.

[David]

These are all great suggestions for increasing the difficulty. My comment on this is the first part:

1. Crank Up the Difficulty
The most straightforward way to increase the challenge is to select a higher difficulty level on the New Game Settings menu. This adjustment will make the AI competitors more formidable and economic conditions more volatile, requiring sharper decision-making and strategy. Only a very small number of elite players have managed to triumph at the game’s most extreme difficulty setting.

This could use a bit of fleshing out - what kinds of difficulty changes would be good for players looking for a challenge?

Some ideas:

1) Increasing AI Price Aggressiveness, Expansion Aggressiveness and Competence of Local Competitors. For very high level challenges setting expertise and Tech Head Start to a high level and playing with all 50 competitors.
2) Reducing your own starting capital to force you to do business on a low budget.
3) CES Only - Increasing Public Expenses, Donations to Rival Parties to make politics as town mayor harder.
4) Banking and Finance only - raising the AI competitiveness and number of banking/insurance companies.

There are other settings that also raise difficulty but these are I think the main points that will have a big impact on gameplay.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Since setting the Difficulty Level will automatically set individual settings, I've edited the article to make it clearer that the most difficult level is level 8.

[whiskiz]

was just about to make a post about this but now i may as well make here haha - i just wanted to say you guys nailed the difficulty/challenge (at least for the base game) nicely done

even better with seemingly having discussions to further increase it

i've only played the base game scenario's so far (though all DLC's bought and ready to go when i get there) currently on 13/15 but all on the hardest difficulty

the thing is even the hardest difficulty seemed a little easy at first. the first scenario or whichever it was making you wait 5 years before you can start seemed like a great idea, but it was only for that 1 scenario randomly?

otherwise at the start i'd buy 100% of my company and take out a loan to start with 40mil and 100% profit, which was more than enough to still cruise through everything

but in the last couple of late scenarios so far, the starting money decreased further and you're seemingly unable to own more than around 60% of your company? (can't have less than 1mil shares outstanding?) - which feels like a master stroke of a decision and what the hardest difficulty really needed, bringing the excitement/challenge back

now with only 60% of the company/profit and even less starting money, i actually need to be running things as lean as i had been anyway, and there being a point to doing the analysis of all the other data (quality of life/real wage to city population for an idea of total product revenue/potential profit from a city and how much potential market share and advertising to achieve it, the distance between cities for freight costs, further perfecting of supply/demand and ownership of the entire chain to reduce costs, customer concerns between price/brand/quality of a product and maybe even the necessity index etc)

so glad things increased like that again in later scenario's because i was starting to get a little bored after figuring out the base mechanics, but now it's all of a sudden breathed new life into my gameplay. i'm hoping the DLC follows suit in terms of challenge and balance and am now looking forward to playing even more

cheers!

[CallMeIcely]

Capitalism Lab is designed to offer a challenging and rewarding experience for players of all skill levels. If you have found the game too easy, we have prepared an article introducing various methods to increase the difficulty. You can read the article at https://www.capitalismlab.com/amp-up-challenge/.

If you have any additional ideas for making Capitalism Lab more challenging, beyond those mentioned in the article, please share your suggestions here.

Seen my Not That Complex script?