Being Intel in Capitalism Lab

[counting]

After succeeding as oil company, mining company, whole raw material sectors leading company, it's obviously possible to be the upstream in game. Although its revenue is entirely generating from AI's purchase, so its revenue is not that impressive compare to AIs. However you do wish AI to have good businesses, or they can not pay you enough, its very different from competing with AIs in most game, but actually working with them. It really feels like in real business, where you have "partners in associated businesses" and you are friends with them, not the enemy. I think Cap Lab should add more mechanism to encourage this kind of strategy.

Then it got me thinking, if it is possible to be the "Intel" in the game. Since after all CPU, CCD, and electronic components, these semi products have an impossibly high profit margin where raw material costs are ridiculously low. And it's Intel, one of the top 100 companies, I have to try it.

However, it turns out to be quite difficult. AIs tend to produce these semi products themselves (since they use default layout), and sell them everywhere. Even though I manage to be the tech leaders because AI ignores them most of the time, but when it comes to price, AIs always set it to impossibly low. And other AIs will buy the inferior product just for the price.

I've tried using my raw material dominate company save as a test template and to cut down the material cost even more with distribution warehouses everywhere. The overall profit margin is good indeed, but the total revenue of these semi products are still small compare to my material earnings. Not to mention comparing to AIs who dominate retail products.

How do you guys think you would do if you want to be the Intel in game?

[WilliamMGary]

After succeeding as oil company, mining company, whole raw material sectors leading company, it's obviously possible to be the upstream in game. Although its revenue is entirely generating from AI's purchase, so its revenue is not that impressive compare to AIs. However you do wish AI to have good businesses, or they can not pay you enough, its very different from competing with AIs in most game, but actually working with them. It really feels like in real business, where you have "partners in associated businesses" and you are friends with them, not the enemy. I think Cap Lab should add more mechanism to encourage this kind of strategy.

+1

There's been a number of players who've tried to not do the retail/manufacturing business and failed. I think that could add a new dimension to the game.

P.S. Would be a good time to introduce contracts

[counting]

I think there is a dilemma where if you control the upstream, its easy to dominate the downstream, however its profit is solely rely on downstream business. But in reverse, it's difficult to dominate the downstream and retails and work your way upstream, however your profit is more or less guarantee by your customers.

Hence this leaves the middle "semi product producers" in an awkward position, where you can neither secure your upstream sources, nor control the price of your downstream customers will offer. Which makes actually fairly close to real life business where profit is usually very hard to come by.

In the Intel case, in real life, the microchip quality is actually exponentially different (think about Moore's law), you can not sell a previous generation chip even if its price is close to 0 (try selling 32-bit CPU now), and it's not compatible at all in newer devices. Hence leading microchip firm can effectively squeeze competitions out even if their tech is just a little ahead. But in game, the AI company can manufacture smartphones or tablets using decades old CPU tech, but the end products is just slightly lower quality, which is not realistic at all.

Although microchip is a special case, since most semi-products in game like flour, or textiles, their quality really don't differ that much in real life, hence it's fairly realistic. So I think we need to consider in game Intel corporation more like a traditional business, rather than a tech firm.

[therealevan]

I myself tried this a few weeks ago, buying components to manufacture CPUs from my factories then shipping produced products to a warehouse to be sold into the PC industry. It failed. I can't recall all the variables but similar to the raw material scenario, the A.I only buys what it needs and not a unit more!! Gives just in time manufacturing to literal means.

[counting]

I am able to survive, just barely. However, I manufactured not only CPU, but also CCD, and electronic component. And overcome the overhead by sharing factory production line. And it took 7 cities and 30 AIs, waited for decades for ecosystem to build up for AIs to generate enough demand, and I have to set my price very very low. Also I have to setup warehouses close to their factories in each city to "encourage" them to buy my staff. Electronic components make the most profit. But even with these measures, the annual profit is barely couple millions.

[greene345]

Which I think is more a bug than anything. If I have the superior product, why can't I get others to buy it? Think real world Microsoft v. Apple v. Linux distro's. Linux is free but has less than 2% market share. I attribute that to the Microsoft/Apple saturation methods and the misinformation campaigns. Apple has the superior product, and actually makes more than Microsoft even though Microsoft sells more machines than Apple.

[WilliamMGary]

Which I think is more a bug than anything. If I have the superior product, why can't I get others to buy it? Think real world Microsoft v. Apple v. Linux distro's. Linux is free but has less than 2% market share. I attribute that to the Microsoft/Apple saturation methods and the misinformation campaigns. Apple has the superior product, and actually makes more than Microsoft even though Microsoft sells more machines than Apple.

Depends on how you measure the quality of the product I guess but I get your point

[counting]

Regardless of how quality is measured, the in game semi-product lacking brand and can't be sold to end customers are also a big factor why their market is so small. We do know Intel and AMD as microchip brand, so why in game CPU lacking brand? I will make a least decent profit, if I can advertise my semi-product. Also people do buy these semi-product at homes.

[therealevan]

I really think that the overall game platform needs to change so that there is already a set level of supply & demand. Unless you're selling products in some sort of a store the upstream is very hard to do in early stages of the game forcing you to wait a decade or two before the proper supply & demand levels have been established.

[counting]

Or we need a procedure generated pre-setup option. When players enter the game, the AIs had already built up their businesses. And players can choose how many years of simulation they want before entering.

I think the coding to add this option is actually not that hard, just don't linking the GUI classes, and let internal objects running numbers, when reaching the destine waiting period, then switch back. I think without GUI and timer objects, the simulation should be extremely quick. (magnitude faster than in-game speedup waiting)