Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

I just play the cap lab,
It is good but still need many improvement.
I think it does not look good with 1 empty slot,
So let's create one, I am thinking either a position for
Chief investment officer or chief relation officer.

For chief investment officer position, company can allocation certain budget for use on investment
Like in the stock market, real estate, and perhaps manage resident and commercial buildings. Advise CEO for issuing more stock shares or stock buyback. It also give power to manage subsidary company money (certain percentage only), high percentage will likely interfer subsidary company operation.

For chief relation officer position, let it handle relationship between companies, deal with friendly merger, and maybe create ALLIANCE or PACTS between companies. Companies should have favoritism bar on each other's relationship.

chief investment officer Yes

There's not much investing to do in the game. I can handle it as CEO, it doesn't take up too much time.

I am decidedly against alliances. It would be a real chore to add anti-trust rules to the game, and more so, diplomacy is often one of the aspects of games that an AI is notoriously bad at. Because of AI limitations of creative exploits, a diplomacy system would make the game easier for a human and harder for the AI. (It might be interesting in multi-player, making it a team game, but this isn't multiplayer.)

"Because there's one more slot" is too arbitrary for me. I don't think the decision to use the standard 9 business unit layout was to imply you can only fit 9 executives in your HQ; I would imagine the physical limits would be much greater than 9 people. Many games I don't take all 8 anyway.

If I could set aside a few million for an executive to try and earn a higher return on cash sitting in the bank I think it would be good. For a business who's main operations is throwing off cash and have significant market share in all markets it could help meet profitability goals.

WilliamMGary wrote:If I could set aside a few million for an executive to try and earn a higher return on cash sitting in the bank I think it would be good. For a business who's main operations is throwing off cash and have significant market share in all markets it could help meet profitability goals.

I simply feel that in this corporate business game, the best possible investment should be to invest in your own business. That is the metagame!

If you are sitting on cash, you are not growing your business as fast a possible. IRL, I was told not to invest with a company with a lot of cash, and in fact, that debt was the better indicator of probable growth.

If there were a better business to invest in, then that is a market you don't have a significant market share in. Athough, as the game is limited, there will be a point where you dominate all markets, and we should consider that game over because you won.

So, if you have cash, and if there are better investments than your business, then you should be losing the game. Because, if you're investing in other ventures, you are investing in your opponent's growth (and sacrificing your own growth) in this corporate game of monopoly.

See, if you invest with private brokerage (or whomever), the truth is (or should be if the game is true to itself) that the private broker will turn around and just use your investment fund to invest in your corporation! Your company was the best investment he could find, because you're winning the game!

We should personally make any investments as the point of the game is to decide how best to make a profit: If we hire an AI to do that for us, we might as well resign For an opposing analogy, we also don't need a Corporate Debt Officer to borrow and repay loans for us, that's something we do, and it's something I wouldn't want to trust the AI to do.

But, per this thread, I don't want to directly arguing against investing, I'm arguing against an investment exec and generally against any arbitrary exec. I just don't feel a driving force to fill up the "empty 9th slot". In the future sure maybe we'll come up with a handful of new executive positions, and they'll change the Executive Staff layout to a non-fixed length list rather than the 9 SBU's.

Hmm, since we can already invest in stock with our competitors that may offer a better return than our company, I might suggest that the Investment Officer would just be an interface to access the stock market, among other types of investments. The choice to stick a dude in the hole rather than have the direct stock [investment] interface is just arbitrary.

Argh, maybe you've persuaded me now. Other types of investments should offer less reward than the stock market, making them extraneous whereas I prefer spartan simplicity, but of course the whole idea is risk/reward, and diversify against risk is a sound idea. It would be a tough choice to decide to pay another exec 10 mil a year for something you could do better by yourself. I like tough strategic choices.

the AI could build a stock position in a firm slowly over time and at an affordable cost making it a cheaper take over. You assign a few million to him and he slowly builds up your investment. In Capitalism Lab you might have a decent business but there's a new business who stock starts at $10 and as they begin building their business the stock price increases to $100. It's not that they're business is better then yours, it's just a way to earn some cash on your cash. I like it and think it would be a nice addition.

WilliamMGary wrote:In Capitalism Lab you might have a decent business but there's a new business who stock starts at $10 and as they begin building their business the stock price increases to $100. It's not that they're business is better then yours, it's just a way to earn some cash on your cash. I like it and think it would be a nice addition.

Well, I can't say much without just repeating myself But I'll try

I see what you mean, but it's something I can do better myself without too much micro. That strategy is what I used to do 10 years ago, which lead me to always disabling the stock market, because it was too easy. (it seems it was easier in the past because there were more startups because there were more bankruptcies because AIs were worse. Startups are fairly rare now.)

I would suggest that he have a set pool, not a budget. When you notice you have extra cash, you can go deposit some funds with him, and when you want "more cash" you can look at his pool and his assets, and tell him to liquidate some of that, and withdraw.

It would add color to the game, I can see a new player being fascinated by it. A robust AI seems complex tho. Unless the corp paying dividends you can't get a profit until you sell. (That's something I tend to forget. It's junk unless you sell) So, we could have options for what indicators to buy, and options for when to sell. Just using your brief example (Buy @10, Sell @ 10 times buy price). Complex of course, would be using p/e or debt to assets or other things. And once he profits, does he pay his return back into the company, or just let it ride an re-invested it? Then again, maybe the AI can crack the code, and you won't have to do anything other than higher an Investment Officer and wait 50 years to become a hundredbillionaire. If it's easier than building firms, tho, the game is broken.

I would rather have an independent brokerage firm to visit rather than an executive that serves the same function (the only difference being that one has a salary and the other a commission). Because it's important to have a clear line between financial sectors and industrial sectors. We play in industry. We do not play in finance. Because finance naturally supercedes industry, as long as you're using monetary value as the score.

Would an independent brokerage firm work for you WilliamMGary? I'll support that.

A financial sectors expansion pack would be a great idea! Another industry to play in. There's a game call Starpeace where you play industry but also have the ability to run a bank (lacks stock market though). Most of the abilities that a Chief Investment Officer would need to have, the AIs already have much of them. Guess making them more smarter & giving the player options to control the executive is all that would be needed.

WilliamMGary wrote:A financial sectors expansion pack would be a great idea! Another industry to play in.

Oh no! I'm completely against that, but I must admit there was an old poll about adding banks I considered going off on. Maybe you want to try to revive that?

When you control finance, you control the nature of money. Since we score how big an industrial coorporation is by how much money it earns, playing a finance game make the industrial game moot.

Just for a quick rant: People want banks, so they can #1 save money by not borrowing, #2 make money from lending. Next step, well, I need a mint to print more currency so I can combat inflation/deflation properly. And I know it's antiquated, but can I switch to a gold standard? And then, My money should be worth 130% more in Bejing than it is in Perth. And we need to make room on the main screen so I can have at-hand updates of my M0, MB, M1, M2, M3 and M3M. No, no, no, no. I'm a veteran of the cap games but I already succumbed to embarrassment right after joining this forum because I mistakenly thought going bankrupt while in the green wasn't possible. I now stand corrected. It's all about the nature of money.

Again, I used to always have the stock market off, because in to old days that made me money faster than running firms. I want to gather resources, manufacture products, and sell them. I had been fascinated with the stock market of this game, until I realized that's not the game I want to play. Finance is outside the more 'industrial' scope of the game. I'm doing my best to acknowledge and accept that stock does have a fundamental role in funding a company.