Questions from Midas

[KingMidas]

Hey everyone. Im new and keep having questions pop up. I thought it might be good to try and bring them to one place vs having them all over. Id love help on any of the questions that you can offer so dont feel like you must take them all on if you dont want to. An answer to even one would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Could someone please help me understand the below image?

Supply and Demand.png (416.32 KiB) Viewed 2449 times

1)My factory is producing plenty of the necessary supplies but I am seeing that my supply is low for my products. Why is that?

2) What does supply and demand mean for purchasing units and for sales units? I would imagine for sales units supply is what they are able to sell, demand is what customers want. For purchasing, supply is what is on offer and demand is what they need to get?

3) Is there a chart anywhere that shows the market saturation for individual products?

4) How exactly does the customer traffic value work? i know that higher is better but im not quite sure what it does.

5) I have an opponent that is the largest company in the game. I am trying to steal market cap from him and he is losing millions in my industry but won't leave. I have better tech and branding plus more locations than him. My overall rating has him always about -20 compared to my products. Its been years but he wont fully leave. Any advice?

Thanks in advance!

[megapolis]

1. The simple answer is throughput. Your units are just Lvl2 which is pretty low. Train them and they will sell more. They are currently not restricted by your factories or by lack of demand.

2. The answer is the same as to #1. Supply for sales units is amount of goods they can receive from purchasing units. Demand is the amount of goods that customers want to buy. They are unable to fulfill all the demand because of throughput bottleneck.

3. Market saturation is always 100%. If you don't have enough goods to sell or as an option don't have enough shops to sell your goods, the remaining money allocated by customers to this kind of goods will go to local producers. The result of this sales will be a local competition rating. There is a couple of exceptions but they don't matter.

4. Don't know exactly how it works. It probably somehow limits amount of customers that can use your shop but I never had any issues with it.

5. That's easy. AI cannot manage its losses. It will not leave a market and will subsidize losses with money from profits on other markets. Or go bankrupt. I prefer to buy them out instead of fighting against them.

[KingMidas]

1. The simple answer is throughput. Your units are just Lvl2 which is pretty low. Train them and they will sell more. They are currently not restricted by your factories or by lack of demand.

2. The answer is the same as to #1. Supply for sales units is amount of goods they can receive from purchasing units. Demand is the amount of goods that customers want to buy. They are unable to fulfill all the demand because of throughput bottleneck.

3. Market saturation is always 100%. If you don't have enough goods to sell or as an option don't have enough shops to sell your goods, the remaining money allocated by customers to this kind of goods will go to local producers. The result of this sales will be a local competition rating. There is a couple of exceptions but they don't matter.

4. Don't know exactly how it works. It probably somehow limits the amount of customers that can use your shop but I never had any issues with it.

5. That's easy. AI cannot manage its losses. It will not leave a market and will subsidize losses with money from profits on other markets. Or go bankrupt. I prefer to buy them out instead of fighting against them.

Thanks a ton for your responses! This really helps.

1) So there is plenty to buy but they don't feel like they need to buy the full amount based on current conditions? Is that what the high supply and lower demand means on purchasing? At the same time, the sale department believes that they have lots of people who want to buy from the store but they dont have enough product? I am wondering why the demand for the purchasing of sweaters, blazers and jeans is lower. Trying to get my head around what im really learning here.

3) Is there such a thing as having a high enough cost that people won't buy? or lowering your costs so that more people desire to buy the product? Are there concerns about where you are in the city? Like perhaps I have dominance of the market but is it possible that building another store would earn me more money if it were added to a new location in the city?

4) yea, I assumed more was better but didn't know if it was a multiplier or how it worked. Like if there was a difference in 50 vs 70 or if at some point it stopped mattering.

5) Ahh, gotcha. That's helpful to know Is there any strategy for getting a piece of a company that doesn't want to sell?

New one for ya. i ll add it to the original post as well in case people just read it.

6) What does business expertise do? Im trying to hire individuals for different parts of the company and am not sure how these stats matter. Should I care what their expertise is or just how high their stats are? Like is it more important that my COO have expertise in a given area or that he has a higher stat in retail? Does their personality matter?

7) If i want to pass manufacturing over to a new subsidiary, how am I able to give it my current factories or set it up so they take over that part of my company? Is possible to hire my current head of marketing over to be the new CEO without firing him?
Thanks again in advance!

[megapolis]

Grrrrr… Almost finished a reply and discarded it by misclick. Damn. Trying again.


1-5. You did not understand me. Imagine a sand watch. A lot of sand above the neck, a lot of space below but it will take an hour for all the sand to go down.
Or imagine a large supermarket with only one cashier instead of a hundred. Tons of goods inside, millions of customers but you cannot sell more than one cashier can process. You are limited by skill of your sales unit. it is only Level 2. At level 9 they will be much faster.
Addition: your prices are too low. Generally your overall rating should be higher than city average by +5. In rare cases +10. Anything above this is a waste of revenue. (And, by the way, waste of your throughput)

4. In my experience in large enough city it stop mattering at about 18-21 points.

5. No, you cannot buy a piece of a rival AI company. AI is too stupid for it. Just forget it.

6. Executives expertise applies only to firms that they control. Anyway hiring executives is just a waste of money.

7. Generally it is a good idea. If you will setup your subsidiary properly, restricting AI from doing anything with manufacturing firms that you give to them. Otherwise AI will start doing stupid things. Basically every move made by AI is stupid. There's another downside of this transfer: you will lose brand rating for goods transferred to subsidiary.

[ohms_law]

5. No, you cannot buy a piece of a rival AI company. AI is too stupid for it. Just forget it.

If it's a private company you can buy them out. If it's a public company and there are shares not owned by the CEO, then you can buy up their shares. If anyone owns more than 50% of a companies stock then they can set that companies management policies. Owning more than 75% allows for a merger.