A few questions before buying the game

[Alec]

I'm thinking about buying the game but I have a few questions based on what I saw on Youtube videos.

How long can a game last? From what I gathered by seeing Youtube videos you have a limited amount of cities(thus markets) and competitors. And there isn't a global market although it seems that seaports import products from there.

Does natural resources exhaust and never regenerate? From what I read it seems that they do exhaust, but I don't know if it is temporary or if you can invest money in searching for the next natural resource node.

Which is the maximum number of cities and competitors?

That's all I have to ask so far.
And sorry if this isn't the correct sub-forum for asking this kind of questions.

[Brutus]

How long can a game last? From what I gathered by seeing Youtube videos you have a limited amount of cities(thus markets) and competitors.

I played for 6 hours straight yesterday trying to complete just the photography challenge game ... I've only gotten 6,5 years into the 30 years span that the game ordinarily covers for under full custom game mode. I'd say I'm about 2/3rds done with that challenge as it is only a small challenge. I do play rather slow and take my time micromanaging everything. That's a small challenge game with 5 cities.

The game can be quick or slow depending on your play style. You can have 6,5 years of game time fly by if you use max speed and it will only take you 5 minutes or so .. your business will be terribly managed though. or you micromanage every business, leverage every opportunity, spy on your competition and eek out every advantage you think you can get and you will be busy for hours just doing that stuff.

This was just a challenge game, like a scenario in regular games. The main meat of the game is in the custom game mode, an ordinary full game would last you about 20 to 30 game years as this is the time span that the game covers. From 1990 to 2020. You can play indefinitely but at some point you will be wondering why you are still selling MP3 players when it is the year 2100 ...

I'd say a full custom game will probably take you about 20 to 30 hours of game time for you to complete if you take your time. I'd say the game easily has 40 hours of gameplay value before you've explored and mastered it but you can easily be playing it for 100+ hours and not get bored imho. Then there's always mods you can download if you think it is not expansive enough lol Even if you complete a regular game of 30 hours, you may want to try different strategies, different goals or roleplay. It's deceptively good at stealing away your free time

And there isn't a global market although it seems that seaports import products from there.

The Seaports indeed act as off-map suppliers of resources, which can be really useful starting out as there won't be any established suppliers in the cities initially and these seaports will provide the fuel to start your early businesses. You can determine in the settings if you want their supply to be fixed or changing and determine the quality of the imported goods. You can also disable them entirely through a script if you please.

There are two types of seaport, consumer and industrial that import goods. Depending on which settings you choose, especially in terms of quality, it can influence the type of game you will play in the beginning. High quality imports means it is easy to retail those goods but hard to manufacture something that is up to their standard. Conversely, low quality means it is easier to manufacture something of higher quality but harder to retail imported goods.

Does natural resources exhaust and never regenerate? From what I read it seems that they do exhaust, but I don't know if it is temporary or if you can invest money in searching for the next natural resource node.

Resources do exhaust so that no corporation can hold a total monopoly on them and it forces you to stay on your toes to hunt for the best resource locations in time. You can turn this feature off through a custom script if you want resources to last forever. Also a new resource location will be generated automatically after a short while and be up for auction once the first one is taken in a city (and up to 2 or 3 max resource locations depending on resource per city).

Each city has every resource available, so the more cities, the more resources in general. You can monopolize them all if you are fast enough and there is a feature that makes each extra resource location more prohibitively expensive to hold as you collect them but it can also be turned off if you prefer. Depending on how many cities you have, the resource game is easier or harder. The less cities, the harder but more rewarding/chances to monopolize and the more cities the easier due to the availability. It is why I play with less cities in general to make this aspect more important.

Which is the maximum number of cities and competitors?

You can have a normal custom game with up to 7 cities (or even 15 cities if you use a special script). Depending on their sizes, they can pose varying challenges as well. Bigger cities require much more work such that you may put as much effort into 1 big city as you would in 3 smaller ones. So it can vary a lot on what cities you are working with. 5 small cities is rather easy to manage compared to 15 massive ones for example. I personally play with only up to 5 large cities, due to lag otherwise late game and just the sheer busy work that 15 cities takes is staggering. You can also have up to 40 corporations competing with you in varying fields in a standard game.

TL:DR
15 cities and 40 competitors (though not sure if 40 is the max for competitors when running a script, trust me, its a plenty! I run with about 25 businesses)

That's all I have to ask so far.
And sorry if this isn't the correct sub-forum for asking this kind of questions.

This is the correct forum for that.

You are welcome!

[Alec]

Than you for the answers. The game seems indeed to have high re playability. Although I'm more the type of person to stick with one save for 30+ hours.

[Brutus]

A game can easily run you into 30 hours of gameplay, depending on the settings you are using. The difficulty will greatly determine how long you will be busy with a game. When I said 30 hours of gameplay is basically when you've seen enough of the game to get an understanding of it and know whether it will be something you wish to continue to play or not. It's a little bit like civilization in that sense that every game is unique but the game mechanics remain the same overall. After 30 hours of civilization I will know whether or not that civilization game is something I'd want to continue playing because I've become proficient with its mechanics.

In the challenge game I just wanted to play a short quick game but it still took me 10 hours and that was just relating to like 3 product groups when there are close to 30 product groups. There's also the digital age dlc which pertains to software and that's a whole different ball game onto itself.

If you can finish an entire game where you dominate every industry on hard settings within 30 hours ... that's pretty god tier gaming skillz you got then. I think most people choose to set goals for themselves because it would take too much time otherwise to complete the game. It's almost too big in that sense and once you've gotten control of over half the market ingame, it's like a game of monopoly, you already know who's going to win, the rest is just busy work but that's the end game with most open ended games like this.