Capitalism 2 and Capitalism Lab Forum

I’m a long-term fan of Wall Street Raider and I don’t really understand how abstract the game is. Could someone please explain?

1. Why are shops only selling like 4 types of products?
2. What’s the deal with cities? What markets do they represent? If I open a bank in Berlin, am I doing business in the whole of Germany or just a single city?
3. If I buy an oil well, why is no one interested in buying my oil? In real life it’s incredibly easy to sell it.
4. If I only have one city, what’s the market? Just that city/country?

''4. If I only have one city, what’s the market? Just that city/country?''

Yup, that's the whole market essentially (you can have up to 7 cities by default and 15 cities I believe if you use a script). A lot of cities are more populous than their real life counter parts to simulate that they also represent the surrounding area. Other cities cannot possibly fit in the current model like new york, tokyo or mexico city ... or many of the chinese cities to be fair, but these will usually start close to the max starting population of 5 million.

"3. If I buy an oil well, why is no one interested in buying my oil? In real life it’s incredibly easy to sell it."

Because you can only make plastic, dyes and polyester from oil in the base game. In the real world mod I believe you can build gas stations and refine crude oil but not in the default game. So there's no easy way to make money from oil in this game unless someone wants to buy oil to produce the aforementioned products. Sorry chap but oil isn't black gold in this game unless you play as stated before with the real world mod, in which case it's broken af and just an easy cash cow to get ludicrously rich on. Same way that you can't become rich just by digging up gold on its own ... you got to make an actual product out of it that gets sold to the consumer, in this case ''Gold Rings''.

"2. What’s the deal with cities? What markets do they represent? If I open a bank in Berlin, am I doing business in the whole of Germany or just a single city?''

I haven't really played with banks a whole lot but I think banks are the one exception that isn't limited by the economy of the in-game cities alone (depending on game settings if I am correct, otherwise they are).

''1. Why are shops only selling like 4 types of products?''

I think you are referring to the idea that a shop only sells 4 products in the entire store? (the amount of products can be increased with one of the DLC's allowing you to sell up to 12 products in a store by adding floors)

While I agree it does seem extremely limited, I personally see the products as abstractions. Selling ''Television'' for example in an electronics store counts a selling all types of televisions imho, ranging from small to larger versions. The price you place is only an average price for the product type. Another example would be ''Bread'' in supermarkets, I imagine that the bread product type represents the entire bread aisle in a supermarket representing whole breads, full-grain, white bread, buns, croissants, burger buns, etc. It's all abstracted as ''Bread''. You're not just selling 1 product but lots of related products that fit the category of that product. This is however my personal opinion. I don't know what the official stance on it is. I've recommended that the actual amount of products that can be sold in a store by multiplied by 4 but it was apparently not popular enough lol.

I hope this helps a little.