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Some time ago, I wrote the article Capitalism Lab – a Strategy for Business. In it I described my regular strategy in playing the game.
The reason that makes Capitalism Lab such a fantastic title is the almost infinite replay value. The player can play through a humongous amount of scenarios and start all over again with new product focus and new strategies. These days I’ve been playing CapLab with a variation of the strategy I wrote about in my last article. That’s what I’m going to be talking about today.
Setting Up the Game
Under the Profile -settings, I name my company Bintel Corporation and my character James Monroe (Gordon Moore -reference anyone, eh?). I pick a corporate logo with a big blue B.
This gaming session will have the following settings:
- 7 cities
- moderate start-up capital
- high economic realism
I choose the following settings for AI competitors:
- 30 competitors
- very high start-up capital for competitors
- very high aggressiveness and expertise for AI
I modify the Digital Age DLC settings by increasing software and internet revenues from 100 to 120. I also add more hireable talents. This should make for a more interesting end game as the in-game time progresses.
I set seaport settings as follows:
- 2 consumer goods imported per city
- 2 industrial goods
- constant import supply: yes
- import quality moderate
- product customization on
- product customization range high
- randomly disable product classes off
- random product reinvention off
Maxing Out the Corporate Credit Card
I begin the game by taking out as much loan as the bank gives me. As a rule of thumb, the more assets on your company’s balance sheet, the more loan the bank will be willing to grant you. In the beginning, you can take out loan totaling to the amount of cash you have in the bank making your business 2x leveraged.
Choosing a City To Build Factories
I identify the city with lowest Real Wage Rate (Harbin with 30). This will now be the location to start building out my manufacturing facilities. I pick Harbin in order to enjoy lowest labor costs. This makes it possible for me to sell my products for higher profit margins.
Building Out Factories and R&D -Facilities
In Harbin, I set up four factories. They start to produce:
1) early computers
2) créme lipstick
3) bath towels and
4) leather wallet
I also build and set up four R&D centres researching improvements on these products. As the R&D -project finalizes, I get a product quality boost that will improve the overall product quality in stores (calculated from R&D, materials quality and marketing brand effects). As my products get a higher overall quality, I can sell them for higher prices than competitors.
Here I set up R&D -projects to last for 1 year and improve product tech for about 30 points.
Next I set up my factories to produce products at cost and selling with the “internal sale” -setting on
Now I find the city with the highest Real Wage Rate. In our case, it’s Tokyo with real wage rate of 93. Compare this to Harbin’s 30. Now I produce things in the cheapest city and sell them in the most expensive one. I hope to profit the difference.
Setting Up Stores In Tokyo
I’m founding a discount store in Tokyo. I try to place the store in a location with as high a customer traffic index as possible. In our case the best spot for building the store has an index of 60.
I’m filling the store with products of Bintel Corporation from Harbin. Now I produce cheaply in the city with lowest real wage rate and sell high in Tokyo where they have the highest wages.
I’m setting up store sell prices as high as possible while still holding the products’ overall rating above the city average. This makes it possible to sell more products than my competitors but still squeeze the most possible money from the product sales.
Summary
To finalize the first part of this strategy guide on Capitalism Lab, I have created a company named after Intel Corporation. The company has production facilities in Harbin, China. This is the city with the lowest real wage rates.
I have founded retail stores to sell these products in Tokyo. Tokyo in Japan is the city with the highest real wage rates. My goal is to profit the difference. People with higher salaries can pay higher prices for the same products. As the products are cheaply produced, I get higher profit margins. This will make for a great business model for Bintel Corporation.
To be continued in the next article in this series
accounting business business simulation capitalism capitalism lab capitalism lab strategy guide classic pc game cliff harris country democracy 4 democracy game dlc farm finance game game review guide ig2 income statement industry giant industry giant 2 investment modding open-source open transport tycoon openttd pc politics simulator positech games proqet r&d research center sales searoute simulation simulation game simulator game steam early access stock market strategy strategy game transport tycoon trevor chan uig entertainment user-created mods