First Successful Company - Karling

[Arakash]

So after many failed starts, i had my first major success, with Karling company, mostly by selling Pickup Trucks, and lately Sedans, in Northeastern US.
This game was on the Easy Difficulty.

This is the first AAR ive written, so its more incoherent ramblings than structured.

I started in New York, as that seemed to have the best stats overall in the US at start.

The first vehicle i chose to make was a pickup truck, as that had the highest demand in my region at the time.
The felix, as i named it, was a 2L Straight 6 Pickup. (Looking back on it now, thats probably a powerful engine choice for the time)
Rather than just putting out a bottom of the barrel cheap vehicle, i tried to make one which had good cargospace(45821L) and good reliability, which i thought was the main draw for Pickup Trucks.
I didnt notice it till later, but i unintentionally(i dont remember making it a focus) also made the felix one of the best vehicles for fuel milage on the market. (20MPG)
Heres a Shot of its stats:

(The cost is 1908 production cost, after ive built over 250k of them)

I think its original cost was around the 900-1000 mark, which is high for a starting vehicle.
Orginally i struggled a LOT with trying to get the right selling price for the vehicle. I had it at ~1100-1200 for months and was making barely enough to keep my head above water, even though i was selling almost as many as i could produce.
After reading some more guides on this forum and reading more tips, i turned it up to 1400 and immediately noticed a huge jump in my profits.

I made a Sedan model shortly after to diversify a bit.
The Crixton, like the Felix, was above average for the time in a most respects, but i focused mainly on fuel economy, comfort and dependability.
Heres a Shot of its stats:

(The cost is 1908 production cost, after ive built over 140k of them)

The orginal cost of this vehicle was higher than the Felix, so it really didnt sell well until later years when its cost went down and i could put its price down as well.

Once i had some solid income coming in, i started expanding brances hoping to get more sales, and opened new factories in Philadelphia and Baltimore to meet the increasing demand.

It was at this point i really stared to expand my marketing(as i had money to spare) and the demand really picked up for my vehicles.
My fumbling in the Marketing system, over the 8 year period seemed to have had the most impact on my demand, but i still have trouble figuring out how to put a consistent marketing budget across my entire empire now, so its still a work in progress.

Most of my time since then has been spent with trying to meet increasing demand, trying to build racecars and win races(which i made another thread about).
I updated my two old models to new models with 1907 improved standards, but the old 1901 models are still taking up 80% of my sales, so i dont see much need to improve them.
I spent some of my earned money to buy my only competitor for pickup trucks in the Eastern US and some of their models (Michigan motors in the screenshot) are selling well too.

As of 1908, im really struggling to meet the massive demand for my vehicles. Just to give you an idea of the numbers, here is the vehicle numbers over time chart.

The Felix, Lightning and Crixton are my designs, the rest are Michigan Motors designs i got when i bout the Company.

I have about 10 factories at this point, with another 4-5 building, most at a cost of 2mil with max production capacity.
Most have also had their production lines expanded through retooling over time.
I think im producing around 35-45k vehicles per month at this point.
Since i started ramping up production, the production cost of a lot of my vehicles has dropped significantly, but i dont see any reason to drop the price, as i already cant keep up with demand.
Im not sure about other mass produced vehicles of the time, but the Model T wiki page lists 500k sales by 1915, which i think i can match by 1909.



Heres some final charts from my current 1908 save of the game.
Profts Chart

Market Share



Im not sure i really look forward to micromanaging 15 factories with shifting demand, as 10 is already pushing what i can tolerate.
So ill probably start a new game in a new vehicle area.

[Eric.B]

Very good write up. If you could, could you please upload as I see some interesting things in your charts.

For example any design older than 5 years should be taking a penalty to sales, yet yours still keep going up...


I plan on tweaking the factory retooling process as Giacomo has suggested. This should reduce the number of factories you need to manage.

Also note there is only about 1/3rd of the AI in the game right now. Many major US companies are missing like Forward and Generic Motors... It should only get harder as I add more...

[Arakash]

Very good write up. If you could, could you please upload as I see some interesting things in your charts.

For example any design older than 5 years should be taking a penalty to sales, yet yours still keep going up...


I plan on tweaking the factory retooling process as Giacomo has suggested. This should reduce the number of factories you need to manage.

Also note there is only about 1/3rd of the AI in the game right now. Many major US companies are missing like Forward and Generic Motors... It should only get harder as I add more...

Thanks for the reply.
Edit: attached a savefile below

On the sales.
Well theres a few things i could mention which i think may have contributed.
First thing i should mention is i think i started on easy, im not sure if that has any effect on the game beyond the start settings, but there it is.
Second is ive been messing around with marketing constantly. Ive been trying to get it consistent across the board but i haven't achieved that.
Third, ive been dropping prices on some of the models(most notably the Crixton), as their cost is starting to get very low.
Finally, in the case of the pickup trucks(felix and quotation), im the only person selling in a lot of cities, at least on the East Coast USA where most of my sales are, as i bought out my only competition.

---

Heres the attached savefile, i found it and how to attach just now.

[Eric.B]

Easy does make the game easier. And it seems I need to make buying out companies a little harder!

Anyhoo I'll take a look at these once I clear a few more tickets. Thanks again.

[Arakash]

Just for the sake of comparison, i tried to match/beat my previous game on hard using a similar strategy.
This time with a company called Zahringen.

One very noticeable thing is the expenses in general seem to be higher, so there's much less margin for mistake in overproducing vehicles, making the game a lot harder.

I was planning to take some screenshots at 1908, but i bankrupted myself in 1906.
I was following the same plan as my previous game, producing a Pickup then a sedan model from the profits of the pickup.
By late 1905 i was averaging about 5000-5500 sales of the pickup per turn and 600-800 of the Sedan as its sales cost is too high for the market.
In January 1906 i launched the new version of the Pickup, which was far too expensive to start off with, but i was planning to sell in low numbers then decrease the price once its cost had dropped.

As i often do just to check on the sales of the vehicle, i overproduced it initially and only sold 500 units. Unfortunately, this not only stole some sales from my older pickup model, it also happened at the same time as a 50% drop in sales(over 2000 units) on my older pickup model over two turns.
I was also rebuilding my factory in new york, the main city i sell to, which increased my transportation costs.
I tried to compensate for the drop in sales in the first turn but i didnt do enough and by the second turn my company was in 2.6mil debt.
Ive tried a number of production numbers after reloading the autosave, but i dont think the company can get out of that kind of hole.
I also cant get a loan from the bank to cover it either.

I dont think ill be trying the same strategy/city again, but overall id say that pickup trucks in New York is really an excellent start for any new player in the current build, it seems to always give you a few solid years of profits.

Heres some chart screenshots again for comparison.
(For clarification sake, the Duke is the Pickup model and the Baron is the Sedan)

First sales by Model

Second is Model sales over the whole time period

Third is Market share over time (My company is Zahringen)