Rather than writing a full AAR, i thought id show a snapshot from one of my games, with screenshots and explanation, showing the style of strategy i normally play.
Its not any kind of record breaker and i make no claim to be the expert on Gearcity Strategy, but i thought it might be interesting to share it anyway.
Im playing Open Beta Version 1.13 of the game.
As normal for me im aiming to do 95% of my sales in London, following a budget car strategy. I sell in London because its an enormous black hole of vehicle demand.
With this economy strategy, i need to sell a lot of units to actually be profitable, because i sell cars at low prices with low profit margins. Usually i need to sell at least a few hundred per month for it to actually work.
One of the first things i do is make sure i resize or demolish and build a new factory that can produce 800-900 cars per month. If you drag the tech slider down a lot this isnt an expensive process.
Branch and Marketing costs are managed by my usual strategy, to keep them under $40 per unit in the Expenses per unit per city screens. Usually i spread my marketing across all types, just to keep it simple. For Branches, i just resize them as necessary.
In practice, this means the size of my Branches and Marketing budget tend to scale as my sales volume increases, which is exactly what i want for this strategy.
As of 1907, im spending 30k on marketing per month in London alone, which i suspect is much much higher than my competitors.
Im also spending 45k for my London branch, which i also assume is helping.
I'm doing very little in a few other nearby cities except a few min sized branches and some tiny marketing budgets.
For my R&D strategy, i wasn't able to afford much beyond designing components for vehicles to sell before about 1903-4. Since then ive started Designing a few max slider components which is needed to optimize turning on Research Teams. As of 1907 im spending about 50k per month in total on research teams. On the actual sliders, i think this is 150k per year per research team slider.
The Lobbying slider has also been at max almost since i started selling vehicles. I tend to think it saves me enough money in taxes to be worthwhile, but im never entirely sure.
For my cars.
I started off with a Cheap Phaeton.
This one ended up costing ~260-290 to produce, here's what its stats look like with some stat degradation by 1907.
Its a basic design, light to be efficient, fuel efficient and durable as those are the primary ratings of the Phaeton car type.
Its sales price has been $600 for all its life, undercutting a good 80% of the cars on the market.
I suspect mostly on the basis of its price and targeted statistics, as well as marketing its been my best seller for the last 7 years, selling 55k units in total.
My second car was a compact produced in 1905, and pretty poorly designed. Its not bad, but just far too expensive for its type and my strategy at 650-700.
Most of this is because i spent far too much trying to make a nice Straight4 engine, which raised the price of the entire vehicle dramatically. With a Sales price of $900 i was selling about half as many of these as my phaetons in 1906. I sold about 8k units in 1906.
Ive got a SC of it as well, but keep in mind i consider it pretty poor.
My third car i just put into R&D in 1907, its a new model Year Phaeton built on my original vehicle, with new components.
Ive taken advantage of later tech, especially of using the FF drivetrain, which is the cheapest by far and helps keep costs down.
Its production cost is $551, which i hope will be decent for selling the vehicle somewhere in the 700's mark.
In retrospect, its engine might be a bit too weak to last a long time. Ill soon find out i suppose.
Here is a SC of this one.
From the two designs ive been selling, the two best months ive ever had for them are in Jan Feb 1907.
Each month i was:
Selling +1500 of the original Phaeton
and 1000 of the Compact
Im spending an extra 150k on Research projects, but i still made a good 300-400k profit on each of those two months, which is more than the usual 100-200k i make.
All of this has resulted in some decent profits over the years. As i mentioned clearly at the start of this, its not intended to be and certainly isn't a record breaking profit. It has been enough to allow me to expand my research budget and start new research projects to support the research teams mechanic.
Ive got 4mil in cash to spare, which gives me some flexibility in my options and a decent cash buffer.
If you've never played a economy/budget car manufacturer before, the profit chart might look strange to you, but i think it tends to show the difference in profit margin in the vehicles i'm selling.
So that's a snapshot from a normal game for me in 1907.
Any thoughts?
Its not any kind of record breaker and i make no claim to be the expert on Gearcity Strategy, but i thought it might be interesting to share it anyway.
Im playing Open Beta Version 1.13 of the game.
As normal for me im aiming to do 95% of my sales in London, following a budget car strategy. I sell in London because its an enormous black hole of vehicle demand.
With this economy strategy, i need to sell a lot of units to actually be profitable, because i sell cars at low prices with low profit margins. Usually i need to sell at least a few hundred per month for it to actually work.
One of the first things i do is make sure i resize or demolish and build a new factory that can produce 800-900 cars per month. If you drag the tech slider down a lot this isnt an expensive process.
Branch and Marketing costs are managed by my usual strategy, to keep them under $40 per unit in the Expenses per unit per city screens. Usually i spread my marketing across all types, just to keep it simple. For Branches, i just resize them as necessary.
In practice, this means the size of my Branches and Marketing budget tend to scale as my sales volume increases, which is exactly what i want for this strategy.
As of 1907, im spending 30k on marketing per month in London alone, which i suspect is much much higher than my competitors.
Im also spending 45k for my London branch, which i also assume is helping.
I'm doing very little in a few other nearby cities except a few min sized branches and some tiny marketing budgets.
For my R&D strategy, i wasn't able to afford much beyond designing components for vehicles to sell before about 1903-4. Since then ive started Designing a few max slider components which is needed to optimize turning on Research Teams. As of 1907 im spending about 50k per month in total on research teams. On the actual sliders, i think this is 150k per year per research team slider.
The Lobbying slider has also been at max almost since i started selling vehicles. I tend to think it saves me enough money in taxes to be worthwhile, but im never entirely sure.
For my cars.
I started off with a Cheap Phaeton.
This one ended up costing ~260-290 to produce, here's what its stats look like with some stat degradation by 1907.
Its a basic design, light to be efficient, fuel efficient and durable as those are the primary ratings of the Phaeton car type.
Its sales price has been $600 for all its life, undercutting a good 80% of the cars on the market.
I suspect mostly on the basis of its price and targeted statistics, as well as marketing its been my best seller for the last 7 years, selling 55k units in total.
My second car was a compact produced in 1905, and pretty poorly designed. Its not bad, but just far too expensive for its type and my strategy at 650-700.
Most of this is because i spent far too much trying to make a nice Straight4 engine, which raised the price of the entire vehicle dramatically. With a Sales price of $900 i was selling about half as many of these as my phaetons in 1906. I sold about 8k units in 1906.
Ive got a SC of it as well, but keep in mind i consider it pretty poor.
My third car i just put into R&D in 1907, its a new model Year Phaeton built on my original vehicle, with new components.
Ive taken advantage of later tech, especially of using the FF drivetrain, which is the cheapest by far and helps keep costs down.
Its production cost is $551, which i hope will be decent for selling the vehicle somewhere in the 700's mark.
In retrospect, its engine might be a bit too weak to last a long time. Ill soon find out i suppose.
Here is a SC of this one.
From the two designs ive been selling, the two best months ive ever had for them are in Jan Feb 1907.
Each month i was:
Selling +1500 of the original Phaeton
and 1000 of the Compact
Im spending an extra 150k on Research projects, but i still made a good 300-400k profit on each of those two months, which is more than the usual 100-200k i make.
All of this has resulted in some decent profits over the years. As i mentioned clearly at the start of this, its not intended to be and certainly isn't a record breaking profit. It has been enough to allow me to expand my research budget and start new research projects to support the research teams mechanic.
Ive got 4mil in cash to spare, which gives me some flexibility in my options and a decent cash buffer.
If you've never played a economy/budget car manufacturer before, the profit chart might look strange to you, but i think it tends to show the difference in profit margin in the vehicles i'm selling.
So that's a snapshot from a normal game for me in 1907.
Any thoughts?