Thoughts on the Difficulty in 1.14?

[Eric.B]

I bought it yesterday when I saw it on Steam, so I'm quite the beginner at this. I found it hellishly hard on easy in 1900. Perhaps it's worth mentioning that I, as any sane person would, started in Ethiopia. Tried a little save/loading magic, but without any marketing I'm not able to sell cars while making a profit at all. The moneyz are just pooring out. Going to try some more in Ehtiopia today and see how it goes with the marketing budget at max.

You might want to avoid Ethiopia.
Consumers work off per-capita. In 1900, Ethiopia's wealthiest 2% are only making about $180 a year. This will make it nearly impossible to sell anything more than say $200 there.

That means you'll have to ship vehicles to Europe. But then, you've got transportation costs. Which could run in the thousands of dollars per vehicle...

Also factor in things like worker skills, resources, infrastructure, etc and you have a recipe for an insanely hard game, even on easy.

There is a reason Ethiopia has never had a real car company.

The economics of the game are designed to be fairly realistic. Where are most car companies founded in 1900? Northern North America, Central, and Western Europe. Try one of those cities and it'll get a little easier.