Dealerships, Sales Reps, and City Wealth

[Geredis]

It would appear that when setting up dealerships/bureaus in each city, that there's no way to actually micro-manage each dealership's mix of locations vs quality of personnel. Is there some way to set them up individually per city? It seems that all of them have the same settings, but in some I wanted to experiment with going 'wide' with lots of dealerships and in others with going for fewer dealers but higher-skilled sales reps to figure out which seems more important.

Can this be settled via the Mega Menu (in which case I've merely overlooked it) or is each city manually tweaked via the Map (though when trying to do that...it seems that it changes all bureaus).

For the record, the cities in question are New York (home), as well as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, so it well could be a regional or even country thing, though I've still got to get my head around it.

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Also, it's hard to tell sometimes, but once the game starts, within a country does city wealth independently fluctuate, or is that simply a relaying of the national average?

[Eric.B]

I assume you're talking about dealerships and growth of dealers...

Dealerships themselves are not controlled by your company. They're contracted out to third parties which your branch deals with. The amount of resources you dump into the dealerships the more these companies will expand with your marques.

The sales resources slider is mainly incentives and brand devotion to dealerships. Think of it as free training, or free display models. Any resource that helps the dealers sell more vehicles.


Branch Employees do not sell cars. They connect dealerships with factories, getting the dealers the vehicles they need. They also handle contracts for these vehicles, and with new dealerships, parts supplies, warranties, training, etc. They're the middlemen between Retail (Dealerships) and Production (Factories)



Most economic data in a city should start out the same. In the future I will tweak this where I have data (US is a great example because the south should be much poorer than the North East) However as the game plays, depending on your production (and the AI's production) some cities will grow faster than others.

[Arakash]

I assume you're talking about dealerships and growth of dealers...

Dealerships themselves are not controlled by your company. They're contracted out to third parties which your branch deals with. The amount of resources you dump into the dealerships the more these companies will expand with your marques.

The sales resources slider is mainly incentives and brand devotion to dealerships. Think of it as free training, or free display models. Any resource that helps the dealers sell more vehicles.


Branch Employees do not sell cars. They connect dealerships with factories, getting the dealers the vehicles they need. They also handle contracts for these vehicles, and with new dealerships, parts supplies, warranties, training, etc. They're the middlemen between Retail (Dealerships) and Production (Factories)



Most economic data in a city should start out the same. In the future I will tweak this where I have data (US is a great example because the south should be much poorer than the North East) However as the game plays, depending on your production (and the AI's production) some cities will grow faster than others.

This is all interesting an useful information, i didn't realize the branch expenditure was as indirect as you described. (with my lack of direct knowledge i assumed that the company were employing salespeople in dealerships)
I think ill add some of it to the FAQ if you dont mind, it seems like a common question people might ask.

[Eric.B]

Well from my understanding of working in the auto industry is that (at least in the US) the majority of dealerships are privately owned companies separate from the brands. The manufactures typically sign deals with the dealership companies much like fast food franchisee do.

There are of course exceptions to the rules. Niche market vehicles may operate their own dealerships. And I'm not sure if this is true else where in the world. Anyway to keep it simple and not branch out into Dealership Tycoon. This is how it works in GC.

[Arakash]

Well from my understanding of working in the auto industry is that (at least in the US) the majority of dealerships are privately owned companies separate from the brands. The manufactures typically sign deals with the dealership companies much like fast food franchisee do.

There are of course exceptions to the rules. Niche market vehicles may operate their own dealerships. And I'm not sure if this is true else where in the world. Anyway to keep it simple and not branch out into Dealership Tycoon. This is how it works in GC.

Sounds good.
I may have not been too clear, i didn't have a problem/complaint with the mechanics you suggested, i was just ignorant of how it worked in the real world