01-24-2015, 07:57 PM
This is my first real game in 1900 on Normal level. Since I made no notes and just started to write the AAR in 1950 sometimes I am not too precise, since I cannot remember all details, but maybe it is at least not too long (it will be too long anyway).
The first period until WWI
So in the beginning I built a company in New York, made a cheap Pick Up and started to sell it. It worked well and quite soon I started to build more and more models. Phaeton, Sedan and Touring followed in 1900. And all of them were a success.
In 1906 and 1907 I started many other models. Mostly capacity was the main problem, else I could have sold even more cars. About 1910 I started to go also overseas to Europe and Australia. I made a lot of money, but I did not want to purchase other companies. So my bank account was full, when WWI started. At that time I closed all branches and factories in Europe.
Azul developed new models continuously and after WWI branches I reopened in Europe even more branches and started to extend my sales network in Japan and South America.
Not enough capacity - the big expansion after WWI to every continent
Until WWI have always been able to sell everything, what I build. My companies were always running almost 100%. Since I had always capacity problems and a lot of money I built on all continents big factories to conquer all the markets, soon. I planned, that each continents made its own cars. The models were the same worldwide, but I wanted to save transport costs, so I limited the radius of the shipping distance in a manner, that I had the following areas:
1.North America and Latin America. 3 factories were in the East of the USA.
2.South America. 1 factory in Montevideo, since labor was cheap there.
3.Europe until the Asian border (unfortunately including the African states along the Mediterranean and Israel, since it is a shipping range radius and is not taking care for the borders of continents). I had factories in London and Paris.
4.Africa excluding the Cities close to the Mediterranean. One factory was in South Africa.
5.Asia with some cities in Western Russia, which got already also deliveries from Europe (once again the radius-continental border problem). The factory was in Japan, since this was the most developed area on the continent.
6.Australia, including New Zealand and New Guinea.
Of course I made only branches in cities which were big enough and which had an income, which was promising enough car sales, to make profit in each branch. So for example in the USA I had branches in all cities over 400,000 inhabitants, since the income was high enough everywhere. The same was valid for Europe and Oceania. In South America I made branches in the bigger Argentinean cities of Buenos Aires and Cordoba, but also in Santiago de Chile, since they were big and had a reasonable wealth. The other cities were not that wealthy, but I decided nevertheless to establish two branches in Brazil, in Rio and Sao Paolo, since they had a very big population at a low wealth rate.
Africa was quite tough. Besides South Africa, where Cape Town and Johannesburg had a bigger population and wealthy inhabitants there were only the Egyptian cities, which promised some business, due to their size. But they were receiving the cars from Europe, so I put them out of the “African shipping rangeâ€.
Asia was quite hard for decision making. There are a few bigger areas in Asia, with completely different customers. The easiest one is Japan. In a small area you can find quite wealthy cities with reasonable number of inhabitants. Besides them you have Singapore which has already some wealth in the ’20s and ‘30s. The other countries are poor. China is a big market with many inhabitants, but they are very poor, India is the same. The Arabs have some money, but are very small. Some cities exist in Russia, but nothing special.
Before WWI I made quite big profits. I am not sure about the amount, but it was about 18 – 20 Million if I remember well. I had always a racing team in a few important series and also spent some money on the general R&D. Marketing was never interesting for me, since my main problem was to enough build cars, not to sell them.
Too much capacity – the shutdown of plants
As soon as all the factories were built up I realized, that I had been too optimistic. The factories were all built at the same time and the result was not the best, since after all were ready I saw, that I had to much capacity. The plants in South America and Australia were running at a low rate, since the producible quantity was much lower that the demand in the respective areas. In the USA I had too many factories, so even here I had capacity for too many cars.
The company in Africa was absolutely useless, only a few lines were necessary. Africa was really disastrous. It was impossible to sell the same car models in the USA and in Africa. They were too expensive and the market was too small. A trial to make a car for Africa and other cheap countries under the same “Azul†brand failed. At that time I wanted to make a second, cheaper model of a Micro car. But as soon as it was ready nobody wanted to buy anymore the other more expensive and older Micro car even though its quality was better. My strategy at that time was to sell all cars in all branches worldwide, so I did not continue to make new cheaper models for poorer markets or any other special models.
So it did not take too much time and I closed the African plant, which cost about 30-35 Mio to build it up a few years before,
. The branches in South Africa were closed also, since it did not make any sense to pay the transport costs from elsewhere. At that time I used to make a world price for all cars, by using the “Sell everywhere†button in the Mega menu. Else it would take too long to introduce a car and change the prices in different cities. I did not want to change price for all cars for these two cities.
To use the “sell everywhere†button is fast, but you will have a lot of trouble due to the transport costs if you deliver to other continents. At least in times, when the cars are sold at prices of 1,000 – 2,000 as it was the case at that time and delivery cost from South America was about 400-500 per unit. Increasing the worldwide price by 500 would lead to a worldwide decline in sales for the respective model, changing the price for each city would lead to the much hated micromanagement.
Since the buildup of these factories and branches took a lot of time and immense micromanagement to pay attention to produce not too many cars (now I had much too much capacity) I did not really care for new models. So in the end of the ‘20s I renewed almost all of my models, which lead once again to a lot of micromanagement.
In the meantime I closed also one plant in the USA leaving me with 3 plants in the US, 2 European ones and one in Australia, one in Japan and one in Montevideo. But these were always made with the maximum of lines and capacity on each line. In most car categories I was market leader, but my profit was never again on the same level than before WWI. It was always about 5-10 Mio each turn. But I wanted to sell cars on each continent of the world, except Africa due to the low demand there.
I had more branches now, since I tried to sell more cars, to be able to increase the utilization of my factories. This lead to increased sales, but profit did not really change. After some turns I checked the branches and found out, that many of them made losses, so I closed them in cities like Teheran, some South East Asian and South American cities, but also in Russia, where business did not run well in some smaller cities.
WWII and the first reorganization
In the mid ‘30s the civil war started in Spain and I closed my branches there. In 1939 this war ended, but WWII began and the number of my branches and factories decreased dramatically. But I did not want to leave Europe completely and started to built up a new plant in Stockholm, which should deliver to those countries, which were still in peace, like Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and those who entered the war only later.
At the same time I tried to improve my overview from the point of view, which plant produced which models. Before the war this was quite hard, since I produced almost every model on every continent. So I had to pay a lot of attention where I produced how many cars of which type. Sometimes it happened, that I produced in two plants in the US the same car. This lead to huge stocks after a few turns. Since I had 15 or more models I did not want to make the micromanagement every turn in every factory, since this would mean about 100 production lines to adjust.
I was not really pleased with the Auto production system either or at least did not completely understood its logic. I used it, while I had only 1 plant left due to the war. Well it showed some good tendencies, but sometimes it produced cars, which seemed not making too much sense, but others which seemed to be necessary were not produced at all. I used it only for 3-4 turns, so maybe it works well, but I had no patience.
So coming back to my problem with overproduction and missing overview. In the Mega menu you can see the demand of a car type in the shipping range and the global demand. It is in the menu, where you can adjust the number of produced cars. This is very good, if you produce one model only in one plant of the shipping range.
You can also see how many cars have been produced in this plant and globally, but you can not see the quantity of this model, which is produced in all the plants in your shipping range. So it can happen, that you produce in two plants of one shipping range (remember North America was one shipping range with 3 plants) the same model, but you will not notice it through the figures in this menu, since the produced quantity of the other plant is not shown directly, but is hidden in the global production quantity.
Therefore maybe another field should be introduced here, showing how many cars of this type have been produced in the same shipping range last turn. This would ease life drastically.
In 1939 I had 3 plants in the US. All of them were as already mentioned huge. I decided, that I will try to specialize them somehow. So I made a trial to get a better overview by creating more brands. I made a brand called “Rossoâ€, which would be a specialist for all the fast cars (Sports, Roadster, Coupe, Shooting brake). One plant would make all of these cars only. This system would lead to a better overview, regarding how many cars were produced in the same shipping range (=continent). The system worked well, so I built up Negro, which was responsible for the limos, town cars and landaulets. The heavy duty sector for pickups, full sized vans, SUVs and Minivans was represented by “Verdeâ€. And finally I made a last brand named “Blanco†for the small cars, like Micro, Subcompact and Compact. All the other cars remained under the core brand “Azulâ€.
One plant made the “Rosso†and “Negroâ€, one the “Verde†and “Blanco†and one made the “Azul†cars. So I had a very good overview of the US-plants from now on. And then came 1941 and I closed them all…ïŒ
So I continued with Montevideo and Stockholm until the end of the war.
The second reorganization
In 1945 the war ended and I had my 2 big plants and many people which wanted one thing: cars. Since I wanted to be on all of the markets quite fast and since I had bad experiences with my big plants I started to buildup rather medium sized plants immediately. The big plants would have taken many years for the buildup, while smaller ones where established in maximum 2 – 3 years.
The following plants were built up:
In North America I created 3 plants Ottawa (23 lines), Montreal (27 lines) and Chicago (30 lines).
In South America I had the old Montevideo plant with 28 lines and started a new one in Buenos Aires with 42 lines.
In Europe I made in Lisbon (22 lines) and London (27 lines) smaller plants, in Stuttgart a huge one (47 lines, which is still under construction in 1952). Stockholm had already 20 lines.
Africa remained without plants.
In Asia I established a plant in Nagoya (12 lines).
In Australia I built up a plant in Brisbane (17 lines) and after short time an additional one was necessary in Perth (26 lines).
I really liked the system with the different brands, so I wanted to continue with it, but wanted even to try a more diversified system.
The cars of the 5 existing brands (call them Latin brands) were a bit old fashioned at that time and I wanted to make better cars for Europe and later after the plants were ready in the US for North America. So I made better cars under the brand “blauâ€. and developed a Sedan and a Hatch.
At the same time another problem occured. On the one side I had the plant in Montevideo with many lines, which operated with low capacity utilization on the one side and markets like the USA without any plants. So I changed the shipping range from 5522 km to “global†to see what happens. Well, all the stocks were sipped away in a few turns, profit rose and in short time Montevideo ran at 100%, as did Stockholm, where two models under the brand “blau†were produced. Step by step my new plants were ready and soon more and more new brands existed, like “blueâ€, “redâ€, “rotâ€â€¦.. Now about 15 brands exist.
One group of brands produces in South America. The second is in North America, the third in Europe, the fourth in Australia and the fifth in Japan. All brands deliver worldwide, so I have some kind of multiplayer here, since the different brands are competitors to each other. But the plants are quite well utilized.
Of course it takes a lot of time and money to develop new models, so I always made just new trims and depending on the area of the plant I made the cars a bit better (expensive) or worse (cheaper). And finally profit increased again to about 20 Mio per turn.
But then I found out, that transport costs are disastrously high, because Europeans liked Australian cars, Australians bought American ones and those tiny Japanese cars were selling like hell in South America. Of course nobody in South America bought its home products, since the models were to old…
So some models had huge losses due to transport costs. It was quite hard to find a good and fast solution for this issue. At that time 40 models and 11 plants existed, so 440 lines to check in the mega menu to adjust production. You can imagine, that I did not do this every turn.
As mentioned before there was one price for every car on the whole world. The sales price was cost x 3. Small cars were at costs of 100-200, big cars of up to 1800.
I tried to find out the delivery cost per model to the different continents, which was not to easy, but finally it was clear, that shipping from the US to Europe may be around 300-500 per Unit. So the transport cost was more expensive than the sales price of my smaller cars. It was time for a new system.
I did not want to go back to the system of shipping range restriction for each plant, even though it would have worked absolutely properly.
On the long term I wanted to make really different cars for the different brands and want to deliver worldwide.
So the only possibility was to adjust the prices according to the transport costs. I was looking for some Automenu button, but there was nothing similar. The only possibility was to try the “sell in region†function. After a short trial with three models from Japan it worked properly.
Sales price was basically the same as before (cost x 3), but I added a transport fee according to the continent, where I want to deliver. So price for a North American car in North America is “cost x 3 + 100â€, but will be “cost x 3 + 700†in Australia and “cost x 3 + 500†in Europe.
So the next three hours were passing with changing prices of my 40 models in 6 regions with the “sales by region†button. (Therefore I would really ask Erik to introduce some Auto menu button, where the transport costs can be entered faster, maybe added automatically in some kind of matrix.)
After having changed the prices the demand for many models decreased of course drastically. (Nobody wants to buy Australian Microcars in Europe anymore, if their price is double to the European ones.)
So after adjusting the quantities I checked my profit and it was 40 Mio instead of the 22 Mio before my small change, so seems to be a good change if you consider that I even produce less cars than before, so I can increase production.
Conclusion
Now it is 1952 and I have to see, how this system will work in the future years. I have to make many new models, since many of my cars are really out-fashioned. The last time passed only with micromanagement of production, establishing of brands and changing of prices. (ok and writing this AAR)
As a conclusion for this let’s say really too long AAR it would be nice to get some improvements, which I will also introduce as a suggestion on the forum.
- In the Mega menu you can see the demand of a car type in the shipping range and the global demand in the same menu, where you can adjust the number of produced cars. But on the other hand you can see how many cars have been produced in this plant (but not in all the plants in the shipping range) and globally. -> A field should be introduced, showing how many cars of the same type have been produced in the same shipping range last turn.
- I would really ask Erik to introduce some Auto menu button, where the transport costs can be entered faster, maybe added automatically to the sales price.
- Sometime I am missing information (like transport costs for Model x from Sydney to Rome), but that is another topic.
The first period until WWI
So in the beginning I built a company in New York, made a cheap Pick Up and started to sell it. It worked well and quite soon I started to build more and more models. Phaeton, Sedan and Touring followed in 1900. And all of them were a success.
In 1906 and 1907 I started many other models. Mostly capacity was the main problem, else I could have sold even more cars. About 1910 I started to go also overseas to Europe and Australia. I made a lot of money, but I did not want to purchase other companies. So my bank account was full, when WWI started. At that time I closed all branches and factories in Europe.
Azul developed new models continuously and after WWI branches I reopened in Europe even more branches and started to extend my sales network in Japan and South America.
Not enough capacity - the big expansion after WWI to every continent
Until WWI have always been able to sell everything, what I build. My companies were always running almost 100%. Since I had always capacity problems and a lot of money I built on all continents big factories to conquer all the markets, soon. I planned, that each continents made its own cars. The models were the same worldwide, but I wanted to save transport costs, so I limited the radius of the shipping distance in a manner, that I had the following areas:
1.North America and Latin America. 3 factories were in the East of the USA.
2.South America. 1 factory in Montevideo, since labor was cheap there.
3.Europe until the Asian border (unfortunately including the African states along the Mediterranean and Israel, since it is a shipping range radius and is not taking care for the borders of continents). I had factories in London and Paris.
4.Africa excluding the Cities close to the Mediterranean. One factory was in South Africa.
5.Asia with some cities in Western Russia, which got already also deliveries from Europe (once again the radius-continental border problem). The factory was in Japan, since this was the most developed area on the continent.
6.Australia, including New Zealand and New Guinea.
Of course I made only branches in cities which were big enough and which had an income, which was promising enough car sales, to make profit in each branch. So for example in the USA I had branches in all cities over 400,000 inhabitants, since the income was high enough everywhere. The same was valid for Europe and Oceania. In South America I made branches in the bigger Argentinean cities of Buenos Aires and Cordoba, but also in Santiago de Chile, since they were big and had a reasonable wealth. The other cities were not that wealthy, but I decided nevertheless to establish two branches in Brazil, in Rio and Sao Paolo, since they had a very big population at a low wealth rate.
Africa was quite tough. Besides South Africa, where Cape Town and Johannesburg had a bigger population and wealthy inhabitants there were only the Egyptian cities, which promised some business, due to their size. But they were receiving the cars from Europe, so I put them out of the “African shipping rangeâ€.
Asia was quite hard for decision making. There are a few bigger areas in Asia, with completely different customers. The easiest one is Japan. In a small area you can find quite wealthy cities with reasonable number of inhabitants. Besides them you have Singapore which has already some wealth in the ’20s and ‘30s. The other countries are poor. China is a big market with many inhabitants, but they are very poor, India is the same. The Arabs have some money, but are very small. Some cities exist in Russia, but nothing special.
Before WWI I made quite big profits. I am not sure about the amount, but it was about 18 – 20 Million if I remember well. I had always a racing team in a few important series and also spent some money on the general R&D. Marketing was never interesting for me, since my main problem was to enough build cars, not to sell them.
Too much capacity – the shutdown of plants
As soon as all the factories were built up I realized, that I had been too optimistic. The factories were all built at the same time and the result was not the best, since after all were ready I saw, that I had to much capacity. The plants in South America and Australia were running at a low rate, since the producible quantity was much lower that the demand in the respective areas. In the USA I had too many factories, so even here I had capacity for too many cars.
The company in Africa was absolutely useless, only a few lines were necessary. Africa was really disastrous. It was impossible to sell the same car models in the USA and in Africa. They were too expensive and the market was too small. A trial to make a car for Africa and other cheap countries under the same “Azul†brand failed. At that time I wanted to make a second, cheaper model of a Micro car. But as soon as it was ready nobody wanted to buy anymore the other more expensive and older Micro car even though its quality was better. My strategy at that time was to sell all cars in all branches worldwide, so I did not continue to make new cheaper models for poorer markets or any other special models.
So it did not take too much time and I closed the African plant, which cost about 30-35 Mio to build it up a few years before,
. The branches in South Africa were closed also, since it did not make any sense to pay the transport costs from elsewhere. At that time I used to make a world price for all cars, by using the “Sell everywhere†button in the Mega menu. Else it would take too long to introduce a car and change the prices in different cities. I did not want to change price for all cars for these two cities.To use the “sell everywhere†button is fast, but you will have a lot of trouble due to the transport costs if you deliver to other continents. At least in times, when the cars are sold at prices of 1,000 – 2,000 as it was the case at that time and delivery cost from South America was about 400-500 per unit. Increasing the worldwide price by 500 would lead to a worldwide decline in sales for the respective model, changing the price for each city would lead to the much hated micromanagement.
Since the buildup of these factories and branches took a lot of time and immense micromanagement to pay attention to produce not too many cars (now I had much too much capacity) I did not really care for new models. So in the end of the ‘20s I renewed almost all of my models, which lead once again to a lot of micromanagement.
In the meantime I closed also one plant in the USA leaving me with 3 plants in the US, 2 European ones and one in Australia, one in Japan and one in Montevideo. But these were always made with the maximum of lines and capacity on each line. In most car categories I was market leader, but my profit was never again on the same level than before WWI. It was always about 5-10 Mio each turn. But I wanted to sell cars on each continent of the world, except Africa due to the low demand there.
I had more branches now, since I tried to sell more cars, to be able to increase the utilization of my factories. This lead to increased sales, but profit did not really change. After some turns I checked the branches and found out, that many of them made losses, so I closed them in cities like Teheran, some South East Asian and South American cities, but also in Russia, where business did not run well in some smaller cities.
WWII and the first reorganization
In the mid ‘30s the civil war started in Spain and I closed my branches there. In 1939 this war ended, but WWII began and the number of my branches and factories decreased dramatically. But I did not want to leave Europe completely and started to built up a new plant in Stockholm, which should deliver to those countries, which were still in peace, like Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and those who entered the war only later.
At the same time I tried to improve my overview from the point of view, which plant produced which models. Before the war this was quite hard, since I produced almost every model on every continent. So I had to pay a lot of attention where I produced how many cars of which type. Sometimes it happened, that I produced in two plants in the US the same car. This lead to huge stocks after a few turns. Since I had 15 or more models I did not want to make the micromanagement every turn in every factory, since this would mean about 100 production lines to adjust.
I was not really pleased with the Auto production system either or at least did not completely understood its logic. I used it, while I had only 1 plant left due to the war. Well it showed some good tendencies, but sometimes it produced cars, which seemed not making too much sense, but others which seemed to be necessary were not produced at all. I used it only for 3-4 turns, so maybe it works well, but I had no patience.
So coming back to my problem with overproduction and missing overview. In the Mega menu you can see the demand of a car type in the shipping range and the global demand. It is in the menu, where you can adjust the number of produced cars. This is very good, if you produce one model only in one plant of the shipping range.
You can also see how many cars have been produced in this plant and globally, but you can not see the quantity of this model, which is produced in all the plants in your shipping range. So it can happen, that you produce in two plants of one shipping range (remember North America was one shipping range with 3 plants) the same model, but you will not notice it through the figures in this menu, since the produced quantity of the other plant is not shown directly, but is hidden in the global production quantity.
Therefore maybe another field should be introduced here, showing how many cars of this type have been produced in the same shipping range last turn. This would ease life drastically.
In 1939 I had 3 plants in the US. All of them were as already mentioned huge. I decided, that I will try to specialize them somehow. So I made a trial to get a better overview by creating more brands. I made a brand called “Rossoâ€, which would be a specialist for all the fast cars (Sports, Roadster, Coupe, Shooting brake). One plant would make all of these cars only. This system would lead to a better overview, regarding how many cars were produced in the same shipping range (=continent). The system worked well, so I built up Negro, which was responsible for the limos, town cars and landaulets. The heavy duty sector for pickups, full sized vans, SUVs and Minivans was represented by “Verdeâ€. And finally I made a last brand named “Blanco†for the small cars, like Micro, Subcompact and Compact. All the other cars remained under the core brand “Azulâ€.
One plant made the “Rosso†and “Negroâ€, one the “Verde†and “Blanco†and one made the “Azul†cars. So I had a very good overview of the US-plants from now on. And then came 1941 and I closed them all…ïŒ
So I continued with Montevideo and Stockholm until the end of the war.
The second reorganization
In 1945 the war ended and I had my 2 big plants and many people which wanted one thing: cars. Since I wanted to be on all of the markets quite fast and since I had bad experiences with my big plants I started to buildup rather medium sized plants immediately. The big plants would have taken many years for the buildup, while smaller ones where established in maximum 2 – 3 years.
The following plants were built up:
In North America I created 3 plants Ottawa (23 lines), Montreal (27 lines) and Chicago (30 lines).
In South America I had the old Montevideo plant with 28 lines and started a new one in Buenos Aires with 42 lines.
In Europe I made in Lisbon (22 lines) and London (27 lines) smaller plants, in Stuttgart a huge one (47 lines, which is still under construction in 1952). Stockholm had already 20 lines.
Africa remained without plants.
In Asia I established a plant in Nagoya (12 lines).
In Australia I built up a plant in Brisbane (17 lines) and after short time an additional one was necessary in Perth (26 lines).
I really liked the system with the different brands, so I wanted to continue with it, but wanted even to try a more diversified system.
The cars of the 5 existing brands (call them Latin brands) were a bit old fashioned at that time and I wanted to make better cars for Europe and later after the plants were ready in the US for North America. So I made better cars under the brand “blauâ€. and developed a Sedan and a Hatch.
At the same time another problem occured. On the one side I had the plant in Montevideo with many lines, which operated with low capacity utilization on the one side and markets like the USA without any plants. So I changed the shipping range from 5522 km to “global†to see what happens. Well, all the stocks were sipped away in a few turns, profit rose and in short time Montevideo ran at 100%, as did Stockholm, where two models under the brand “blau†were produced. Step by step my new plants were ready and soon more and more new brands existed, like “blueâ€, “redâ€, “rotâ€â€¦.. Now about 15 brands exist.
One group of brands produces in South America. The second is in North America, the third in Europe, the fourth in Australia and the fifth in Japan. All brands deliver worldwide, so I have some kind of multiplayer here, since the different brands are competitors to each other. But the plants are quite well utilized.
Of course it takes a lot of time and money to develop new models, so I always made just new trims and depending on the area of the plant I made the cars a bit better (expensive) or worse (cheaper). And finally profit increased again to about 20 Mio per turn.
But then I found out, that transport costs are disastrously high, because Europeans liked Australian cars, Australians bought American ones and those tiny Japanese cars were selling like hell in South America. Of course nobody in South America bought its home products, since the models were to old…
So some models had huge losses due to transport costs. It was quite hard to find a good and fast solution for this issue. At that time 40 models and 11 plants existed, so 440 lines to check in the mega menu to adjust production. You can imagine, that I did not do this every turn.
As mentioned before there was one price for every car on the whole world. The sales price was cost x 3. Small cars were at costs of 100-200, big cars of up to 1800.
I tried to find out the delivery cost per model to the different continents, which was not to easy, but finally it was clear, that shipping from the US to Europe may be around 300-500 per Unit. So the transport cost was more expensive than the sales price of my smaller cars. It was time for a new system.
I did not want to go back to the system of shipping range restriction for each plant, even though it would have worked absolutely properly.
On the long term I wanted to make really different cars for the different brands and want to deliver worldwide.
So the only possibility was to adjust the prices according to the transport costs. I was looking for some Automenu button, but there was nothing similar. The only possibility was to try the “sell in region†function. After a short trial with three models from Japan it worked properly.
Sales price was basically the same as before (cost x 3), but I added a transport fee according to the continent, where I want to deliver. So price for a North American car in North America is “cost x 3 + 100â€, but will be “cost x 3 + 700†in Australia and “cost x 3 + 500†in Europe.
So the next three hours were passing with changing prices of my 40 models in 6 regions with the “sales by region†button. (Therefore I would really ask Erik to introduce some Auto menu button, where the transport costs can be entered faster, maybe added automatically in some kind of matrix.)
After having changed the prices the demand for many models decreased of course drastically. (Nobody wants to buy Australian Microcars in Europe anymore, if their price is double to the European ones.)
So after adjusting the quantities I checked my profit and it was 40 Mio instead of the 22 Mio before my small change, so seems to be a good change if you consider that I even produce less cars than before, so I can increase production.
Conclusion
Now it is 1952 and I have to see, how this system will work in the future years. I have to make many new models, since many of my cars are really out-fashioned. The last time passed only with micromanagement of production, establishing of brands and changing of prices. (ok and writing this AAR)
As a conclusion for this let’s say really too long AAR it would be nice to get some improvements, which I will also introduce as a suggestion on the forum.
- In the Mega menu you can see the demand of a car type in the shipping range and the global demand in the same menu, where you can adjust the number of produced cars. But on the other hand you can see how many cars have been produced in this plant (but not in all the plants in the shipping range) and globally. -> A field should be introduced, showing how many cars of the same type have been produced in the same shipping range last turn.
- I would really ask Erik to introduce some Auto menu button, where the transport costs can be entered faster, maybe added automatically to the sales price.
- Sometime I am missing information (like transport costs for Model x from Sydney to Rome), but that is another topic.
