Questions on Strategy

Zitat

Originally posted by Amanda Grayson
You stay flexible and are able to change the production of your fabrics according to which product you can buy at the moment and which not.

By "fabrics", she means "factories"

I may try it out sometime ... or maybe not

*sigh*... I shouldn't have built those furnitures

But back to the topic... it is all stdok's fault changing the demand back (just joking). And yes, at the beginning, you should be able to sell all. Then, when the supply reach a certain point, you sales in low seasons weaken. Many would say that producing the average is better choice. I like dropping the price, and in decrements dependent on my mood at that time. A third choice would be selling the over-production on market, which I sometimes do. The best choice would be the one that make the most money.

Trying different prices in different shops... hmm... if you try different shops and see which perfrom, you would be wasting money. Some new players like to do that, and there is nothing wrong with it if you are experimenting. Other not so new players should not be doing that. Trying different prices is quite common, although I don't have the patience for it.

Well it's a good thing I stopped in at the forum! I decided earlier that I was going to do the very same thing with a furniture shop - I was just building up a bit of capital first. I suspect DIY would very likely be the same way at this point. Last round, I also did textiles. It made good money, but I found it to be rather a pain - all those cotton farms. Maybe I'll just stick to cafes until I have more RL under my belt. Need to do some more thinking.

I had a similar situation with icecream last round. Most of the time, I sold 30 per WU, but now and then the purchases would drop. It didn't seem to last very long, though. Whether that's always the case or not, I couldn't say. But things could pick up again with those products.

Part of the challenge in IT is due to the fact that the market can switch gears so rapidly. The shop sales are at least more predictable. Morgie made an important point there - keeping ourselves flexible allows us to ride with it more easily. Best not to put all our eggs in one basket, I think, when it comes to anything involving purchasing from or selling on the market.

By the way (Morgie's last post) - The terms 'fabrics' and 'materials' are very close and often used interchangeably where textiles are concerned. So I imagine that was just one of those words that translates awkwardly from one language to another.

Zitat

Originally posted by Kahla
I had a similar situation with icecream last round. Most of the time, I sold 30 per WU, but now and then the purchases would drop. It didn't seem to last very long, though. Whether that's always the case or not, I couldn't say. But things could pick up again with those products.

It is the case most of the time, for seasonal products. People don't buy / eat icecream in winter. ... Well, ... at least people except americans (... who wear short-sleeves and slippers, eating an icecream at around 0 degree celcius ... not uncommon in my uni).

Fabrics = factory in German
Fabrics = stoffe in English
=> stoffe = factory?

I haven't found anyplace to see the total number of buildings. But when you click on each building category, the total of that type of building is shown at the top of the list. So it's just a matter of adding those together.

I'll leave the prices question for Dktc or someone else. But at least I can say that I've never had to lower any prices below the norm, even when the product was over 500% on the SuDe.

I did take a chance on the furniture industry, just out of curiosity - it's one I didn't try last round. So far, it looks like I -might- break even or make a tiny amount of profit overall. I'll probably be pulling that one down the minute my supplies are sold. Bleh.

Zitat

at least people except americans (... who wear short-sleeves and slippers, eating an icecream at around 0 degree celcius

Such as my son, who wears nothing but t-shirts in the winter, and longer sleeves in the summer. Go figure.

Zitat

Originally posted by John Smythe
(a) Worst case scenario...how far can shop prices drop if oversupply is really bad and everyone is actively trying to sell in the shops.

What I heard was that the prices should not drop below norm for you to be able to sell the quantity for that season (if seasonality applies).

Zitat

Originally posted by John Smythe
What is the worst you've seen?

Norm... well... actually... not really. I set my price slightly below norm and was told by someone else that I could sell at just a little above norm.

Zitat

Originally posted by John Smythe
And in a more general sense, any idea on average drops for oversupplied industries like DIY or furniture.

Hmm.... can't say... maybe a drop of 20~30%?

Zitat

Originally posted by John Smythe
Where can I see how many buildings I already have? What page?

Go to "option". Activate your profile. Then go to "players online" and click on your "little man" icon.

The steel price will go up again. But probably not as high as last round.

You should research RL first. Get your RL a little higher and produce some more lucrative goods. You have to have more profit to support your ql research. Quite a lot of players make non-RL0 goods which they have no ql.

You need 10 lvl0 farms to support one lvl0 textile factory that makes fabrics.

P.S. You won't see me for a while (maybe 2 ~ 3 days). I am flying home :]

Zitat

I didn't want to move up product levels until I had accumulated decent quality research to justify it.

Keep in mind that researching QL is extremely expensive. A research building costs 1.000.000 to build. And then it costs 500.000 each WU just in standstill, a bit more when a product is being researched. While it's in upgrade, it still costs 125.000 per WU, and each upgrade level raises the maintenance cost as well. So you really need to have a high amount of dependable cash flow coming in, which is easier closer to the end of the round.

RL, on the other hand, requires no special building, and therefore no maintenance costs - just the initial cost to buy that RL.

Bear in mind as well that in order to produce something at a certain QL, you must research the product and all materials it requires to that QL (or buy some of them from someone who can). Otherwise, the product coming out of your factory will only be the average of the materials that went into it, regardless of whatever QL you're capable of producing.

My plan is to concentrate my capital on RL early in the round, and put QL off until later. That will open up more products that aren't already being heavily over-produces, which will in essence give me more to spend on QL at the end. I'll probably use every bit of cash I've saved up - the QL is more important to me than the cash, because it'll help me a great deal in later rounds.

Zitat

I have now found an overall total in the same place on the "All" page.

How silly that I saw it on the category pages and not there!

Zitat

And in a more general sense, any idea on average drops for oversupplied industries like DIY or furniture.

Don't forget that the SuDe can be misleading at times when a product is also used as a material in other things. What may look like it's hugely over-produced may actually be used far more in manufacturing than for sale on its own. Milk is a good example, since it's used in quite a few products that aren't even sold in a grocery store.

Zitat

I managed OK by finding someone higher up the quality list of sellers who priced the same as those down below, out of frustration perhaps?

I wasn't so lucky. I bought at a price that I thought would give me a fairly safe cushion for its QL. I'm still tweaking the selling price, but one of the products will only sell at slightly under the price I paid for it. On the bright side, I didn't buy a great deal of either, so I'll just chalk it up as a learning experience.

What we need is an equation for price determination that takes the amount of over-production into account. That's complicated enough due to the fact that we can't necessarily determine the margin of over-production simply by looking at the SuDe.

The only thing I can think of would be to experiment by buying the same product at different QLs, tweaking the shop price for each until I've found the highest possible selling price for each. Then compare those to try to determine whether adding a modifier to a certain part of the normal equation would work consistently.

But even so, the supply is continuously changing as people drop or take up production of that product. So I think it would take a math genius to figure this one out. My little brain isn't quite up to it.

John, the Best Vendor ranking seems to react with kind of delay sometimes. Or maybe other people expanded so strongly that your shopping on the market just keeps you where you are but not much more.

I have two shops where I am selling products from the market, furniture and toys. Since my toy shop offers five products I make the marbles myself because I do not always get two different products for my shopping value.

I am doing it the same way als you, Kahla. Research level first, quality level later. If one does no research at all he or she will be stuck with the level 0 products which are concerned by the price dropping strongest. And researching brings products with more profit - ok, not always. It can happen that you have a shop and have to produce a thing you do not like so much for your shopping value.

Zitat

It can happen that you have a shop and have to produce a thing you do not like so much for your shopping value.

Ah, very good point. That's why I didn't want to try toys this round, because I knew some of them would require me to grow cotton early on. I really got sick of cotton last round. lol

I'm not terribly concerned with the scores right now, apart from learning how each of them are determined. It's interesting to see how we're doing in each category, and it's pleasant when we discover we're doing better than we expected in one of them. But they really won't matter until the end of the game.

Some categories are just going to be much easier or much more difficult at different stages during the gameplay, depending on how we're going about things. But trying to maximize every category score now would be too limiting - it would mean that we'd be forcing ourselves to invest in things that just aren't as profitable at the time, in order to keep a score up.

Right now, concentrating on profit is the key, I think, because the more capital we have, the more we can invest in things that will ultimately help us raise those category scores. That being said, experimenting and getting a feel for the different facets of the game (including those scores) is a good thing, since everything that we learn gives us that much more advantage later on.

I try never to have over a few hundred thousand at the end of a WU, because money sitting in my account isn't working for me. (Obviously that only happens when I'm logged on - a girl needs to sleep at some point!) I'll invest it somewhere instead, so it can multiply the profits I get each update. If I suddenly find I have to switch gears, then I'll have started the new hour with fresh profits to work with. And if it takes me two or three updates to complete a changeover, then so be it, as long as I'm still making profits from other things in the meantime. Now, that's just my own current strategy. It certainly doesn't hurt to keep a cushion of extra cash handy, and I very well might find that I need to do that later on - I just haven't really needed to do that yet.

What to do depends on what you could use. If you research more RL but don't have the building spaces for the new products, the RL would not do any good. If you want to get higher RL and get into the new industries, upgrading the factories would be a waste of money.

Generally, if you want to stay in the current industries, whether research Rl would depend on the level of the products. If there is a new product within, say, a coupleof RL, that would probably be a good idea. Upgrading buildings is like a must if you want to keep your current setting till the end of the round and focus on QL research. However, whether it is effcient to focus on QL this early is debatable. If you focus on QL right now, having excess funding would be a very good idea. The higher the QL you research, the more $$ you need. Therefore, you may not have enough profit later on to support your QL research.

If upgrading buildings, you would want to upgrade all the building in the same production chain at the same time. It would save you some headaches.

Remember this is a game, if your settings make you feel stressed, you may want to change it. You don't want this to be work .

I've been doing a LOT of upgrading lately, because I was starting to get close to that limit. I don't imagine everyone goes about it the same way, but I'll share what I do.

The choice of what to upgrade first depends on several factors - look at what will cut into your profits the least, what will take less time to complete upgrading, and what will benefit best from upgrading (i. e. free up the most plots upon completion, etc.). Sometimes one of those three concerns outweighs the others.

First I sit down and make a plan. I figure out what level each building should be upgraded to, in order to make the production numbers even throughout each production line. This early in the game, I'd rather keep it to upgrade level 5 or below if I can. Down the road, when I'm approaching that building limit again, I'll upgrade them further. But for now, I'd rather not spend all that time and cash on higher than that unless it's necessary.

Once I've done that, I'll look over my list to get an idea of some good choices to start with. If I can over-produce it first and save up a stockpile, or if there's a steady supply at a decent price on the market, then I'll still be able to sell it in my shops while I'm upgrading those buildings.

That's not always possible, of course. If I can't come up with a stockpile, I might only upgrade a section of the production line at a time - such as upgrading one cattle farm and one icecream factory, rather than all the icecream production buildings at once. It'll still cut into my profits, but not as much as if I shut them all down at once. I'll also keep a close eye on the market to see if I can catch any replacement in the meantime.

The higher along the production line you go, the less buildings are needed. To make tea, for instance, I needed quite a few logging camps in proportion to the number of food industry buildings. Sometimes it makes sense to start with the bottom and mid level buildings. I'll use a stockpile of mid-level materials to keep my factories working. Once I've got those bottom buildings further along, I'll start upgrading those factories (preferably with a stockpile of the finished product to sell). If I don't time things exactly right, my bottom and mid level buildings might be ready before those factories are. But any excess materials I produce from those can be sold on the market, so I'm not all that particular about it.

The reason I often do it that way is because when I've tackled the entire production line at one time, I've generally ended up with the end buildings ready far ahead of the others. That can mean that some have to sit at standstill while the others catch up, which is somewhat of a waste. But that's not always the case either - sometimes I can get the mid level material from the market so my factories won't sit idle. Either way, of course, it's a bit simpler to do the whole production line at once - it requires less planning and less watching.

Max shop selling price = norm*(1.5+(ql/100))
so... with q73, it would be norm*2.23

The problem is that alot of products are already dropping in prices. The higher the ql, the quicker the price drop. It is not surprising if you can't sell them at max. I can't either.