1900 Opening factory build strategy

[BanDHMO]

What do you like to build in the beginning of the game, as everyone rushes to establish their companies, develop first cars, etc?

I notice there is an initial period where you can sell almost anything at inflated prices by opening up branches in the riches biggest cities while there is little competition and your production capacity is nowhere near enough to satisfy the market.

The first thing I do is buy up license rights to a popular vehicle type from AI to fill up starting factory's production capacity. Mark it up like mad, and it still sells out for huge profits while my first designs and factory builds are happening.

This is an obvious opening move, and after new factories come online, around the time my own designs are ready for three or four most popular vehicle types, profits grow even more.

However, I can't quite decide what's a better approach when building these factories. On one hand, higher tech makes the factory much more cost-efficient, so I'd want the most advanced factory possible. On the other hand, higher tech factories take a lot longer to build, and you waste the limited early period time where ridiculous super-profits can be made.

So, what do you do? Do you first build low-tech, low-capacity factories to take advantage of the early gold rush? Do you take your time to build state-of-the-art factories and only produce at your starting factory for the first 3 years or so? Do you have a favorite compromise solution somewhere in between those extremes?

[REDACTED]

I prefer to start without factories on very hard difficulty. I just research generic components and licence them out for the first few years. Then I spend the next 20 years spamming low tech, high production factories.

At the start my cars are pretty much junk anyways so I focus on max volume, cheap cars and as many designs as I can afford. Eventually I have each factory dedicated to a specific model and then I start worrying about factory tech upgrades.

[Doc]

I like getting the max size 6 year bond, building a small max tech factory, and designing a cheap phaeton the first turn. The gold rush helps AI as much as me, so I take out the max bond each year and invest in them since their growth easily beats the interest. This is such a gold mine, depending on luck I may start a fullsize max tech factory before the small one is done building.

[BanDHMO]

Interesting strategy, Doc. I haven't considered investing early money in competition, figuring I can do a lot better than AI.

Do you find that AI is too slow to expand its branches and not aggressive enough on price? Maybe my difficulty is set too low, but I can usually buy license for an AI design, crank the price up to nearly 1.5x what the AI sells for and still sell out my starting factory's production capacity by simply building branches in London, Paris, Berlin, and other biggest/richest cities, while the AI doesn't do that.

Even if it's not optimal, I have always wanted to try out this strategy, using investment instead of carmaking as main profit-driver, then just focus on one or two vehicle types for fun.

[Doc]

The first 6 months the AI loses a ton of money getting things up and running, but once they get started gains of 50% per year are common. I don't consider this investing in the AI instead of myself, more like using them as a springboard to jump ahead.

The AI prices their cars for normal buying conditions, the gold rush at the start is anything but normal. There is also some randomness to which cities they build branches in so every AI doesnt use/ignore the same ones.

I'd argue that it is optimal on all but the hardest difficulty, where you simply don't have the starting funds to make cars in earnest and invest at the same time. Right now I'm trying for a luxury car achievement on hard, 1917 I have a 28 line factory with max tech, 70 million in misc American stocks, and have paid off all the bonds. All the while my cars are awful because of my lack of design skills and need for 50+ lux rating(achievement) and I barely sell any. But even if I fully invest in research and lose more money every year, those stocks will mature far faster(until depression) and I easily get richer.

[Deez_Noots]

the real trick to making money at the start is just outright buying cars from other companies for resale, this means you are not limited by your factory at all and any branch that is profitable is viable to sell in, if you start in the USA doing this can literally make you the largest car company by sales in the first year of the game and get you enough money to start building a proper factory