Population Sizes

[Vanilla]

I was looking to make a company outside Europe/US. I've played this game a long time but truthfully I've never paid much attention to population, just start somewhere big early on, and focus on densely populated cities first, I've never given it much thought.

Outside of Europe/NA though, cities are pretty sparse, and often are low population. For example, India has about 2-3 million people in the entire country in 1900, Nigeria, the only city in west africa, has 40k-ish. Does this represent the entire population your branch will have access to? Will there just not be the customers outside Europe/NA regardless of price, because of the extremely low population, or do sales not work quite like that?

[Eric.B]

Outside of Europe/NA though, cities are pretty sparse, and often are low population. For example, India has about 2-3 million people in the entire country in 1900, Nigeria, the only city in west africa, has 40k-ish. Does this represent the entire population your branch will have access to? Will there just not be the customers outside Europe/NA regardless of price, because of the extremely low population, or do sales not work quite like that?

The game has a variable attached to the city.xml file that are sales multipliers against the city populations. For example, the sales multiplier for American cities are high because we are a car dependent culture. Whereas the multiplier in Netherlands is not high, because they are not.

In the Base City map, the cities were selected based on historical ties to the auto industry and major population centers. The number of cities is based on vehicle sales market share circa 2017. And finally the sales multipliers are adjusted based on historical sales figures of these countries every year the history is scripted for (1900-2019).

If you run a sim of 300 AI (zero-play the game), and then use SQL to gather up all the sales data, the sales figures should be fairly close to real numbers. Though, the game does have about 1/5th the number of AI companies that should be in the game, so late game mega companies are less likely. (Less merging into mega-companies than there should be.)

So while India might have 3 Million people in the game in 1900 and Nigeria only 40k, think to yourself, how many Indian car companies existed in 1900? The answer would be none. The first Indian car company started in early 1940s (Hindustan Motors if I recall). The market in India is just too poor to be viable until then unless you're a super wiz at the game. It's meant to be challenging. But of course, India and Nigeria's have a money problem in the early years, not a population problem.

Anyway, think of city populations as regional. New York City region is much more populated than the Jacksonville region. The game only shows city size, but the regions surrounding a city is generally as populated as the metro itself.

[Vanilla]

Thanks for shedding some light on this.

The impression I'm getting is as the game strives to be as much of a realistic model as possible, some regions will be, just as they were in real life, significantly less viable for starting in 1900 in, regardless of price? And I'm guessing due to high shipping costs, producing in asia and selling outside of it isn't going to be an option until decades later.

Is there anywhere outside europe/NA you'd recommend? I've played these regions a whole lot, and although there's definitely new stuff I could do there, I've got a real craving for going somewhere less typical for a start, like Africa or Asia.

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by Vanilla:

The impression I'm getting is as the game strives to be as much of a realistic model as possible, some regions will be, just as they were in real life, significantly less viable for starting in 1900 in, regardless of price? And I'm guessing due to high shipping costs, producing in asia and selling outside of it isn't going to be an option until decades later.

Nearly everywhere except for the poorest of the poor places in Africa should be viable without heavily exploiting the game (Shipping half way across the world). However, I would consider anything outside of North America, Europe, and Australia to be for people who want harder game modes.

Is there anywhere outside europe/NA you'd recommend? I've played these regions a whole lot, and although there's definitely new stuff I could do there, I've got a real craving for going somewhere less typical for a start, like Africa or Asia.

Try a domestic Japanese company. Don't expand outside of Japan until after WW2. That'll give you a good balance of how to handle poor early game countries and rapid expansion pains.

[Vanilla]

Thanks for the advice. this is one of my most played games on Steam, and I really appreciate not just the work you put into the game itself, but how responsive and helpful you've been to posts over the years.

[Airwolf]

Originally posted by Eric.B:

Originally posted by Vanilla:

Nearly everywhere except for the poorest of the poor places in Africa should be viable without heavily exploiting the game (Shipping half way across the world). However, I would consider anything outside of North America, Europe, and Australia to be for people who want harder game modes.

Why is this exploiting? Mercedes manufactures in Europe and ships to the USA. I am manufacturing in the USA and marking up my prices by the average ship $ amount to Europe and having good success

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by Airwolf:

Why is this exploiting? Mercedes manufactures in Europe and ships to the USA. I am manufacturing in the USA and marking up my prices by the average ship $ amount to Europe and having good success

1) Mercedes didn't do this in 1900. Nor did Ford, which is why Ford Europe is a thing.
2) Tariff system in the game is not comprehensive and realistic.
3) The comments you're quoting is talking about third world labor exploits such as making all your cars in Ethiopia (or Nigeria like the OP mentions) and selling them in New York in the year 1900. Not making them in Germany (where labor costs are pretty much the same and trade relations are normalized) and sending them around the world after WW2. The former did not happen in real life.

Edit: 4) Offshoring labor costs are a thing that happened with globalization in the 1960s. However, it's mostly near-shore as opposed to third world to first world. The game mechanics, particularly with early year transport costs, international relations, and tariff systems do not accurately simulate realism in this respect. In the game you can exploit this fact for lower prices. Africa to Europe in the 1900s for example.

[Elisestar]

Does the level of Import Tax take into account where the Vehicle is from ?
(Or Tariffs , as Mr Trump calls it)

[Sheppis]

As far as I understand the game, to a degree yes. I am pretty sure the import tax is calculated by comparing the tax in both the sender and reciever countries. And the difference is applied as tax.

[Eric.B]

Originally posted by Sheppis:

As far as I understand the game, to a degree yes. I am pretty sure the import tax is calculated by comparing the tax in both the sender and reciever countries. And the difference is applied as tax.

Correct, this is how the game currently works.

In the real world, it works much differently. For example, in the US we have the chicken tax which subjects non-american made trucks to a 20% tariff. In Japan, it's been practically impossible for non-Japanese companies to sell cars there since 1936.

The exploitative issue in GC is extreme globalizing well before WW2. It's a combo of unrealistic tariff systems and shipping costs not being as comprehensive as they should be.

[Airwolf]

#3 makes sense. But since im manufacturing in the midwest, i dont feel so guilty shipping around the world. i just crossed 3.5B in revenue in 1925 on nightmare mode and that is without doing contracts (which i feel is a bit broken and easy mode)