Hi guys,
Here is a new version for you:
0.9.1.24:
- Balance change that affects a lot of things including the AI expansion speed and tactic (the AI will try to avoid other AI players more often), country upfront has increased, building site cost decreased, site upkeep cost increased a bit - and generally all of these have a different impact on the 3 difficulty levels.
- Country costs are increased, but from now on not only population but wealth also affects the country price. Remember that rich countries buy more than poor countries.
- Middle to Late DPP is also decreased.
- Sometimes while you were building a new computer you could close some windows (especially the hardware windows when you changed your mind to not create a new stuff) - so you had to go back to the computer list and click on the "back to edit" button. From now on this is fixed, you won't be pulled out from the process like this.
- The office hint is changed - the office is a mandatory building only after some levels of other buildings, not from the start.
- Upper Right Infor Bar Statistic hint has changed - it is the "all-time market share" not the actual year's market share.
You HAVE TO START a new game - otherwise, the new costs will affect your AI and site costs, but not affect the country costs in your saved game which means a very bad balance.
I didn't have much time to test the new values, but I do believe that it is better than before. You will experience slow down at the early stage of the game. Many complained since the last version in negative reviews that the game is just way too easy and the world map is maxed out way too early.
Also, I'd like to point out two things again:
1) - The "Industry Standard" shows you your competition's average. Your opponents will have values around those in their hardware. So at this moment, this is how you can measure your competition's computers. Later you will have more information, but I don't plan to show you exact models - this would be a game killer. It seems to be a nice thing to see everything, but in the real world, this is much more complicated and also showing everything in the game would kill some fun factors. I do understand that you need more feedback, that's right - but I won't show you really everything. Game design is a tricky thing. Perfect simulation and showing everything most of the time kills a game. Just to give you an example. The first versions of the game using real-world data about how many computers you can sell. It was incomparably more than now - giving you EXTREME profits that made the game nearly _absolutely_ pointless. The computer industry is such a goldmine guys, really. You can't imagine the profit numbers behind this sector. Secondly, just imagine that you show exact prices and values. Your first move would be to change yours. What could be the reaction? The opponent doing the same that could lead to a cycle until you reach the minimum profit margin. In the real world, this never happens, because nobody is interested in reaching that point. Companies won't undercut to their competition again and again. When they do, they do it really slowly and by using much more tools and tricks that we could and should simulate here.
2) Why poor countries don't buy your cheapest thing.
I saw a lot of complaints about this. Again, poor countries have a big part of their population who chooses by "value for the money". First of all, it doesn't mean that they don't have people who will prefer faster computers or computers with more feature. Secondly, it doesn't mean that they will buy only the cheapest computer on the market. Why would they?
I also live in a poor country. Still, here most of the people prefer to buy a computer that has a better price/value ratio than the cheapest potato toaster. Being price sensitive doesn't mean that we will buy only the cheapest computer. You can sell me your cheap computer, but if I can buy a much faster one for some extra bucks, I will prefer the other one. Or in other words, I won't buy a Pentium IV Computer today, doesn't matter if that's the cheapest computer.
Of course, the game still has a LOT of things to solve, and this is surely NOT the last balance update. Maybe it won't even work out what I changed.
Thanks for your help on the forums! Enjoy the game, and please support me on the game's steam page!
Your friend,
Andris