King Cars - hard difficulty (with small tutorial steps at the start)

[Curse]

After my first non-tutorial game went to 1925, learning much about the game and getting rid of many of the first newbie mistakes, with more than $100 Millions profit per month the game went, at least for the second, a bit boring.

So, here's my second real game and I try to get an AAR running up for you guys, but also to have a small history for myself. City names are always the biggest ones, so London is always in the UK and Frankfurt is always in Germany, despite the fact there might exist more in the world.

Settings:
-1900
- hard
- all AI (+ real company names)
- no advanced options/changes


The company is called "King Cars" as all my companies are part of the "King Corp." group.

The goals are:
- Make profit by the end of 1902.
- Avoid losses except when building early factories.
- Shift to high quality and expensive cars as soon as possible to build up image and worker skill (etc.).
- Deliver quality products for high prices. However, this also includes not screwing over customers and not maximize profits on the cost of our products or customers.
- Never produce so many cars the quality starts to decline. Quality over sales amount. An exception may be financial difficulties.



1900:

I decided to HQ the company in London. As biggest city of that time and the UK being one of the technological leaders I see a reasonable real world background to jump in and get the 28% tax rate as well as a top factory place, just short of New York.

Auto settings for hire and wage were deactivated in the first round. Wages for all groups were set to average, branches staff was fired for the moment.

Cash on hand: $ 450.000, no loans, no IPO.
Factory: 5 production lines in London, bad quality.
Branches: 1 branch in London, bad quality.

Three design projects were started with the goal to make them not too pricey while keep at least a minimum standard in quality and to keep them as multi purpose as possible, while maintaining a specific item level somewhere around 28.
Of course the first design was the engine, as this will, especially later in the game, decide how big the engine spaces in our chassis must be.

Uni 1 engine:


Uni 1 gearbox:


Uni 1 chassis:


Research teams were staffed to 100%, timing was set for all the same and a very cheap approach. Loss was about $22k per month, so there was no point to rush designs to get cars earlier as that would never have made up the rush costs.

As soon as the parts were done I offered them for licence. One time fee was set to be at about 80% of the maximum the game suggested, same for the one time unit fee, both rounded up or down to make it a nicer looking number.

Same I checked the competition in London (and Paris) and there was a huge list of sedans already, about 8-10 different ones. Phaetons, Coupe 2+2, Town Car and Landaulet were completely uncontested.

As Landaulets (as well as Limousines) are low piece high profit cash cows and the Phaeton is a mid-high piece cash cow I went for those two designs. As creative as I am they are called the
King Cars Phaetom (yes, seriously):


King Cars Landaulet (you didn't see that name coming, eh?):


Both were designed in a few minutes and with two goals in mind:
1) We can't produce too much of them anyway, so our target audience is not everybody, therefor we must have not high ratings everywhere the usual target audience likes. The landaulet for example isn't that much luxurious.
2) The most important stat is specific type rating, followed by dependability. GearCity citizens somehow love things that basically never break but unfortunately we don't produce bricks. Or diamonds. Or Chuck Norris.

Again rush (= development pace) was done just very slightly as there was no way 1-2 months earlier car sales can make up for the rush costs.


1901:
Research of the Landaulet was finished February 1901, a single product line with 10 units per months was created.
Price per unit was set to $8000, as landaulets are the most expensive and "best" cars in the game.
We also started Newspaper marketing at 100% at all branches.

Auto hire staff was put back on, wages were again set to average everywhere.

We opened several new branches on the lowest possible resources level and therefor making them as cheap as possible.
Thought was: Just a single sold unit can turn such a branch into profit. Also numbers of production and therefor sales are so low there is no chance 100% resources branches will create noticably higher sales that would be necessary to make them a financial success.

New branches were: Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Leeds, Birmingham.

King Cars made its first profit in March 1901 with 8 sold by 10 produced landaulet. Actually London hat just a single sale but Brussels and Amsterdam had two each.

The King Cars Phaeton research was completed in May 1901 and one production line with 15 cars per month was opened. We opened branches in Belfast and Berlin. One Phaeton is going to cost $2000.

The months after we had sold 14 landaulets (4 from reserves) and 15 Phaetons with 5 possible more deliveries. Therefor a second production line was opened and we build 2x 15 Phaetons per month now.

Profit in June 1901 was $42.557.
Cash on hand is $207.495, no loans, no IPO.

Sales 6/1901:


Revenue 6/1901:


Landaulet Sales until 6/1901, monthly:


London Factory 6/1901 with Phaeton overview:




I'm going to play a bit further and come back when a bit more happened or the company went bust. Also feel free to ask or let me know what you think about this AAR.
The current savegame will be attached at the bottom of the post. Especially for someone new who read this and wants to see how things unfolded in the game this might be useful. Or whatever.

[Curse]

Still in 1901:
King Cars hit a bit of a stall for the rest of the year. As sales some day will grow and car park is for free as well as produced cars don't lose value in a form they can't be sold anymore, I let the London factory run at 100%, going two lines of Landaulet and three lines of Phaetons.

Profit hit an average of $60.000 per month.

In November 1901 the company seemed to be stable enough to go a step further but not rich enough to construct a new factory. In theory there would be money to expand the London factory from 5 to 8 lines, however, I want to increase sales radius, not just output capacity. Therefor we're going to save some money. Our goal is to establish a roughly 30% lines/50% technology factory in Chicago that has about 5-8 production lines to start a US division of our company. This division will also be the backbone if tensions in Europe some day get too rough for daily business.

So, for now the step further is to open some new branches in Hamburg, Lyons, Marseille, and Madrid. Marketing was extended to those places.


King Cars Phaeton is the best Phaeton in 1901. I'm not an expert but that may be partly due to the fact there is no other Phaeton around.



1902:
We started the year with new branches in Copenhagen, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, Luxembourg, Zurich and Barcenlona.

In February 1902 we at King Cars learned about something new - a limousine. I don't know exactly what this could be, but as it is something new I expect competition to be scarce, therefor we develop such a thing. Of course we use our reliable Uni 1 parts for that.


Profit is now above $100.000 per month. Unfortunately we achieve this by selling through our build up reserves of cars:


April 1902 will change the course of the company. I start building our second factory at Chicago, USA. King Cars lacks a bit of funds but at the same time the London factory is constantly at 100%. As emergency money I can IPO the company so I go for it anyway.

The second we announce the new factory the bank is willing to loan us about $4 Millions instead of just $1.8 Millions. Financial problems seems to be fixed for now.

As our potential sales are now nearly double the production capacity and car reserves run dry I increase prices from $8000 to $9000 for the Landaulet and $2000 to $2500 for the Phaeton. The cars are still unmatched in terms of specific rating on the market so I guess the prices are fair.

I also start gathering funds for the USA campaign. The Chicago factory of course is not planned to produce cars for the European dealerships...


One month later the price increase for the Phaeton turned out to be a really really really bad idea. Sales decreased from over 80 vehicles per month to about 20. We set the price back to $2000 and fired a guy named Steve. We also burn through our cash reserves faster than Greece. Hum. That is actually not working as thought.

Another month later we have to take back the price increase for the landaulet, too. We fired Steve again. Or another Steve. Not absolutely sure about that.


In October 1902 sales have stabilized. Seems the fact we focussed public hate on Steve worked well. Research for the Limousine has also finished. We cut back Phaeton production from three to two lines and produce 16 Limousines in one line at the London plant. Sale price is $7000 despite the fact production cost per unit is noticably higher than on the landaulet.


1903:

1st of January, 1903. The car reserves are gone. I switched another production line from Phaeton to Limousine a few month ago but I don't want to end production of the Phaeton just to make more profit. There are many people who saved money so they can get one of the famous King Cars Phaeton and we are not going to disappoint them!

At the same time I gave green light for the London factory expansion. 8 production lines instead of 5 will be made available in half a year thanks to the $1.5 Million investment. The money was taken from the already taken out bank loan as profits increased and I expect US sales to pick up in 5 month as the Chicago factory is likely to go online in 4 month.


May 1903 has come! The Chicago factory opened as planned. The initial production will be
1 line with 80x Landaulet.
1 line with 60x Limousine (ouch, they are this harder to make?).
2 line with 80x Phaeton each.

We opened branches to sell all those cars in Chicago, Milwaukee, Saint Lous, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, Montreal, Atlanta, New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.


The next move will be to design one or two "new" cars, of course with the proven Uni 1 parts. One of them will be a mid-size Sedan to start gathering market share there and the other one might be a Pickup, even our parts are abysmal for that kind of vehicle.

Edit:
That's the King Cars Pickup.. Pickup:


And this is the Sedan:


Clearly the Uni 1 parts are not top notch anymore. Haha, ok, they never were, but the situation for them clearly has not improved the last three years.

As soon as we know how well our Sedan and Pickup sell we start the design of two new universal part lines, one bigger and better one and one small and maybe a bit cheaper one. Later in the game one can use the same gearbox and engine for both but I'm not sure if this works in 1904/1905.


July 1903 brings us the expanded London factory. That means more branches in Europe: Lisbon, Barcelona, Bordeaux, Genoa, Milan, Rome, Naples, Stuttgart, Oslo, Stockholm, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw.



(I'll update the post below this text here as soon as something more exciting happens besides the usual adjusting factories to demand.)

I also started to pay the lobbyist 100% locked amount of cash. This is useful as we start to generate noticably profits every month.

One month later, August 1903, gives the last evidence our sales are stable and increasing while the Chicago plant has still lots of unused production capacity. Instead of paying back the bank loan we are going to re-invest the money that's left over as well as our incoming profits. What could a three year old car company in mid 1903 do? Right, it could start the building of another factory! As our London factory has way too less capacity (and it would actually have been smarter to rebuild it instead of upgrading it...) we move to Stuttgart for now. Concept is the same as for the Chicago factory, so about 50/50 slider:

[Curse]

King Cars won again some GCM-Awards in 1903. It totally speaks about world car quality when our old and badly put together nonsense wins prizes years after it was designed.


I also decided to end 1903 with the payback of all loans. We are debt free and still make profit despite the fact we have an expansive factory under construction.

To check back with some of my goals from the start:
- Make profit by the end of 1902.
That worked perfectly. The company made profit the second it started to actually sell cars and had just a single month (I think it was the third after sale started) that brought us losses (except construction payments).

- Avoid losses except when building early factories.
I guess this can be seen as done starting with 1904.

- Shift to high quality and expensive cars as soon as possible to build up image and worker skill (etc.).
As the usual starting car possibilities, mostly sedan, were massively overproduced by competition from the beginning, we achieved that more or less coincidentially right from the beginning. Of course quality must improve soon.

- Deliver quality products for high prices. However, this also includes not screwing over customers and not maximize profits on the cost of our products or customers.
Worked well and the second we tried to get more buck for the products the customers stepped in. Lesson learned. Maybe.

- Never produce so many cars the quality starts to decline. Quality over sales amount. An exception may be financial difficulties.
I'm glad we made profit without killing off car quality and even right now, where we could sell way more cars in Europe, we stick to the "~45% rule" in the production lines.


1904:

With money coming in I decided to spend about 1/3 of the incoming cash in Research and Development. Therefor our quarterly skill will increase 0.433 instead of 0.4 the part development alone gave us.


I try to keep the RnD investment at about 1/3 of profits until no more money can be spent. Experience is this can nearly double the amount of research we have compared to right now.

In February the Pickup entered production in Chicago. Two lines with 78 units each for the start. Sell price is $2000 instead of the $3000 I usually take for a Pickup. Two competitors offer very high rated Pickups (34 and 36 compared to our 38) and one of them is a company called "King". I guess I must invest in the stock market as soon as possible.

March shows us this Pickup thing failed massively. We produced 156 Pickups and sold 15, basically giving us nearly 0 profit this month. Price is reduced to $1500. Competition is numerous and it was a bad sale month at all, so I guess sales will increase. Production for now is stopped and I ordered billboard and magazine marketing 100% for all branches in North America.

In April the Pickup sales are up to 83 units. Way below my expectation but ok, it's a start. We're also introducing the King Cars Sedan for about $2000.

(I had a game crash and the last savegame was somehow from 12/1903, so I had to redo things as good as I could to get back here.)

Until end of 1904 I had to lower the price of the Sedan to $1750 and it has still bad sell numbers. Competition in this sector, but in all now, is really demanding. I like it!

Stuttgart factory was completed and London factory now focusses on Landaulet and Limousine, everything else for the European market is being produced in Stuttgart.


Not sure how exactly it's coded in the game but I imagine I feel how bad my workers and my company itself is. Even very bad parts cost a fortune and my production and sale numbers are a joke. Hopefully that'll improve, for now the new parts are in design.

Uni 2 Small Chassis:

Uni 2 Small Engine:

Uni 2 Small Gearbox:



Uni 2 Chassis:

Uni 2 Engine:

Uni 2 Gearbox:

[Curse]

Year 1904 ended without anything special. Some of our cars won GCM-Awards, however, as this is a common occurance I will now only mention them if there is something special, like a totally obscure car winning an award or the "best car of the whole world"-Award is lifted.

According to the competition report there is, out of an extreme number of manufacturers, just one other manufacturer that is able to make a noticable profit. Of course it is "King", skyrocking their share costs to levels we will not be able to get into for a longer time. Bummer.

I also gave the order to build a new factory in December, the Detroit plan is our first factory with a 100/100 rating. Complete construction costs can and will be financed by ourselves, no loans!


At last we refitted all of our branches. The disadvantage of having so many of them are the high costs to keep them in shape:


1905:
As the new parts get researched I designed several new cars. I also decided not to licence out those parts as the income is very small and we would give away one of our biggest advantages - high rated parts for the time.
Some of the cars will not be completed in research as again I decided rush is not worth it as we are rather limited production wise anyway.

There are two car types that will, most likely, not hit the dealership market, a Sedan and a PickUp. They are specifically designed to meet fleet contract requirements, mostly in fuel, and therefor lack other stats to keep them affordable and/or to be able to put a fuel efficient engine and gearbox in.
Sedan Fleet:


Pickup Fleet:



An abysmal Compact Car:


A Full-Size Sedan (FS Sedan):


And a Coupe 2+2 (Coupe 2p2). Somehow they are extremely requested by fleet contracts and I hope this will be the same in a year or so as it takes a while to develop it:


Next and last big step in December 1905 will be a new 100/100 factory in Europe. As the London plant was upgraded for $1.5 Millions, what seems like a mistake now, I'm probably going for Birmingham first.
This is how the factory will approximately look like:



Payment for two 100/100 factories in construction for about 2.5 years may get us in the loss some months, however, cash reserves should be able to balance that. Cash on hand is: $5.247.109, increasing.


Edit:

1906
Nothing interesting happened in 1906. We're burning through our cash reserves with a good $300k-450k per month as the two new gigantic factories are under construction. I get a feeling they are massively too big for the moment but we can utilize them later then.

As competition increases I put the two fleet types on the market with a way higher price. They sell in small numbers and add to our sales. What doesn't sell is the Coupe 2+2. I think neither the car itself nor the price ($2000) is the problem, it's the extreme competition and the very low total numbers sold. We won some fleet contracts for the car, development was cheap, and at the end of the day I think we're not going to make a loss on it while it helps us to keep competition honest.

If the construction expenses are ignored King Cars was the only (!) auto manufacturer in the world 1906 that made a profit. I guess that's one of the things that will be balanaced later during game development as right now it's not survival of the fittest, it's armageddon. Still fun for me as I have to compete against hundreds of (real named!) AIs.

A small funny note at the end before 1907 starts: The Coupe 2+2 won the GCM award for best car in Europe. Sales per month are about 0-2 cars. Just for the testing purposes I'm lowering the price near the unit cost, changing the profit margin for learning.

[Curse]

1907:

I want to start 1907 with some screenshots that show the state of the company after the first several years.

All time market share:


Yearly profits (construction costs included, up to $1.2 Millions per month):


Sales from last month (12/1906). I can't produce every model every month due to line restrictions and I like to have some in reserve in case of a shortage:


Model sales chart of 1906:



To get more possible fleet contracts the development of a second trim of the Pickup was started, the High Power version:


The engine we developed for this trim was also used in two facelifts, the Limousine:


And the Landaulet:


Uni 2 Power Engine:


While the facelift of the Phaeton got Uni parts we developed a while ago for the Compact Car and that are also used in the Coupe 2+2 and the Sedan Fleet:


Sales are still pretty low. Hopefully King Cars gets some of the fleet contracts as there are some huge ones that could fill our factories. Bid prices were also about 195% of unit cost what works well most of the time.

For this purpose we also developed two Ship Engines of which one will be actually kept:

[Curse]

1908:

Year 1908 begins with a new playing session for myself and, as often, I thought about my current gaming projects during the short moments of silence my girlfriend granted me.

I'm not too happy about the current state of the company. Yes, we are world market share leader and yes, we most likely have the best assets (mostly due to our factories) and make the most profit.
Problem is, I don't think this same course will keep the company alive during hard times like war or economical problems. The fact it will others harder doesn't fix the situation. Therefor I see two resolutions: First one is to shrink the company down. I don't think this will work as sales per vehicle type are low. Second one is to expand our portfolio and offer a car in basically every possible type section. As we already have the factories even low sale numbers can make up for the action as long as development is cheap enough and sale numbers are not way too low.

By the way: I'd appreciate every feedback, being it positive or negative, being it about the AAR itself or CEO and design decisions inside this AAR!

Mid 1907 the decision was made to expand further. Branches were opened in Tokyo, Osaka and Sydney for the Pacific Area and Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Rio de Janeiro for South America. Car prices are noticably higher in these regions to cover for the high transport costs. There is also a factory lock for the nearest factory (South America and Sydney this is North America, Japan can choose as Europe and NA have nearly the same distance). Due to the fact we again used the smallest possible branch a single sold luxury vehicle will cover the monthly expenses while giving us an image start in these regions.

The branches in London and New York were redesigned to 100/100 quality but I haven't seen any effect on this so far.

In early August 1907 we cancelled our first car from order lists, the Phaeton. It was replaced some months earlier with the Phaeton 1909 and all reserves were sold while there was no fleet contract or anything else left. The model was also officially discontinued from models our factories prepare to produce. Over the course of time it sold ok and generated a bit of profit, however, as our first mass produced vehicle it was important to make people familiar with the King Cars brand.


Current savegame is attached to this post. I'll edit and expand this post tomorrow when I'm back at my own place.

Before 1908 ended we introduced another car, the Full Size Van.


The FS Van won the GCM car of the world award. Ok, no idea why, but I'll take it. Lots of other awards also went in for our products.

Last action was to replace the production of the Landaulet with the facelift model. The facelift Phaeton 1909 brought in huge sale numbers (up to 350 cars per month) compared to what we had before.

That's the fleet contract per month list of end 1908:
86x Sedan Fleet
11x Coupe 2+2
32x Full Size Sedan
39x Pickup Fleet
270x Pickup Fleet HP

[Curse]

1909:

1909 started with something that could be seen as "gamey" or "cheesy".

The Landaulet 1909 is an exceptional car itself, having a specific rating of about 60 in 1908/1909 while being the most exclusive car in the whole game by definition.

I therefor increased price from $9000 in the Europe and North America district ("Core district") to $17.500. Compared to todays money this is about $500.000.
In the Pacific district we charge $19.750, in the South America district we charge $19.250 to compensate for transport.

However, we still are able to sell these things. In good numbers. 187x last month.
I'm absolutely sure I could charge way more for the car and still sale a good number, but I think that's a good way between cheesy and ok. In fact it's the by far most luxurious car in the world. I imagine it is purchased in good numbers by monarchs, presidents and industrial leaders as well as other rich people.

Compared to today's price I think it's also realistic. However, I'm open for discussion as this is basically about $2.000.000 per month "for free" and as soon as the Limousine 1909 will be added, I expect another million or so as the sale price for this thing will be $15.000 per unit in the Core district.


Next step in 1909 was to design a new uni base, again with even more options in the engine compartment as well as two different chassis, a big one and a sedan one.

Cash is gathered for the next 100/100 factory in the US, most likely be build in Saint Louis, as the transport distances in the USA and to South America are as short as possible while maintaining at least a 4.5 stars rating.

Before that we purchased our competitor, King. For now the marque will be put in the safe to be used some day later. All King products will be discontinued and sold off.


I also ordered another increase of funds for the RnD department of King Cars:

[Curse]

1910:

1910 was a slow year but the components of the 3rd generation were finished. Each part received one or two modify-upgrades ("tunings").

We face three problems right now:
1) Unorganized auto types as the early years offer fast technological and manufactural changes.
2) Extreme competition.
3) Very low sales in general, especially for niche types.


The new Uni 3 Big chassis for large cars:


The Uni 3 Sedan chassis for normal cars:


The Uni 3 Gearbox:


The Uni 3 F(uel)E(fficiency) engine is the most used one. Disadvantage are the 30HP that make cares fitted with them sometimes not eligable for fleet contracts:


The Uni 3 H(igh)P(ower) variant:


As well as a Uni 3 HP B version that's not used yet but basically for trims or niche cars or even Landaulets and Limousines:

---

1911:

In 1911 some of our new vehicle types were finished and introduced.

The King Cars Jeep, our new Pickup:


The King Cars Station Wagon, that is actually a Touring because reasons:


The King Cars Scotland, that is a Full Sized Sedan with the features of a normal Sedan and therefor cheap to build:


The King Cars Thames that is a normal Sedan with the same features as the Scotland:


The King Cars FS Van 1910 that is finally able to take part in most fleet contracts:


And the King Cars Baron, our first Luxury Sedan:



As usual the niche products sell extremely bad despite the fact they win car of the year etc. regularly. Maybe prices are too high, however, I don't sell below costs even the ingame menu displays for some cars a negative lifetime result. However, I doubt that ingame display number.

[Curse]

1912-1918:

As tensions in the world increased we prepared for several scenarios and kept produced car reserves as low as possible.

1914 the great war in Europe started and we cancelled marketing campaigns and closed branches as soon as war reached a country with exception of the London branch due to its very high standard (32 dealerships).

We also closed the factories at Stuttgart and London.

My decision to keep up the high RnD spending brought us losses for many years in a row - but it was calculated way before and therefor the cash reserves were created in the first place.

Of course the war didn't stop us from designing and introducing new cars. The screenshots of them were made with them several years at the dealers, the initial ratings were way better of course.

At first, the new landaulet, called the United Kingdom:


The new limousine, United States:


A race car prototype that made it to the dealers with low production numbers:


Ireland, a compact car:


And Little Friend, a micro car prototype that actually sells:



As soon as I felt the war is coming to an end the decision was made to build a new Chicago factory, as big and technological advanced as possible:


The war ended. We lost about $60 Millions due to our expensive RnD and distribution program but it will pay off in the end. Cash reserves are still at about $70 Millions and we're making profit again - with our Birmingham factory only producing war goods and most branches in Europe still closed.

Right now there's a decision if the sole Birmingham factory will be enough to satisfy the European and African market or if we should utilize our huge London lot and build a new factory there. The building costs of about $30 Millions are what makes us wait.


1918 ends with redesigns of our Uni 3 parts. The designs are very good, we just update them to our advanced manufacturing skills and the overall better technology. We'll get better and cheaper parts this way for our future vehicles.

[Curse]

1919:

Over the course of the year we took over several competitors, the most notable one being Cadillac. Except Cadillac, that was just a cheap cash due to bad stock courses, they were our biggest competitor for a specific or two car models.

As GearCity right now seems, at least on hard, to save most of the AI competitors by random actions I thought I'm doing a bit of maintenance myself. I keep the today well known marques and sell or delete the unknown ones.

I also kept a Milwaukee plant we took over for engine manufacturing and a Paris plant as backup until the new London 100/100 plant comes online.

As soon as the new Uni 3 facelift parts are ready we'll make a facelift for basically every model we sell.