Acquire Firm(s) from competitor by bidding (partially merging)

[Njeroe]

Would it be possible to have an option to offer money to buy certain firms from your competitor and/or trade them? For example if you own some supermarkets and would like to expand by buying up more of them in the area your competitor is operating. This would allow players and AI to offer money for your firms and try to establish a bigger market share in their area of expertise. Would work the same way technology does and wouldn't require AI players to have their firm for sale.

To prevent players from taking advantage maybe add a mechanic where the AI considers the offer based on if you are in direct competition with their primary product class, how many firms you already have in a certain city, the size of your market share in the product classes the firm falls under (if specialized). If one of the previous is true it could affect the price and perhaps in some way block the sale altogether.

The offer could be for one firm, but could also perhaps be for multiple firms of the same type or in the same city, this would be a partial merger. I think more possibilities to expand and/or merge companies in partial would be nice perhaps also usefull for subsidiaries where you can sell or buy multiple firms from and to to your subsidiary. Another mechanic to prevent the player having big advantages would be reviews on certain mergers by a government institution like the FTC in the real world to prevent monopolies from forming?

If someone else wants to add something or has suggestions which are similar please post here so we can discuss the possibilities.

[rhoussami]

I agree, i wanna be able to buy a store or a factory from a ai player. I was gonna suggest that!