Office space

[bdubbs]

So I actually figured out something interesting after posting yesterday. The reason I wasn't able to replicate what you were doing was actually tied to the difficulty and not in my implementation of it. I remembered when you first started posting you'd set the game to the max difficulty. I usually play with my own custom settings that are similar, but a little friendlier to retail. Namely I usually have 2 seaports of each kind / city, and I usually kept import quality at medium and competence of local competitors low. So I tried picking a generic 8 for difficulty and voila, suddenly I was getting more than enough credit from the bank to finance my real estate endeavors.

This really makes me wonder how the game decides credit worth and in the case of starting out with $30m cash actually made the real estate strategy much, much stronger than any other strategy on that top difficulty level. At that top difficulty level even the best seaport goods are going to turn minimal profits and even if you try to get a competitive edge with a white label strategy the amount of money you sink into your brand rating is unlikely to pay off in a big way. Retail is further hurt on high difficulties by CES because low populations mean low demand for retail goods. What really made me laugh is because there is so much headwind in the retailing sector that there were far fewer companies that were competing there over time. Basically what this meant was I could still break into retail after 10 years and had a multitude of options to choose from when it came to which products I wanted to research and manufacture without having to be worried about direct competition.

What I'm ultimately getting at is that is that in my opinion if you set the difficulty to 8 and follow a pure real estate strategy at the beginning its actually much easier than running a pure real estate strategy on lower difficulties. The profits from apts/commercial buildings are steady, and the constant credit extensions make it very easy to grow very rapidly. As time goes on the competition is making significantly less money than they would in a more retail / manufacturing friendly environment. Not only does this let you be the company with the highest overall profits as pure real estate but it makes it really easy to just set up a few R&D buildings and come in and dominate a product class. Not to mention on CES it seems like population is pretty strongly tied to available apartments so when you're running a real estate strategy you can pretty much build an unlimited amount of apts and as long as they have decent ratings they will fill up.

[colonel_truman]

I didn´t know that one could have it harder at lower difficulties with this strategy. I´ll try some time and see what happens.
Anyway, when you have a friendlier retail strategy I don´t compete with the AI, but buy their shares and strike it rich...
When I said I was going to play with the hard level I meant what you said, yes, a "generic" level.
I believe what the developers had in mind with the CES was city building mainly, so one must go arm deep into real state if one plays that DLC.
When you say you can build an unlimited amount of apartments in CES, I´m not that sure. Cities don´t grow past some point just by building apartments.
My intention in writing this was, apart from letting people know that real estate can be fun, and enjoy writing it myself, to point to some possible "exploits" and their possible tweaking IMHO, like "liquid" land, RS-AI passiveness, lack of taxing, etc. But I was leaving that for the end. In the meantime...
My apologies if I´m not genuine enough. Hope you enjoy my article anyway.

[colonel_truman]

Here´s the Improved IS&BS for february 1996 with a small change: the data for the old buildings (>1year) is considered apart, also.
I don´t remember if the rent per square foot in the old sheet was taken correctly, so probably I messed it up and we cannot make a reliable comparison at this time.

improved I&B 1996.png (78.93 KiB) Viewed 6275 times

Here´s our humble follow up for measuring the profitability of our apartments.

apartment prof. sheet.png (9.55 KiB) Viewed 6275 times

The total value of the buildings and their land is 2.846.054.000

The value of our "liquid" land is thus:
+ (total assets) 3.791.000.000$
- (buildings&land) 2.846.054.000$
- (cash) 20.185.854$
- (stocks) 197.578.108$
- (land in HQ + labs)(est.) 60.000.000$

Liquid land +667.182.000$

We add the price of the stocks :
+ (stocks) 197.578.108
+ (liquid land) 667.182.000$

Saleable assets +864.760.108$

We substract our total debt:
- (total debt) 1.749.000.000$

Debt to worry about -884.240.000$

The provisions necessary for this year:
- (Interests 6%) 108.000.000$
+ (Friendly inflation 6.5%) 57.700.000$

Real interests -50.300.000$

We calculate the cash available for this year:
+ (Projected income) 240.000.000$
- (Real interests) 50.300.000$
- (Labs) 9.000.000$

Cash estimate +181.000.000$

We have also 370 million available to borrow from the bank, so in total we´ll have about 530 million to finance our next project this coming 1996.
And now knowing our hand, let´s view our possible plays:
The overall aim will be to make the cities grow, so we can keep expanding our office & apartment districts.
Beyond keeping supply high and improving the life ratings, we´ll have to focus on job creation, sooner or later, and for that we´ll have to make the cities competitive in order to export merchandise abroad.
Maybe too soon at this juncture, but we have been researching the cosmetic products (no one else has, seemingly) so we could "spin off" a subsidiary to start selling them, and see how well it does.
Also, Fusion corp. has a CEO with good research capabilities within the furniture products, and there´s no other firm involved in that category. We could double our "spin off", but at what cost? We could start positioning for that.
We could also begin planning the construction of a new city, as the conditions to stay indebted remain.
One thing´s sure, and that is, that we´ll keep the supply of buildings high in all cities, until something breaks.
Any ideas?

Thanks for reading.

tomahawk-feb1996.rar

(3.46 MiB) Downloaded 150 times

[kasmersensei]

Interesting approach. I might try it after I finish my current custom game. Currently, my registered Enlight game copy is offline (older laptop) and so I recently am playing offline saves.

I have sometimes built buildings to increase my own retail efforts as this can bring in more revenue, though competitors often try to get a free ride as well unless you have bought all the accompanying land.

[colonel_truman]

Hello sensei.
Thanks for reading and do share your experience once you try.

I´m back and will be posting the follow up soon.
As no one gave any ideas I guess I´ll stick with the old plan.

There´s a new intro to the article as the first post.

[colonel_truman]

FEBRUARY 1996 - FEBRUARY 1997

Fast forward to February 1997:

Overall we have restrained our impulse to draw on more debt this past year, so we´ve been living off income from our RE firms. The exception was the 100 million loan to set up a spin-off in the cosmetics/body care area, starting February 1996 (plus 50 million from Tomahawk´s cash).
Welcome Lulu&Lala Inc. with Gina Santanna as CEO. They have one lab running and the CEO hasn´t done much more apart from drawing her salary from the company´s treasury for the whole year. We´ll see...

L&L.png (711.28 KiB) Viewed 6204 times

We plan to have a hands-off approach to our subsidiaries to see how well they manage by themselves, and esp. to avoid micro management hell and other "micros" which turn our attention away from the "macros". We´ll keep throwing some more money at them in following years in order to capitalize them properly and that´ll be it for now.
We´ve been buying and selling a few stocks as oportunities arose, for the short term, to keep too much cash from falling prey to inflation. Companies are still overvalued and just a few making money, so no plans to begin stocking shares yet. On the other hand our stock price keeps climbing, now nearing 1k$/share.

Stock Market-feb1997.png (557.19 KiB) Viewed 6204 times

We have kept most of our land assets: did most sales in Lambs Grove to raise cash as needed, and bought a new lot in Lynden to begin cornering that city´s CBD, as seen in the picture below.

City View - Lynden (New District).png (907.47 KiB) Viewed 6204 times

We´ve built between two to four new residential buildings, and one or two office buildings in each city, keeping supply high as planned.
But in Funk we´ve decided to get finally involved for real in the residential sector. In order to do so we´ve bought land in three parts of the city and developed two of them. I´ll call these 7-central beach and 9-sixters. In these two areas the cost of the land was 1 million per square plus 6 million per building for a total cost of about 10 million each unit, so we can have a neat approach to calculate their profitability. The ratings of these new buildings are quite good so we´ve sold some land around our old "east filth" residential district to fund the expansion, as we don´t plan to develop that side any more.
The area still undeveloped south is even cheaper in land terms but we don´t think it will score such nice ratings as the other two.

City View - Funk (New District).png (1011.76 KiB) Viewed 6204 times

Inflation has risen a bit and stands at around 7%, and interest rates ticked up once to 6.5%, so we have negative real rates of -0.5%.
How my not monetizing Tomahawk´s assets will adversely (for us, down) affect inflation is something I´d like to see, as I don´t think the other corporations ever incur any debt at all.
Net assets have increased by 587 million for the year to 2628 million, and the monthly profits by about 4 million/month to about 23 million/month.

Balance Sheet-feb1997.png (726.37 KiB) Viewed 6204 times

Income Statement-feb1997.png (632.52 KiB) Viewed 6204 times

Now, to the big picture:
Competition between corporations, altough being "bad for profits", create a competitive atmosphere, and so exports and jobs in the game, as businesses will try to place their seasoned manufactures abroad. These new job openings in turn will attract new residents, who will demand new housing and will encourage further business activity. And so, inflation & demand for more office space, which is our main concern, is attained.

We don´t consider the same applies to RE business as we are happy enough to have a monopoly there.
But in case an opponent appears we have now attained enough girth to try and suffocate them. Raison détre...

Keeping that in mind we´ll try to encourage competition and avoid mergers, and so our first spin-off is born and more will come down the road. We´ll start keeping an eye on the evolution of the cities from now on and we´ll let it dictate where and how we allocate our future stream of profits.

Thanks for reading.

[colonel_truman]

Alright, here´s the Improved IS&BS for RE firms.
I added a few lines here and there and removed others as needed. I guess I´ll keep getting more ideas to better it as time goes on...
The biggest surprise to me has been to see how well the office district in Funk is performing... and how I forget time and again to set office buildings #1 & #2 to market price.

improved I&B 1997.png (105.38 KiB) Viewed 6196 times

[colonel_truman]

Here you can take a look at the sheets where we will measure how profitable our first apartments are, as the previous one was too flimsy and will be discontinued.
We´ve considered for this humble approach the first five buildings already on foot constructed in each of the cities.
In Funk we have two types of apartments: 3 of small size and 2 of medium size. In 1996 the building of the new districts has destroyed their profitability, so since that time I´ve estimated the future under benign conditions so we have something to hang on to. Next time I´ll use the apartments in the new districts.
Their net rent for the first year of existence has been assumed to be zero, as can be seen in the pictures below, from the firm´s profit graph curve.

Funk - 3 small buildings feb1994.png (836.95 KiB) Viewed 6191 times

Actually the medium size buildings seem to make a profit the in second half, but we haven´t considered it.

Funk - 2 medium buildings feb1994.png (917.49 KiB) Viewed 6191 times

Funk - apartment prof sheet - END.png (18.31 KiB) Viewed 6191 times

In both Glen Fork and Lynden the apartments were built in August 1994, so the first year considered is just a half-year, and so the net rent for the first three months is zero. For the next three months it´s positive, as can be seen in the pictures below, with a very steep curve, in the firm´s profit graph, since inception.

Glen Fork - 5 buildings feb1995.png (1.06 MiB) Viewed 6191 times

Lynden - 5 buildings feb1995.png (1.08 MiB) Viewed 6191 times

Glen Fork - apartment prof sheet - 1997.png (17.53 KiB) Viewed 6191 times

Lynden - apartment prof sheet - 1997.png (17.33 KiB) Viewed 6191 times

Lambs Grove´s apartments are the late comers as the first district was demolished one year after inception because of bad ratings. The current district was built in August 1995. The same applies as the other two cities in terms of calculations.

Lambs Grove - apartment prof sheet - 1997.png (12.59 KiB) Viewed 6191 times

So, here´s the approach to the sheets:
We take a loan to buy the underlying land and construct the building.
We both start paying interests and drawing income from rent. First few months we have a negative income from the firm (fixed costs).
The loan gets eaten up by inflation (YoY calculus), and so the interest payments become smaller too with time.
We use the rent both to pay the interests of the loan, and keep the surplus as cash equivalents (We work so it keeps its purchasing value).
When the loan value matches the amount of cash equivalents we (should) repay the loan fully.
Finally, we sum the years the process takes until completion.

[colonel_truman]

FEBRUARY 1997 - FEBRUARY 1998

I forgot to post the save file last time. Here´s one after the change in our research department was made for February 1997.

PLAC_017.rar

(3.61 MiB) Downloaded 136 times

NEW RESEARCH FOCUS:
As you might recall we have a new subsidiary focused on the health care mega-class, so we have discontinued research there after finishing our current projects, and instead decided to invest our efforts in getting an edge in the auto industry. We´ve kept only one lab focused on the cosmetics area so we don´t lose too much of our advantadge.
We fired Howard Konar starting 1997 and hired in his place Martin Trigo as new head of research. We hope we´ll be able to give Mr. Konar a position as CEO somewhere, sometime.

HQ personnel - feb1997.png (658.98 KiB) Viewed 6173 times

We also bought the latest auto tech from our "partners", and very willingly sold at a discount, as you can see in the picture below, news at the bottom.
One might argue that our research at this juncture is being a bit expensive, as I have thought before. We´ll keep investing in R&D as it´s for the long pull and only the future will prove us right or wrong, but any comments will be appreciated.

Research changes - feb1997.png (1.05 MiB) Viewed 6173 times

Two other companies are currently engaged in the auto business in Glen Fork where our research facilities are located, so there´s some activity already there to start with: The city competitiveness in the area is 20,84, so we get a nice boost to our new research.
Anlin has all its five factories and its R&D firm in Glen Fork and Target Strike has its R&D in Glen Fork, and divides its production between Funk and Glen Fork.
Also, it seems the "World" at large is not too focused on producing vehicles, so we´ll try to export these in the future. For that, of course, we´ll set up a new subsidiary when we deem appropiate.

NEW SUBSIDIARIES:
Welcome Saratoga Mills and Cotton Thread. They join our venture starting Feb 1997, both focused in each of their area of expertise: the first one in the food mega-class and the second in the fashion category.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are interested in making our country rise as an exporter, and for that we need lots of competition, to harden our businessmen and season our merchandises so that they can compete as well at home as abroad. We´ll discourage any monopolies in the nation by any means necessary, except ours.
Also, it seems that these guys keep our money relatively safe against inflation, and as we still have negative real rates, we have taken advantadge of that to capitalize them with 300 million each (total) with new issued debt, from 150 million at the beginning of the year.
Or if you prefer, we´ve monetized our assets through the bank to fund our new venture, once more. You can see the value added to our firm in the balance sheet, Stocks category. Hope that will increase the inflation a bit.

Saratoga Mills BS - feb1998.png (630.81 KiB) Viewed 6173 times

Cotton Thread BS - feb1998.png (629.15 KiB) Viewed 6173 times

To mention, all three subsidiaries have the corporate brand marketing approach, and Saratoga Mills is currently engaged in manufacturing.

NEW REAL STATE AIMS:
We have adopted a somewhat passive approach this year in the RE area. The apartments are still being filled with new incoming residents and supply is still quite high, and in the office space area we have new plans for both Funk and Lambs Grove.
In Funk we plan to expand the office district West, and for that we´ve been purchasing expensive land in the area around the police station. We hope that once we develop that area and the value of the land appreciates the CBD dot will finally come to sight, as we calculate it´s now very close to shore around that part of the city.

City View Funk - feb1998.png (940.83 KiB) Viewed 6173 times

In Lambs Grove we find the chain of stores south of our office district finally spoiling our best chances to do business in that city.
As we don´t have the option to make a bid for them, we tought of all the prime land they take and how little they deliver in return. So we have considered that the best option is to lobby the major to intervene and find them a new home. So we´ll do our best until then.

City View Lambs Grove - feb1998.png (1.15 MiB) Viewed 6173 times

[Gorillatore]

This is great. Love the in-depth post and the way it's written, like a shareholder quarterly update. Keep it going!

Question, how are you extracting all the data for those clean reports you're posting? And how did you get the new images for faces?