New companies no longer emerge? (and some bugs related to company generation))

[leatra]

This might not be related to the DLC but I discovered this only after buying this DLC and downloading the new patches that came with it.

Before if the number of companies in the game dropped below (through mergers and bankruptcies) what was set during game settings then new companies would emerge. This no longer seems to happen. I think it was an important feature that made up for AI's inability to cope with survival mode. In my survival mode game I'm the only company left and that just makes a for a very lonely and stale game.

I think this should be an option in game settings. Do you want new companies to generate if some is eliminated? Yes or no? Because some players prefer a game style of eliminating every other company in the game while others prefer keeping the game active as much as possible.

Furthermore, I think I noticed a problem with company generation. Normally software, bank, insurance companies generate right after normal companies. In survival mode they just never generate anymore, but they used to. In one of my survival mode games however I noticed them generate randomly like 5 years into the game which was odd.

One last thing, making the "company start-up capital" setting on "very high" or "massive" means no company generates. You become the only company in the game.

[David]

To my understanding, new companies still emerge when survival mode is disabled. If your games prove otherwise, please let me know and I will look into it.

On the other hand, the survival mode tests the player's ability to grow a city. When the economy is performing poorly and companies have gone under, there won't be any new ones to be founded, which is part of the main theme of the survival mode - survival means that when something goes wrong, it is not supposed to have a second chance, which is in line with most of other survival games on the market.

[leatra]

Well I preferred having new companies emerge in survival but I understand the logic. I wish there was an option in the settings to let the players decide for themselves however. What I like about survival is building a nation from nothing. Being the only actor in the game doesn't really appeal to me. And the AI seldom succeeds in surviving the initial "tiny city with almost no market to sell products to" stage. Though it's probably because I always set the settings to be really difficult.

[David]

Well I preferred having new companies emerge in survival but I understand the logic. I wish there was an option in the settings to let the players decide for themselves however. What I like about survival is building a nation from nothing. Being the only actor in the game doesn't really appeal to me. And the AI seldom succeeds in surviving the initial "tiny city with almost no market to sell products to" stage. Though it's probably because I always set the settings to be really difficult.

I would recommend that you try this configuration: starting the game in non-survival mode with just one city and build your nation by founding new cities over time. You can just ignore the existing city and build a new city from the outset, focusing on the new city and doing nothing in the established city. While it is not exactly what you want, I believe that it will provide a similar gameplay challenge.

[leatra]

Yeah I'm doing that right now. Still would prefer to start from completely zero though. Or at least being able to influence how company emerge feature functions, like how long does it take for a company to emerge, what is the hard cap on company number, etc. Or starting with 0 AI companies and at a set date new companies start to emerge, etc. I don't think it would be hard to code either but I don't know anything about coding so I'm just talking out of my ass here.

Would be a nice addition if it's not a hassle to add to the game. I mean, the difficulty rating is a joke already. If you know what you are doing you can game the settings in such a way that the game is really easy while keeping the rating high. But that doesn't matter because the game's design encourages the players to play the game their own way anyway.

Edit: I can confirm companies emerge in normal play

[David]

You may suggest new script variables for customizing new company emergency settings and I will forward them to the dev team for their consideration.

You may see this post for examples of user suggestions for new script variables: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=8007&p=34392#p34392

[David]

I got some free time today and ran a test game with the survival mode enabled. The test confirmed that new AI companies actually can emerge in the survival mode. You can see the company at the bottom of the list indicated with "(0 year)" in the attached screenshot.