Issues Presented: Companies are not dynamic nor are they an organic entity in the game. They are created directly by the player rather than arising, indirectly, because of the player’s action. Additionally, they are purely a positive force, rather than being a force that can either be worked with, regulated, or become too powerful.
Summary of Suggestions: Create a mid game crisis that spreads.
What are Companies?
Companies Actions:
Company Benefits (In game)
Company Benefits (For the enjoyment of the game)
Suggestion explained:
General Idea
Premise: Companies should be large scale and monopolistic. Influenced by figures like John D. Rockefeller. The biggest influences to how companies are modeled should be Standard oil, The United Fruit Company, and AT&T depending on what type of company it is.
An important aspect about the Victorian Era, that was only recently introduced, was the rise of companies. Companies grew and attempted to monopolize certain fields in the industrialized world. Companies were important because it allowed for the rise of the richest industrialists of this time period. What I suggest is for companies to indirectly result from player action, rather than being a direct result of a player’s choice to create the company. Companies should allow for a giant boost to the GDP and faster development of specific industries. Vertical and horizontal integration, which will be explained later, will allow for companies to make the production of their goods even cheaper than normal industrialists. With this growth, the leaders will also gain massive wealth, boosting their interest group’s power. This will allow for faster industrialization, stronger industrialists, and stronger trade unions.
Companies should be huge enterprises. Composed primarily of laborers and petites. The number of petites should be even higher than normal buildings to simulate how these companies need more lawyers, accountants and middle managers. Company leaders should depend on what type of company it is. These leaders can be landowners or industrialists. These leaders will be actual characters with traits. These traits will determine their conduct towards employee wages, government influence, and monopolistic actions. Additionally, companies should be divided in types. Some company types will have unique attributes, such as a research department (explained later).
Companies should act like the plague mechanic in CK3 or institutions in EU4. Developing economies with free economies will allow for the dynamic rise of companies, which provide numerous benefits, from tech points, slight buffs to buildings, to the company ignoring MAPI in the buildings they own. The companies are not spawned by the player, but they have a random chance to spawn as long as certain conditions are fulfilled. The game should have certain “base” company templates. These templates are explained below. The conditions of the country will give rise to these types of companies without the player directly making it. Rather than pressing a button, dramatic increases in GDP, untapped wealth in provinces, or very rich industrialists will spawn companies.
Companies should have two “modes.” These modes are international and domestic. Domestic nations should have monopolized enough of the targeted goods, have a high enough horizontal integration, or see a foreign province with high enough possibility for profit while that country has open laws. International companies should be able to influence the foreign companies and will greatly profit their country of origin. These countries of origin are generally bigger powers. In contrast, middling powers should favor domestic companies, who would be able to fight against foreign companies while having a home field advantage. Countries should also be able to pass “regulation” against foreign and domestic companies, with foreign and domestic companies being regulated differently. Many of the terms used in this paragraph are explained at the end of the suggestion. For now, I will explain the company types/templates and their spawn conditions
Before jumping into the conditions, vertical integration refers to a process where a company gains another Target Good, with that new good being an input for their original Targe Good. One example would be a company that is focused on STEEL will get IRON as another target good. This would allow the company to now also buy iron ownership and cheapen the cost of an input. Horizontal integration refers to the company's ease towards spreading to other provinces. A profitable company that sees many avenues for more profit while facing few challenges will have a really high horizontal integration score. This makes it even easier to buy (or build) ownership in foreign provinces and states. Diversification is the process where the company gains another TARGET GOOD that is similar to its original. One example would be a fruit company also gaining wheat as a target good. These three systems are explained with more depth at the bottom of this suggestion.
Company types
There should be multiple company templates. These templates represent different types of companies that dominated in this period and slightly afterwards. The templates have different spawn conditions and will give different benefits. Below you will see conditions such as laws, economy, politics, and what provinces companies will want to spread to.
Focus: Builds agricultural goods.
Formation Conditions: (Not all of them need to be fulfilled. Certain conditions should increase the odds of companies spawning more than others)
Timeline: These should be some of the earliest spawnable companies.
Laws: (for middling powers):
Political Conditions (middling nations):
Political Conditions (richer nations)
Economic Conditions:
For Developing Economies (Brazil and Argentina)
Richer Nations:
Spread Targets:
Evolution:
These companies should have the highest horizontal integration. They constantly want to spread to more and more provinces. Vertical integration should be minimal, with railroads being the midgame exception. Diversification should also be somewhat rare.
Historical Example: The best practical example would be United Fruit Company spreading throughout Central America and the Caribbean.
Focus: Builds anything related to mining and/or processing goods.
Timeline: These should be available after agriculture companies. Some countries should start with this company, but fewer countries than those that start with agriculture companies.
Formation Conditions: (Not all of them need to be fulfilled. Certain conditions should increase the odds of companies spawning more than others)
Laws:
Political Conditions:
Economic Conditions:
Developing to Richer Nations:
Spread Targets: (Domestic or international)
Evolution:
These companies should desire vertical integration. As these companies grow, they will start purchasing tools and other inputs. One such example would be a company going from just steel production to also buying iron mines. The process of vertical integration can be supported by player “REGULATIONS” explained later. These companies should rarely diversify.
Historical Example:
The best practical example would be United Fruit Company spreading throughout Central America and the Caribbean.
More details:
These companies should start in rich nations and gravitate towards middling nations. Unlike the agriculture companies, these companies require the provinces and foreign nations to have an educated workforce. Landowners should have less influence in the country but should still be influential.
Target Nation: Large influence in their country of origin, but also be attracted towards middling powers that have cheap and untapped natural resources. These companies should favor the industrialists and produce some of the wealthiest. They also desire vertical integration and then strong horizontal integration. These companies will be the biggest and create the Robber Barons.
Focus: Builds electrical or advanced goods.
Specific Goods: Telephones, Power plants, engines, and radios. Anything else that might involve electricity or mid to late game technology..
Timeline: Midgame to later end of the midgame.
Laws:
Political Conditions:
Economic Conditions: This should be one of the easiest to spawn once industrialization is really exploding
Spread Targets: (Domestic and International)
Evolution:
These companies should aim for diversification or vertical integration. These companies will require high competitiveness(term explained at the end of the suggestion) to diversify. The only consistent change is that these companies should move towards the production of tools. This represents these companies producing the basic tools needed for advanced machinery. Ideally, tools will be split into Basic Tools and Advanced Parts but that is just a minor consideration.
Historical Example: AT&T, bell labs, and Nortel
More Details: Midgame but volatile
These companies should appear closer to the end of the midgame. They should represent the clear sign that industrialization is in full swing and electrification is needed. These should also be the most volatile of all the companies. If Competitiveness is a value, Momentum might also need to be a value. Both values would be important to represent how new and innovative companies could quickly overthrow stagnant companies.. Additionally, this company should spawn easily if the only company of this type is a foreign company. Canada should be able to produce one of these companies in the early lategame if an American company is already spreading . If the government starts regulating foreign companies and the domestic version spawns with an innovative leader, the smaller domestic company should overthrow the bigger stagnant foreign company. Competitiveness and Momentum are described at the bottom of this suggestion.
Unique Attribute: Research Department provides research point discounts to certain techs.
These companies should have a research department, akin to the universities. Representing Bell labs and Edison's patents, these companies should desire to innovate. The research department will cost the company anywhere from 10% to 20%(up to consideration) of their budgets(budgets explain at the bottom), depending on their leader, and will produce research points or a discount to certain techs. While competitiveness should provide a technology research bonus, these companies allow for huge discounts for any technologies related to electrification or goods that use electricity and engines. This should create a system where universities are not the only source of research. Additionally, it will make the player want to keep companies around instead of regulating them to death. This should be one of the few companies with intelligentsia.
Focus: Anything that is a non-agricultural consumer good.
Focus Examples: Clothing, groceries, porcelain, automobiles, and services
Timeline: Midgame before or around electricity companies. These should symbolize growing urbanization and growing wealth of the population.
Formation Conditions: (Not all of them need to be fulfilled. Certain conditions should increase the odds of companies spawning more than others)
Laws:
Political Conditions:
Economic Conditions:
Developing to Richer Nations:
Spreading Targets: (Domestic and International)
Evolution:
While generally adverse to horizontal integration, these companies should diversify quickly and build up their home state massively. If I had to split it, car companies should probably be more vertical integration oriented while other goods are focused on horizontal integration.
Historical Examples:
Ford Company for automobiles but applied for more consumer goods. Possibly grocery stores.
More Details:
More Details + Unique Attribute: More petite and services
This was a rough outline of ideas that I had while writing this. These were not fleshed out, but it has some quick general ideas that might be cool to implement.
Financial Goods - Based on J.P. Morgan
I hope to see the financial sector of the game develop. This would enable strong financial companies with connection to a possible financial sector. They should also be important to the development of any real estate/housing system, any Boom and Bust System, and allows companies and industrialists to have more money or use it more effectively. These will be the most dangerous and possibly speculative, without proper regulation, but also one of the most important for further growth. Financial Companies might be needed for “Industrial Consolidation” and the creation of more companies. Companies would still form without it but they will either take more time and money, be more dangerous and risk failing, or the government will have to provide capital and insurance, putting the government at risk. These are motivators for the “economic/financial” technologies under technology.These should also be able to prevent crashes. Possibly just decrease the delay before suffering from input shortage.
Military: General Ideas that are not as flashed out. With this section I mostly want to create the rise of a military-industry that ties industrialists closer with the army, creating a late game threat to the player.
Military Companies are based on general ideas. These companies will be the smallest scale companies that should be implemented. Not really fitting with the other groups but it would create clear “military-industrial” ideas. These companies produce all the military goods needed by the government or foreign governments. They should also have “research departments' ' that discounts the prices of military techs. These companies should only pop up much later in the game, possibly only after mass mobilization is activated. Additionally, there should be some special interaction with the resource extraction companies. Probably merge these two companies or have them complete or sign a negotiation. The government ( player) will then have to deal with these two companies either forming a broader stronger monopoly that now has arms and that boost the army and industrialists to a greater extent, or to weaken them. Having a company like this will be crucial for World Wars.
Military schools: Possibly using the systems mentioned to create military schools. Military schools work like companies but instead of producing goods, they produce generals. The school would spawn if many people are conscripted in an area with at least one university. It will then spread to provinces that share a similar culture and that share similar inputs. So, if most of your soldiers in the south are infantrymen, then the school will produce generals that excel in infantryman tactics( in contrast to techs that involve new weapons) and possibly boost research to anything involving infantry. Different cultures and regions should completely slow this spread. This could create opposing military schools with one school specializing in creating generals and infantry that excel in defense and another navy school in NY because you built many ships. Depending on your actions while at war, the school might change how it teaches stuff, creating a loop that the player will have to break.
EXPLAINING CONCEPTS
What is a TARGET GOOD?
Companies will all spawn with one TARGET GOOD. The company will want to build/buy ownership in buildings that produce this TARGET GOOD.
What are AUXILIARY GOODS?
Auxiliary goods are any new TARGET GOODS that the companies gain from either diversification or vertical integration. These are the goods that companies want to monopolize but that they do not spawn with. Splitting TARGET GOOD and AUXILIARY GOODS is crucial because it will allow the player to regulate the companies. One such regulation would be to remove the AUXILIARY GOODS, therefore lowering the total wealth of the company and total clout that the “CEO/LEADER” gives to his interest group.
What is DIVERSIFICATION, VERTICAL INTEGRATION, and HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION?
Companies will have 3 important stats, excluding the leader’s traits and company type, that directly determine their growth
Diversification: Diversification is the process where a company will add another TARGET GOOD. This will occur if the company becomes rich enough. It will limit the growth of companies and allow us to have just a few powerful companies. This should be more common for consumer good companies.
Vertical Integration: Certain companies should also gain one of the input goods of their TARGET GOOD as another one of their target goods. The conditions for this is if they become rich enough or if the player builds that industry up enough in places where the company is already in. Additionally, passing deregulation or regulation that favors that company will boost vertical integration.
Horizontal integration: This is just the company's ease of spreading. Companies should easily be able to buy/build ownership in their home state/province. As they gain wealth, they will increase their horizontal integration, allowing them to buy out-of-state ownership for cheaper and cheaper. Horizontal integration is crucial because it allows for easy player interaction. Players who want these companies to spread should pass regulation driving the number up, making it cheaper for these companies to buy out-of-state ownership. In contrast, lowering this number will slow the company. If they reach below a certain number, it should make it more expensive for the company to have ownership outside their state or origin, causing them to sell ownership or buildings that are not as profitable when compared to others. A trust buster should desire to lower this number.
COMPANIES CONSTRUCTION SECTOR:
To further boost companies, companies should receive a separate construction pool. They should start with a free 5 construction sector and possibly grow with their wealth. This construction sector might even compete with the private constriction pool for who gets more sectors. This should make companies feel even more separate than the normal industrialist. Players would have to regulate them so they do not monopolize the non-player construction pool. Additionally, this will boost smaller nations as they will get another source of construction sectors.
COMPANY BUDGET
Companies should have income and expenses. Companies that are low on money and have many non-profitable industries should start to sell them and buy more ownership in profitable buildings. This will also determine how much wealth, construction sectors, and clout they have. Budgets are also crucial for the size of their research departments.
LEADER TRAITS
Leader traits will determine how a company will act. A cruel landowner in an agricultural company would cause more research output but anger the workers. A meticulous industrialist would be great for electrical good companies. These will allow for cheaper input goods, resulting in higher profits. Additionally, these people will allow for a cheaper research department, allowing for a bigger research department and more research points to the player. An ambitious leader will increase the horizontal integration of the company while they are in charge. Additionally, a master bureaucrat should allow for companies to move into foreign countries much easier. Most importantly, honorable leaders should want to increase wages when profits are high enough, while cruel leaders will want to keep wages as low as possible once they feel that they are in a safe enough position. Certain negative to neutral traits will cause leaders to create events like an artificial shortage by decreasing supply of the good they own the production of. This will make companies a threat to the player. If companies get too powerful they will create issues for their poor workers and for the player’s economy. This is just a small list of how they would work but they should be very important.
HOW MANY COMPANIES ARE THERE?
Companies should still be limited like they are now. Countries should need certain techs to unlock companies, like how it is done now. Additionally, they should require a high GDP, literacy, and for the economy to be free enough. They should then require the industrialists (or landowners for agricultural companies) to be rich enough. Possibly by creating a headquarters that cost a high amount of construction points. These headquarters will incur a minimum expense for the company. If this expense is not met at company spawn, it will not be able to start fully functioning until it is profitable. It can become profitable by buying ownership slowly or by receiving help through regulations/deregulations. Passing “regulations'' should lower the expense. One such regulation could be making land cheaper to buy for the company. This will simply lower the costs. Once the company makes profit, it will start to grow at an even faster rate and be able to vertically integrate and diversify.
As the game continues. the player should be able to spawn 2 or 3 of the companies listed. More techs and wealth will allow for more companies to spawn, but the conditions will become harder and harder for each successive company. The AI will also hopefully spawn companies, with them being limited to some middling and great powers. Middling countries should have companies so they can fight against foreign companies spreading into their land. Smaller countries with low literacy should not have companies and will have to solve the influence of the foreign companies through diplomatic incidents or changes in laws.
WHAT ABOUT COMPETITION
Countries should not have 2 agricultural companies (unless one is domestic and the other is foreign). Countries should only be able to have 1 company of each type. Competition is brought about by comparing the ownership of the TARGET GOOD that the company has to the ownership they do not have/building that they do not own a majority ownership in. Companies will have buffs, be able to ignore MAPI, and buy inputs from themselves, but they will have to face government regulation, scaling expenses, expenses from requiring more petite workers, and the non-company industrialist out building them, taking potential profits. and decreasing their horizontal integration score. Additionally, companies compete with foreign companies, who might have higher competitiveness or better leaders. Therefore, companies will have to face the government, non-company industrialist (who should generally have more freedom and construction point than the company), foreign governments, and foreign companies.
WHAT IS COMPETITIVENESS AND MOMENTUM
Competitiveness represents how innovative companies are. This is determined from the amount of competition, horizontal integration, and traits of the leaders. Competitiveness is most crucial for an Electronic good company but it should be a feature for all the companies. Competitiveness is essential for fighting foreign companies. Competitiveness allows for a feature that benefits small and rising companies when they have to fight large foreign companies. This will also be connected to momentum.
Momentum the predicted health of the company. Companies that have high competitiveness, high horizontal integration, leaders with good traits, and strong budgets will have high momentum. This will boost income and horizontal integration. This represents a snowball effect that companies face. In contrast, low momentum will quickly cause companies to fall apart. An economic downturn destroying the budget, low competitiveness, alcoholic leaders, and more will cause a sharp decrease in momentum. This will lower cause even sharper decreases in the spread of the company. Additionally, low enough momentum will cause the company’s spread reversing. Momentum should be a result of other factors and make the company weak to opposing forces, rather than automatically destroying the company.
WHAT ARE REGULATIONS
I have mentioned REGULATIONS several times throughout this proposal. Regulations are not just basic laws. Regulations differ from laws as they do not need to go through the law passage system. Instead, they pass instantly as long as the leader or ruling party supports it. The limit to these regulations is that the popularity of the leader’s interest group determines how quickly they can pass another one. Additionally, certain interest groups will support these regulations more than others. Landowners will allow the easy passage of any regulations that favor agriculture or extraction companies, while having a landowner as the leader will disallow any regulation limiting their power. A possible exception can be if the leader of the company has certain traits or if a party demands for regulation or deregulation. To summarize, regulations (and deregulation for regulation that support companies) should be special laws that only relate to aiding or limiting certain aspects of a company. They require for the government to be in support of these laws, either the leader or the leading party (up for consideration, but they will never require the long process of passing the laws). Regulations are only limited by cooldowns, which can be lessened.
Side Note: Possibly tie regulation cooldown to popularity of the leader. A highly popular leader having much smaller cooldowns.
Secondly, regulations should not be applied to all companies. Agricultural companies should have different regulations than consumer good companies. One example of a regulation would be the Pure Food and Drug act for agricultural companies. Regulations should only apply to the specific company in question and not towards all companies.
To make it easier on the player, there might be a general “REGULATIONS” law that will affect all companies equally by lowering horizontal integration or lowering momentum. This can be done if the industrialists are gaining too much power or if all the companies are led by leaders that are causing high unrest. This is a normal law and needs normal passage. This law will act like a hammer towards companies and allow for much more damaging regulations.
Thirdly, foreign companies should have similar regulations. They are an exception because we already have laws that limit outside economic influence. Those laws would still find use. Deregulations could be used to empower domestic companies and oppose foreign companies. It would allow the player then to regulate a too powerful domestic company. Regulating a domestic company being much easier as regulating foreign companies could come with opinion maluses from the foreign companies’ nation of origin or even infamy.
Lastly, regulations can be anything small like increasing the income of a company by giving a tax cut to anything as big as splitting a company apart after passing antitrust laws. This can possibly be done by having specific regulations split up into tiers. Higher tiers require much higher cool down. Splitting up a company would be the highest tier and instantly force them to sell a large part of their ownership in states that are not their original. These might work by forcing them to sell until competitiveness reaches a specific point.
WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT BIG COMPANIES
Companies should not be a pure buff to the player. Companies should be a double edged sword that can supercharge free and capitalistic economies, but also risk these companies becoming dominated by the industrialists. As the competitiveness of a company goes down, depending on the leader trait, the company will start to make more negative/monopolistic moves. These actions can start by simply decreasing wages, refusing to ever raise wages to employees, to creating artificial shortages of goods to increase their profits and discourage the building of more of the target good. Additionally, monopolizing companies might also stop contributing research points to the player or make certain research more expensive. The purpose of this is to show how dangerous monopolization is and to make companies a danger that the player will want to regulate or totally destroy.
Companies should also create political dangers. One danger would be companies turning the country into an oligarchy. This can be done by the leaders greatly boosting the strength of their respective parties and supporting their parties in elections. Another possibility is for companies to create trade unions at an easier rate than normal buildings. A good leader with positive traits will want to increase wages and take hostile actions less often. While a dangerous leader, who might have better traits for spreading the company, would be more hostile and create more trade unions due keeping wages low. Companies should produce more trade union members and have them massively more politically active.
Companies will also be a danger for foreign countries. Companies, especially the agricultural companies, should greatly strengthen the landowners and even petition governments to change laws. They strengthen the landowners and make it harder for many smaller nations to modernize. Countering these companies will require the countries to kick them out, close trade, or create a company powerful enough to rival them. Companies will allow for a massive generation of wealth for the weaker countries, development of certain industries, and improve relations between the target nation and the nation where the company spawned.
WHY THIS FAVORS TALL AND MEDIUM PLAY STYLES
An important aspect about this game is making sure that overly big powers are not too favored. I believe that it is crucial to make sure that middling and even smaller countries have a chance to punch above their weight. This company rework allows smaller countries, that are low on resources, to receive a great boost to many fields. While huge countries already have all the resources required, this will allow small countries to be able to ride the boost that the companies provide to higher heights. Additionally, middling powers will also have a way to profit from bigger powers. This would be done when a middling power starts a company that faces a foreign company with low competitiveness and low momentum. The new company will be able to easily kick out foreign economic influence and even spread to the country that the foreign company came from. This will make middling powers have gameplay around founding as many companies as possible and making sure they stay strong and competitive. This might do well to simulate Imperial Japan’s zaibatsu.
WHAT DO COMPANIES OCCUPY
If performance is an issue, I would settle with each company having an entire state. What this means is that once a company reaches a percentage of ownership in a province, that province will be “owned by that company.” That will stop other companies from buying ownership in that state unless it has high enough horizontal integration, momentum, and competitiveness. States should generally be dominated by one company with companies rarely fighting for states unless strong conditions are found, such as one company receding and having bad stats.
FOREIGN COMPANY SPREAD REVISITED
I talked about foreign companies spreading at multiple points, but I will summarize my thoughts here. Most companies should start as domestic and not spread until they are rich enough, have a high horizontal integration, and see massive potential in a foreign country. A prerequisite might be that the normal industrialists(or landowners) have already started building in the foreign countries. These companies will then start spreading to the foreign provinces. To represent the bureaucracy cost of having foreign buildings, foreign ownership should be slightly less profitable. The existence of foreign companies would also massively boost the competitiveness of their opposing domestic companies.
TECHNOLOGY SYSTEM REVISITED
I have mentioned the technology system earlier on. I will summarize the system here. Certain factories will have, what I called, “research departments.” This represents how research and development was crucial for companies. The research departments either give you research points or discount specific techs. This system is crucial because it moves research away from just spamming universities. Instead, the player will want the companies to improve the economy but also produce more research points, The research departments will cost the companies upkeep. Research departments will contribute to competitiveness , with innovative leaders spending more money to increase the size of the departments and therefore increasing competitiveness, and a poor leader will decrease this to improve profits even more, lowering innovativeness. Additionally, poor economic circumstances might also lead to the reduction of the research departments. Hopefully this new system will enable a new method of research production.
COMMAND ECONOMIES (Draft ideas)
Command economies should either not have companies or have companies that cost scaling bureaucracy. The government should also choose the leaders and have positive traits decreased in terms of effect. This either represents a 5 year plan type system or be a vector of attack where industrialists would slowly gain their strength back if you use these companies. The companies would allow command economies to stay strong and have high research without needing to invest even more into universities, but it would weaken their political position.
I hope that any of my suggestions are looked at. Thank you for the game and best of luck.
Summary of Suggestions: Create a mid game crisis that spreads.
What are Companies?
- Dynamic and specific non-player actors that are similar to plagues.
- Political and economic conditions determine company spawn
- Specific economic conditions determining if these companies are agricultural, extraction/processing, electrical, or consumer good focused.
- Companies have one targeted good and will attempt to monopolize this good.
- Companies provide economic boost to the production of goods
- Companies provide wealth to the “CEO” or leader, who belongs to certain interest groups
- Companies can be regulated, to stop them from becoming too powerful
- Companies can be domestic or international
- Companies also provide another source of power for industrialists and landowners mid to late game.
- Companies have a higher ratio of petite workers
Companies Actions:
- Companies will buy (or build) ownership with the goal of monopolizing the production of that their targeted good
- Diversify (adding more targeted goods),
- Vertically Integrate (add a targeted good that is required for the production of its primary good)
- Horizontally Integrate (speed in which it buys other/builds ownership of buildings or buys them in other states)
- Raise wages if the company makes massive profits and leader is charitable
- Artificially decrease the supply, with the goal of keeping prices high depending on leader traits
- Intervene in the politics of foreign nations by giving interest group strength or demanding actions from the government
Company Benefits (In game)
- Economic benefits for the player
- Free increase in the production of goods
- Ability to vertically integrate (allowing for cheaper inputs for its buildings)
- Possibly ignore MAPI for anything that the company owns
- Certain companies will allow for the production of research points or discounting certain techs
- Boost industrialist clout early game
- Allows for another way for players to keep some interest groups through accepting demands and certain regulations
- Traits of leaders will allow players to pacify trade unions or boost them
Company Benefits (For the enjoyment of the game)
- Gives non-command controlled economies a double edged sword as they have to decide between allowing a powerful monopoly which might speed up economic development at the risk of giving the industrialist too much power
- Allows for a more dynamic game by having to manage the companies that resulted from player economic development
- Allows for another internal threats that the player will have to manage or work with
- Spices up the mid to late game
- Creates “leader/CEO” characters that have a strong influence on the country without being in charge of an interest group
- Makes character traits much more important and have an effect on actions. Making traits more than just production or popularity modifiers.
Suggestion explained:
General Idea
Premise: Companies should be large scale and monopolistic. Influenced by figures like John D. Rockefeller. The biggest influences to how companies are modeled should be Standard oil, The United Fruit Company, and AT&T depending on what type of company it is.
An important aspect about the Victorian Era, that was only recently introduced, was the rise of companies. Companies grew and attempted to monopolize certain fields in the industrialized world. Companies were important because it allowed for the rise of the richest industrialists of this time period. What I suggest is for companies to indirectly result from player action, rather than being a direct result of a player’s choice to create the company. Companies should allow for a giant boost to the GDP and faster development of specific industries. Vertical and horizontal integration, which will be explained later, will allow for companies to make the production of their goods even cheaper than normal industrialists. With this growth, the leaders will also gain massive wealth, boosting their interest group’s power. This will allow for faster industrialization, stronger industrialists, and stronger trade unions.
Companies should be huge enterprises. Composed primarily of laborers and petites. The number of petites should be even higher than normal buildings to simulate how these companies need more lawyers, accountants and middle managers. Company leaders should depend on what type of company it is. These leaders can be landowners or industrialists. These leaders will be actual characters with traits. These traits will determine their conduct towards employee wages, government influence, and monopolistic actions. Additionally, companies should be divided in types. Some company types will have unique attributes, such as a research department (explained later).
Companies should act like the plague mechanic in CK3 or institutions in EU4. Developing economies with free economies will allow for the dynamic rise of companies, which provide numerous benefits, from tech points, slight buffs to buildings, to the company ignoring MAPI in the buildings they own. The companies are not spawned by the player, but they have a random chance to spawn as long as certain conditions are fulfilled. The game should have certain “base” company templates. These templates are explained below. The conditions of the country will give rise to these types of companies without the player directly making it. Rather than pressing a button, dramatic increases in GDP, untapped wealth in provinces, or very rich industrialists will spawn companies.
Companies should have two “modes.” These modes are international and domestic. Domestic nations should have monopolized enough of the targeted goods, have a high enough horizontal integration, or see a foreign province with high enough possibility for profit while that country has open laws. International companies should be able to influence the foreign companies and will greatly profit their country of origin. These countries of origin are generally bigger powers. In contrast, middling powers should favor domestic companies, who would be able to fight against foreign companies while having a home field advantage. Countries should also be able to pass “regulation” against foreign and domestic companies, with foreign and domestic companies being regulated differently. Many of the terms used in this paragraph are explained at the end of the suggestion. For now, I will explain the company types/templates and their spawn conditions
Before jumping into the conditions, vertical integration refers to a process where a company gains another Target Good, with that new good being an input for their original Targe Good. One example would be a company that is focused on STEEL will get IRON as another target good. This would allow the company to now also buy iron ownership and cheapen the cost of an input. Horizontal integration refers to the company's ease towards spreading to other provinces. A profitable company that sees many avenues for more profit while facing few challenges will have a really high horizontal integration score. This makes it even easier to buy (or build) ownership in foreign provinces and states. Diversification is the process where the company gains another TARGET GOOD that is similar to its original. One example would be a fruit company also gaining wheat as a target good. These three systems are explained with more depth at the bottom of this suggestion.
Company types
There should be multiple company templates. These templates represent different types of companies that dominated in this period and slightly afterwards. The templates have different spawn conditions and will give different benefits. Below you will see conditions such as laws, economy, politics, and what provinces companies will want to spread to.
- Agricultural Companies - Based on United Fruit Company but also local companies.
Focus: Builds agricultural goods.
Formation Conditions: (Not all of them need to be fulfilled. Certain conditions should increase the odds of companies spawning more than others)
Timeline: These should be some of the earliest spawnable companies.
Laws: (for middling powers):
- Traditionalism
- Agrarianism
- Tenant Farmers
- Mercantilism
Political Conditions (middling nations):
- Rich and high clout landowners should increase the chances of this spawning.
Political Conditions (richer nations)
- Earlier to mid-game with underdeveloped nations in your market or that you have the right to build in.
Economic Conditions:
For Developing Economies (Brazil and Argentina)
- Poor farmers but very rich landowners into the mid-game.
- Developing, but closer to a middling power.
- High Demand for agricultural goods
- Agricultural trade is extremely profitable
Richer Nations:
- High Price of Food
- Farmer wages are too high
- Farmer wages are too low
Spread Targets:
- Developing nations with strong landowners (might face competition by a domestic company)
- Underdeveloped countries with low literacy (can only face competition from governments)
Evolution:
These companies should have the highest horizontal integration. They constantly want to spread to more and more provinces. Vertical integration should be minimal, with railroads being the midgame exception. Diversification should also be somewhat rare.
Historical Example: The best practical example would be United Fruit Company spreading throughout Central America and the Caribbean.
- Industrial Resource Extraction/Processing: Based on Standard Oil, U.S. Steel Corp, and Anglo-Persian Oil Company
Focus: Builds anything related to mining and/or processing goods.
Timeline: These should be available after agriculture companies. Some countries should start with this company, but fewer countries than those that start with agriculture companies.
Formation Conditions: (Not all of them need to be fulfilled. Certain conditions should increase the odds of companies spawning more than others)
Laws:
- No Traditionalism
- No Agrarianism
- Possibly punish people with Tenant Farmers
Political Conditions:
- Closer to midgame when the industrialists are on the rise. These companies should be a result of early industrialization.
Economic Conditions:
Developing to Richer Nations:
- High Price of industrial resources
- Location with many unbuilt mines while the midgame has started
- Laborer wages are too high
Spread Targets: (Domestic or international)
- Location that has a lot of iron mines with low wages (for buying ownership)
- Location that has the potential to build many iron mines and with high predicted profit
- Middling nations that have yet to begin industrialization but are not dominated by landowners
Evolution:
These companies should desire vertical integration. As these companies grow, they will start purchasing tools and other inputs. One such example would be a company going from just steel production to also buying iron mines. The process of vertical integration can be supported by player “REGULATIONS” explained later. These companies should rarely diversify.
Historical Example:
The best practical example would be United Fruit Company spreading throughout Central America and the Caribbean.
More details:
These companies should start in rich nations and gravitate towards middling nations. Unlike the agriculture companies, these companies require the provinces and foreign nations to have an educated workforce. Landowners should have less influence in the country but should still be influential.
Target Nation: Large influence in their country of origin, but also be attracted towards middling powers that have cheap and untapped natural resources. These companies should favor the industrialists and produce some of the wealthiest. They also desire vertical integration and then strong horizontal integration. These companies will be the biggest and create the Robber Barons.
- Electrical Goods: based on AT&T, bell labs, and Nortel
Focus: Builds electrical or advanced goods.
Specific Goods: Telephones, Power plants, engines, and radios. Anything else that might involve electricity or mid to late game technology..
Timeline: Midgame to later end of the midgame.
Laws:
- No Traditionalism
- No Agrarianism
- Disfavor Tenant Farmers
Political Conditions:
- Industrialists have a massive amount of influence. Industrialists should be powerful and preferably in the government for this company to spawn.
Economic Conditions: This should be one of the easiest to spawn once industrialization is really exploding
- Rich industrialist class
- High industrialist power in one state
- Much of the state funding is towards universities
- State has profitable Electronic Goods and at least 1 university
- Increasing demand for electronic goods
- Many Electronic goods without an already existing company in the province
Spread Targets: (Domestic and International)
- Requires high literacy provinces
- Requires provinces with at least middling SOL, but spreads faster for Secure and Prosperous
Evolution:
These companies should aim for diversification or vertical integration. These companies will require high competitiveness(term explained at the end of the suggestion) to diversify. The only consistent change is that these companies should move towards the production of tools. This represents these companies producing the basic tools needed for advanced machinery. Ideally, tools will be split into Basic Tools and Advanced Parts but that is just a minor consideration.
Historical Example: AT&T, bell labs, and Nortel
More Details: Midgame but volatile
These companies should appear closer to the end of the midgame. They should represent the clear sign that industrialization is in full swing and electrification is needed. These should also be the most volatile of all the companies. If Competitiveness is a value, Momentum might also need to be a value. Both values would be important to represent how new and innovative companies could quickly overthrow stagnant companies.. Additionally, this company should spawn easily if the only company of this type is a foreign company. Canada should be able to produce one of these companies in the early lategame if an American company is already spreading . If the government starts regulating foreign companies and the domestic version spawns with an innovative leader, the smaller domestic company should overthrow the bigger stagnant foreign company. Competitiveness and Momentum are described at the bottom of this suggestion.
Unique Attribute: Research Department provides research point discounts to certain techs.
These companies should have a research department, akin to the universities. Representing Bell labs and Edison's patents, these companies should desire to innovate. The research department will cost the company anywhere from 10% to 20%(up to consideration) of their budgets(budgets explain at the bottom), depending on their leader, and will produce research points or a discount to certain techs. While competitiveness should provide a technology research bonus, these companies allow for huge discounts for any technologies related to electrification or goods that use electricity and engines. This should create a system where universities are not the only source of research. Additionally, it will make the player want to keep companies around instead of regulating them to death. This should be one of the few companies with intelligentsia.
- Consumer Goods: Based on Ford Motor Company, but can represent luxury brands as a whole
Focus: Anything that is a non-agricultural consumer good.
Focus Examples: Clothing, groceries, porcelain, automobiles, and services
Timeline: Midgame before or around electricity companies. These should symbolize growing urbanization and growing wealth of the population.
Formation Conditions: (Not all of them need to be fulfilled. Certain conditions should increase the odds of companies spawning more than others)
Laws:
- No Traditionalism
- No Agrarianism
- Disfavor Tenant Farmers
- No Serfdom
- Possibly Dedicated Police Force
Political Conditions:
- Focused on the rise of the petite rather than the industrialist. These represent the urbanization of your population and are likely to appear when industrialists and petites are in large numbers. These people should focus on the lower to middle classes but can decide between normal and luxury items.
Economic Conditions:
Developing to Richer Nations:
- At least one province with high urbanization
- Quick increases in the standard of living for either poor or wealthy
- Low supply of Luxury goods
- High prices for clothing or furniture
- Too low prices for clothing or furniture
Spreading Targets: (Domestic and International)
- Places with comparatively high urbanization or quickly increasing urbanization
- Places with a large number of laborers and a medium sized middle class
- Places dominated by the petite
Evolution:
While generally adverse to horizontal integration, these companies should diversify quickly and build up their home state massively. If I had to split it, car companies should probably be more vertical integration oriented while other goods are focused on horizontal integration.
Historical Examples:
Ford Company for automobiles but applied for more consumer goods. Possibly grocery stores.
More Details:
More Details + Unique Attribute: More petite and services
- This company should replace the churches and the urban center for the production of services.
- These companies should create higher paid and more reliable class of petites.
- These companies are important because they give you a discount towards society technology and should have options of Fordism, Taylorism, and Proto-Toyotism (draft idea to implement these. They would shift worker ratios but not necessary)
This was a rough outline of ideas that I had while writing this. These were not fleshed out, but it has some quick general ideas that might be cool to implement.
Financial Goods - Based on J.P. Morgan
I hope to see the financial sector of the game develop. This would enable strong financial companies with connection to a possible financial sector. They should also be important to the development of any real estate/housing system, any Boom and Bust System, and allows companies and industrialists to have more money or use it more effectively. These will be the most dangerous and possibly speculative, without proper regulation, but also one of the most important for further growth. Financial Companies might be needed for “Industrial Consolidation” and the creation of more companies. Companies would still form without it but they will either take more time and money, be more dangerous and risk failing, or the government will have to provide capital and insurance, putting the government at risk. These are motivators for the “economic/financial” technologies under technology.These should also be able to prevent crashes. Possibly just decrease the delay before suffering from input shortage.
Military: General Ideas that are not as flashed out. With this section I mostly want to create the rise of a military-industry that ties industrialists closer with the army, creating a late game threat to the player.
Military Companies are based on general ideas. These companies will be the smallest scale companies that should be implemented. Not really fitting with the other groups but it would create clear “military-industrial” ideas. These companies produce all the military goods needed by the government or foreign governments. They should also have “research departments' ' that discounts the prices of military techs. These companies should only pop up much later in the game, possibly only after mass mobilization is activated. Additionally, there should be some special interaction with the resource extraction companies. Probably merge these two companies or have them complete or sign a negotiation. The government ( player) will then have to deal with these two companies either forming a broader stronger monopoly that now has arms and that boost the army and industrialists to a greater extent, or to weaken them. Having a company like this will be crucial for World Wars.
Military schools: Possibly using the systems mentioned to create military schools. Military schools work like companies but instead of producing goods, they produce generals. The school would spawn if many people are conscripted in an area with at least one university. It will then spread to provinces that share a similar culture and that share similar inputs. So, if most of your soldiers in the south are infantrymen, then the school will produce generals that excel in infantryman tactics( in contrast to techs that involve new weapons) and possibly boost research to anything involving infantry. Different cultures and regions should completely slow this spread. This could create opposing military schools with one school specializing in creating generals and infantry that excel in defense and another navy school in NY because you built many ships. Depending on your actions while at war, the school might change how it teaches stuff, creating a loop that the player will have to break.
EXPLAINING CONCEPTS
What is a TARGET GOOD?
Companies will all spawn with one TARGET GOOD. The company will want to build/buy ownership in buildings that produce this TARGET GOOD.
What are AUXILIARY GOODS?
Auxiliary goods are any new TARGET GOODS that the companies gain from either diversification or vertical integration. These are the goods that companies want to monopolize but that they do not spawn with. Splitting TARGET GOOD and AUXILIARY GOODS is crucial because it will allow the player to regulate the companies. One such regulation would be to remove the AUXILIARY GOODS, therefore lowering the total wealth of the company and total clout that the “CEO/LEADER” gives to his interest group.
What is DIVERSIFICATION, VERTICAL INTEGRATION, and HORIZONTAL INTEGRATION?
Companies will have 3 important stats, excluding the leader’s traits and company type, that directly determine their growth
Diversification: Diversification is the process where a company will add another TARGET GOOD. This will occur if the company becomes rich enough. It will limit the growth of companies and allow us to have just a few powerful companies. This should be more common for consumer good companies.
Vertical Integration: Certain companies should also gain one of the input goods of their TARGET GOOD as another one of their target goods. The conditions for this is if they become rich enough or if the player builds that industry up enough in places where the company is already in. Additionally, passing deregulation or regulation that favors that company will boost vertical integration.
Horizontal integration: This is just the company's ease of spreading. Companies should easily be able to buy/build ownership in their home state/province. As they gain wealth, they will increase their horizontal integration, allowing them to buy out-of-state ownership for cheaper and cheaper. Horizontal integration is crucial because it allows for easy player interaction. Players who want these companies to spread should pass regulation driving the number up, making it cheaper for these companies to buy out-of-state ownership. In contrast, lowering this number will slow the company. If they reach below a certain number, it should make it more expensive for the company to have ownership outside their state or origin, causing them to sell ownership or buildings that are not as profitable when compared to others. A trust buster should desire to lower this number.
COMPANIES CONSTRUCTION SECTOR:
To further boost companies, companies should receive a separate construction pool. They should start with a free 5 construction sector and possibly grow with their wealth. This construction sector might even compete with the private constriction pool for who gets more sectors. This should make companies feel even more separate than the normal industrialist. Players would have to regulate them so they do not monopolize the non-player construction pool. Additionally, this will boost smaller nations as they will get another source of construction sectors.
COMPANY BUDGET
Companies should have income and expenses. Companies that are low on money and have many non-profitable industries should start to sell them and buy more ownership in profitable buildings. This will also determine how much wealth, construction sectors, and clout they have. Budgets are also crucial for the size of their research departments.
LEADER TRAITS
Leader traits will determine how a company will act. A cruel landowner in an agricultural company would cause more research output but anger the workers. A meticulous industrialist would be great for electrical good companies. These will allow for cheaper input goods, resulting in higher profits. Additionally, these people will allow for a cheaper research department, allowing for a bigger research department and more research points to the player. An ambitious leader will increase the horizontal integration of the company while they are in charge. Additionally, a master bureaucrat should allow for companies to move into foreign countries much easier. Most importantly, honorable leaders should want to increase wages when profits are high enough, while cruel leaders will want to keep wages as low as possible once they feel that they are in a safe enough position. Certain negative to neutral traits will cause leaders to create events like an artificial shortage by decreasing supply of the good they own the production of. This will make companies a threat to the player. If companies get too powerful they will create issues for their poor workers and for the player’s economy. This is just a small list of how they would work but they should be very important.
HOW MANY COMPANIES ARE THERE?
Companies should still be limited like they are now. Countries should need certain techs to unlock companies, like how it is done now. Additionally, they should require a high GDP, literacy, and for the economy to be free enough. They should then require the industrialists (or landowners for agricultural companies) to be rich enough. Possibly by creating a headquarters that cost a high amount of construction points. These headquarters will incur a minimum expense for the company. If this expense is not met at company spawn, it will not be able to start fully functioning until it is profitable. It can become profitable by buying ownership slowly or by receiving help through regulations/deregulations. Passing “regulations'' should lower the expense. One such regulation could be making land cheaper to buy for the company. This will simply lower the costs. Once the company makes profit, it will start to grow at an even faster rate and be able to vertically integrate and diversify.
As the game continues. the player should be able to spawn 2 or 3 of the companies listed. More techs and wealth will allow for more companies to spawn, but the conditions will become harder and harder for each successive company. The AI will also hopefully spawn companies, with them being limited to some middling and great powers. Middling countries should have companies so they can fight against foreign companies spreading into their land. Smaller countries with low literacy should not have companies and will have to solve the influence of the foreign companies through diplomatic incidents or changes in laws.
WHAT ABOUT COMPETITION
Countries should not have 2 agricultural companies (unless one is domestic and the other is foreign). Countries should only be able to have 1 company of each type. Competition is brought about by comparing the ownership of the TARGET GOOD that the company has to the ownership they do not have/building that they do not own a majority ownership in. Companies will have buffs, be able to ignore MAPI, and buy inputs from themselves, but they will have to face government regulation, scaling expenses, expenses from requiring more petite workers, and the non-company industrialist out building them, taking potential profits. and decreasing their horizontal integration score. Additionally, companies compete with foreign companies, who might have higher competitiveness or better leaders. Therefore, companies will have to face the government, non-company industrialist (who should generally have more freedom and construction point than the company), foreign governments, and foreign companies.
WHAT IS COMPETITIVENESS AND MOMENTUM
Competitiveness represents how innovative companies are. This is determined from the amount of competition, horizontal integration, and traits of the leaders. Competitiveness is most crucial for an Electronic good company but it should be a feature for all the companies. Competitiveness is essential for fighting foreign companies. Competitiveness allows for a feature that benefits small and rising companies when they have to fight large foreign companies. This will also be connected to momentum.
Momentum the predicted health of the company. Companies that have high competitiveness, high horizontal integration, leaders with good traits, and strong budgets will have high momentum. This will boost income and horizontal integration. This represents a snowball effect that companies face. In contrast, low momentum will quickly cause companies to fall apart. An economic downturn destroying the budget, low competitiveness, alcoholic leaders, and more will cause a sharp decrease in momentum. This will lower cause even sharper decreases in the spread of the company. Additionally, low enough momentum will cause the company’s spread reversing. Momentum should be a result of other factors and make the company weak to opposing forces, rather than automatically destroying the company.
WHAT ARE REGULATIONS
I have mentioned REGULATIONS several times throughout this proposal. Regulations are not just basic laws. Regulations differ from laws as they do not need to go through the law passage system. Instead, they pass instantly as long as the leader or ruling party supports it. The limit to these regulations is that the popularity of the leader’s interest group determines how quickly they can pass another one. Additionally, certain interest groups will support these regulations more than others. Landowners will allow the easy passage of any regulations that favor agriculture or extraction companies, while having a landowner as the leader will disallow any regulation limiting their power. A possible exception can be if the leader of the company has certain traits or if a party demands for regulation or deregulation. To summarize, regulations (and deregulation for regulation that support companies) should be special laws that only relate to aiding or limiting certain aspects of a company. They require for the government to be in support of these laws, either the leader or the leading party (up for consideration, but they will never require the long process of passing the laws). Regulations are only limited by cooldowns, which can be lessened.
Side Note: Possibly tie regulation cooldown to popularity of the leader. A highly popular leader having much smaller cooldowns.
Secondly, regulations should not be applied to all companies. Agricultural companies should have different regulations than consumer good companies. One example of a regulation would be the Pure Food and Drug act for agricultural companies. Regulations should only apply to the specific company in question and not towards all companies.
To make it easier on the player, there might be a general “REGULATIONS” law that will affect all companies equally by lowering horizontal integration or lowering momentum. This can be done if the industrialists are gaining too much power or if all the companies are led by leaders that are causing high unrest. This is a normal law and needs normal passage. This law will act like a hammer towards companies and allow for much more damaging regulations.
Thirdly, foreign companies should have similar regulations. They are an exception because we already have laws that limit outside economic influence. Those laws would still find use. Deregulations could be used to empower domestic companies and oppose foreign companies. It would allow the player then to regulate a too powerful domestic company. Regulating a domestic company being much easier as regulating foreign companies could come with opinion maluses from the foreign companies’ nation of origin or even infamy.
Lastly, regulations can be anything small like increasing the income of a company by giving a tax cut to anything as big as splitting a company apart after passing antitrust laws. This can possibly be done by having specific regulations split up into tiers. Higher tiers require much higher cool down. Splitting up a company would be the highest tier and instantly force them to sell a large part of their ownership in states that are not their original. These might work by forcing them to sell until competitiveness reaches a specific point.
WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT BIG COMPANIES
Companies should not be a pure buff to the player. Companies should be a double edged sword that can supercharge free and capitalistic economies, but also risk these companies becoming dominated by the industrialists. As the competitiveness of a company goes down, depending on the leader trait, the company will start to make more negative/monopolistic moves. These actions can start by simply decreasing wages, refusing to ever raise wages to employees, to creating artificial shortages of goods to increase their profits and discourage the building of more of the target good. Additionally, monopolizing companies might also stop contributing research points to the player or make certain research more expensive. The purpose of this is to show how dangerous monopolization is and to make companies a danger that the player will want to regulate or totally destroy.
Companies should also create political dangers. One danger would be companies turning the country into an oligarchy. This can be done by the leaders greatly boosting the strength of their respective parties and supporting their parties in elections. Another possibility is for companies to create trade unions at an easier rate than normal buildings. A good leader with positive traits will want to increase wages and take hostile actions less often. While a dangerous leader, who might have better traits for spreading the company, would be more hostile and create more trade unions due keeping wages low. Companies should produce more trade union members and have them massively more politically active.
Companies will also be a danger for foreign countries. Companies, especially the agricultural companies, should greatly strengthen the landowners and even petition governments to change laws. They strengthen the landowners and make it harder for many smaller nations to modernize. Countering these companies will require the countries to kick them out, close trade, or create a company powerful enough to rival them. Companies will allow for a massive generation of wealth for the weaker countries, development of certain industries, and improve relations between the target nation and the nation where the company spawned.
WHY THIS FAVORS TALL AND MEDIUM PLAY STYLES
An important aspect about this game is making sure that overly big powers are not too favored. I believe that it is crucial to make sure that middling and even smaller countries have a chance to punch above their weight. This company rework allows smaller countries, that are low on resources, to receive a great boost to many fields. While huge countries already have all the resources required, this will allow small countries to be able to ride the boost that the companies provide to higher heights. Additionally, middling powers will also have a way to profit from bigger powers. This would be done when a middling power starts a company that faces a foreign company with low competitiveness and low momentum. The new company will be able to easily kick out foreign economic influence and even spread to the country that the foreign company came from. This will make middling powers have gameplay around founding as many companies as possible and making sure they stay strong and competitive. This might do well to simulate Imperial Japan’s zaibatsu.
WHAT DO COMPANIES OCCUPY
If performance is an issue, I would settle with each company having an entire state. What this means is that once a company reaches a percentage of ownership in a province, that province will be “owned by that company.” That will stop other companies from buying ownership in that state unless it has high enough horizontal integration, momentum, and competitiveness. States should generally be dominated by one company with companies rarely fighting for states unless strong conditions are found, such as one company receding and having bad stats.
FOREIGN COMPANY SPREAD REVISITED
I talked about foreign companies spreading at multiple points, but I will summarize my thoughts here. Most companies should start as domestic and not spread until they are rich enough, have a high horizontal integration, and see massive potential in a foreign country. A prerequisite might be that the normal industrialists(or landowners) have already started building in the foreign countries. These companies will then start spreading to the foreign provinces. To represent the bureaucracy cost of having foreign buildings, foreign ownership should be slightly less profitable. The existence of foreign companies would also massively boost the competitiveness of their opposing domestic companies.
TECHNOLOGY SYSTEM REVISITED
I have mentioned the technology system earlier on. I will summarize the system here. Certain factories will have, what I called, “research departments.” This represents how research and development was crucial for companies. The research departments either give you research points or discount specific techs. This system is crucial because it moves research away from just spamming universities. Instead, the player will want the companies to improve the economy but also produce more research points, The research departments will cost the companies upkeep. Research departments will contribute to competitiveness , with innovative leaders spending more money to increase the size of the departments and therefore increasing competitiveness, and a poor leader will decrease this to improve profits even more, lowering innovativeness. Additionally, poor economic circumstances might also lead to the reduction of the research departments. Hopefully this new system will enable a new method of research production.
COMMAND ECONOMIES (Draft ideas)
Command economies should either not have companies or have companies that cost scaling bureaucracy. The government should also choose the leaders and have positive traits decreased in terms of effect. This either represents a 5 year plan type system or be a vector of attack where industrialists would slowly gain their strength back if you use these companies. The companies would allow command economies to stay strong and have high research without needing to invest even more into universities, but it would weaken their political position.
I hope that any of my suggestions are looked at. Thank you for the game and best of luck.
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