1 Start a company. Take over the world.
Contents
1. When you re new to the game it might seem like the cards aren t very powerful But there are cards and then there are cards The more powerful cards are rarer so make sure you always keep your hand open for drawing new cards every year Before the end of the year go through and get rid of the cards you won t use so that you can be prepared to receive the good cards Remember success preparation meets opportunity A card that gives you a 30 million grant from the government can help turn things around in a hurry But if you don t have any card slots open you ll never get that card Hopefully these tips will help you on your way to becoming a master at The Corporate Machine Brad Wardell designer of The Corporate Machine 35 36 Stardock Entertainment St k 17292 Farmington RD Livonia MI 48152 United States of America 372. The Corporate Machine In The Corporate Machine control of a region gives you advantages in the region you are in plus in the regions surrounding that region Regions with distribu tion centers regions with the big bluish buildings give you a huge bonus in that region and surrounding regions if you control them How much can this make a difference If you click on the bonus button on the top right hand corner by the mini map you can see that region adjacencies can make it so that someone else s product has to be twice as good as yours to kick you out Keep an eye on the competition Information is power in The Corporate Machine Knowing why you are winning or not winning in a given region is what separates new players from expe rienced players The big difference comes into play by directly comparing your product versus your opponent s product If you re not winning in a region here are some of the things to look for 1 Cost How much does your product cost versus your opponent 2 Quality Look at what the region wants versus what your product has in that area It s not enough that your product is overall better than your opponent what matters is whether your product is better in the areas that that region cares about Click on the region demographic button at the bottom and click on the region you want to know about Let s say the scaleis from 1 to 100 Ifthey want ease of use and the bar is very long say 8096 as long as i
3. adjust your production 1f desired click on the little button in the upper right corner of the screen Back on the Site Screen By now your Engineering Lab should have been constructed 28 However we need to check some things out before hiring any workers why waste the money on their salaries when they are not doing anything Click on the lower left plot and start building your first Marketing Office Atthis time you may want to hire an additional 5 10 workers on the expectation that demand has increased while you have been working with other things Return to the Main Map by clicking on Done or on the mini map near where your site is highlighted Back on the Main Map By now you ve investigated two regions your initial region and the one you started investigating before going to the Site Map Click on another region adjacent to your first and investigate it as well Ifthis is your first time playing now might be a good time to pause the game while you learn what the inhabitants of these regions want Click on any of the regions that you ve currently researched Click the Region button on the bottom toolbar The window pane in the lower right of the screen contains the Regional Desires for that region Reliability Performance etc By researching these traits you can improve your product and make it more attractive to different regions The longer the bar in this window the more the regions desire t
4. are trying to make the game fun not cruel afterall Specifically you have to manufacture products and sell them into enough regions of the world so that you can eventually achieve an effective monopoly in your given market To do this you ll need of course to build factories to make your products research centers to improve your products and keep the reasonably competitive build mar keting buildings to create awareness and manipulate the perception of your product and that of your opponent s product as well as build numerous other buildings that enhance your ability to do these sorts of things In order to win you ll have to achieve some sort of balance of these things You may make the better mousetrap but the mice won t be coming unless you have some effective advertising for them and have it available in quantity in their local mouse hole for their convenience The Object of the Game The object ofthe game is to conquer the world You must become the undis puted market leader This means you must hold a certain per centage ofthe market depending on the number of competitors at the time This works out to be 70 if there are 2 players 65 if there are 3 players 60 if there are 4 players 55 if there are 5 players or more System Requirements Windows 95 98 NT 2000 DirectX supported SVGA video card Pentium 100 Pentium 166 or better recommended 16 MB RAM Sound card recommended Internet connection or IPX n
5. improve the quality of my prod uct specifically in areas that people in the regions I m in care about There are a few traits in The Corporate Machine which are subtle and few take advantage of them In the computer market make sure you remember to decrease the number of manufacturing hours On the accessory video card you can bring the time to produce from 22 hours to 14 hours with very little expense The monitor is another one that is good to bring down quickly One of the trickier issues in The Corporate Machine s computer market is how to raise aesthetics It s not straight forward but you can click on the case and change the size of it The smaller the case the higher the aesthetics value of it goes To get to those smaller cases you have to research techs to decrease the size of your components Look carefully at how much gain you get by improving a technology Look at the number of units actually increased Sure you can increase the reliability of your computer s memory but it doesn t have much impact on the computer s overall reliability Don t spend 3 years researching something that only adds a few points to your overall quality Fear Uncertainty and Doubt These are the friends of the marketer There s one rule in The Corporate Machine s marketing Bigger is better if you can afford it A TV ad campaign may cost you 10 million to produce but it only requires 2000 more marketing resources to maintain So don t fool yoursel
6. screen s only user input is in changing the price ofthe product which will allow you to observe changes in demand But there was a method to our madness we wanted to discourage people from using the hiring and firing of employees as just another slider If you re grossly not meeting demand or grossly over producing then adjusting your labor force makes sense but if you re close to matching demand then modifying the price makes the most sense The user interface does allow you to quickly go back and forth to the site screen where you do hire fire employees Double Click on the top right hand button that lists how many labor points you have and you ll return to the site screen From there you can change your labor force and then double click on the appropriate building you want to go to l7 Engineering Engineers are people too The research screen is where you can create new technologies to be used in your product line On this screen you will see a picture of your product in its current state To the right is information on how long the currently selected tech nology will take to research Below that is a button taht will allow you to begin researching a given technology as well as a progress bar that fills up as you near completing the research Below you will see how your product stacks up compared to your competi tors Remember all products are graded on a curve Your new Pendium II 400 might be fast but if your compe
7. stardock com you ll find lots of add ons links to user based web pages and a lot more Technical Support Technical support can be found by emailing support stardock com There is a website interface for sending in queries that will allow you to obtain the fastest response times http www stardock com techsupp preport html Common Problems My Mouse is moving very jerky on the screen If you re running Windows 95 or NT your graphics card may have limited DirectX support To get around this run The Corporate Machine with the MOUSE parameter c program files CorpMachine gt machine mouse or you can simply type mouse no quotes into the parameters field in the The Corporate Machine properties from Windows Stardock net just hangs or gives an error when I click on it Sometimes the Internet has a hickup where certain servers are not available for periods of time Just try again later You can also try pinging ent stardock com and see if there is any response My music begins to skip and then the game seems to freeze when I m playing an Internet game Iflatency gets bad enough your send buffer will get full Hit the pause key and wait for everyone to catch up before continuing Try playing the game at a slower speed using the or key 26 Note This portion is still based on an older beta and thus some of the information is not accurate but it should serve as a good start Starting the game The only real
8. strong in Special Resources Some regions have a special characteristic just as the real world Any large corporate executive can tell you that sometimes it doesn t matter how much you sell but where you are selling it at Special resources are primarily used for Direct Action Cards more on that later In The Corporate Machine there are 5 special resources that you can use Labor resource Direct Action Cards that affect your laborers or ability to build will require that you hold regions with this icon Marketing resource Direct Action Cards that relate to influencing the media or the world require this Research resource Direct Action Cards that improve your research steal technology or sabotage research will require that you hold regions with this icon a Underworld resource By holding these regions you will have access to certain types that will be able to do very destructive things to your opponents Political Resources Regions with this symbol are places where local or national capitals are Direct Action Cards that get you unfair favors and bonus s will require that you hold regions with this icon Simi larly Direct Action Cards that allow you to do unfair things to your opponents require these regions as well Demographics The strategic way of winning The Corporate Machine is to understand what people want and making sure they get what they want The buttons at the bottom of the map screen allow yo
9. time is about 300ms But sometimes the Internet will just Freeze up for a few seconds A few seconds is an eternity in an Internet game If things get bad enough the music might start to skip or things may slow down to a crawl or even freeze Don t worry your computer is not crashed Just hit the Pause key to stop the game and let it catch up for a second and then continue The further someone is away from you physically the higher the chances of lag time So before you begin to play people who are on another continent be aware of these things You can greatly reduce these affects by playing the game at Normal or Fast Do not play at higher speeds than that unless you are very comfortable with your connection speed Also note that Computer players tend to actually send out more data that human players This is because well humans are a lot slower than computers at making moves The computer players are thinking and acting all the time They don t forget to hire those Workers to keep up with demand or to keep researching regions So if you have 3 or 4 human players get rid of the AI players if you can again unless you are pretty comfortable with your connection Please keep in mind that Stardock net is a public forum where people from many parts of the world are on at the same time and are of different ages Please keep in mind that there are real people behind those names The anonymous nature of the Internet tends
10. to make people forget that courtesy and kindness are still important traits Choosing your market The Corporate Machine only comes with the computer market but other markets will be made available shortly after release by Stardock Stardock Devel oper Network members and third parties in the form of Dynamic Industry Modules DIMs Choosing a world You can pick where you want to play A list of different worlds are available to choose from Your First Game Welcome to The Corporate Machine Okay this is the tough part This is one of those times we wish we d cloned some already successful game put on some neat graphics and gone out the door since everyone would know how to play it Of course the TAB key brings up the map in these games Unfortunately there s no other game quite like this so we ll have to go into some detail here You start the game with a single office which already has a garage This is your base of operations Because the world map has randomly generated statis tics starting in a third world region of the real world doesn t mean anything here as the poorest nation inAfrica in the real world could be the best place in the world in The Corporate Machine Understanding the map The The Corporate Machine map is divided into regions Depending on which demographic the buttons at the bottom of the screen you have selected the re gions are color coded to reflect the data ofthat demographic You clic
11. your LAN If you want to play a private internet game you can do so by creating a network game and telling other players what your IP address is If you are ona Windows 95 NT LAN your game will be listed when your friends select the Join network game Stardock net Many games will boast that they can play on the Internet but most of them require you to jump through a lot of hoops to get an Internet game going The Corporate Machine has Stardock net which is probably about as easy as you can get to find Internet games Just logon to the Internet start The Corporate Machine and click on Stardock net From there you will be able to talk to other players and join games You cannot join games in progress Games that are grayed out are games that are in progress The left side of the screen shows all the people in your particular channel If you are very new at The Corporate Machine and the Lobby channel is relatively full you might want to go to the Beginner s channel Please keep in mind that it s no fun to be creamed by an expert Many Internet games have become un fun because experts will pretend to be new at the game and slaughter a newcomer If you ve become an expert you ll be able to find other experts in the other channel Dealing with Latency Lag time or latency is the amount of time it takes for your computer to send data to another computer and get a signal back If you are using a modem a typical ping
12. your own corporate empire and crushing your competitors in a particular market that you choose to play in Business is War In the real world things aren t fair The best product rarely wins The most original concept rarely gets created and often times hard work amounts to very little If these realities bother you then you should close this booklet and take this game back to the store right now Nevermind worrying about us we ve already marked you with a highly sophisticated tracking device that is integrated into the paper of this user manual We ll find you shortly However if you are prepared to face the business realties of the world you ll probably like this game or at least like it enough not to use the CD as a frisbee for a few months The Corporate Machine is about starting your own company and building a corporation that can survive in today s competitive world Because of the complexities of the business world we ve had to cut a few cor ners For instance you do not have to hire accountants to take care of your corporate taxes or any of that sort of thing And while there are some pretty dastardly deeds that can be accom plished via the direct ac i CA tion cards we do not go Aig ths into some of the minutia PES such as having to send the buyer at your company s wholesale distributor a ste reo to give to his kid so that he ll talk to the purchasing guy at the local super store into carrying your product We
13. Start a company Take over the world Lit Soft Introduction 0299 vi 9 ev RAUCHEN UR 3 The Object of the Game eee 4 System Requirements eee eee eens 4 Starting A New Game eee 5 Multiplayer Gaming ellen 6 Playing the game ellen 8 Understanding the map ee eee 8 Units on the Map oo voe AVE rr aden GEA d 1 Command Buttons eee 12 Navigating the map llle 12 Building Up Your Campus eee 14 Manufacturing 4 2 9 sp d Rl RR read res 16 Engineers are people too clle I Marketers aren t people well okay maybe 19 World Events 29 9 wx eu aie a ale aw mpm XR nie ERU 2 Direct Action Cards 4 a da e ye wees 22 Keyboard Help oe 22 ub A ESTIS 24 www stardock com leen 25 Getting Updates ce hl nr Rt ee 25 Technical Support sie es eS UR xe RR RI es 25 Walkthrough 222 Se ee ES ER eine Po ae E E 26 Credits Artwork Alex Gounaropoulos Designed by Bradley Wardell Bradley Wardell Mike Duffy Copyright 2000 Stardock Progr g Entertainment Bradley Warcell Michael Duffy David Braun Victor Lesperance Introduction Welcome to The Corporate Machine the game of ruthless world conquest via economic domination The Object of the Game The object of the game is to take over the world by building up
14. ay to more subtle ones such as an explosion that takes out one of your buildings 22 Direct Action Cards Doing unto others as you wouldn t want them to do unto you No game or simulation can simulate 100 what the real world behaves like The Corporate Machine is a corporate conquest game that tries to favor action over having too many realistic features For example in the real world companies routinely try to lure away key executives from their competitors This has a devas tating effect on the competitor since brain drain is major reason for a company to lose its competitive edge But in a game or simulator how does one go about simulating this Do you have a game screen that takes you to a special Trip to Seattle on the corporate jet or a list box listing all the different gifts and signing bonus s you could give to a potential executive to get him or her to leave your competitor And if you did put all this into a game would you not then open the door to others features that many would consider just as relevant such as buying up other companies government grants lawsuits patents etc The Corporate Machine s answer to all this comes in the form of Direct Action Cards In a nutshell here s how they work Each card allows you to do a specific task in the game To use that card you must be the market leader in regions that have special resources the regions with the resource icons on them At the top of t
15. decision that needs to be made prior to starting the game are what type of specialty you will be manufacturing market ing or researching Each specialty is twice as efficient at its job than the players of another specialty Depending on your strategies for playing the game you may decide that one specialty better suits your style of gameplay Getting oriented Take a quick look at the popup help items on the main screen These will only appear by default on the easiest level but then can be recalled any time by hitting F2 Similar screens will also appear in your marketing site research and production windows more about those later Use the adjust the speed of the game Initially Fast or Faster are probably the best choices though you ll quickly find that multi player games become a lot more challenging when playing on Fastest or higher Press the Pause key upper right of your keyboard at any time to pause the game Press it again to resume play Let s Play Click on a region adjacent to your initial starting region and press Investigate Region in the right hand panel The Investigate Region Button Click on the Site button on the right hand Sereen side not the one toward the bottom to enter the Site screen 27 Site Screen Click on your garage This is where you initially manufacture your product Use the slider to hire some workers 20 should be good to start Click on the empty plot in the up
16. etwork required for multi player games 28 8k connection or better Double speed or faster CD ROM drive Mouse Getting Started Starting A New Game When you load up The Corporate Machine you are presented with these choices Start a new company Continue your last company Load a previous company Create a Multiplayer Game Join a Multiplayer Game Stardock net Starting A New Company So you ve decided to go into business for yourself When you choose this option you are starting a single player game Now you must decide what your specialty is Manufacturing There s an old saying Being there is half the battle Manufacturing experts play to be in as many places as possible Your laborers will be able to produce twice as many goods per employee when compared to non manufacturer types The game isn t won by having the best product it is won based on who makes the most money and the person who can supply the world has a big advantage General Motors would be a good example of a manufacturing expert Marketing If you choose to play from the marketer s point of view you re going to be playing to win by controlling perception Your Marketers will be twice as produc tive which means you ll be able to create marketing campaigns faster and have more of them Your technology may not be the best and you may have problems meeting demand but you will be the master at controlling the perception of your products and those of your oppo
17. f into thinking that you can go and create a bunch of little marketing campaigns and over whelm your opponent This is not usually the way to go late in the game Early on it is probably a good way to go but eventually you will want to kill off those old marketing campaigns and create new ones 34 Deciding when to create negative marketers versus positive ones is also a realtrick Basically don t make negative marketers unless you re in second place unless you re in a multiplayer game and you just want to mix things up Pricing Every top The Corporate Machine player will tell you that the key to victory is to overprice your products whenever you can Just think to yourself What would Bill Gates do in a time like this The smart companies will price their stuff as high as possible Don t worry about what your opponents are pricing their stuff at unless it s cutting into your sales too much Try to maintain at least a 20 profit margin at least Real companies try to maintain somewhere between 1596 and 3596 profit margins and you need to do that too Many people will slowly go out of business because they keep lowering their price to the point where they aren t making enough money to compete Better to be in fourth place but very profitable than in second place and making no money at all Only if someone is on the verge of winning should you really worry about what place you are in worry more about how much money you re making The Cards
18. fice site is where you build up the infrastructure necessary to conquer the world By clicking on the blank areas and then pressing the upgrade button you can if you have enough money build new buildings or upgrade existing ones in order to increase productivity and make room for more employees At the bottom right you can see your morale Ifyou go in debt company morale will start to go down as people begin to worry about their jobs If your morale goes to 0 you go out ofbusiness Not being the market leader in the region your site is located will also lower morale Luckily you can improve your morale by building recreational buildings or at the very least making sure you build in a decent recreational area This section will discuss the various buildings Factories Your garage which can be upgraded to a factory and beyond is where your products are manufactured By single clicking on the building you can hire and fire employees by adjusting the slider control The little red area on the left where you hire fire employees displays the minimum number of employees you have to keep on hand to function If you double click on a building you are taken directly to that building s screen if applicable 15 Sales Office Initially your site will only be able to sell to the region that itis in In effect your office site will behave like a non mobile sales executive except it only sells to the region it is in and not the surrounding regio
19. ght Go back to the Main Map and continue investigating regions adjusting production and researching new components until your first marketing unit appears it will look like a small card in your home region Click on this marketing unit and move it to a neighboring region by using the RMB on the target region just like your sales units Conclusion By now you ve gotten a firm start on the basics of Business Tycoon Practice makes perfect As you continue playing you will quickly get the hang of manipulating all the various facets of the game Other Resources Visit http www stardock com to find links to sites dedicated to the strategy of Business Tycoon Business Tycoon is a game that is very easy to play but very hard to master 32 Mini StrategyGuide Introduction Don t you hate buying a game and then having to put out another 20 to buy some strategy guide just to get some basic strategies down We sure do and for that reason we re including this mini strategy guide with the game Strategy guides are good at getting into great depth in the game but some basic ideas on how to play and win shouldn t cost money So here are some different strategies at playing The Corporate Machine The Regions Pick the regions you target very carefully Most contemporary strategy games rely more on your fast reflexes than through analytical evaluation of your situation This isn t a bad thing but it s not the way to succeed at
20. hat attribute w green bars being the most desirable Check the other regions you ve investigated as well Their desires are relatively unimportant during the first year or two of the game since your products have not been enhanced yet but you will quickly find that they will buy a lot more of products that they like vs your competitors By now you should have investigated your third region if you did not pause the game if you did unpause now Start investigating a fourth region Goto the Production Screen by clicking the Produce button 29 Production Screen How is your demand relative to supply If you are under or overproduc ing and click the button at the top of the screen to Jump to the Site Map Site Map Adjust your production as needed based on the info you just got off the Production screen If you have more than 3 million now might be the time to upgrade your Garage to increase your manufacturing capacity If you do not do this now keep in mind the fact that you will need to upgrade at some point When is now up to you but the sooner the better if your demand is higher than you can supply Another choice that can be made now or later is whether to invest 1 million in a Sales Building center top plot This building functions much like your salespersons on the main screen more about them in a minute By building Sales buildings you can sell to the regions surrounding your site without needing a sales e
21. he card you can see what resources this card specifically needs The types resources the card requires to use will depend on what type of action the card does For example exploiting child labor would require you to be the market leader in a red region which signifies that it is a very poor region of the world You begin the game with 3 Direct Action Cards At the beginning of each year you will receive a new direct action card up until you obtain 7 after which you won t get any more until you have used some At the beginning of each year the regions with special resources that you are the market leader in go into your resource pool When you have enough resources to use a card it will light up and allow you to use it Be careful how you use the card however If you re in the lead for example you probably don t want to use cards that your opponents will get after wards If you re losing your best bet is to try to pick on the winner if possible 23 24 Keyboard Help Key Function Esc Options Screen F1 Help Screen F2 Context Sensitive Tutorial F3 Sales Statistics Tab Send message to other players Pause Pause the game Speed up game Slow down game www stardock com Getting Updates While we do not expect that you ll need any updates to The Corporate Ma chine you may want to take advantage of the free updates that Stardock will pro vide over the course of your use of the game At http www
22. itially since you have few researchers you can only increase the attributes by a small amount without requiring enormous amounts of time While you are learning you may want to limit individual research projects to somewhere between 15 and 30 weeks duration Later as you upgrade your engineering labs you ll be able to research things more quickly If you start researching something and change your mind while it is still in the Research Queue the listing to the lower right select it and hit the X to prevent that particular project from ever being started Note that you cannot cancel the current research project so be sure not to start one that will take many years Return to the Main Map by clicking Done Main Map By now the sales executive in your home region should have a little number next to him This represents the number of sales executives that are in a particular region As your corporation increases in revenue earned you will gain additional sales executives Click on your sales executive Notice how the display on the right changes to display him and the attributes of the product he is currently selling If there is more than one sales executive in a region you can select them simply by clicking on them notice how the graphic becomes highlighted Any selected sales executives or marketing units more on them in a minute will move to any region that you have researched when you click the right mouse button RMB in that regio
23. k on a given region to select it which brings up its statistics into the two windows on the right Not only are the regions color coded they may have an icon of some type on them These icons can include Distribution Centers Getting into distribution is very important in any industry Your sales executives are in charge of making sure your product is available in the region it is in and 2 regions distant in every direction However being the market leader in a region that has a distribution region will improve your adjacency bonus You see being market leader gives you a 10 bonus to your demand value which we ll discuss later in every region adjacent But being the market leader in a region with a distribution center gives you a 30 bonus which can be very important if you fall behind technologically and need to use marketers to capture that region Distribu tion Centers increase in cost as more are built in the game by any player Hint Build them in regions you feel you need to hold that are already leading in Economic Centers The little Star symbol on the map represents an economic center These regions thanks to intense corporate sponsered empowerment zones and community funding are much more wealth with much stronger economies than most other re gions You can build these zones but be warned each one gets more expensive The more economic centers there are the more they cost Hint Build them only in regions you are
24. mpaigns to im prove the perceived styling of your product which will help but this only goes so far ESI Qualities When it s time to build a site you need to decide what you plan to do there The quality of the regional labor can greatly affect the productivity of your site Regions with a high labor value will allow you to manufacture products faster Similarly regions with a high engineering and marketing score will yield better employees of that type The recreational value believe it or not is possibly the most important trait since that indicates how nice of a place the region is The nicer the place the easier it is to keep your good employees and keep morale up The cost of living affects how much your employees cost These attributes can make up to a 30 difference in your productivity so pay heed to them 11 Units on the Map Sales Executives Your sales executives are essentially the economic version of your armies They are the ones who make sure your products are available in the region they are in and 2 regions out in every direction When you click on your sales executive the one that has your color it ll say Yes By right clicking on a destination region your sales executive will move to that destination Choosing where to move your sales executive is crucial to your success Use the demographics screens to determine the best place to move your sales executives Your company automatically gains a new sales executi
25. n Try moving him to another region now Your sales executives will sell to the region they are currently in as well as surrounding regions though at a decreasing level of effectiveness the more distant those regions are Now might be a good time to click the Share button on the right This will show you who is selling products in the current region the number of products sold and the number of each product de 31 manded by the population If the number sold is less than the number demanded you may need to increase production This might also be a good time to consider dropping your selling price as you research cheaper and cheaper components Start investigating some additional regions Notice that they become more expensive to research the further they are from your site Now we come to the most misunderstood but most powerful units in the game marketers Return to the Site Map hire some marketers end enter the Marketing screen remember how to get to screens from the Site Map Marketing Screen Here is where you will develop the marketing campaigns to assure your utter domination of the world As you upgrade your marketing buildings additional types of marketing campaigns positive and negative will become available For now think about the Regional Desire of the areas around your initial site and develop a radio campaign based on the desired attributes Click on the attribute on the left and Create Campaign on the ri
26. nents Microsoft is the classic marketing strong company Engineering Choose Engineering if you want to play the game as someone who is good at developing new technologies Your Engineers will be twice as productive which means you ll be able to research new technologies much faster You may have problems supplying everyone in the world and you may risk being out marketed as well IBM is the ultimate example of an engineering firm Once you ve chosen what your expertise is you ll want to enter in your name and the name of your company From there you ll proceed to the player list screen On the player list screen you choose who you will be playing against The computer players all of their own personalities based on Stardock s advanced SDS AI artificial intelligence engine This means that each player will try a differ ent strategy based on modeling successful human opponent strategies By clicking on the arrow buttons on the left you can choose to add or delete computer players from the game When you are done press Start and the game will begin Multiplayer Gaming outside Stardock net Local Area Network LAN games Starting a game on your LAN is the easiest way just choose IPX as your join game and it will find other The Corporate Machine games on your network If you re creating a new game simply choose to create a new game and wait for others to join If you are running OS 2 Warp you ll need to have TCP IP installed on
27. not fire the marketers that are maintaining your marketing cam paigns so if things get bad for your company you ll need to terminate those campaigns first and then downsize those marketers When you decide to create a marketing campaign you have to decide what kind of campaign to create a positive one or a negative one 20 Positive Marketing Campaigns Positive marketing campaigns are the most common and least risky to do In essence they are campaigns designed to improve the perception of a given quality of your product Of course there are different levels of marketing cam paigns Each levelis more powerful than the last but more expensive to create and maintain To get access to the higher levels of marketing you have to upgrade your marketing building Negative marketing campaigns require one level higher of an upgrade to create than a positive one Negative Marketing Campaigns Negative Marketing Campaigns are more powerful than positive ones but also much riskier With a negative campaign you target a specific competitor and depending on what level the marketing campaign is damage the perception of that opponent s products The risky part is in the fact that you re not actually helping yourself just hurting a specific competitor If you pump enough money into a negative campaign you can eliminate your opponent in a region ofthe world But if you re not the 72 company in that region that competitor is merely replaced by an
28. ns Sales offices will increase the radius of sales Each upgrade to the sales office increases the radii of surrounding regions to which you can sell without a sales executive up to a maximum of four regions away Research Office Your research office is where products are improved as you invent new technologies to introduce to your products By single clicking on it you can hire fire engineers by moving the slider on the left side ofthe screen Double clicking on the building willtake you to the Engineering screen Marketing Office By building a marketing office you gain the ability to create marketing campaigns after hiring marketers of course As you create marketing campaigns the number of marketers necessary to maintain that campaign increases Double clicking on the building will take you to the Marketing screen Happy Fun Land Recreational buildings you create allow you to increase morale at your site Though the buildings may seem expensive this is quickly offset by the gains in the productivity of your workers And remember do not taunt Happy Fun Land Training Center The best way to get the most out of your employees is to build an on site training center which Each level of training center increases your employee s pro ductivity by 2596 You ll find it virtually impossible to win at higher levels against the Alor against an experienced human player unless you ve built at least a couple of these Company Stores Com
29. other Strategies for Marketing While entire books have been written on this topic in Entrepreneur Gold it is effective to use your marketing campaigns like you would commando units Send them to regions that you feel you strategically must have Whether that be regions in which you have offices in regions that have special resources that your direct action cards require regions that are very wealthy and economically strong or enemy regions in which you want to hurt your enemy s morale the decision is up to you 21 World Events Losers sure are lucky Well at least they are in The Corporate Machine A typical The Corporate Machine game may last 20 to 30 game years During that time a lot of important world events may occur that will affect the course of the game Strangely enough events tend to work to help the company that is in last place or hurt the companies that are leading A typical example would be an economic recession that seems to be at its worst in the regions that the leader is making the most money An economic explosion on the other hand would seem to take place more often than not in regions where the companies that are hurting are still leading in There are lots and lots of different events that occur in the game and many you won t see until after playing the game for many months Some events may just give government grants to a particular player which is a pretty straight forward monetary transfer all the w
30. pany stores and other kinds of perks are a great way of getting away with not having to pay your employees so much You d be surprised how much a conviently located store for your employees will lower the employee s costs in time and money and thus save you from having to pay them so much Intelligence Buildings The phrase Know thy enemy is as true in business as it is in war Each time you upgrade this building new graphics will become available for you to read on the graphs screen 16 Manufacturing Meeting Demand There are two basic ways of meeting demand Hire or fire employees or modify your price The Manufacturing screen allows you to analyze the demand of your product and change prices By double clicking on the labor points button at thetop right ofthe screen you can return to the site screen Pricing your Product The entry field on the right allows you to change your price Simply enter the price you want and press the Enter key to make the change official Be careful with this as you need to make sure you have enough gross profit to cover your expenses The gross profit of your product is merely how much it takes to build it and does not take into account labor marketing engineering or other costs How to hire fire people quickly from this screen Ifthere are any flaws ofthe user interface of The Corporate Machine this is it You cannot hire or fire employees on this particular screen The manufacturing
31. per right of the site map This is where your research buildings are built Note in the top display that it will cost 6 million for the next upgrade Upgrade the building which actually builds it in this case as soon as you can Double click on the garage to enter the Production Screen Note once a building is constructed you can double click on it to enter the corresponding screen for the building if available Production Screen The production screen is where in many ways whether you win or lose the game is decided Set your prices too high and demand will fall off Sell an inferior product when compared with your competi tion and watch the toads conquer the world as your corporation goes bankrupt Since all products are about equal in the beginning of the game you can overcharge a great deal In the computer market a price of 6500 be sure to hit Enter to make the change official is about right to start with In only a short time In terms of game years you will have to return to this screen and adjust your price to be more competitive But for the initial stages of the game he who has the most money comes out ahead Note the demand on the bottom of this screen and the corre sponding figure for how many units you are producing each period Overproducing is not a big factor initially but you ll want to keep an eye out so that the amount you are supplying 1s relatively close to demand To get back to the Site screen to
32. se buttons will be available Only as you construct the proper buildings will these buttons appear wor Map The main map is where you control all the action From anywhere in the game you can always get back to the main map by pressing this button Pa Factory Screen The factory screen controls all your production On this screen you set your price and can monitor your supply and demand of your product CU Marketing Screen This button will take you to the marketing screen The marketing screen allows you to create campaigns which affect the perception of products and compa nies B Research Screen The research screen is from which you can improve your product and be come more compettitive ntelligence Screen The intelligence building allows you to gather information on you and your opponents Eventually enough intelligence buildings will allow you to see all the region data in the world without having to individually investiage it I Screen This button will take you to the site screen from where you can construct buildings to improve your company 13 Navigating the map To get around the map you can move your mouse to the edges of the screen OS 2 users running the windowed version can move their mouse to the edges of the window to get the map to scroll You can also navigate around the map by clicking on the mini map on the top right hand side 14 Your Office Building Up Your Site Your of
33. t could be and your opponent s ease of use is twice as high as yours he s getting twice as many points overall You could have the most reliable fastest computer out there and if his ease 33 of use it twice yours even if both of you have very poor ratings he s probably going to win that region 3 Adjacency bonuses Click on the bonus button on the middle right of the screen If his bonuses are much higher than yours that means you need to be that much better This is used to represent the cold hard unfair world Ifall was fair we wouldn t be stuck with Windows 95 we d be using Amigas or Macs or OS 2 or something probably But market momentum is something you have to deal with 4 Supply If your product is better cheaper and better known in the area make sure that you are supplying their demand If you are not producing enough product that means the store shelves in some places are empty 5 Marketing Check to see if there are any marketing campaigns nearby A TV advertising campaign can more than double the perceived value of an opponent s product 6 Direct Action Cards Pay close attention to what cards are played They can knock you out of a region or make your prestige go way down or worse Research Research Research It s important that you research new technologies for your product as soon as you can When I play I usually alternative between researching technologies that lower my cost to product and technologies that
34. t radio buttons Be wary of doing this though a lot of new players will try to just sell to the place that has the best average of both traits If your product is relatively inexpensive sell it to places that have a high wealth value If your product is expensive concentrate your sales executives in the high economy regions Most players won t be able to really meet demand so there is a strategy in picking the places where you will be most competitive As with all graphs lighter colors are better EE Share 10 To see how well you are doing from a market share standpoint click on the share button The lighter the color the better your market position is Wealth and Econony will tell you how much you can potentially make in a region But sales will tell you not just what regions are the busiest sales regions but you can look and see where a particular opponent is making all their money DA Desires Possibly the most important demographic in the game the region will tell you what traits they value the most The longer the bar the more they care For example let s say you re general motors and the computer player is Ford motor Your car has a great engine and thus is a high performance car but is somewhat weak on its styling If you re trying to sell to a region that values styling and Ford has a product that is higher in that trait they ll probably sell better even if their product is somewhat more expensive You can use marketing ca
35. titor is selling a Pendium III 600 then your perfor mance rating is probably going to be a C or lower because it s relative to your opponents On the left side are two lists The top list is the technologies currently available The ones available here and now are colored white The ones that will become available due to what is currently being researched will show up as gray The second list box is your research queue You can place a few technologies into the queue and they will automatically be researched in that order You can empty the queue if you make a mistake You can speed up your research efforts by hiring more engineers or improv ing the productivity of your existing engineers via new buildings on your site 18 19 Marketers aren t people well okay maybe In essence marketing is about controlling perception The marketer be lieves that perception is reality However if you ever spoke to a marketer he or she would likely say that their job is educating the public The perception is reality mantra turns out to work pretty well in practice For example in the PC industry some years ago the Intel Pentium chip had a floating point bug that caused calculation errors in extremely rare cases In practice no one ever saw this problem or would be affected by it or at least so few people that it didn t matter Unfortunately for Intel they lost control of perception which rapidly create a scenario where Intel ended up gi
36. u to view the map in different ways that will aid your decision making Na Leader The market leader demographic allows you to see who is 1 in a given re gion Unlike traditional war games winning a region isn t an all or nothing proposi tion it just means that that player is making more money in that region than anyone else What s the advantage of being the market leader then First off it gives you an advantage for sales in adjacent regions Secondly if there are any special resources in that region they are available to you The color ofthe region corresponds to the player s chosen color ES Penetration For all you would be Bill Gates out there the first thing you have to realize is that the key to winning in any business isn t technology it isn t even marketing necessarily it s distribution Your ability to get your products onto the shelves or whatever it takes to get your widget in front of a potential customer This demo graphic will display how good your market penetration is The lighter the color the better There are two important factors in how much money you will make in a given area Their economy and their wealth The wealth of a region is essentially how much potential money there is to be made there Economy is how rich or poor the people there are China would be a good example of where there is a lot of money to be made but the people there are poor You can combine the graphs together by clicking on both ligh
37. ve at the beginning of the year if your company has grown enough in revenue You can click on your opponents sales executives to get an idea of what they are selling and how much they are pricing it for The market penetration that sales executives give does not come instantly It takes 3 years for you to gain full market penetration so don t expect to jump into a region with the wonder product and begin making the big sales Marketing Campaigns Marketing Campaigns behave as the commando troops for your com pany You send them to regions of the world that you feel you absolutely must control To use one simply click on one and send it to where you want it to go by right clicking on the destination You create marketing campaigns by building a marketing office and hiring marketers to create the campaigns You can hit F1 for details on each unit uim Your Site The minitature version of your office site on the map is where you have a site You can build new sites by clicking on the build button Each new site costs more to build than the last one due to higher overhead of inter site communications The small stick like buildings on the map that are color coded represent your opponents sites Enemy Sites Your competitors will also of course be building offices and factories When you see a little flag in a region that means an opponent has an office site there 12 Command Buttons When you begin your game not all the
38. ving a free replacement to anyone who asked in order to maintain the perception that they aren t a bunch of greedy corpo rate types Car commercials rarely focus on what the car actually does Instead they try to create manage the perception of what type of person uses the car Ev ery market has its own style of trying to manage perception but when it gets right down to it it is perception not reality that is being manipulated Entrepreneur Gold works the same way On your site you can build a marketing office When you hire mar keters they add marketing resource points to your company s resource pool You use these resource points to create marketing campaigns from this screen But here s where things get tricky when you create a marketing campaign it doesn t just go off and do its own thing you have to keep marketers on that particular campaign In other words as you create campaigns some of your marketers are used up in maintaining those campaigns leaving fewer to create new ones Eventually all your marketers will be used up in maintaining your existing marketing campaigns leaving not free ones to create new ones At that point you either have to build more marketing buildings to hire more marketers or kill off some of the marketing campaigns already in play The number of resource points you have is based on how many marketers you have plus other factors that affect the productivity of your marketers such as morale You can
39. xecutive in the area Click on the Engineering Lab and hire some workers Then double click on the Lab to enter the Research Screen Research Screen The Research Screen is where your engineers work on upgrading components of your product For the default computer market there are seven components plus the case that have attributes that can be improved via research Some components have a larger effect than others on specific attributes For example improving the performance of your CPU the chip to the left of the case will boost performance the most Similarly increasing the ease of use of the operating system the OS 4 box on the right will help lift the overall ease of use ofthe product Researching product upgrades 1s not an exact process Since different regions in the game desire different things remember the Regional Desires indicator on the main map improving one aspect of your product at the expense of another could cost you later in the game Juggling all aspects of the product while simultaneously competing marketing the product investigating new regions upgrading your sites 30 and competing against other players may seem daunting at first but you ll quickly get the hang of things For now recall the Regional Desires of the regions around you If for example they really liked a product s Aesthetics increase the Aesthetics of a component and hit the Research button to start your engineers working In
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