I've just recently bought Cap Plus from GOG and found this thread.
Played yesterday till 2 AM, finished a scenario, and was just itching to contribute here to the discussions =]
As was advised by Zeewolf, you have to keep an eye on blue boxes in the factory. Are they flying out too quickly? If so, I max training&equip spending for that factory AND build another identical factory. As for relinkin the suppliers: Cap Plus has Autolink function but I'm still not used to it. I go the old way. Remember the corp/firm/product filters mentioned in tutorial? I use them ALOT. Right click on product filter, press S, select Silica -- only those who sell Silica will be displayed on the map, nothing else. All you have to do is compare quality/price and select the best one for you. Furthermore, if you dont remeber where YOUR silica mine is, right-click corp filter, select your corp.
Now a question from me. Has anyone played the Techno-sweep scenario? It's a scenario were you have to R&D a product before you can start producing it. Neither me nor AI were able to R&D stuff like dvd player, internet tv, pda -- all the items that were not in the original Cap, although the scenario settings state that standard product setup is used. As a result I 'lost' this scenario. The good thing I got 2000+ score, so a 70 pts bonus was a non-factor ;p
After that I tried China scenario -- and was able to set up R&D to research pda, so I guess the bug is limited to Techno-sweep.

I don't exactly recall that scenario (most of the time, I go free play), but it's true for the whole game that certain hi-tech items can only be researched after some given date in the game.

I just started...I can't figure out how to link stores and farms.

First of all, make sure you've got sales units on the farms, so that they're selling a product for you to link to. Also, if you're growing crops, remember they need time to grow and won't be available immediately. And finally, remember that not all farming products can be sold in stores, but have to be processed first. Milk, for instance, have to be processed into bottled milk at a factory.
If all this is okay, then:
To link to a farm, click on the layout menu in the stores, click on the purchasing unit (or make one), click on "link supplier", click on the farm you want to buy from, and then click on the product you see there and finish with the "link"-button. Just like with factories, et.c.

Perfect, I understand now. Any tips on how to grow your brands? Can you only grow brands you produce, and can you only use the private label on goods you DON'T produce?

Just use the advertising units to grow brands. Remember you can change the amount of money invested in advertising. Invest more money early on, if you can afford it. Cut down on the budget later. Place the advertising unit in the center of the store plan, so it can link to all your sales units if needed. I typically just use local advertising.
Remember that brands are not always important. People generally care less about brands when they buy low cost goods. So don't bother spending tons of money advertising your eggs, for instance.
All your products are your own brands in the first place, so they don't need to have their brands changed.
TBH, I almost never sell products from other companies, so I've never really bothered to use the private label.

For someone as anti-capitalistic as myself, I am surprised at how much I enjoy the game. I love games like SImcity or Baseball mogul that have lots of oppurtunities for number-crunching and things.
I am REALLY, REALLY, REALLY enjoying CapP. I spent nearly SIX hours playing it the other night, and I havn't even relaly grasped the nuances yet!
I love the interface, love the speed it runs at, and in general, I love "grand strategy" games, ones that are large in scope and try to deliver a complete simulation of some particular aspect. That's part of why I love EE, and it's a big part of what I like about CapP. Asside from not having to raise your moeny yourself, IE, having to secure investors, it seems to nail most aspects of economics. I am not sure if there is a fully realized stock market in there, but I know there is some form of one.

If your wondering why CapPlus is better than Cap2 (IMO):
The advantage I saw in CapPlus was the diversity of the world you played in - you had to worry about climate and shipping costs far more than in Cap2. Cap2 broke the gameplay down to cities, and that was it. CapPlus was far more about global opportunities, which made it better IMO.
Now, if you really want a mind-blowing CapPlus strategy (you cannot do this in C2):
If you KNOW you are going to corner the market on a specific product (beds, cigarettes, ect) that will sell out very quickly to either competitors or internal retailers, I suggest building what I call a 'distribution warehouse':
Build multiple factories in a rural setting - anywhere from 3-5 and place them next to eachother. For all the factories EXCEPT for one, build whatever product you are desiring, and set the cost to near-wholesale (maybe 2% profit over CoGS). Also ensure that you are only selling internally as you do not want to sell this cheap to competitors (setting the default to internal helps out here).
Finally, with your last factory, build it like this:
Build 5 purchasing agents and link them to the factories next to this one. Since they are so close, shipping will be negligible. Then build 1 or 2 inventories, and finally 2-3 sales units. Link them properly.
This facility helps optimize your input-output of goods. This distribution warehouse will be the selling agent if you are selling to competitors or yourself. The advantage is your not balkanizing your sales per factory. At higher training levels, you'll want to ensure you have the maximum number of manufacturing nodes and maybe 1 sales area rather than extra sales areas which are usually the bottleneck. The distribution warehouse has at least 2 sales units which usually can handle volume, especially given that you have up to 5 factories linked in selling products to the distribution warehouse.
So whats the point? I need to get a screenshot, but if you do it smartly, the distribution warehouse can make ~$20 million in GROSS PROFIT a month. Yeah, I'd like to see another factory do that :-p

Interesting strategy. A friend of mine talked about something similar. I can definitely see how it would be very cost-effective in the long run, as well as simplifying the process of branching out to new cities.

It is very cost effective in the long run when you are able to meet the demand of 5+ cities using one factory. It really cuts down on a lot of the micro-management hassle of building multiple factories and trying to balance input/output with multiple retail stores.
I *wish* CapPlus had different factory sizes like Cap2, but I guess that is a minor qualm.
I must take back some of what I said: The strategy won't quite net you $20m in gross profit/month from just one distribution point. Given that you will either have the rest of your factories well in the red, or have this one make little money, it becomes dependent on that.
Right now, I have a vertically-integrated system (aka a cartel) for jewelry:
I have 1 gold mine with 5 mining ops feeding 5 factories with raw gold @ $200.00 an ounce. The mine makes ~$3.5 million a month
These 5 factories produce jewelry for a distribution point. Each profit approximately $500k a month. These facilities sell the made jewelry for $350.00
The distribution point then purchases all of the jewelery @ $350.00 and maybe $0.10 shipping a unit, and then sells the jewelry at $475.00. The distribution point makes about $3m a month in profit, with $16 million in revenue.
Total, the expenditures add up to maybe $3 million a month, which is entirely shipping the gold to the factories, and worker salaries. In turn, it grosses $16 million a month. Not only this, demand outstrips supply by about 200% meaning that if I could increase production (by another mine, which is hugely strapped), I could make more, most likely.
*Most* of these operations earn between $7m and $10m profit, depending on the product and the demand. If demand becomes weak for the product, due to competition, you can close off one factory without requiring re-linking or losing any retailers in the process. I find it helps managing a bit better.
Right now, I have a game with about $3 billion in assets, and yearly profits of $700m. I only sell about 10-12 products on the market, hehe.

Great thread, guys. Well worth a necro. I now remember why I found this game so compelling years ago.

Beds are pretty amazing. I find that if you snatch up the best timber spot, invest in a bit of R&D, and advertise your brand, you're able to raise the retail price to maximum (an incredible $1750 per unit!) and still not fully meet demand. That's the time to increase production. At some point a competitor will come in and undercut your price, so you'll have to pull back eventually, but you'll still have the quality and recognition to do just fine. Until that happens you can pile up the cash.

I'm sorry to hear about the changes that were made for Cap2, because they sound like mostly wrong choices.

EDIT: Here's a strategy for the longer term...

If you can grab oil and mineral resources, you can really build an empire. Oil can be turned into plastic, and plastic and mineral resources can be combined to make four different products: detergent, toothpaste, shampoo, and eye shadow. You can build a factory that buys oil and turns it into plastic, and buys mineral resources to combine with the oil. Each factory can produce two of the above products, so with two factories you can produce four products -- enough to fully stock a department store. In this way you can own the entire production chain from start to finish.

Yep, chemical minerals is probably the most important resource in the game. With access to the four products you mentioned (and decent minerals), as well as the beds from early on and maybe some farm products, you should be able to expand into most cities quite easily. Plus you'll need the minerals for other things too.

Is there a way to create a factory with more than one manufacturing unit for a product that requires three purchasing units? If there is I haven't figured out the puzzle yet. It would certainly be nice for sofas, which are a logical step after beds. It's strange that bed factories, requiring only one input resource, can easily support three manufacturing units, but sofas can only fit one.

For my money, this game could stand to have double or triple the number of products, and many more industries to enter. I've always wanted to buy a television station or a newspaper, for example.

I wonder how much the game was limited by the computing power of common CPUs when it first came out. It's capped at 12 cities and 10 competitors, but more would make it more fun, IMO. I don't even like to play with fewer than 10 competitors, because that number makes the stock market far more interesting, among other things.

You mean, to have two manufacturing units produce the same thing (in your example, sofas) from the materials acquired by the same three purchasing units?
I think it should be possible this way. (P=Purchasing unit, M=Manufacturing Unit, I=Inventory Unit /optional, of course/, S=Sales Unit)
P----P
| X |
M M
| X |
P I----S