Posted February 04, 2010
... or at least, the best I've found. Because a business simulation is exactly what this game is. Your resources are money and shares, you win by making more money, usually by buying raw materials, manufacturing products, and selling them in your retail stores.
It's a great game because there are a lot of options. You want to specialise in clothing? Go ahead: start farms to grow cotton and rubber, and to raise wool and leather. You want to assmeble complex products such as cars or computers, with several subcomponents? You want to avoid getting your hands dirty and just sell other players' products, labelled as your own? You want to ignore the business side entirely and just trade on the stock market? You want to research new advanced products? (well, they're kind of old now ...) You can (theoretically) win the game any of these ways. But you'll do better if you understand the meaning of vertical integration, range branding, loss leaders, and (of course) cash flow; this isn't a game that's easy to get to grips with, but nor is real life business.
I played Capitalism II as well, but I prefer Cap Plus. Cap Plus focuses more on the whole world whereas Cap II tends to be more city-level; I like CP's many challenging scenarios; and Cap II doesn't have the concept of some land being more fertile for crop growing, which I missed more than I would have expected.
Cap Plus from GOG runs in DosBox (this is necessary to get round the DRM; yes, I tried running it after booting a DOS prompt). Since my Windows PC is dead slow, I'm running it successfully on my MacBook Pro, using a Mac-wrapped version of DosBox called Boxer.
One more thing: Enlight used to run a Hall of Fame web page on which the shortest recorded times for completion of each of the scenarios was recorded. I wish I could find it now. I only remember the very shortest time, which (I think) was for the "Race Against Time" scenario, which was 5 game days (!!), and the time for the "Global Domination" scenario, which was 16 or 17 game years.
It's a great game because there are a lot of options. You want to specialise in clothing? Go ahead: start farms to grow cotton and rubber, and to raise wool and leather. You want to assmeble complex products such as cars or computers, with several subcomponents? You want to avoid getting your hands dirty and just sell other players' products, labelled as your own? You want to ignore the business side entirely and just trade on the stock market? You want to research new advanced products? (well, they're kind of old now ...) You can (theoretically) win the game any of these ways. But you'll do better if you understand the meaning of vertical integration, range branding, loss leaders, and (of course) cash flow; this isn't a game that's easy to get to grips with, but nor is real life business.
I played Capitalism II as well, but I prefer Cap Plus. Cap Plus focuses more on the whole world whereas Cap II tends to be more city-level; I like CP's many challenging scenarios; and Cap II doesn't have the concept of some land being more fertile for crop growing, which I missed more than I would have expected.
Cap Plus from GOG runs in DosBox (this is necessary to get round the DRM; yes, I tried running it after booting a DOS prompt). Since my Windows PC is dead slow, I'm running it successfully on my MacBook Pro, using a Mac-wrapped version of DosBox called Boxer.
One more thing: Enlight used to run a Hall of Fame web page on which the shortest recorded times for completion of each of the scenarios was recorded. I wish I could find it now. I only remember the very shortest time, which (I think) was for the "Race Against Time" scenario, which was 5 game days (!!), and the time for the "Global Domination" scenario, which was 16 or 17 game years.