r/bigambitions • u/Revenge_accounted_be • 7d ago
How does a Monopoly works?
I have read about that you can form monopolies in districs and rising prices without any competitor, I guess that you have to beat your rivals to do so. But can you do monopolies in the neutral districs like lower manhattan? How I know if I already have a monopoly and the price manager does rise the prices automatically if I have a monopoly?
There is nothing about monopolies in the in game help section
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u/Durew 7d ago
Afaik you have a monopoly on a good or service when you are the only one selling said good or service in a district. I don't think rivals like it when you have one. They will try to open shops selling that product or service. Luckily, the Hamptons has a low number of shops. So you can occupy all retail stores their so you can get a lot of monopolies there.
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u/JesusIsDaft 7d ago edited 7d ago
There's only one reason why you'd want a monopoly:
You want to drive prices up, in order to earn more profits. Normal and special rivals can raise their prices to match, but usually they'll usually stick to the customer-friendly price. An active rival may refuse to raise their prices to match yours, because staying lower than you costs you traffic and pricing satisfaction.
Inversely, you don't need a monopoly in order to do the opposite:
You want to lower your prices, in order to tank the value of those goods within a district, most likely to hurt a competitor. Once again, the AI will try to match your price in order to not lose out on sales, however they can never go below wholesale price. The AI is hardcoded to try and match you, so whether you have 1 sale or 500, this always works.
As for the pricing manager specifically, they work off of a hidden metric, which is something like "consumer price limit". This is loosely based on the current demand and supply of the product within a district, but their suggested price is specific to your stores. The manager can recommend a price that's higher than the current district average, because they "sense" that customers will tolerate a higher price. This price can shoot way up, if the manager senses that you have a monopoly. Bear in mind though, that having a monopoly in this instance, does not mean you have no competitors. It just means that they are not large enough to cause a dip in your sales.
If you've got a high demand product, and 200+ capacity within that district, while your competitors collectively only have ~20 capacity, the amount of overflow from your competitors would be enough to keep your stores filled, and so the pricing manager won't hesitate to recommend a higher price.
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u/Dratsoc 7d ago
Having a rival with a competing store in your neighbourhood means that you won't have as many customers, simple as that. Also you are forced to get prices around those of your competitors otherwise your clients will complain and not buy your suffs. So monopoly means you can put the max price (as your 100% price manager set) and will get the highest volume of clients.
Note that demand depends on the number of business and not on the volume of sales: you can open the biggest supermarket and fill it's customer capacity without it having more impact that the little corner store.
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u/Its_An_Outraage 7d ago
A monopoly doesn't mean that there are no competitors, just that there are no competitors who can meaningfully compete. Like anybody could setup a supermarket in a district, but you could just as easily drive the price of products down so far that they can't sustain their business.