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As mentioned in my previous post, I wanted to make a mod for Capitalism 2 to rebalance it and fix various bugs. I did that today.

Main features

• Rebalances profit margins: In the original game, the average profit margin for a product was over 14000% and went up to a million percent. At the same time, most semifinished products had negative profit margins (including citric acid, coconut oil, corn syrup, dyestuff, flour, linen, polyester, textiles, and wheat germ oil). I've rebalanced them somewhat so that you can make a profit selling any product, but the average profit margin is much lower -- "only" about 150%, with a median of about 67%. I would like to eventually get it down to 30-40%, but that requires more extensive changes.
• Rebalances demand: The original game balanced the demand for products so that every product or product group had roughly the same revenue ceiling. This resulted in people buying ridiculously large or small numbers of some products, and overall people bought too little. I tried to make the demand a bit more realistic. Overall, people buy a lot more things, which helps counteract the reduced profit margins, and some fields are now much more lucrative than others.
• Reduces freight costs: One of the main complaints about the original game was that freight costs were so high that it was pointless to try to ship products between cities, and even within the same city you may not be able to make much of a profit unless you placed your production buildings close to your retail stores. On average I cut freight costs in half, but I also made them somewhat more realistic by basing them on the approximate weight and size of the objects, so the freight costs for a few items are actually higher than before. But overall, it's now worthwhile to ship some finished products to other cities.
• Warehouses: I converted one of the factory types into a warehouse. Now there are 1 small, 2 medium, and 2 large factories, and the warehouse. Essentially, it's a building with a large amount of internal space and low monthly overhead. You can use it to merge product flow from multiple sources or buffer goods from unreliable manufacturers. However, it's not possible to prevent you from manufacturing things there, so only the honor system prevents you from using it as a large, cheap factory; the AI has no honor and uses warehouses for manufacturing, but I figure it's not a problem because the AI is so weak that it needs all the help it can get. :-P
• Increased costs for extractive industries: I've greatly increased the setup and monthly costs for logging camps, mines, and oil wells. Nonetheless, those industries are still overpowered. In fact, they may be even more profitable now due to the reduced freight costs, but you'd better make sure you have some demand lined up before setting up shop now.
• Increased competition and activity: This wasn't exactly planned, but due to the changes I made, the AI seems to be a lot more active. There's a lot more competition and a lot more products available from the AI. The AI also seems to buy products that you produce more often. Perhaps it's due to the fact that semifinished products are now profitable, so the AI produces them and is then able to produce the finished products that they enable. Additionally, the reduced freight costs probably allow the AI to be more flexible in its operations.
• Executives are cheaper to hire: In the original game, executives often demanded a salary higher than the company's entire annual profit! They were worse than useless. I've decreased their salary demands by about 80%, and now it may actually be worthwhile to hire some executives.

Minor features / miscellaneous changes

• R&D buildings and advertising cost a bit more. $5,000 is really too cheap to set up an advertising unit, so I raised it to $50,000.
• I made the AI value oil and chemical minerals a bit more, because they enable the creation of many other products even if they're not that profitable in their own right.
• On a few products, such as computers, I made people care more about the quality of the product than about the brand. I guess that's just my personal bias. :-)

Known problems

• The game is still too easy. I need to reduce profit margins more and find a way to make extractive industries more expensive without discouraging the AI from entering the market.
• The mod hasn't been extensively tested. I've played a couple games, and it seems like a real improvement, but I certainly haven't tried out all the industries and products.

Download and installation instructions

Method 1 (quick and easy):

1. Navigate to the "gameset" directory within your Capitalism 2 installation directory.
2. Make a backup of the 1STD.SET file.
3. Replace the 1STD.SET file with the one from the archive.
4. Enjoy!

Method 2 (more flexible, requires Microsoft Excel):

1. Navigate to the "gameset" directory within your Capitalism 2 installation directory.
2. Make a backup of the 1STD.SET file.
3. Download the Capitalism 2 mod kit from here.
4. Use the mod kit to import BalanceMod.xlsx into the game database.

To uninstall (after using either method)

1. Restore your backup of the original 1STD.SET file.