#Offworld trading company youtube upgrade

I can't think of another strategy game that is so changeable. Performing the buy-out might then make the buyer vulnerable to the remaining corporations and will almost certainly cause an upset in the markets that might dangerously upset the balance of power.Įverything that you do has consequences and everything that your opponents do will have an impact on the state of the world. Cash alone isn't always enough and the buy-out might require liquidation of stock. That goes back to that opening phrase: money is no object. They may have the ability to snuff you out but the game doesn't tell them the potential victim sees the Sword of Damocles but unless their opponent is paying close attention, they might just see a CEO sitting on his throne. Your opponent - the person currently holding all the cards - doesn't get that message. It crunches the numbers, figures out that somebody has enough assets to buy a majority holding in your company, and lets you know. When you're vulnerable to a takeover, the game tells you. The end-game isn't destruction, it's a hostile takeover. You're not trying to destroy your opponents, you're trying to absorb them. They can't thrive – or even survive - without what the others have. The difficulty of operating on a planet with an unfriendly environment makes the corporations reliant on one anothers' produce, particularly in the early game. Offworld creates an incredible tension through this forced cooperation. The claims system ensures that your corporation can't produce everything – you need to specialise and, crucially, you need to engage in a symbiotic relationship with your opponents. There are other ways to get them as well, but mostly you'll be working your way up through the game's equivalent of a tech tree, enjoying a brief flurry of expansion each step of the way.

#Offworld trading company youtube upgrade

There are obvious sequences of construction to follow in the early minutes of each map, but to win you'll need to adapt to the situation as it changes.Įverytime you upgrade your HQ, which costs cash and specific resources you'll receive a new set of claims. Looking at a random map, you must decide where to place your headquarters and then secure the first pieces of land that you'll construct factories, solar panels and other facilities on. The most important decisions are related to the limited claims you're given at the beginning of each game. These disrupt and interfere, cutting off sources of revenue, stealing resources or manipulating the market to present false figures. There are ways to interact with other players directly through purchases made on the black market. You're always making choices, every second that you play. Create a monopoly on one of the resources necessary for survival on the planet and you can hoard the fruits of your labour (or your labourers' labour, I guess), forcing everyone else to ship the stuff in from off-planet at great expense. Build a production chain to make glass or computer components and you can flood the market with the end-product, causing prices to plummet. Everything that you and your opponents do causes the figures to shift in a sensible fashion.

The genius of the game is in making the manipulation of those markets comprehensible while never allowing them to become predictable.Īnd yet they're entirely predictable.

Just as many RTS games are played on the minimap, Offworld is played in the numbers at the side of the screen. Mars may be the landscape on which you're constructing the tools of capitalism, but the entire corporate conflict plays out in the markets. Values change constantly in the dynamic market that is the game-space. Offworld Trading Company treats money as ephemeral. It's a phrase that I mean in a very literal sense and cuts to the heart of the brilliance of the game's design: it's a game about making money in which the actual amount of money you have doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the flow of cash and resources. That's the most important lesson I've taken from the hours I've spent running a corporation exploiting the raw materials of Mars. It's also one of the smartest strategy games I've ever played. Offworld Trading Company, the new game from Civ IV lead designer Soren Johnson and his team at Mohawk Games, is a strategic simulation of a sci-fi Martian economy.