From this menu you are given several options. To start with, just choose "New
Company." This will let you start a single player game.
You will also choose a company name and a CEO (chief executive officer) name from this screen. These can be anything you wish. Choose the color that will represent your company and then click on the accept button.
To start, one or two opponents on the beginner or easy difficulty setting should be fine.
You can also decide how much money you wish to start with. I would recommend leaving it at the default to start, but when you get an idea of how to play the game you may wish to experient with this value. You will be able to speed up--or slow down--the starting pace of the game by changing startup funding.
This screen also allows you to choose which market and map you wish to play on. In the demo version, you will only be able to play the Computer market on a single supplied map. In the release version you will be able to choose one of several maps, and more markets will be made available shortly after the release.
Click the Ready button and the game will start.
If you chose the beginner difficulty setting, you will be given a help screen that explains the functions of the various parts of the screen. This can be extremely helpful to the first-time player.
Choose a region that is touching the region containing your home office. It will take $100,000 and 3 weeks to research the region. Click the Investigate Region button.
It is important that you keep researching new regions. This is how you expand your market. Forgetting to research new regions can be a serious setback, especially early in the game.
On the Site screen, you will see a couple of buildings and some places in which to build future buildings. Click on the garage. The upper left corner of the screen will give you status info on the building and a slider bar which is used to hire employees. I suggest hiring 10 workers to start. As soon as the workers are hired they will begin producing your computers. Your salesguy and your main office will start selling them automatically.
Return to the World map. You can do this by clicking the Done button in the lower right corner of the screen or by pressing F5 (the hotkey for the World Map). Any regions that you have researched will turn to your color. This means that you control that region and any resources in that region. (I'll come back to resources later).
The production screen shows a lot of information. At the top you will see a section called Design Statistics. This shows the name of your computer, what it costs you to build one, and what your profit is when you sell one. (Note that profit does not take into account your expenses such as salaries and maintenance costs).
Just below that is a bar graph showing the features of your computer. These statistics consist of five areas:
On the right side of the screen there is a text box with your current selling price in it. This can be set to anything you wish. I recommend increasing the selling price from the default. Since there is no competition when you start out, you can charge a pretty hefty price.
Along the bottom of the screen you will see some important info. Probably the most important are the sections that display your current inventory, production, and demand. Keeping up with demand is very important in this game. Usually you will probably want to keep production at about the same rate as demand although some strategies will call for higher production or demand.. You can change demand by raising or lowering your price. Higher prices obviously mean lower demand and vice verse.
If you are not meeting demand you have two choices--raise prices or hire more workers. It is often difficult to know which is the better choice, and it will take some time before you master this. Keep in mind that hiring more workers means increasing your salary costs.
If your production is exceeding your demand, you again have two choices--lower prices or fire workers. It is not always a bad idea to be producing more than you are selling. Anything you produce gets put in your inventory, and some strategies will require having a large inventory.
Salesguys have a range that cover the region they are in, the ones surrounding that region, and the regions surrounding those regions. In other words, they have a range of 2 regions, but the effectiveness decreases with range. Salesguys are most effective in the region that they are actually in.
Along the bottom of the World map, you will see a button bar with seven selections. Now would be a good time to discuss their functions.
From left to right these buttons are labeled
The Rank button will color code the map according to your sales presence in each
region. The lighter the color of a region, the more sales presence you have in
that region. This button may have been more appropriately labeled 'Presence'.
The Wealth button has two sub-choices. In the lower right corner of the screen
you will be given the option to color code the map according to Wealth, Economy,
or both. Wealth is how rich a region is. The richer it is, the more they will
pay for your products. Economy is how well that regions economy is doing. I
believe this has to do with how many units that region will buy.
The Share button will color code the map according to how much of the
marketshare you have in each region. Lighter colors means you control more of
the marketshare in that region. This button is very useful in determining where
you are losing or gaining ground against your competitors.
The Bonus button also has two sub-choices--Adjacency and (To be added). Your
sales are given a boost in each region according to how many other regions you
control in that general area and according to how close that region is to one of
your main offices.
The Region button will tell you which of the five design attributes that region
most desires (Reliability, Aesthetics, Ease of Use, Performance, or Prestige).
You may also color code the map according to those attributes. This is extremely
helpful in determining what technologies you should research.
Finally, the Site button will tell you what the strengths and weaknesses of a
region would be if you decided to build another site in that region. These
attributes are Labor, Research, Recreation, Cost of Living, and Marketing.
Again, you can color code the map according to one or more of those attributes.
This is extremely valuable in determining where to build an expansion site.
I will usually build a Sales Office (to expand my sales radius) followed by an
Engineering Lab or an Engineering Lab followed by a Sales Office. It is
important to get the Engineering Lab up so that you can start to research new
technologies.
The lower left corner of the screen shows the attributes for the selected
component, and has a set of sliders that will let you change (research) those
attributes. You should see what the people want be checking the Region button
from the World map, and then research components and aspects of components that
will increase the desired attributes in your computer. Also, see the
Research Effectiveness Page to help in
deciding what to research.
The lower right portion of the screen contains your research queue. You can
choose several research projects and queue them up so that one starts when the
first one finishes without requring your intervention. You will be notified when
your research queue is empty.
I suggest working on lowering the price of your computer fairly soon, as well as
the attribute that your home continent desires.
This status report has some important info that you should be aware of. First,
it tells you what your gross income for the year was. Then it gives you your
marketshare percentage.
Perhaps the most important info in the report is how many Resource Centers you
control, and how many Resources points you have. Resource points are needed to
play Direct Action Cards (DACs), and these points are awarded according to how
many Resource Centers you control. Let's talk about Resources next.
Note that if you find the end of year status report to be an annoying
interruption, you can choose to not see it again in your current game by
checking the 'Don't Show Me This Popup Again' check box.
You will want to try to control as many resource centers as possible. That makes
regions which contain resource centers strategically important, and you will
find that in some games some resources will be harder to come by then others,
making those resources ever more important.
Okay, you have some resource points... Now what do you do with them? How do you
use them? The answer is in DACs.
Along the bottom of the World map, you will see a few small icons with five
numbers to the right of those icons. (If this is the first year of the game,
there will be two icons, and the five numbers will all be zeros). These icons
represent the cards (DACs) that you have in your hand. The five numbers show how
many of each of the five different resource points you have available.
You can find out what each card does by moving the mouse cursor over the card's
icon. This will display a text description of the card (actually, just the
card's name) on the bottom of the World map area. For a much more detailed
description of the card, how it is used, and what it does, click on the card's
icon. This will bring up a popup window.
In the popup, you are given a complete description of the card. Often you are
given the option of which opponent to play the card against. There are three
buttons along the bottom of the popup--Play (if you have enough resources),
Discard, and Done. Play will play the current card. Discard will remove the card
from your hand (you can hold only 7 cards at one time, so you may want to
discard duplicates or the less powerful cards to make room for more). Done will
remove the popup, returning you to the World map.
In the top left corner of the popup you are given the number
of resource points that you will need in order to play the card. This info is
given in the for of resource icons. You will need one point for each icon shown.
In the top right of the popup are three buttons--forward and back arrows and an
X. The arrows will advance or back up to the next or previous card. The X button
has the same function as the Done button.
There are two main types of DACs--the ones that help you (such as governement
grants and technological breakthroughs) and the ones that harm opponents (such
as Increasing opponents' research times and inciting labor strikes). You will
learn that both can be very important, but it will be the really nasty ones that
you target against opponents that could cause the tide of the game to turn.
For a much more thorough description of the DACs available in the game, see the
Direct Action Cards Page.
Marketing is an extremely strategically important part of the game. If you
havn't discovered and built a Marketing Office, do that now. This is done from
the Site screen. Choose the vacant space in the lower left corner of the lot and
press the Upgrade button at the top of the screen. Your Marketing office will
begin construction. When it is finished, hire some marketers and then go to the
Marketing screen by double clicking on the Marketing Office or pressing F8.
The Marketing screen has several components. The top left corner of the screen
lets you choose the type of marketing campaign you wish to launch. Campaigns can
be either positive or negative (help your image or hurt an opponent's image),
and they can be either Newspaper (level 1), Radio (level 2), or Television
(level 3). For negative campaigns and the higher level campaigns you will need
to upgrade your Marketing Office building (note: in the demo you are not allowed
to upgrade your marketing office).
The lower left corner of the screen lets you focus the campaign on one of the
design attributes (if the campaign is positive) or against an opponent (if the
campaign is negative).
The lower middle of the screen shows your current marketing campaigns while the
lower right has a button that lets you create new ones (if you have enough
marketers). The top middle portion of the screen gives info on what it will cost
to create a campaign, how effective the campaign will be, how long it will take
to create the campaign.
Pick a focus for your marketing campaign, and then click the Create Campaign
button. The progress bar in the lower right of the screen will show how much
longer it will take before the campagin is ready. Click the Done button or press
F5 to return to the World Map.
When the marketing campaign is finished, a newspaper (level 1) will appear at
your home office. This is your marketing campaign. You can move it to any region
on the map that you have researched. The region that you move the campaign to
will be where the campaign has its effect. You should place marketing campaigns
in strategically important regions (such as your home office, an opponent's home
office, or where important resource centers are located).
You will find that marketing campaigns can be extremely useful when you
run into competition. In fact you will find it very difficult to win a game if
you do not use at least some marketing, even if you are not a marketing
specialist.
Usually you will probably want to build your expansion offices on continents
other than where your Main (original) office is located. This will allow you to
research new regions more quickly and with less cost.
Choose a region in which to build your new office with the help of the Site
button on the bottom of the World map. (Note that you need to have
researched a region before you can build a site in that region). Ideally, you
will want a region that has the best of all traits, but often you will have to
pick a region that is high in one or two important traits while being lower in
the others.
Once you have found a region that is satisfactory, click on the Build Site
button. In a short period of time you will have another site that you may
develop and upgrade in the same manner as your home office.
When you have the Leader button selected, the map is color coded according to
which company controls (has the most marketshare in) each region. In the lower
right-hand corner of the screen will be a pie graph that shows your percentage
of the gross revenue for the region you currently have selected.
Expanding Your Site!
Once you have earned some money, you will need to make some decisions as to what
you want to expand and upgrade at your site. Go to the site screen (either press
the Site button on the right side of the screen, click on your site, or press
F6). You will again see the site screen with its buildings and vacant spaces.
You will have to make a choice as to what to upgrade or build. Your possible
choices at this point (assuming you have enough money) are to
What you decide to build will depend on your chosen specialty, how much money
you have, and what capabilities are most important to you. See the
Building Upgrades Page
to help you in determining what the various buildings and upgrades will do for
you.
Researching New Technologies
Once you have built an Engineering lab you can start to research new
technologies for the components in your computer. Hire some Engineers from the
Site screen in the same manner used to hire factory workers. Then go to the
Research screen by pressing F9, pressing the Research Button, or double clicking
on the your Engineering Lab from the Site screen.
The Research screen is also full of important information. In the upper left
corner is info that you are already familiar with from the Production screen.
The entire upper right portion of the screen is taken by a computer and the
various components that are used to build the computer (Monitor, Operating
System, Keyboard, Graphics Card, CPU, RAM, Case, and Hard Drive). You can select
any component by clicking on its picture.
End of Year Report
Sometime during gameplay (around December 31 to be exact) you will have seen a
window pop up telling you that it is the end of the year.
Resources
There are five types of resources:
Each resource type has its own icon which may be located in a region of the map.
If at the end of the year you control a region with a resource center, you gain
one resource point of whichever resource type is located at that region. These
points accumulate until you use them by playing a DAC. Different DACs require
different types and amounts of resources points before they can be played. The
more powerful cards will require more resources.
Direct Action Cards (DACs)
DACs are Entrepreneur's way of letting you do some of the things that a business
might do in the real world. These could include recruiting a rival company's
salesguy, trying to steal a rival's technology, having a technological
breakthrough, and much, much more.
Marketing
We havn't discussed marketing yet, so I'll address that now.
Building Another Office
By now you have almost all of the basic concepts you need to play Entrepreneur
successfully and to make money in the game, but there is one other crucial
aspect--Expansion. Once you have played for a short period of time, you will
find that you cannot meet demand, or that you cannot create any more marketing
campaigns, or that researching new technologies is taking too long. You will
want to build another home office where you can hire more workers.
Play On!
Using what you have learned thus far, continue to play until you have won or
lost the game. To win, you will need between 50-67% minimum (depending on the
number of players) of the total marketshare. You will lose the game if an
opponent achieves the winning condition first. Winning condition is calculated
at the end of each year starting with year 5. Have fun!
Send feedback to Greg Boyko