example screen for when one starts a new game

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Income forcast: pridiction of the income for the next quarter when you hover over it you get a run down of where your money comes from and where it gets spend

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Cash: money you currently own when you hover over it you see one time incomes and expenses

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Influence: sum of your influence that is still left for use in this quarter when you hover over it, it shows you unter Total influence the amount you will get next quarter with a run down from where it comes and under Used how much you have used and where it was spend

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Renown: current Renown amount determits how much Influence you have next quarter

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Skills: opens the Skill screen for more info see Skills

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Date & Pause/Play Button: shows current date

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News & Events: latest events
Button for all News & Events

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Persons: for interactions with other Characters for more info see Other Characters

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Destinctions & Achievments: Goals set by the Developers which are made up of all the things you do during a playthrough. Each completed milestone gives you 1 Skill point.

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Politics: opens the Goverment tap for more info see Politics

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Stock market: opens the Stock Exchange screen

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Map: opens the map

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Office: to get back in to this screen

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Connections: opens the Connections screen. Shows all the Characters that you have interacted with and the ones with which you have releation for info see Other Characters

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Luxuries: opens the Luxuries screen

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Finance: opens the asset screen of your Character.

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Movement: Click on your Character and click on the state you want to travel to, buy the ticket to start your journey.

When you click on any State a to the State corresponding window opens

When you click on a State this screen opens
Here you can see all kinds of information regarding the state
Here you can also donate money to finance building in the state, which gives you Influence in return and also improves different macro economical stats.

When you click on Laws this screen open
Here are all the different Laws that affect the State, to change them you need to control atleast one Legislator.

When you click on Legislature this screen open
Here you can see the Parlament its next election date, here you can also submit your local Assitants so that they can Influence the States Politics.

When you click on Capitol this screen open
Here you see all the important (political) people of this state
Governor: Most powerful person political person in a state. A quick way of increasing your profits with Goverment contracts.
Police chief: Head of the Police Department. Important if you want to use the police against the population or other Characters.
Prosecuter: Prosecutes criminals (makes Politiciansresign with Dirt). Good if you need a certain Politician to resaign.
Tresurar: Manges the states treasury. Important person if you want to use Government-subsidized loans.

When you click on Companies this screen open
clicking on any company opens the company management screen which we discuss in How to manage a Company.

When you click on Assistants this screen open
Here you can hire Assitants, which get used as your Politicans, they also earn you some influence and make it possible to interact with other Characters in a State you are not in.

When you click on Persons this window opens
Collector Mika Pshishtov: Collects money from people that don't pay you your money back. The only way of getting your money back from not paying creditors.
Courtesan Poly Adler: Increases or decreases Influence needed to start a negotiation. Can be useful when you need to deal with a Character that has up to double the influence you have.
Detective Grant Hills: Looks for dirt. The Legal way of getting Dirt.
Journalist Harry Copper: Decreases or increases Characters Reputation. Good for messing with the Reputation of Characters.
Saboteur Jason Stigitz: Destroys workplaces. Useful for decreasing the size of your competitors.
Hitman Walter Hill
Marksman Striking Hawk: Kills or injures people. Useful for eliminating enemies so they are no longer a problem.
Financier Frank Silverstone: sets Company tax to 0 for a quarter. Can save money but doesn't benefit you to much.
Goon Jesse Hume: Resets a Characters Diplomacy in the next negotiation. Useless because when you get him you probably have decent diplomacy skills.
Cardinal Farther Michael: Increases loyalty. Good if you can't full fill the ambition of a Character.
Lobbyist John Dew: makes a Law pass one round. Helpful, because otherwise you would need to lobby all the Politicians yourself.
Broker Larry Williams: increases or digresses stock price. Can be nice way to make or save some money earlier on, but there are ways to do that while not needing an Agent.
The Pianist Donald Green: sets strike rate to 0%. Can be helpful, but your strike rate should not be that high just preemptively increase salaries to be save.
Provoker Carl Fidler: starts a strike. Good if you want to snap a Company up for cheap.
Headhunter Mark Taller: makes it possible to hire CEO form another Company. Not that useful usually there are plenty of good CEOs around for hire.

When you click on Persons search this screen opens
Here you can see all the characters in the game, filter them after different categories
Right-clicking on anyone opens a menu with interaction options, which only can be done if you are in the same state as the Character is.

When you click on Dirt this screen opens
Here you can see on which people you have Dirt that can be used
Fake: Make fake evidence with support of the Police chief. If Detective fails you one can always count on the Police chief.
Detective: Legal way of getting Dirt. The easy way of getting Dirt.
Blackmail: Makes a Character your Puppet (no need of influence for any action). A nice way to force Chracters doing what you want them to, but you might get some new enemies.
Publish: Publishes Dirt and the Character loses Reputation. Kinda unnecessary since you need a Journalist and don't get much from it.
Refer to the Prosecuter: Makes an Offical resign. A good way of getting ride of unwanted politicians.

When you click on any Character a to the Character corresponding window will appear
Under Connections, you can see all the Characters he/she has met.

Portrait Background color
Blue: Human Player
Green: Friend of Player
Red: Enemy of Player (AI has also Friends and Enemies)
Beige: Neutral

Informations about the Character
Below that you can see different Traits of the Character as well as his Influence, Wealth, Diplomacy / Economics skill, Reputation, and Loyalty towards you.
Also his current location (state) and his job.
The three middle beige Traits determine the initial loyalty and red or green modify things regarding negotiations and how they react to different actions the player takes on them.
The most left beige Trait is the current Ambition.
The rightest beige Trait determinants the Luxury type he/she has the most interest in.

When you click on Assets this window opens
Here you can see all the Assets a person has as well all the income (from Shares, Luxuries, Loans, Cash reserve and Salary) that he makes from them and all the costs (Taxes, Loans and Maintinance [Maintinance as of now is only payed by the player]).
Clicking on any Asset opens a new Window with more information about the company or the Item.
You have the same window when you click on Finance in your Office.

When you click on Luxuries this window opens
Here you can see all the Luxury items a person has and the effects he/she gets from them.
If you open the same window from the Office screen through clicking on Luxuries in your Office.
You can sell your Luxuries by clicking on the item and clicking on sell to start an auction. I only advise doing that if you need the money because Luxuries are better used as gifts for the AI to make them your friend.

Finances: Reduces maintinance. Extremly useful for cutting down on costs.
Managment: Speeds up Technology upgrading. Useful for the late game when the only option for expansion is better Tech.
Investments: Gives you interest on your cash. An easy way of making money with your unused cash.
Bookkeeping: Reduces tax cost. Useful if you want to cut down on costs but you already skilled Finance to the max.
Evaluation: Reduces Agents cost. Only useful if you use a lot of Agents. (As of version 0.193.0 the cost doupels after each use.) For more info on Agents see Other Characters

Eloquence: Adds more phases to negotiations. Skill it at least once so that your first negotiation round is less likely to instant fail.
Etiqette: Reduces likely hood of failed negotiations resulting in less loyalty. Good thing, if you don't want that everybody hates you, after you are finished with your playthrough.
Psychology: Reduces the amount of Influence that is needed to start a negotiation. For the most part, a useless skill because if you follow this guide Influence is your smallest issue.
Planning: Reduces the number of days you have to wait when the negotiation fails or is completed. Useful if you don't have any other use for your skill points.
Trading: Reduces the initial cost of Shares. Very useful if you invest big sums and you want to get more Shares for your Dollars. But if you know what you are doing it should be hard to get a bigger discount while not using this skill

Grants: Increases the price of your goods with Government subsidies. A very easy way of increasing your profits.
Laws: Reduces the amount of money it costs to bribe Politicians, needs to be at least skilled once for the option of bribing. Pointless because when you get to this point where things like this make sense you have millions to spare.
Criminalistics: Option to make fake dirt on a Character (increases likely hood of success). Only useful if you want to mess around with many Characters in a less friendly manner.
Loans: option of getting Government-subsidized loans (reduces loan interest). Useless because you are always going to make more money, then it costs interest.
Lobby: Option to submit laws (increases ?). Not implemented yet.

The simplest method of earning money, for every share you own in a Company you get a part of its dividends (this value depends on the Dividend rate and profits after tax).

If you want to go for this route of earning money, go to the Your First Shares section.

Involves buying shares for less then they are worth and selling them for more. Usually it is best to buy from people with selling ambition, but not through fulfilling the ambition, you buy them like any other shares from them through a deal. This should cost 0 Influence to do and can (if you buy enough shares) complete the ambition.

After you have completed the deal with a step discount, you now can either try to sell to the local stock market or to other Characters and fulfill their ambition. This only makes sense to do, you don't care about the money and just want to improve the loyalty to make them a friend.

If you want to go for this route of earning money, go to the Your First Shares section.

Buying from Auction events, for less than the market value and then instantly flipping them in hopes of more money. Back then it was also possible to do it with ambitions now you will always lose money thanks to the fact you buy for more and sell for less. so unless you want to improve loyalty it would be usually better to keep them for yourself (more Influence) or sell again through an auction.

Found on the right side usually have yellow background and an icon according to which category they belong.
 
After completing an auction and being the last bid you now should have the Luxuries screen open with the currently purchased Luxury. Click on it for the sell button to appear.
 
Example of a successful Luxury flip
 
Loan out your money to other Characters earning interest on the loaned out amount, this might at first seam not a bad way to earn money, but watch out for those defaults, because then your money gets stuck which makes it hard to be used.

If you want to go for this route of earning money, you are best advised going into person search and filter for only people that have the loan ambition.
 
You may also want to limit to the State you currently reside in, since you can't interact with them if they are in a different State. The first in the list is your current State.

First, go on your on the Companies tab in your local state (you can only buy shares from a Company if you are in the same state as the Company is).
Then sort after biggest profitability lock for a company that pays out at least 50% of the profits if there is no Corp. with at least 10% ROI (Return On Investment) move to another state (don't worry about the cost, it's worth it) and to it again. (It is advised to use the filter option of the map and filter to find the most profitable Corp. and move there.)
 
You also just could buy shares directly of the Stock market, this is usually the best option, because since the negations got updated you would always pay more than it is worth.
Click on the link shown below to get to this Company's Stock market section.
Or on the Button with a Bull and Bear found right of the Map Button and then look there for the same name.
In new versions of this game you also need to have the Stock exchange to be present in Shareholders tab in order to buy from them.
 
Now you want to start a trade deal with a person that has the least sum of skill and for which you have enough Influence. To start a deal, just right-click the Character. (if there are multiple options, choose the one where the name matches)

In current versions of the game is best to have the AI not expand the red area too much.
Unless it is the first round and the needle is very much on the right side, like in the example below.
 
Only try keeping it at orange, remember not to be greedy as it may cost you Renown and Reputation. And as long as it is less than market you should always take the deal instead of letting it fail accidentally, since it only needs to land once in the read area and that is usually not a good price to pay.
 
You might end with a good deal.
 
But it could end like this or worse making you pay more.
 

Signing Your First Deal

You want to buy as many shares as possible.
Now you have 3 Cards (Argument A, Argument B, Argument C), you want to choose the one that is the least negative if possible the one that also reduces the price.
In this example, it would be Argument C.
 
When you fail your first deal, just try the next person inline, or you wait 15 days and try again. I would not advise that since you could make the person your enemy and you don't want that at the start of the game and often if it failed the first time, the second time it usually goes the same way.

Now you should see something like this
You can refuse it, but I wouldn't advise doing that since you lose Reputation on top of Loyalty.
After you have signed your purchase deal, you now own a little part of your previously selected Company. Now you also can see more detailed information about the Company. We will later on look at how to manage a Company in How to manage a Company.

Here you can see all the people that are owners of the company and have influence over what happens with the company.

Use Agent: Gives you the option to use a Agent on the Company
Change CEO: Changes CEO (his skill influences the increase in research [1 Star = 1 point])
Development Strategy: Just links to the Statistics page
Get Subsidies: Option to take a loan with a reduced rate from the local government
Government contract: Increases the profitably
Company Expansion: Increases the amount of workplaces
Lending: Take a loan from the Bank
Share Issue: Increases the amount of shares
Merger: Merges two Companies of the same kind if in the same state needs 50%+1 of all shares in both Companies to go through
Trust: Join a Trust too profit from other members Tech level, with time all Companies in it adjust to the highest level in the Trust. Need a 50%+1 majority in both Companies to go through. Works across State borders.
Cartel: You must have 50%+1 in two Companies of the same type for it to work. Increases the Price (thus the profit margin) you get for your product, depends on market share (US wide).
Holding: CURRENTLY NOT IMPLEMENTED IN THE GAME

Workers: Amount of people that are employed there.
Wage Level: Percent of the average wage they compared to the states average they get paid.
Work-plan: How hard your workers work.
Research: How quickly your tech level improves (tech with biggest share of votes gets researched) In new versions, if you have a big enough stake you can change it by tracking the portrait around.
Dividends Size: Percent of the profits the owners get paid out.

Just lots of Staistics (better be learning accounting to understand all of this)

First of all you need to have a majority (50% +1) stake in a Company, so that you actually can change things around aside from voting on everything and hoping it goes through.

In any case you would want to max out the amount of Workers, the work load and increase their pay to 660% (until staff turnover is nearly 0% or profits don't go up) for highest profits. Usually only the first too will work if you don't have full control of the Corporation.
Next thing you should to is change CEO to a better one, the better his Skills the better for Research. (In new versions you can also become the CEO and manage the company more directly)
Last thing you want to do is change what is being researched by dragging the CEO Picture to something that increases profits.
If you just need lots of profits, decrease research spending and up the Dividend size so that more money ends up in your pockets.

something about macro Economics degree and work in progress
(it is hard to explain when there are a million different things influencing each other, while constantly changing)

If you happen do be in the position of owning multiple big Companies, you have to worry about the different effects on them and between them. Things like demand / supply, laws, wages, education, productivity and more.

In case you did not notice until now, yes everything is effected on some level by Politics in the game, from the tax you pay, to the work regulations, or how State stats change over time through funding. So it makes sense to take a closer look from time to time.

Every State has their own individual laws that change over time, after time there might be big differences.
They can also influence who can participate in an election or vote in it. Usually it is best to not start as a Atheist, Illiterate, Black, Woman, since it would make it impossible to run in elections. They can also make the difference between otherwise same companies, because how they effect companies in a state

Blue: State laws that are getting changed.
Purple: Federal laws that are getting changed.
You can lobby individual people but you need to have the necessary resources and they need to be your friend or puppet, or use the Lobbyist to it automatically.

If you have started a new game, in about 1 year there should be an election coming up, you can also participate in the state ones which happen at the start of the game, if you can vote under the local laws. And sponsor at mass to gain friends and puppets, as well as agents on mass.
They should happen every 2 years, so no worries if you don't have the resources to win, next time it might be you. Alternatively you could nominate your own people, which can then be the front man.

A very important value in the world of Politics, but one that is also easily improved through Politics, since friends and puppets give part of their Influence to the player. Alternatively you can finance buildings in states for permanent influence boost, if you can spare a few millions. Or run yourself in some elections for a Influence boost as a Politician.

need to do some time

For this one you need a rich Friend, first you want to look for People that have 4< Loyalty and look for one where you can complete their Ambition, move to another State if you have to, once you completed the Ambition pick the Loyalty reward, once they are your Friend you want to borrow as much money as you can (watch for the terms, you also need to repay that money at some point so it is best to borrow in a quarter and pay it back in the same), now you have extra Capital to invest in great Companies and make profit on money you don't own.

For this you need to involve yourself in the politics, in the first step you need a Company and some skill in Grants, now you need to become friends with the State Governor and make a Government contract. If you want to expand this, you can lobby for changes in customs polices of the USA, Tax and Labour regulations to keep and make more money.

The Idea is similar to when you buy in a bad event, but either a, you make it through Agents or you buy a 50% majority stake and set workload to 0%, now you can buy the rest of a Company for half the price.

Similar to Share skimming, you drop the price in a competitor Company, and then with a 50% majority start a take over merger with another company and profit like that. Makes repaying a loan easier, if you don't need that much money. (a even more broken variation is to buy shares and sell them at the stock market till the Company is worth a few thousands and then start the merger vote)

Easy one, have a majority 50% stake in 2 Companies of the same type and form a Cartel with them, depending on their market share this gives you a price bonus for your products. (In the worst case, this gives you 5% bonus to product price)

This one involves the Stock market you have a large enough vote in a Company, so that there is no need for a vote on changes, next you increase the profits and worth of a share. Now that your share are expensive you sell them to the Stock market, depends on how many you want to sell (until [ask] price drops by 10%-20%, is what i have found to be the sweat spot), but watch out if you sell too many at once this trick might not work. In the next step, you reverse your changes and make the Company as unprofitable as possible (workload 0%) and buy as many shares back as you want. (this can net 10%-50% in profit per share sold and bought back)

Own a Bank (size doesn't matter), take out a loan from the Fed, invest the money in highly profitable Companies. Congrats now you earn extra money for 0 cost.

This is by far the easiest with the greatest effect, you need to own a Company (not Bank) in which you are the CEO, now buy shares (the more, the better) from a local small Bank as this Company (if you don't have the money take a loan from another Bank you don't want to buy), now take as many loans from the Bank you own, you should see the values slowly increase this is how you know it worked and that your worth is going up. After reaching the point of 2 billion per loan you should have a very high net worth for both Companies, this is where you can either sell your Personal shares or of the Company and give the loaned money back, after this the company or personal money should be in the multitude of millions.