Empire TV Tycoon

Empire TV Tycoon

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Hunter's Guide to Empire Staff
By TheHunterSeekerAlgorithm
A guide to the staff currently avaiable in the game, how useful they can be, and how it will impact your gameplay.

Of course, flavoured by my own opinions and such. Feel free to comment on your own experiences and relevant information will be added to the guide to make it more thorough
   
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Introduction
While you'll face the sole responsibility for programming your channel and making it successful, you aren't God (Not unless you've got grand delusions). It that vein, why not get some very talented people into the action of making your Channel the top rater in Empire TV?

This Guide will cover the current staff options available to you, and just how useful (In my opinion) they'll turn out to be in your quest for airwave domination.

The roles are, in alphebetical order:

Audience Analyst
Community Manager
Hacker
Marketing Manager
Production Assistant
Public Relations
Scriptwriter
The Audience Analyst
Not a bad place to start, as this role gives you a distinct advantage in not only programming ahead, allowing you to plan out advertising and marketing in advance, it eventually, when levelled up, can help contribute to increasing your audience.

Audience Analysts are useful, whether they're more useful than some roles is entirely up to the play through though. I've managed to win without analysts in my staff, so they're not essential by any means. But they are very useful for the fledgling TV producer.

It comes to a trade off between the Marketing Manager's ability to significantly win timeslots to the Audience Analyst's ability to passively increase ALL timeslots. The arguments I've read between are quite fair. So it becomes a matter of personal preference. Chose your fate.

The Community Manager
Imma lay this out there: If you go into a game without a community manager, stop playing. You don't deserve to win.

They are THAT essential. Ads are THE lifeblood of your channel, keeping you in money constantly, unlike production awards which happen every two days.

The gifts the Community Manager gives to you is to not only increased ad revenue, but a reduction of the audience needed for the ad to succeed. If you've got a fully ranked Community Manager, they can improve all ad income by a whopping 40% for 8 hours, which may not seem much, but when chained up with the ending of a number of high revenue commercials, it really adds up.

This must be one of the first people you hire, if not THE first. It's that important. The extra money will help you keep you in the latest movies and technology, and allow you to keep producing your own productions for a chance to win extra money and fame.

Listen to me people. Get this staff member. Or watch your revenue drain.
The Hacker
Of all the staff, I consider this one the most useless.

The purpose of the illegal video dealer is to circumvent the library restrictions by getting high quality movies early. The Hacker's purpose is to prevent the police from finding out, and if they do, restricting the financial penalty that ensues.

I have never had much success with illegal movies, hacker or no. And the game seems to be able to find ways to circumvent YOU using them by matching the movie in rankings in that slot (Happened to me on one playthrough and left me confused as all hell as to what the damn point of the illegal movie seller was)

In short, don't use the hacker. Don't use the illegal movie seller. It's a complete waste of time and a precious staff slot.
The Marketing Manager
Ah the Marketing Manager. Want to dominate a timeslot? Need extra audience in order to get a valuable ad campaign over the line? This is the role for you.

The Marketing Manager is a very useful role, particularly when used in concert with the Community Manager.

They produce five levels of ads, culminating in the almighty internet ads which can single handedly win a demographic you were almost destined to lose.

It takes time to produce the ads, but unless you are crap at programming or determined to win highly lucrative ad campaigns, you'll have plenty in reserve for whenever you need a boost. Hell, even radio campaigns, the level three ads, make a significant impact on the demographic.

Marketing Managers are highly useful, but it comes down to preference between this role and the Audience Analyst. Both can work if used properly. Your choice bucko.
The Production Assistant
If you want a balanced team between channel and production, it would be well worth your while getting a production assistant.

They do two crucial things for your production, they improve the production by granting you more points to spend in the initial phase of production, and they speed up production times, enabling you to sneak your productions in quickly for the awards ceremonies and that extra money and fame said awards bring.

That said, productions tend to be a secondary money maker to ads. And while it is an important role in productions, it is not THE most important role in productions (That honour belongs to Scriptwriters). Thus, hiring one is entirely up to you. If I go for a balanced team, I hire a production manager. However, it's hard for it to go ahead of a Community Manager, a Marketing Manager, or a Scriptwriter.


The Public Relations Expert
Eugh. Easily the third tier on the production side of things, the main function of Public Relations is to allow you to hire better actors for your productions earlier.

Essentially, it gives you more fame when hiring actors. You know what else gets you more fame? Being good at programming. You can easily compensate for poor actors by having a good Scriptwriter and, if you wish, a Production Assistant.

When fully levelled up, it can decrease the chances of your actors giving bad performances and therefore increase the overall quality of your productions, although I'd still debate whether it's worth more in the long run than an audience analyst or a community manager.

This is the Hacker for productions. A near useless role that takes up a precious staff slot for a rather poor benefit. If you start carrying them in your team, GIT GUD.

The Scriptwriter
A must have role, on equal status with the Community Manager. If you want to make your own productions, you must have a scriptwriter. It's as simple as that.

Having a good scriptwriter, while expensive, can pay off big time in the long run. Even if aspects of your production are crap, if the script is still solid, you can at least steal that award, money, and fame.

Constantly improving them is a must, build them up so you have less crap quality scripts, and aim to be producing, at the very minimum, Very Good to Masterwork Quality scripts.

If you intend to have productions (And you should), this is the only role you absolutely need. The others (And by others, I should clarify that I mean ONLY the Production Assistant) are entirely optional. A team with a scriptwriter and a Production Assistant is a team capable of constantly winning big at the awards. More awards=More Money and Fame=Winning.
Acknowledgements
Cheers to the games designers for making an amusing and enjoyable little game which I'll probably being playing the s*** out of for a while.

Guide Contributers (Or those who pointed out author ommissions and mistakes): NEU-NEU

Shoutout as well to Magnasword2 and MasterDave, who are losers. :D

If you have anything to add or point out, write a comment below. I'll consider its worth, and then consider whether to put it in.

Enjoy.
3 Comments
TheHunterSeekerAlgorithm  [author] 16 Nov, 2015 @ 5:41am 
Good points, and well made. I'd still debate whether having a Public Relations is neccessary over the community manager or the audience analyst (My stance on the latter has changed due to a recent playthrough, I found planning my programming ahead very handy for ads and movie purchasing, as well as the handy universal audience boost). Perhaps it is definitely a more late game winner than an early game role, and more so it might make an appearance the harder the difficulty (Where you have more time). Cheers for the points though.
NEU-NEU 15 Nov, 2015 @ 2:47am 
One personal thought about the Community Manager is that she's only useful for extra money income. I wouldn't consider her mandatory since you can do perfectly without her as long as you spend your money wisely and choose the optimum ad contracts (which means being sure of the audience numbers you'll have each hour).

On the other hand, she can be very useful in expert mode during early game (since everything is more expensive and you start with lesser money). But once you feel you're set with money (i'd say 2 millions $), you can easily fire her and hire someone else that would enhance your productions quality or help in other fields. Money shouldn't be a problem even with unboosted advertisements when you know how to be ahead of your competition.
NEU-NEU 15 Nov, 2015 @ 2:45am 
Don't forget to mention that the Public Relations Expert is also used to reduce the chances of bad actor performances, not just for the fame boost on hiring actors. The Public Relations Expert is therefore useful when you want to ensure maximum ratings for your productions, although not that important early in the game.