This post:wsherrick wrote:The AI's are pretty hard to take over. At first it was impossible, but in testing I found that it made the gold almost impossible if you play with AI's, so I weakened them a little so if there is a stock market crash or an AI player gets to greedy and loses all of his stock then you might have chance. So go for it.
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Hans, I didn't see and respond to your comment about the AIs getting more than 50% of their stock in the start of the game as I assume you were trying to eliminate the AI like I did. I thought that this wasn't designed to be possible, but the above post seems to say that it was designed to be difficult but doable. i didn't try to prevent the AI men from getting 50% of their stock initial as shaking the market (to squeeze them all into a margin call) left them with little. However, I did buy into their companies as soon as they started them. (Personal cash is needed and I had emptied my company cash into my bank account by stock buybacks). The AI men don't start with that high percentage in their first month (I forget is it around 20%?). I bought in to the newest one as much as I could (up to just above the share price=book value per share level) as I knew that the AI would buy that stock the next month and I could then sell it for a slight profit when they bought the next month or a little later in that first year. This helps the AI men to be more vulnerable to the margin call I am planning for them all. I also found out that it is better to sell (likely short sell) shares 1,000 at a time until the first AI man is on the point of having insufficient margin. Then a 5,000 share lump will do the trick plummeting share price to obscene levels and ensure that they are forced to sell as many of their shares as possible. If you do things just right, the AI man may have negative cash and no shares remaining, otherwise continued short selling can take their stake even lower at some cost to you. Once you make sure they are all put in their place, spread out your buying efforts between the companies. It wont be possible at once, but depending on execution you should get a good stake right away. Every new month buy again and continue to do so until you have control 51% stake of them all. You can buy more, whether you should or not is a decision that doesn't affect the eventual goal of taking over the AI unless you plan on using the trick of selling shares at the time of merger to get a better price.
There are many factors that you can watch and adapt to like which AI man starts the first company and how strong an AI company will be initially, and others to try to control like timing of the market squeeze. You will need a full head of steam to make this grade and as always there is room for improvement to this strategy as well, good luck!