The Rivals system in Big Ambitions 1.0 is quite complicated to understand and harder to defeat unless you know how to beat them. They directly work against your businesses in various sectors, which harm your profits in the long run. Every rival can employ a series of tactics, many of which are usually used by businesses in real life as well. Every rival works within a sector, so you should try to grow your business within one sector at a time to avoid a lot of competition on multiple fronts.
Rivals Explained in Big Ambitions 1.0 – How They Work and How To Defend
Rivals are competitors who operate within their own sector of the game. The major rival of a sector will not get active before you open three stores within that sector. Therefore, you should spread your stores through multiple locations to avoid triggering multiple rivals at the same time. They can employ a number of tactics to undermine your business and lower your profits. These tactics include:
| Tactic | Effect | How To Defend |
|---|---|---|
| Lower prices | If they lower their prices, customers will be attracted to their stores more. This will cause a drop in demand for your products. | Drop your own prices to match the rival’s prices, or even slightly below them. This is a temporary measure so that you do not witness a drop in demand. Once the demand has stabilized, you can steadily raise your prices. |
| Steal employees | They will try to poach your employees by offering them higher wages and incentives. If too many employees leave, your business will naturally suffer. | Increase the wages of your employees and maintain their satisfaction level. If they are satisfied while working at your business, then they are almost never going to leave it. |
| Open competing stores | Rivals can open competing stores near your locations (if they do not have one already). They do this in an attempt to poach customers in the area. | The best advice to defend against these practices would be to spread your stores out within the sector as well. Do not concentrate everything in one place as I did. |
How To Beat Big Ambitions 1.0 Rivals
There are multiple ways to go about defeating your business rivals. These include, but are not limited to:
- Price War: Drop your prices to always remain below the target rival. Your rival will slowly start losing profits, and eventually be unable to keep up with your prices anymore.
- This method is quite slow if you employ it on its own. Instead, it is better to use it with a combination of the next tactic.
- Warehousing: Once you start supplying your businesses with your own warehouses, the rivals cannot keep up with your prices. At this point, start lowering your prices to cause a massive drop in the rival’s profits.
- Buy Out: If the rival’s profits start dropping, so will their valuation. Once this happened, I was able to buy the business and shut the rivalry down.
General Tips
Here are some general tips that helped me combat the Big Ambitions 1.0 rivals:
- Pay a one-time bonus to employees whose satisfaction level has dropped to dangerous levels. This will sharply raise their satisfaction within the company. This is not advised for every employee, as it does cost a decent bit. Moreover, if an employee is already satisfied, the bonus does not achieve much.
- Rivals only activate in a sector once you open three or more stores. Thus, you can smartly spread your stores out across multiple sectors without triggering this limit. This will allow your business to grow quickly early on without much rival interference. Once you feel ready to take on a rival, open more stores in one sector at a time.
- Low-cost stores within the vicinity of a rival store can quickly undermine their business. This is a cost-effective way of messing with their profits. In practice, you are essentially employing their third tactic against them.
- Get a good job early on to help progress faster.
