As your company grows, it will became necessary to build the company headquarters. This building handles all the paperwork and services for all your companies, and when you reach 50 buildings, you won't be able to handle it without it, your company will stop functioning properly. On top of that, some services like advertisement for your store can be bought only at your Company HQs, so you may want to consider building it even earlier.
To build your main Headquarter:
Click on the Build button to load the build menu on the right hand side of the screen.
When the Build page loads, click on the headquarters Icon. This will load the headquarters build menu.
Remember, after you click on one of the icons on the main page of the build menu, it will load the menu for that section. You will see the text for all the buildings in that section of the build menu. The buildings in white are the buildings that you can build and the buildings in gray are the ones that you cannot build at this time. When you click on the text for one of the buildings it will give you some information about that building.
Click on the company headquarters line.
This will display: some information about the building, an icon, a "Build now" button and a "More info" button. The cost of the building, in $1,000.00 units, and the area needed for the building in square meters will appear on the right of the icon. Your company headquarters requires 3600 square meters, the equivalent to nine squares on the map: three squares up and across. One square on the map is equivalent to 400 square meters.
Most buildings must be built on land that is either not zoned, or that is zoned to a specific type of zone appropriate for the building being built. If a building must be built in a specific type of zone, there will be a symbol below the area figure. This symbol will be the color of the zone that you need to build in. For your headquarters it will be light blue with a C in the middle, for commercial zones. That is why you were looking for some open blue-zoned land when deciding on the location. Hold your mouse over the symbol to get a hint about it.
Click on the more info button.
This will display additional information about the selected building. Regarding the headquarters, it will list how many people the building employs and how many Prestige Points you will get when you build it. You can also get this information by holding your mouse over the building icon on the menu, but when you click the More info button it will display additional information for other buildings on the same menu page as well. For disabled buildings the hint won't work, just use the More info button.
Click on the Company Headquarters text.
Click the Build now button.
The system will download the building zones in the area you are in. If the land has been zoned you will see it change color. You should be right over the place you want to build so just wait for the zones to load. The other thing that will happen is that now when you move your mouse over the screen you will see the building move around the screen too. It will turn green if it is in a valid build location or red if it is in an invalid build location.
Move the mouse over the area where you want to place the building.
When the building turns green click the mouse. You have now placed your first building, and you will see the construction begin on the screen.
Click the back button on the build menu.
Click the build button to close the build menu.
Click on the building so that is selected.
Click the heart icon above the small map.
This will open up the favorite page on the top of the screen. You can use this page to provide you with quick access to some of your buildings. All that you need to do is double click on its name to move to a building in the list.
Click once on the name in the quick link menu.
After the link is selected click once more to rename it.
Name the links in such a way as to help you remember what they are. This strategy will be especially helpful in keeping your company organized when the number of buildings you have increases. When you build the Commerce Headquarters later on it will be right by this building. So examples of useful link names would be Mariko Headquarters, Mariko Center, Mar. HQ. With a name like that you know exactly what type of building and Seal the link is for. If you are consistent with your style of naming links, you will not have any problems going through them to find the one you need.
Click on the heart icon again to close the Favorite page.
After the main headquarters is built, it will automatically do the research to allow it to function. Also, you will be able to research industries and, if you have a vision of running your own television station, law firm or software company, you will buy the license to build these facilities here. Even if you do not build such firms yourself, your company will still require these services and the company headquarters building is where you hire them from. The headquarters act as the middleman between your stores and television stations. You can have hundreds of stores buying advertisements and the only place you need to go to hire the advertiser is your main headquarters. Legal and software services are handled the same way.
Inspecting the Company Headquarters and Hiring Suppliers
Now it is time to review some of the settings for the Company Headquarters.
Right click on your company headquarters.
This will open the inspection window. You can also get the inspection window by left clicking on a building and then clicking on the Inspect button. The Inspect window is where you will find out a lot of information about the selected building.
General Tab.
This is the page the Inspect window defaults to when you first open it. On this page you can rename the building by typing a new name in the name box or you can close and demolish the building. Note: do not close down your headquarters, this will cause all the buildings it supports to stop working. You will also see the type of building, who built it, and the ROI. The ROI (return of investment) for headquarters will always show "Never", since they do not make any profit directly. Your headquarters help your overall company make a profit.
Click on the Researches button.
The page that pops up is where you research different items: the items that are available to you will have a green circle next to them. Items that are unavailable will have a gray circle. This is also where you can see what you are currently researching and also what you have already developed.
Click on the Services tab.
This will provide with information on your current supplier of Legal services, Software and Advertisement. You will see the supplier's name, the number of hours purchased, the cost and settings for the max price and minimum quality. Choose one of them, and keep going.
Click on the Jobs tab.
This page is where you can set your employees wages and see how many are currently employed. If the town has set a minimum wage you will see that in red on the wage bar. Lowering wages is one of those catch 22 situations. Sometimes you need to lower wages to make a profit but when you lower them workers will have less money to spend on the products you are trying to sell. So you will need to decide where you want wages at based on your personal preference. A general guideline would be to not set them 100% over minimum wage unless you have problems retaining workers, and not less than the town's minimum wage. Pay attention to the minimum salary set by the major (the red on the wage bar). If you set your wages below the minimum wage, employees will receive the minimum wage anyway, but employees, in deciding whether to remain with the facility will take the amount you set into account. Furthermore, you will have a hard time hiring any new workers due to the low pay offered. Generally, it's a good idea to be close to the minimum wage or slightly higher.
Click on the Management tab.
This page is used to upgrade and downgrade your buildings and to copy the settings of one building to several with one click of the mouse. You will primarily use these functions on your stores and factories.
Click on the history tab.
Once your building is one year old, this tab will provide you with a profit and losses chart for the building. That tab also provides you with the basics on all the Information tabs in the company's headquarters. You will find that most of the tabs have the same function on any type of building. Next, you will go back to the Services tab and go through the steps of hiring services.
Click on the Services tab.
Click on the Legal Services tab.
This will provide with information on your current supplier of Legal services. You will see the name of the supplier, the number of hours purchased, the cost and settings for the max price and minimum quality.
Click on the Hire button.
This will bring you to the supplier search panel. There are options, with the check boxes, that enable you to focus the search: by town name, company name, and type of facility. The search will use wildcard searches so if you want to find companies that start with the letter A, You would type A* in the company name box. For now, leave both name boxes empty and put checkmarks in all the boxes, by doing this, the search will bring up any supplier in any town.
Make sure all check boxes have a check mark in them, then click the search button.
The system will now search for suppliers based on the criteria entered. Sometimes it will not turn up any suppliers and that could mean there currently are no suppliers of the item you are looking for. The system will show a list with the town name, company name, cost and quality.
Click the Select All Button.
You can select and deselect individual suppliers by clicking on their name in the list or you can select all of them by clicking the Select all Button. It is good to have backup suppliers on your list, so select more than one. The system will buy from the cheapest one in your list.
Click Buy from selected suppliers.
The new suppliers will download into the Suppliers list for your building now. Some of the suppliers you found searching, may not be copied into your suppliers list. This can be due to the setting of the facility you are trying to buy from or the strategy the owner has set towards you. This will be explained later. After the suppliers finish loading you can set the Max Price and Min Quality bars if you want. Be careful not to set the max price at a lower rate than what suppliers are currently charging, and that you do not set the Min quality higher than the quality that they are offering. If you do that you will not be able to buy products until you adjust these two settings. It would also be a good time to hire some advertisers, if any are available, by following the same process that you just went through with the suppliers. Once you have finished hiring suppliers and advertisers (if possible), your job with the company headquarters is done for now.
Click on the Quit button to close the Search panel.
Click the Map View Button to return the map.
Click the Inspect button to close the Inspect window.
Summary on Building the Company Headquarters
That covers all the steps in building your company headquarters. Some basic points to remember are repeated below.
You need to build in Commercial, light-blue zoned land if the land is zoned.
A company headquarters is required before you can build many of the other buildings.
All headquarter buildings are service centers, not direct profit centers. All headquarter buildings will show negative profit as a norm: do not shut them down unless you don't really need them.
You hire the services for your company as a whole at the Company Headquarters.
If you want to build your own service industries, the research for those items are available at the Company Headquarters.
