When I first started playing the game, one of the websites that I initally found useful was:
http://www.corvalliscommunitypages.com/bsgimages/bsgrev2.html
After playing the game many times and after becoming a Grand Champion, my opinion about the site has changed quite a bit. I think the information there is useful to learn more about the game and to think about strategy, however, there is a lot of information there that is not advisable to follow, is wrong, or has more complexity than indicated in the recommendations. I don’t want to be too negative about it, because I think it’s better than a lot of other sites. My biggest concern is that players will take the information too specifically and too literally, following it like a strategic bible, without taking into account how the authors have their own unique perspectives that aren’t always suitable or good for many game situations.
I could probably write a whole book about what I think is wrong or misleading on that site, but I’m not sure that it’s necessary so long as the reader/player remains duly skeptical and takes the info with “a grain of salt” to recognize that the opinions there may not be as good as they seem to be.
The biggest problem with the advice there seems to be a huge overemphasis on the importance of celebrity bidding. I studied many dozens of games by previous Grand Champions when this information was available on the BSG website. I found that many of the winners had NO celebrities at all. In fact, I found that it was very common for the best players not to have celebrities, and if they did have celebrities, it didn’t really affect their overall performance at all because they only had one or two that were picked up at value prices late in the game. The International tournament is significantly different than the games played in classrooms, however, since in the classroom most of the teams have never played the BSG before while the tournament is only played by teams invited who have already won their classroom simulation first. In other words, the classroom game is all newbies who tend to make a lot of mistakes without realizing their errors. This is very important with respect to celebrities because it’s much more likely that at least one team will be overbidding for all of the celebrities for every year of the simulation. When that’s the case, it’s almost always a bad decision to outbid their overbid. You should only bid for celebrities WHEN YOU KNOW IT WILL BE PROFITABLE FOR YOUR TEAM TO WIN THE BID. Most teams don’t seem to even know how to calculate the prospective profitability of winning a celebrity. You MUST bid less for the contract than the EXTRA profits that the celebrity is expected to generate. And you should be conservative to allow room for an unexpected downturn in sales. Do not bid at all unless you create a spreadsheet model that can determine a profitable bid amount for each celebrity for your own company’s operation for the years of the contract. Short term celebrity contracts are probably not worth bidding on at all until the last years of the simulation so that the contract doesn’t expire before the end of the game. If in doubt, don’t bid, or bid a very low amount that should be profitable in any condition.
Another problem with that site is the poor discussion and use of the number of models produced, particularly in reference to the plant upgrades. In most cases, it will be better to reduce the number of models produced in the early years until a plant has upgrade option B. Option B is the most important upgrade because it reduces the setup cost – which is the most important cost for producing a large number of models. It’s also the most expensive plant upgrade – for a reason – it can be the most profitable by reducing production costs the most. The cost of the upgrade is based on the size of the plant, so it’s much cheaper to start this upgrade early before expansion, and often it’s worth selling off capacity to reduce the size of the plant – and decreasing the cost of this upgrade.
You should also know that it’s possible to produce 500 models in one high capacity plant, and produce a smaller number of models in another plant, then combine the output that you distribute to get a higher average number of models that are sold in a region. For example, you could produce 500 models in Asia, and 100+ models in Latin America, and still end up with more than 350-450 models sold in America by distributing them there with a mix from the two plants. You probably shouldn’t have two plants that have the same upgrades and that have the same capacity, since it will be more cost effective to have only one large factory, reducing the fixed costs. But this scenario isn’t discussed.
These are just two example of strategic problems with that site. There are a lot more. So take the info with a large degree of skepticism.