I have been playing for about a week so definite noob comments here, but I was a professional options trader in a past life, so I thought I understood how stocks work.

In the daily challenge where I managed to squeak out a victory, I watched the replay, to see how closely I squeaked by.

First...  I squeaked like a mouse with its ... well anyway, the enemy had 100% of the assets needed to win when I bought him out.

That's not the curiosity though.  He had 7 shares of his own stock.  I was very leery of buying out the extra two shares because I assumed that would give him the cash needed to buy me out.  Based on the replay, I would have assumed that was a valid assumption.  But when I did buy that first extra share, his control of assets required to buy me out dropped.

When I bought his shares, I just doubled the value of one of his assets, so his asset value should have gone up. 

In addition, since I bought his stock for an inflated price, his stock price should have gone up raising his assets even more

Finally, since I paid twice as much for a share than what I could turn around and sell it for, my stock price should have gone down, instead it went up.

That is all just the math.  In the real world, when one company makes a move on another company, the target company invariably rises, but not to 100% of the target value.  The purchasing company, however, can go down or up depending on the perceived merits of the acquisition.

In that perspective, I guess I can understand the game mechanic I observed.

---  Company assets are evaluated at full target takeover value  (i would think that disadvantages AI algorithms because the AI does not actually own the assets it thinks it has unless someone buys those shares on their timeline)

--- Company takeover attempts are assessed as profitable, which is valid because the game makes them VERY valuable... thus raising buyer's stock

Of course, I could have misinterpreted everything.