So I bought the game but don't much time to play as I am working full for congress now. When I return back up north to my apartment, me and my buddies designate a day per week or two to play LAN Civ for maybe 14 hours at a time..lol. So the rules are: we might start between 1-3pm and no human player can attack another human player untill atleast midnight (to make sure no one quits). I am trying to learn alot about this game in a month but just dont have the time to play it.

So let me get this straight....if i have no oil resources, i can find standard ethanol and put it in a couple of my own cities for oil? Is spreading corproations throughout your own cities helpful at all? or just internationally? I have always been a fan of state property (build large empires, build workshops) and it seems state property got a hell of a boost for this game....is there really an advantage to using corporations instead of state property?

lol I can see another post pratically answered all my questions as I was writing this thread

I'm in the middle of my first full game and I have noticed that with corporations you want to only spread a handful to your own cities and only the cities that would really benefit. You want to spread them to your rivals all over the place so that you can make up the maintenance costs of the corps in your own city.

For example I founded Mining Inc. and Sid's Sushi. I ended up spreading Mining Inc. to my key production cities, while spreading Sid Sushi to all of my rivals.

....is there really an advantage to using corporations instead of state property?Jury is still out on that one, but if you need oil for your tanks, and there is none nearby, you have to turn to those greedy capitalists at Standard Oil! ;)

this raises a good point: one corp strategy can be selling finished goods of aluminum and oil. but these are corps you want to keep within your borders. selling each produced resource for the cost or greater of consumption can work if they dont: have the resource, have the corp that produces them, or have trading partners that have the resource. you can be like opec in this case.

The boni can be really worth it if you have enough of the base resources available. And spreading the corps to other countries, preferably your colonies/faithful vassals can generate enormous amounts of cash.
Just make sure you build the headquarters in your Wall Street city. For every branch of the corporation in any city, your HQ produces 5:gold: base. With market, grover and bank it's already 10:gold: and with the Wall Street wonder whooping 15:gold:. Each branch also costs 7-8:gold: of maintainance to the city owner.

On the other hand, it's not cheap to spread your corporation to every corner of the planet. Executives take 1-2 turns to produce and opening a branch in another city will cost 120-180:gold: on Standard speed. Considering the late appearance of most corps, they are probably more suited for epic and marathon games.

It's probably best to keep Std. Ethanol and Aluminium Inc. within your own empire and spread the rest among your colonies/vassals. Civilized Juweliers could be spread to other empires that are nowhere near cultural victory. You might want to keep the others to yourself or spread them to the least powerful civilizations (if you haven't conquered them yet).

this raises a good point: one corp strategy can be selling finished goods of aluminum and oil. but these are corps you want to keep within your borders. selling each produced resource for the cost or greater of consumption can work if they dont: have the resource, have the corp that produces them, or have trading partners that have the resource. you can be like opec in this case.

Can you trade the Aluminum/Oil produced?

I haven't founded SE and I try to combine AC/CC for the Synergy (all you need is Coal), so I honestly haven't tried to trade the generated resource.

It's my understanding only the city where the Corporate Office is gets the resource .?.

sadly you may be right.

For a quick overview of the effects of opening a corporation in your cities, click the briefcase icon in the upper right corner icon bar. It it will display the maintenance costs and bonuses for each corporate office in each of your cities. I don't believe it takes inflation into account, but it does break down the costs and benefits that will accrue by opening an office based upon buildings, bonuses, and resources available.

sadly you may be right.Yeah, he is right, the corp produced resources stay where they are made.

One thing about corps that wasn't clear until I actually played the game was that resources that the corp consumes still has it's benefits.

For example I was afraid that if you built Sid's Sushi Corp the city would lose the health benefits from fish,clams,crabs and rice. Luckily this isn't the case.