Hey guys just wondering, because my empire is usually VERY large and state property seems like a must to knock out the maintenance. Would it be worth it to switch to a different civic just to start to spread a corperation? It just seems that a corp cant bring in the bacon that state property does[pimp] .

Depends on what year you're in (what inflation is like) and how much you've spread your corp overseas.

whats a generally good inflation rate to start a corp at? and its never spread over seas because im always state property. Thats why im such a corp noob. I haven't seen a civic yet to match State prop. so i havent bothered, but i want to maybe give corps a try.

I've been wondering where corps fit in as well. Perhaps if you were only looking at 7-9 cities and had mostly coastal cities (for the trade routes in free market), a single corporation spread to several others civs may allow for a successful endgame.

Start a corp as early as possible! It's really the only way to beat the demon that is inflation. inflation in the game is tied to game year alone, so the earlier the better.

The reason you would want to spread it overseas is to make up the costs you bring on to yourself for using the corp. You always want to found the ones that you plan on spreading in your own cities.

I would say not worth, if you have a large empire.

I tried playing Charlemagne with a huge territory and all I got was a big production and money slowdown.

So keep it commie :)

well if for some reason in one game i didn't have a huge empire, which corp should i get and how is the best way to spread it? only to my cities in areas i want the bonus and to as many foreign as i can? I tried to read some of the other corp posts but they go way to in depth. i just want the noob explination on how to do it right and when its actually worth it. Sorry to seem so dumb about it but i mean i am starting with 9-13 cities before AD, i am usually a huge war monger.

i think it depends on your goals. what corp best fits your strategy? mining co is good for production bonus, sushi for food and culture, cereal mills for food.

Spread them to 1 or 2 foreign cities per civ and they will do the rest. you don't want to alienate the AI when spreading them. Also, make sure you only spread them to where you want the bonus for yourself. dont put them anywhere you dont.

I think so, whenever I found a corps, I always switch back to free market. Corps are just so devastating to enemy economies, I just can't resist :)

My question is, if your empire is always so large in each game, don't you think you need to move up a level?

But hey, whatever lets you have fun.

Can't bring in the bacon? But spread it to enough cities and you can rake in the dough while at the same time brining havoc economically to your rival's cities! It's not uncommon for my corporation(s) to rake in upwards of 100+ gold per turn, and I usually don't found any of my corporation's branches in my own cities.

which is why the system needs to be fixed so that simply spamming the enemy or allowing the enemy to spam themselves is not a completely viable strategy.

I think its been well established now that the use of corporations has to be "self monitored" by the human player.
The fact you can use them to devastate AI economies is clearly in error and not the original intent so there needs to be an elemetn of self monitoring not to exploit them.

Also i'm yet to use corps but can you remove corporations from your cities if an AI sets up a branch?

No, no you can't which is actually a good thing. It requires you to weigh the various benefits of civics like SP, Mercantilism and Free Market.

To have the ability to remove certain elements of the enemies strategy like religion of corporations for little or no cost is unfair and unbalancing.

My question is, if your empire is always so large in each game, don't you think you need to move up a level?

But hey, whatever lets you have fun.

Can't bring in the bacon? But spread it to enough cities and you can rake in the dough while at the same time brining havoc economically to your rival's cities! It's not uncommon for my corporation(s) to rake in upwards of 100+ gold per turn, and I usually don't found any of my corporation's branches in my own cities.

Empire size is a matter of map size rather than difficulty level. When going for Domination wins on huge maps you will have huge empires regardless of difficulty level.

Empire size is a matter of map size rather than difficulty level. When going for Domination wins on huge maps you will have huge empires regardless of difficulty level.

Yes, you are right. In fact... I usually do go State Property when I find myself with a large empire and pursuing a domination victory.

However, 30% of the land and population on a huge map is usually enough to set oneself up for a space or diplo win or at worst, have a chance at it.

I tend to see corps as being useful when you own a relatively small empire. They can provide you with either ressources or help to do super cities, they focus more on quality (inside your borders at least) than quantity.

If you have a small empire, like 5 or 6 cities, odds are you will lack ressources like tin or oil, and bringing those few cities to a higher level is indeed spectacular. Therefore, free market (and some spywork to force your opponents to join you there) and corporations seem adequate.
If you have a big empire, like 20+ cities on a normal map, odds are ethanol and tin corps will be useless, and having 2-3 wonderful cities would be less important than managing the whole mess and surviving the inflation. State Property looks better then.

My question is, if your empire is always so large in each game, don't you think you need to move up a level?

But hey, whatever lets you have fun.

Can't bring in the bacon? But spread it to enough cities and you can rake in the dough while at the same time brining havoc economically to your rival's cities! It's not uncommon for my corporation(s) to rake in upwards of 100+ gold per turn, and I usually don't found any of my corporation's branches in my own cities.

when i first started playing bts the comps were way harder so i dropped the difficulty. I have been 1 upping the level every game ever since. I love BTS. 100 GPT sounds pretty nice, what year was it?

I tend to see corps as being useful when you own a relatively small empire. They can provide you with either ressources or help to do super cities, they focus more on quality (inside your borders at least) than quantity.

If you have a small empire, like 5 or 6 cities, odds are you will lack ressources like tin or oil, and bringing those few cities to a higher level is indeed spectacular. Therefore, free market (and some spywork to force your opponents to join you there) and corporations seem adequate.
If you have a big empire, like 20+ cities on a normal map, odds are ethanol and tin corps will be useless, and having 2-3 wonderful cities would be less important than managing the whole mess and surviving the inflation. State Property looks better then.

The only thing here is, if you have a big empire, that means you prolly have multiple sources of resources, making corps even more powerful...

yes you wont need the source of oil from Ethonol Corp, but the bonii in hammers etc. will be a nice boon.

I'd rather gift those resources away their increase corp cost.

@Shredz : I don't agree - or at least, that's not the way I play.

I need a "super mining corp" (can't remember the name) in my production city, when I have only one or two of this type. If I have 12 of them, the cost of the corporation spreading would be prohibitive, and I wouldn't sacrifice a great person just for one wonder city of so many.
Besides, as things stand, multiple ressources are as much a boon as a curse, since they increase the cost of the corporation office.

Of course, that's just the way I see the use of corps : if you can manage to spread them in a massive empire, that's even better, it means we can exploit them differently, making the addition worthwile.

My Sid's Sushi Corp brings in +12:food: per city in my current game. That's 6 free specialists, make some of them Merchants and I easily reap a profit in my own cities, not to mention the fact I run Representation alongside for tons of bonus :science:. It's really easy to get extra resources from the AI's... I gave Mansa Musa 1 hit movie (which gave him a bonus of +1:)), and in trade he was willing to give me 5 "spare" resources, some food, some jewels. I'm 99% sure the number of Food resources in the game has been dramatically increased -- there's about 30 each of clams, crabs and fish on my current map, with only 11 civs. I have 10 cattle in my borders (which encompasses 2 former civs) and none of my rivals need the spares.

Civilized Jewelers is also a naturally profit-making venture without requiring any extra work. The gold produced at each city of mine is around +20:gold:, while the maintenance fee is -20:gold: and each city brings in 5:gold:+200% at the Headquarters.

Keep in mind the +1:traderoute: is also more significant now that all overseas trade receives a bonus (+100%:commerce: I think) in addition to the Customs House, which boosts this further.

Plus spreading a Food corporation to your cities gives you the alternative of replacing nearby farms with Cottages or Workshops, the latter of which dramatically boosted the production of my military city. Mining Inc and Creative Constructions seem rather like a waste of the engineer when you can use spare food in this manner.

Yeah, corporations are only worth pursuing if you have a clear strategy behind them. For example, it's worth bombing a rival civ with sushi corp if you can restrict the number of seafood resources they have, so that the maintenance costs they incur outweigh the corporation benefits.

Otherwise, if you can't engineer a favourable situation for having corporations you might as well use State Property, which gives 10% production bonus as well, as well as having synergy with Caste System.

i've always been confused as to why corporations devastate economies. for example, Coca cola's prescense in africa has resulted thousands of related jobs. I think it's done quite the opposite. i think that corporations should play a similar effect to the economic benefits of religions

I am still trying to figure out whether what, if any situations, is a corp spread to your own cities still profitable for you at year 2050? In other words, If you were running the HRE (w/rathaus) at settler level, would you be able to turn a profit from a corp in your own city?

Well, it will be changed in a patch, so it isn't worth calculating at the moment.

solver's unofficial patch removed corp maintenance from inflation effects.

I like the corps and see no reason to change anything, but I'm sure they will since the #1 topic in this forum is complaining about them. All I have is my personal experience playing BTS in the last week. I use religion to spam my cities with a 25% building production boost. I'll spam my neighbors for extra income and to influence their religion. If they don't accept it I'll beat them up and force it on them. Around that time my religion is all over the map and the smart ones are switching to free religion so that my minions don't declare war and block their trades. It is at this point that corp shows up and I get a whole new bag of toys to play with. Unlike religion I don't want this in my towns. I'm going to spam it all over the map like a pimp slanging crack. Ten to twenty turns later every other civilization is trying to overcome the bill I just hit them with. If they manage to crawl out of that I'll give them some music or a movie and shake them down for every last penny. They are toast. Their only hope now is to convince everyone else to declare war on me. It's futile though, because I've got so much cash at this point that I can finish production on those nukes. If they hesitate with a stack on my border... kaboom. Then I'll nuke every surrounding city and create a barrier of nuclear fallout between us. I love this game. My only complaint is that in Alpha Centauri a nuke would deface the land and I kind of miss that. I can nuke a city 5 times in a row and it will still be there. :nuke:

I've now got Sid's Sushi up to +15:food: +57:culture: per city, or 7 free Specialists and a little left over. If I had them all as Merchants that'd be (3*7=21)+100% or 42:gold:, plus the 15:gold: at HQ, and (3*7+110%=) +44:science: from the specialists under Representation. Maintenance fees are -30:gold: per branch. It easily turns a profit and then I have extra benefits left over. This is on a large epic Big&Small map with 11 starting civs and only 3 civ locations conquered (Persia, India, and part of Khmer), all the other spare resources were acquired through trade with civs that didn't need them, and I could increase this more if I was willing to trade away more of my spare happiness resources.

In my military city I was able to change 5 farms supporting my mines into workshops, losing -15:food: from the farms, but gaining +15:food: from Sushi, and +15 base :hammers: from the workshops (multiplied by +250% bonuses to reach 53:hammers:). In commerce cities you can also replace now-unneeded farms supporting the population with cottages for a massive :commerce: boost, part of which goes to :gold: like a Merchant to easily offset the maintenance cost. The food corps are like the old nutrient skypods of Alpha Centauri, eliminating any and all food considerations in your empire while simultaneously turning a profit and providing a massive cultural + food boost for newly-conquered cities near a rival's cultural boundaries to keep them from starving or flipping.

It sounds like the problem is:
1) The AI doesn't know how to capitalize on corporations properly by trading for spare resources.
2) It doesn't know to change to Mercantilism or State Property if things get out of hand. A simple civics change would waste all the :gold:, :hammers:, and time you spent to spread your corporation to their cities.
3) I'm not sure the AI saves up Great People to found corporations, either. The only ones I've seen founded by an AI are long after they research the appropriate tech.

If you can force global Environmentalism through the UN to counter their civic change even after all that, then you're dominating the game so much you've already won anyways.

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/660/sushixh5.jpg

My musical fish are playing a happy tune as they're merrily converted into Sushi.

getting mining inc asap + forcing it on every single civ + 200% gold bonus in HQ = :gold: :gold: :gold:

they don't like your corporations? force them to the wonderful world of free market through your spies.

A corp is much more powerful compared to state property, because it gives a huge boost to your empire while the others get their factories covered in trademark stickers and logos galore

Up to +17:food: now, I traded off my spare strategic resources to backward civs without the techs to use them (all colonies of other leaders):

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/3962/sushi2lf3.jpg

Yes, that's 65 base :culture: too, before modifiers. Forget theaters, my conquered cities pop cultural borders twice the turn they come out of resistance, and get 17 free food to boot. Mansa Musa has another 5 Clams... I'm eying his territory for "financial capital acquisition"... plus he's the tech leader *rubs hands together in anticipation*

The number of food resources in BTS has been dramatically increased, at least in the games I've played so far. This is all on a map with only 11 starting civs and 4 colonies, and they all kept 1 of each resource for themselves. If you were going for a Domination win (I'm trying out the new space race instead) you could probably get that up to +20:food:, or +25:food: on a Huge map with 18 civs.

The reviewers were worried about Corporations not being powerful enough; they might be far too powerful. I hope Free Market doesn't get nerfed. State property could use a buff, possibly giving +25%:hammers: instead of +10%:hammers:. The +25% corporation maintenance penalty associated with Environmentalism leaves that civic in the perpetual trash can too, even if it does give +8:health: per city and +2:commerce: per windmill and forest preserve. I've never, since the release of Civ IV, been in a situation where Environmentalism would have been better than the other choices, and every choice should have at least some situation where it's useful.

A little question to Thalassicus :
Can you look in your financial advisor to give us the inflation rate?

*Nods* It's currently at:

City Maintenance - 1034:gold:
Inflation - 1423:gold:
Total Expenses - 2855:gold:

I'm not sure how useful this information is in regards to the inflation problem I've heard about, but there's the data. I've heard it gets bad in the 2000-2050CE range, my matches typically end before 1900CE.

That's indeed impressive, and I hadn't seen corps this way.

However, there are some things that need a rework. It's just too easy to counter an AI corp. If it founds one, AND if it spams it through your land, AND if you don't want it (ok, that's a lot of "if"), you just switch to mercantilism/SP for one turn, easy with the big brazilian statue, and you're free. Having those civics making the corp offices "inactive" but still here, in case you switch back to another one, should be enough

However, there are some things that need a rework. It's just too easy to counter an AI corp. If it founds one, AND if it spams it through your land, AND if you don't want it (ok, that's a lot of "if"), you just switch to mercantilism/SP for one turn, easy with the big brazilian statue, and you're free. Having those civics making the corp offices "inactive" but still here, in case you switch back to another one, should be enough

Ouch, it permanently, completely removes them? If the AI did this too, you'd have to be careful of spamming branches in Spiritual AI cities... they could wipe out all your hammers, gold and time with one switch. It sounds to me like the AI never considers changing civics to counter corporations, based on the anecdotes in this thread.

I don't think the AI is able to change a civic in order to get rid of your corporation offices, but when it actually changes, the icons of your corp's presence in a city (and the income) disappear.

...I made the test : adopting State Property or Mercantilism just "hides" the corporation office, but doesn't make it disappear. It's made dormant, but still there, and will reappear as soon as another economic civic is adopted.

In other words, as long as you have enough spy points to force the AI in a free market, spreading your corp is worthwile, since it will never get rid of it, only for a short while.

I've never, since the release of Civ IV, been in a situation where Environmentalism would have been better than the other choices, and every choice should have at least some situation where it's useful.

The environment doesn't suffer whether you choose it or not. If global warming or a similar environment-damaging effect came about because of industrialisation, and not nukes...

Thal - I am in aggreeance with you on the power of corporations. I see you have -30 gold there. Why so high? I haven't really seen the costs that high? Does the cost increase in level?

The only time I've ever seen costs that high is in cities with no courthouse.

I definitely think they may be a tad overpowered. I've been getting better at extorting resources away from the AI. I'll spam a corp, get the +10 gold benefit in the capital, and leave the AI civ earning +1 work from mining inc in each city, and watch it run its economy completely into the ground. I won't start expanding my corp in an AI city until I have all of the AI's extra resources. I haven't had an instance yet where the AI had the brains to stop trading with me to get increased benefit from the corp I spammed in his country.

The AI definitely needs a little tweaking. Especially when you consider how easy it would be for the AI to cripple your economy by simply switching to State property.

Figure...if you spam your corp to a ten city civ...that's an immense amount of gold coming into your treasury that just dissappears if they switch to SP.

I dunno. I'm a big fan. It sure makes the space race a lot easier.

No. Corperations are so bad it makes SP better. ! Viva la revolución¡

I don't understand why some AI civs often switch to environmentalism, with at least 80-100% of their cities having corporate offices in them. That's like suicide! I checked an AI's city screen once and he had to run at 100% in gold, with his army on strike (because the AI loves large armies now...). Are the AI's going coo-coo or is there something so amazing about environmentalism that I'm missing.

Here's my 25-specialist city with +18:food: now from Sid's Sushi. :)

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/456/sushigpcitypd9.th.jpg (http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/456/sushigpcitypd9.jpg)

Note that the Industrial Park's free Engineer appears below the other specialists, but it's not a Great Specialist and still provides +3:gp:.

I'm going for a non-engineer specialist to start another golden age.

I don't understand why some AI civs often switch to environmentalism, with at least 80-100% of their cities having corporate offices in them. That's like suicide! I checked an AI's city screen once and he had to run at 100% in gold, with his army on strike (because the AI loves large armies now...). Are the AI's going coo-coo or is there something so amazing about environmentalism that I'm missing.

:goodjob: this is a game balance issue where the priority for health outweighs the priority for a solvent economy.

i've always been confused as to why corporations devastate economies. for example, Coca cola's prescense in africa has resulted thousands of related jobs. I think it's done quite the opposite. i think that corporations should play a similar effect to the economic benefits of religions

Well, that's something that I love of the corporation model: it works exactly like in the real life. If you have the right resources and generally talking, if you are a big, rich civ, corporations can give huge bonuses to you. However, if you are an already poor civ (or lack of the proper resources), corporations are likely to ruin your local economy. Think of traditional farmers vs huge agricultural corporations. They create employement on the first world countries, but they have pretty much ruined lots of agricultural societies in thirds world countries since the traditional farmers cannot compete properly against it and they hold seed patents.

But did you make use of the Rathaus UB of the HRE, or were you playing unrestricted leaders?

I would say not worth, if you have a large empire.

I tried playing Charlemagne with a huge territory and all I got was a big production and money slowdown.

So keep it commie :)

Well, that's something that I love of the corporation model: it works exactly like in the real life. If you have the right resources and generally talking, if you are a big, rich civ, corporations can give huge bonuses to you. However, if you are an already poor civ (or lack of the proper resources), corporations are likely to ruin your local economy. Think of traditional farmers vs huge agricultural corporations. They create employement on the first world countries, but they have pretty much ruined lots of agricultural societies in thirds world countries since the traditional farmers cannot compete properly against it and they hold seed patents.

but the problem is that in the game they are ruining first rate countries.

I don't understand why some AI civs often switch to environmentalism, with at least 80-100% of their cities having corporate offices in them. That's like suicide! I checked an AI's city screen once and he had to run at 100% in gold, with his army on strike (because the AI loves large armies now...). Are the AI's going coo-coo or is there something so amazing about environmentalism that I'm missing.

I have yet to see an AI civ ruin its economy by means of spamming my or another civ's corporation. Most often they only have 2 or 3 of the necessary resources and so they pay very low maintenance, much lower than me. In one game I had Sid's Sushi giving me 8 food and costing about 20 gold in each of my cities. With inflation I could only justify running it in a few of my cities despite having the HQ income. Charlemagne was running Free Market and open borders so he got an office and spread it for me. But he only had 4 sea food resources and got 2 food for about 4 gold, which in some of his food poor cities was a good trade off as it let them grow and improve their trade routes!

I would like someone to show us a concrete example of an AI civ being ruined by corporation maintenance costs. It seems to me that the running costs are usually offset by the benefits or they are so low that they are not significant. I do think the AIs sometimes waste the 100 hammers and 120-ish gold it costs to spam the offices. Sometimes the small benefit a corporation gives them each turn doesn't justify that office set up cost.

but the problem is that in the game they are ruining first rate countries.

Well, not exactly. I mean, this is the use that I give to corporations:

1- tech directly to juridic person and get the corporations early (that is the key of its sucess). Start trading all the other civ "excesive resources" since they don't have any corporation yet. Spread the corporations in few strategic places inside yoru empire.

2- Now that you have secured your acess to their excesive resources, you start to spread your corporations at their land. Spam them like crazy. If they would have that excess of resources they could have gained the awesome cultural, food and production bonuses. But instead of that, they get the manteinance costs and only a very little part of the corporation bonuses.

3- Once powerful empires of the old times that archieved power trough land, now they have became my personal commercial . .. .. .. .. .es thanks to corporations and a solid tech edge.

4- They try to switch to mercantilism / state propierty to avoid it. Too bad I won the UN resolution for free trade.

So, basically, I have acted EXACTLY like the first world countries did: I have reaped the resources of bigger, more resource - rich civs due to my early tech advance (think XIXth century russia or African kingdoms). Then, I have ruined their economies, making their land, traditional source of their power, little valuable, thus drowning them in the civ ladder. And then, when they tried to restort to comunism or mercantilism in order to protect their economies, I use the international, evil globalization institutions like the UN to impose them an economic model that benefits ME and screw them. Just beautiful.

I thought BTS was going to kill State Property, but really, it's given a decent boost :p Unless you desperatly need a certain corp, or, as in Vanilla/Warlords, Merc/Free Market would better suit your empire, it's still a very good civic.

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6326/sushi3xl8.jpg

Up to +24:food: +94:culture: from Sushi and growing. Newly conquered cities pop borders two times the turn they come out of resistance, giving them 40% defense, and pop again three turns later. Cities grow at +1 population per turn until size 10 (rush granary first turn). I turn the extra food into Merchants once the city maxes out in pop, plus the :gold: in the HQ. My HQ city is currently making 1492:gold:/turn.

Here's what my Big&Small map looks like, I'm the Dutch (orange):

http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/7087/sushimapph4.jpg

Large map with 11 civs, temperate climate, normal sea level. 3 small colony civs were also founded by AI's.

My great person city now has 27 specialists! State Property's still good if the AI's found corporations ahead of you, though, if you're playing on immortal or deity and you can't get to them first. The AI's don't seem to save up Great People for founding corps, however... although I'm not sure. I do know Huayna Capec got to Mass Media 20+ turns before me and never founded Civilized Jewelers, the most directly profit-making of all the corporations. I encountered a rather large and powerful Apostolistic Palace group in this match too, after Louis spread Buddhism to 4 other civs. This expansion's a lot of fun!

On a side note, it also skyrockets your score due to the massive population if you spread it to all your cities right before winning.

Impressive numbers Thalassicus :D Can you tell us your corporation costs again and the inflation rate now you've further expanded and inflation has grown? I presume you have markets, grocers and banks (MGB) in most cities where you're running merchants to recover the costs. Four merchants in a city with MGB will give 24 gold maximum, unless you run Caste System, so you'll need to have other means to recover the costs. Large cities do get a lot more trade in BtS even if it is internal between your own cities and vassals. There is a sort of virtuous circle of extra food supporting bigger cities that trade with each other giving more commerce as well as running more specialists and working more tiles.

Can you tell us what your civics are and how they fit into this corporate scheme you are running? I guess you have Representation and Free Market as standard but what about the other three categories?

If you could post a savegame it would be appreciated, then I could study the game in detail and not ask you a myriad of questions.

I'm running representation between turns now that I'm out of war again, switching with sufferage via Christo Redentor for purchasing buildings during turns. Representation, free religion, and the nationwide +1:) per vassal have provide enough extra happiness to run Caste System to get the merchants (this would be more complicated if Caste System was still High upkeep like it used to be). It does add an additional -51:gold: civic cost, recovered by the massive number of merchants it allows however. Headquarters city is +2,362:gold:/turn now. Total national city maintenance is -3944:gold:, inflation -1645:gold:, gross income +7415:gold:. I'm running science at 80% with profit. I sent you the save for more details.

The real benefit has been the massive amount of food and culture in brand new or border cities along the way, bringing them up to speed very quickly. The financial balance is more of a side thing. The most obvious profit-making corporation is Civilized Jewelers, of course, if a player is going for moneymaking.

There's one severe problem I've noticed while playing this test game (trying out the things in BTS), regarding the AI. If you do several successful unrest/poisoning spy missions in a row on many cities, the AI will plow them under to farms, committing economic suicide. I killed Hammurabi's advancement that way, leading to Tokugawa splitting off from being his capitulated vassal. I've been giving Mansa Musa and Huayna Capec a working over with my spies as well... the AI just doesn't know how to handle espionage. It's been a bit more labor-intensive with Mansa as I have to ferry the spies back and forth on transports.

I have used the huge food and culture from a cheaper version of Sid's Sushi in two of my games. The culture makes even a food poor little ice-city or tundra-city dominate a large area and grab resources outside the fat cross, which are easily brought under control with forts. I used the food to develop cities with slavery and they became viable and useful. Whipping in courthouse, jail and intelligence agency gave me specialists to use the food on between whips and while regrowing. Five spies with the 100% EP bonus were giving 40 EPs on top of the 28 from the buildings. The city was losing gold (considering inflation) but it was a very cost effective way to convert gold into EPs and beakers, much better than raising the EP slider. The 4 trade routes gave respectable commerce too so I was busy installing library, university and observatory by the :whipped: to boost the beakers from commerce and the specialists.

You have Christo Redento so you could alternate between slavery and US to build up small cities quickly. With that much food small cities will grow at 1 pop / turn anyway and smaller cities have lower corporation upkeep. Under slavery each pop gives 30 base hammers which is worth 90 gold under US (60 with Kremlin) but those base hammers get production bonusses from forges and factories etc. It is easy with forges, factories and coal (for want of a better power source) to get 100% production bonus and 1 pop is then worth 180 gold. At size 10 the 20 food required to grow 1 pop is worth 180 or 9 gold per food, which compares very favourably with the 3 gold per food from a merchant working through MGB (plus Representation beakers through LUO) although there are also GPPs from the merchant which might be valuable in certain cities that could make another. Small cities and those without all the buildings that boost specialist output MGB and LUO, should use slavery to install those buildings cheaply before growing bigger to run more specialists.

If you need hammers for constructing an army if could be more cost effective to set up food rich whipping and drafting cities driven by Sid's Sushi food rather than using merchants to recover corporation costs and build troops elsewhere. The basic limitations to this idea would be the 1 pop per turn growth and unhappiness from over use of :whipped: and drafting. But I guess you would have a substantial general happiness level throughout your empire due to resources and then installing forges and markets could boost that happiness "headroom" substantially. That happiness headroom would let you be quite vicious in converting food to hammers. Every 10 turns you could recover 4 unhappiness from a draft and whip and keep a steady stream of cheap troops.

The entire concept of corporations as implemented in BtS is simply baffling to me. Corporations produce money. That is the whole point of one. The idea that spreading a local corporation around in your own territory can destroy your economy is ridiculous.

Corporations produce money. The money is then used to pay workers/other expenses and whatever is leftover becomes profit which can be reinvested, saved, or spent. At every step that this money changes hands, it can be taxed. The end result is a few very rich people, a lot of employed people who can afford to take care of themselves, and a government getting large amounts of tax for it to waste on whatever it feels like at the moment.

Corporations as they exist in the game are more akin to state controlled enterprises, which are notoriously bad at making money and can bring an entire economy to financial ruin due to their inefficiency (USSR). Which is funny since the only civic granting you complete immunity to corps is state property :confused:

Bleh. I wish there was a toggle to turn them off. Same with the whole espionage thing. They should function more like religion. Whoever founds them gets more money the larger the corporation gets. Each corporation in a city could produce a small amount of bonus resources and commerce (instead of the extreme amounts or food/whatever you get now). If a civ adopts state property/mercantilism or goes to war/stops trading with whoever owns the HQ then the bonuses in that civ's city should go away along with a corresponding loss for the HQ civ. Simple, and a lot more intuitive imo. In real life, despite what people say about "evil corporations" they generally bring prosperity wherever they go. Naturally, in a society rife with corruption and lacking in the rule of law, this may not be true...

Now I'm ranting :lol: oh well. Back to warlords.

It's even easier in my game on coastal cities, because I play the Dutch. +1:hammers: +1:commerce: on every water tile. :D