Having seen much discussion and debate on this I decided to break out the worldbuilder and figure out exactly what the corporations cost based on the quantity of nessessary resources you control.

When I have time, I will come back and expand on this to include specific strategic uses for each corporation.

Some information for comparitive tests:

INFLATION IS NOT FACTORED IN AT ALL
(solver's patch addresses and removes inflation from the equation, everyone should be using it.. it will be updated soon in an offical patch)

A COURTHOUSE MUST BE PRESENT IN THE CITY TO CONTROL COSTS
this does include the headquarters, it pays dues like every other city
my spreadsheets show the prices AFTER the courthouse is implemented, and also displays the modified prices for running free market or environmentalism

If you are going to found a corporation, it is important that you place it in the city with the WALL STREET national wonder. why?

after Grocer, Market, Bank, Wallstreet the headquarters will be producing
15 gpt for each location running that corporation

supermarket improves it a little, but please note that mansa musa gets a 10% bonus, and england gets a 15% due to their UB's

this is enough to offset most corporations with 20 resources of the needed type under their control. without wallstreet you can only break even at 10 of that resource under your control for most corporations

IT IS IMPORTANT TO REALIZE THAT BEFORE THAT POINT CORPORATIONS WILL ACTUALLY IMPROVE YOUR ECON IF YOU ARE PLAYING WITH SOLVER'S PATCH

-inflation against corporate costs has been fixed with this-

if you go beyond 20 of the needed resource, it will begin to cost you gpt.

of cource you could always send the corporation to your enemies or vassals and put that 15gpt towards paying your own dues to the corporation

A few special notes based on my research:

Mining inc is the MOST expensive corporation, but has the largest payoff in hammers.

Jewelers is ALWAYS profitable!!! if you are running the buildings as I have suggested this one will MAKE you money!! finally a reason for a late artist!

Standard Ethanol produces 1 oil per instance of this corporation, you should be able to trade atleast a few of those away for large gpt.

Aluminum inc.. I doubt you'll ever see 20 instances of coal but this corp has unique synergy with creative constructions. CC can use aluminum as a required resource. so every single instance of aluminum inc under your control magnifies the results of creative constructions.

Attached are scanned pictures of the spreadsheet, unfortunately I cannot upload the .xml but would be happy to email it or enlarged pics of the scans.

When it is not so late I will reopen this and go into further detail. for the publisher of the PDF for BTS I would be happy to see this integrated into your next version!

NaZ

Very good, but i expect some arent using Solver's patch.

Where can i find this patch ? :) If anyone could give me a link i would really appreciate it.

Thanks

Where can i find this patch ? :) If anyone could give me a link i would really appreciate it.

Thanks

Here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=235067

Its at the top of the BtS forum. When it's updated just go to
http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/misc/navbits_start.gif Civilization Fanatics' Forums > CIVILIZATION IV > Civ4 - Beyond the Sword > Solvers Unofficial BtS patch
to get the latest version.

Standard Ethanol produces 1 oil per instance of this corporation, you should be able to trade atleast a few of those away for large gpt.


I thought that corporations didn't actually produce a tangible resource that you could actually trade away, but rather that it provided the effects of that resource for the city that had that corporation? Am I wrong here?

Agree on corp hqs in wallstreet city. That is a must imo. Also, always good to spread corps to neighbours to offset your own maintenance costs. If you are lucky, they will start spreading it around as well. Of course you have to be judicious with the aluminum and oil ones.

Another thing to keep in mind is civs switching into mercantilism and state property. The ultimate fix for this is building the UN and passing env'talism (costs them even MORE in maintenance for your corps then--although for you as well). Alternatively, you can use spies to keep forcing them into free market or env'talism. Sometimes if you force a civ into FM they will stay there. Sometimes not. I usually go for UN-env'talism now to cement corporation situations.

I was able to run Sids Suchi in every city of mine playing as Mansa Musa (+10% gold with Mint) even running environmentalism with Solvers patch. The English and Americans would be even better with thier unique buildings. With fast GP's because of philosphy eleizabeth would be even better (and more dangerous).

Also the UN can setup some nice economic warfare using the Mali/American/English. Found 1 or 2 corps in the same city, spread them arround (Ais tend to self spread them I have noticed), then try and force the environmetlism civic down everyones throat. The mints/malls/stcok exchanges can handle the excess costs in your cities but the other AIs will crumble.

Attached are scanned pictures of the spreadsheet, unfortunately I cannot upload the .xml but would be happy to email it or enlarged pics of the scans.

If you'd like - I'll happily host them for you. Send me a PM if you wish and you can email them to me and I'll stick them on my ample webspace with pleasure. :cool:

I do have to comment that Solver's unofficial patch is far from universal. There have been hints that Firaxis will reduce corporationn maintenance when a proper patch is actually released, but it has certainly not been stated it will completely be decoupled from inflation.

A few comments on other specific points.

Jewelers is ALWAYS profitable!!! if you are running the buildings as I have suggested this one will MAKE you money!! finally a reason for a late artist!

Only true with Solver's patch, otherwise this is the weakest of the non-resource generating corporations, producing only culture at high gold costs. There exist more efficient ways of doing this. Even so, the efficient use of corporations will generate far more gold from foreign branches than is required for domestic branches. Better to convert that into something more useful like food and hammers with the other corporations. Converting gold into gold really isn't productive, especially when you tend to be inundated in it near the end of the game.

Standard Ethanol produces 1 oil per instance of this corporation, you should be able to trade atleast a few of those away for large gpt.

Corporations merely allow the cities access to the resource. It does not exist in the conventional sense, and cannot be traded.

Mansa Musa and Elizabeth have a significant advantage as you point out (I'd probably class Elizabeth as one of the strongest civs now). There's no reason to have a corporation anywhere other than the Wall street city unless you're running competing corporations (which is largely pointless).

Your spreadsheets, while interesting, make no allowance for city size. Looking at the numbers involved you seem to have calculated them for a small (size 1?) city. Maintenance increases substantially with city size. In size 20+ cities (which the food corporations tend to result in), even under optimum conditions 20 resources would result in costs per turn of over 30 gold pre inflation.

Sometimes not. I usually go for UN-env'talism now to cement corporation situations.

It's a little dodgy forcing yourself into enviromentalism, as it greatly increases domestic corporation costs. Granted, you may make enough from foreign corporations for this to be worthwhile, but I much prefer the espionage approach.

I think Zulu/HRE have a bigger advantage to corps than America/Mali/England do. The Ikhanda/Rathaus won't help with corps in foreign cities so you'll have to actually use it to benefit but its definitely cheap enough to do so (and actually worth trying to acquire extra resources).

Thanks for comments so far, the couple of errors that were made have been corrected. I have redone the calculations for size 1 size 10 and size 20 cities to better reflect costs.

solver's patch should be used or costs will be out of control due to inflation

I will repost the spreadsheets later today, and I am working on a full blown strategy article for the forum.

this will include civics choice, tactical advantages to having control of these corporations, and economic warfare.

NaZ

It's a little dodgy forcing yourself into enviromentalism, as it greatly increases domestic corporation costs. Granted, you may make enough from foreign corporations for this to be worthwhile, but I much prefer the espionage approach.

The extra health is very beneficial now though and although domestic costs are increased I prioritize spreading corps to the AIs and having them be unable to switch civics on me is a huge boon. Especially if an AI has the cristo redentor they can easily keep switching on you. Also, if an AI is far away constantly sending spies over there can be annoying. And if you have to do this constantly for multiple AIs this can also be annoying. The UN eliminates all these problems and if I'm going for corps I think this is the way to go.

When BtS first released, I calculated Corporate Fees down to the 100th of a point and began an article very similar to the one you are discussing now.

You can find it here:

Corporate Maintenance Explained (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5729003#post5729003)

Even though it has been hinted at that some of Solver's patch will be made official, I am lying in wait for Firaxis' official patch before I recalculate and complete this article.

If I can be of any use to you, please PM me. I am at your service ... :D

The extra health is very beneficial now though and although domestic costs are increased I prioritize spreading corps to the AIs and having them be unable to switch civics on me is a huge boon. Especially if an AI has the cristo redentor they can easily keep switching on you. Also, if an AI is far away constantly sending spies over there can be annoying. And if you have to do this constantly for multiple AIs this can also be annoying. The UN eliminates all these problems and if I'm going for corps I think this is the way to go.

Are you saying the UN can eliminate AI spying?

I do have to comment that Solver's unofficial patch is far from universal. There have been hints that Firaxis will reduce corporationn maintenance when a proper patch is actually released, but it has certainly not been stated it will completely be decoupled from inflation.

QFT. My impression is corps are a little too strong with Solver's patch. But I'm sure the next official patch will make corps a lot easier to use.

Are you saying the UN can eliminate AI spying?

I think what he's saying is that the UN locks the AI into Enviromentalism. He therefore doesn't have to keep sending spies over to the AI to keep tipping them back into enviromentalism (though they'll sometimes stick with an espionage civic change anyway).

Otaku you saved me a bunch of work :D

I'll put my strategic article on the backburner for now.

however I am going into my origional post and updating the sheets since I did the work. easy to print out for people to use.

with solver's patch corporations work the way they do in the real world.. they expand economy to a point. beyond a certain # of controlled resources you are paying gpt even if it is not tied to inflation.

some basic rules for corporations would include:

a courthouse in EVERY CITY THAT RUNS IT is a MUST

you need to control the headquarters, and have it in a wall street city.

if a nearby AI founds a corp you have 3 choices..
1. run mercantilism and pay a little more for your corps
2. be ready to install your corporation to oust theirs.
3. go to war and take their corp headquarters, and run grocer market bank to offset costs as much as possible

this makes it important to control mining inc OR creative constructions, sid's sushi OR cereal mills OR std ethanol. that way you can oust their corporation from your city. you are still paying but much less since you control the HQ

some early strategic thoughts:

mining inc is strong but at a heavy price, excludes other corps and is most expensive. however it does lead to quick infrastructure building and easy warmongering due to expanded production. NOT SAFE TO SPREAD TO AI

cereal mills and sid's sushi allow you to feed cities that otherwise would be running farms.. so you can build more cottages which can end up a net increase in GPT. for a GP farm you can run 5+ more specialists
relatively safe to spread to the AI

std ethanol is not that expensive, is the only corporation to make use of a calendar resource (sugar) and provides good BPT for your GPT. if you control the HQ in wall street you can have up to 7 instances of the resource and still break even producing 14bpt per city (size 20 used for costs)
at 20 resources controlled you are paying a net 15gpt for 40bpt.. quite a deal

civilized jewelers produces gold, so factor in a built market grocer and bank and this one will almost always make you a profit. if you control the HQ the $$ just rolls in. safe to spread to the AI

Creative constructions is a nice balance between extra hammers and cost plus it produces culture which helps for newly captured cities.

aluminum co is a special case. there usually are not that many sources of coal, but say you have 3 in your territory. if you run aluminum co thats 3 sources of aluminum in that city.

why does this matter? you can't trade them but aluminum is a creative constructions resource. you MUST BE CAREFUL RUNNING BOTH but you can magnify the effects of creative constructions by also running aluminum co in that city. if you can afford it you get extra BPT, hammers, culture in exchange for gpt

the chart shows base costs, now for size 1, 10, 20 cities. I hope you all find it helpful

NaZ

There is one point noone mentions with corps. The game is never boring once corps enter into the picture. Love em, hate em, or fear them they definitely are a later version of religion.

I noticed that a new official patch is available. Does it incorporate any of Solver's changes, or any thing else that affects corporations?

Nope.... it only resolves some CTD issues, no change in the game it self ( atleast is what the description of the patch says )

unfortunately there were no game balance changes at 3.03. just glitch fixing.

I'd still install and play with solver's patch for your next ALC. the current inflation model makes corporations almost useless.

NaZ

NaZdReG , Methos posted in the BTS forum that you had to reinstall Solver's patch after the install of the 3.03 patch....

yeah I know. without solver's patch a lot of the work related to corporations wouldn't be possible at all.

I actually use a mod that has solver's patch integrated into it. only other things in the mod are the VERY endgame techs and weapons related to the nextwar mod (I just think they're cool ;) ) but up to that point in the game it plays exactly like vanilla bts with solver's patch

NaZ

oh and about standard ethanol. usually there are 2-3 oil resources in your empire. with std ethanol you can trade those 3 away while keeping access to the critical resource

I may be wrong about this, but I from counting yields, it seems strategic resources add hammers (+1) to each city (even apart from corporations.) So std. Ethanol also gets cities a minor production boost.

I may be wrong about this, but I from counting yields, it seems strategic resources add hammers (+1) to each city (even apart from corporations.) So std. Ethanol also gets cities a minor production boost.

If you're talking about the mouseover info from the City's resource pool, those are not applied to the city directly.

Those values only represent the raw +1:hammers: bonus those resources give to tiles they are present on.

You have to take in factors beyond pure fiscal gains and losses, beyond the accounting profit and look at more intangible economic profits. The point of corporations is not necessarily to make pure gold. The point is to do this:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5812700&postcount=49

It's like smac Sky Hydroponics Labs for Civ IV.

1) Massive food for new and old cities
2) Massive culture for new/conquered cities
3) Massive Score increase from population if you spread it to all your cities right before winning.

The idea is not so much to make gold as to convert late-game money into different resources. In this case I'm even making a profit because the 12 free specialists per city are turned into Merchants under Caste System.

My "calculated score if you win this turn" is over 100,000 and increasing by ~1,000/turn from the population boom.

I'm running science at 80% and with Representation, the colossal number of specialists giving +3 base :science: each is giving me two future techs every three turns as my spaceship races for Alpha Centauri in the 1800's (I wanted to try out the new spaceship victory, and it's actually pretty nice visually). The extra :) and :health: from Future Techs is increasing the population cap to make even huger returns possible as I conquer or trade for all seafood on the map and max out Sushi's +:food: for the highest population score possible.

The purpose of a business, after all, is to take something of lesser value to society and turn it into something of greater value. Sid's Sushi converts useless surplus seafood resources into population and cultural expansion, with a possible cost or gain in gold on the side.

I just realized how ironic it is that Caste System is also the most useful labor civic (12 merchant specialists) under my current Corporation. You have your clerks, your management, your executives, your board members...

unless you're running competing corporations (which is largely pointless).

I'm not so sure. You could run Mining Inc in your cities that need hammers but not culture, Creative Constructions in cities that need hammers and culture. You can also have The Jewelers the same cities. If the civ has Oil, spread the Ethanol one to block the Cereal mills. Same with Aluminum...

If you're talking about the mouseover info from the City's resource pool, those are not applied to the city directly.

Those values only represent the raw +1 bonus those resources give to tiles they are present on.Are you sure? I've counted the yields before, and they seemed to be added in. I'll recheck next time.

having just played through a game to compare, I must say mining inc is indeed a double edged sword. while it has the same out put of creative constructions, the lockout of most other corporations PROTECTS you from ai encroachment. where as creative constructions would allow far more other companys to set up in your cities without paying takeover fees.

I guess it depends on how many GP's you have right then and what your plans are to go mining inc or creative constructions. but considering the atleast 35% hammer bonus from forge and factory its hard to pass up an extra 10-20 hammers per turn regardless of its cost.

NaZ

I am a bit late in replying to this thread but NaZdReG sent me a message I didn't read until just now, asking me to comment. So forgive my tardiness but I have a lot to say.

I am suspicious of many people's opinions on corporations, they either seem to be overly enthusiastic and corporations are the "best thing since sliced bread" or they are pessimistic and corporations too expensive and inflation ruins them in the late game. Opinions vary wildly depending on map type, difficulty level and the players personal playstyle. Some see it as a way to ruin AI economies and some see it as a way to energise a cultural victory. If it can be used to ruin an AI economy then I hope that gets fixed in a patch as I don't like that way of winning, but so far I've seen no hard evidence of that happening in my games, and although many players say it's happened in their games I wonder how closely they looked at the finances / benefits the corporations gave the AI.

There seem to be some very strange ways of thinking about and then accounting for the setup and maintenace costs of corporations and that makes many people's advice dubious. They are either double counting the income or not counting the benefits at their true worth or massively underestimating the set up costs. Many people get confused between their Investment Account and their Profit and Loss Account (Income Account).

We need a clear way of comparing the Investment costs of setting up a domestic corporation. Most players account for the office (basically 100 hammers, worth about 200 gold and 130 gold per office) and to regard that as an investment by the HQ that gets repaid at 10 gold or 15 gold per turn with Wall Street. In fact if you have no other reason to build Wall Street, like an existing shrine, then you can add its 600 hammers (worth 1200 gold) to the HQ set up costs and perhaps even a bank or two if you had to build those in a city in order to build WS.

Let's take a medium sized empire of 12 cities and calculate the set up costs of Sid's Sushi.

Assume it had more than 6 banks already but no good reason to build WS. Also assume it had no reason to research Medicine (costs about 6700 beakers on Monarch) except to grab Sid's Sushi and assume it has acquired and saved a GM to make the HQ (worth say 2000 gold on a trade mission). Then we spread the corporation offices at a cost of 100 hammers and 130 gold each to our 11 remaining cities.

With 1 :hammers: = 2 :gold: = 2 :science: we have:

Wall Street 600 :hammers: worth 1200
Medicine 6700 :science: worth 6700
Great Merchant worth 2000
11 Excecutives 1100 :hammers: worth 2200
11 Offices cost 1430

The total investment is therefore equivalent to 13530 gold + beakers. With 12 offices working through WS we have an investment return of 12 * 15 = 180 gold. That is a return of 1.3% per turn on the investment :eek: and it would take 75 turns for the set up costs to be recovered. Yet we get people raving about the "Profits" they are making. The truth is they've sunk a great deal of their empire's resources in something that will take an age to pay back the investment (in terms of HQ income at least)

Most people would not include the high cost of researching Medicine in this account but another player running a Caste System + SP game would have no need of Medicine and would invest his beakers in other technologies, so I maintain it is justified to look at the problem this way. I did not include the research costs of Corporation (the tech) in the set up costs as that is needed for Assembly Line and all players will research or trade for it at this stage of the game, sooner or later.

Now lets look at the running costs and the benefits. They have a fixed component and a variable depending the number of resources and size of city. This has been investigated thoroughly by OTAKUjbski in this thread Corporate Maintenance Explained (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5729003#post5729003) and explained further by Mr Cynical in this thread Corporation: The Power of Sushi (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=237717) so I don't propose to go into much detail. Also NaZdReg has prepared spreadsheets for a variety of situations in this thread.

Having made the large investment in resources to set up the HQ and 11 offices for Sid's Sushi it is obvious that we need enough seafood and rice resources to give a decent amount of food. There will be greatly increased costs that can be more than offset as Mr Cynical has shown:


Now the common complaint is that the expense is simply too high for the quantity of food given, but as I will show this is not the case. I'll draw on an example from the last game I played. By the end of it I had 12 cities, all between size 20 and 30, with Sid's Sushi present, giving 8 additional food and a serious amount of culture in each one. Total costs from the corporation were 626gpt, allowing for inflation which at the time stood at 133%. Now to begin with, if you are fortunate enough to have the HQ as I did, you're reclaiming a certain amount of that. In this case 12 cities at 5 gold each with full modifiers comes to 180gpt, so total costs were 446gpt.

Now comparing the value of food to gold is a little tricky, since aside from corporation, there's only the old reverse conversion tool; merchants. 4 merchants in 12 cities with proper modifiers is 300gpt, so at the moment it isn't looking that promising, as I'm still 146gpt in the red. I haven't made any allowance for GPP, culture or (if I'm running representation) science. Factor in those, and you're looking at 146gpt for 300 odd science, extra GPP, and 60+ culture per city, and things start to look rather better.

Fact is though, converting gold to gold by using a corporation to get extra food to run merchants doesn't give the best possible rate. It just gives the easiest comparison to illustrate you are coming out ahead. Consider some of the other possibilities; 4 extra specialists in you GP farm translates to quite a nice boost in GPP. What about a commerce city that needs a mixture of farms and cottages to work all the tiles? 8 extra food means 8 plains tiles cottageable without needing balancing farms. I can rip out 4 farms and replace them with cottages - looking at a boost of 28 commerce, and hence at least 56 gold's worth. Even at endgame inflation, it's only costing about 46 gold in a size 20 city, and I haven't even touched on culture.


I agree with all of what he's written here except that he should not include the HQ income in his running costs. That is on a separate account trying, forlornly, to repay the huge investement he's sunk into this Sid's Sushi strategy. That reduces his apparent profits considerably. I suspect (without going into great detail) that in this example he's spending a lot of gold (in maintenance plus inflation costs) to get back a lot of gold from his merchants plus beakers from Rep and GPPs. The value of the raw beakers depend on how good the research modifiers are and the value of the GPPs depend on whether he can squeeze at least another GP out of that city, if he can't they are worth nothing otherwise 1 GPP = about 1 beaker or gold (assuming his next GP costs 2000 GPPs).

I look forward to further discussion. :)

Wall Street 600 worth 1200
Medicine 6700 worth 6700
Great Merchant worth 2000
11 Excecutives 1100 worth 2200
11 Offices cost 1430

While these costs are true, I'd question whether it is fair to count these as sunk costs exclusively for the corporation. Medicine is going to get researched anyway, and carries a higher importance than previously due to the increased health problems in the industrial age. With a beeline for Sushi, odds are you'll be first to it, and hence may trade it for additional tech to counterbalance sunk cost.

I'd also query Wall Street as a sunk cost - whether you have a corporation or not, surely in just about any game you're going to build this anyway? Yes I prioritise it a lot more with a corporation strategy, but again, it'll get built without it.

The expense of the merchant and executives (construction and founding) is fair enough. Indeed on those lines my sunk costs will be higher, since there'll be probably a dozen more executives for foreign spread.

I agree with all of what he's written here except that he should not include the HQ income in his running costs. That is on a separate account trying, forlornly, to repay the huge investement he's sunk into this Sid's Sushi strategy. That reduces his apparent profits considerably. I suspect (without going into great detail) that in this example he's spending a lot of gold (in maintenance plus inflation costs) to get back a lot of gold from his merchants plus beakers from Rep and GPPs. The value of the raw beakers depend on how good the research modifiers are and the value of the GPPs depend on whether he can squeeze at least another GP out of that city, if he can't they are worth nothing otherwise 1 GPP = about 1 beaker or gold (assuming his next GP costs 2000 GPPs).

What's wrong with including the HQ gold? Each branch is going to repay 15 gold there, and so makes a small, but noticeable difference in running costs. The only issue is if you don't get the HQ, which is very unlikely. Even on Immortal level the AI doesn't come close to beating me to medicine.

In the example I gave in this case, I've given both the total maintenance, and the food output. Total cost per turn from corporation (including the additional cost from inflation) was 626gpt, and I can't see any reason not to count the 180gpt I recouping against that. They're both gold, and measured after all modifiers have been applied.

As I've said, the strategy relies on additional foreign spread to counterbalance the costs. The benefit of a purely domestic corporation is (at least without Solver's patch) very dubious indeed. Ideally a civ would found at least one additional corporation, for purely foreign spread, and while again the upfront costs are quite high, a couple of thousand gold per turn, which can be easily generated from two corporations, soon repays it. With a tentative guess at another dozen exceutives, a GP and foreign branch costs, that's about 2000 for the GP, 1200 for the executives, and maybe 2400 for branch costs. It doesn't take too long to repay that (It's would only take a little over 30 turns if the AI didn't spread it at all. Given that the AI rapidly spreads it to all cities it can, you can see the potential here.

In the example here, by the time my corporation expenses (factoring in inflation) were at 626gpt, the income purely from corporations was accounting for just over 2000 gold after all modifiers. That's with just two corporations, and the construction of under 30 executives. The additional 8 food and whatever culture in my cities came on top of that.

You raise some fair points about sunk costs, but I don't find them that significant, and I think you're exaggerating them somewhat by including Wall Street and the cost of the tech.

All of this is based on a game without Solver's patch. With Solver's patch corporations make a less effective weapon against the AI (though I don't consider that their true power), but the maintenance costs become trivial.

@UncleJJ:
I see. Interesting. So in your view it is easy enough to make profit on the Profit and Loss Account but difficult on the Investment account? Then what is your own verdict on the overall usefulness of corps?

I think setting up the corp as early as possible certainly helps with increasing profitability on the Investment account. However, the less tangible benefits of corps might be able to justify the cost of setting them up. When talking about Sid's Sushi, as Mr Cynical has suggested, that would be flexibility. Other corps might give you something that would otherwise be difficult to come by, even if you are prepared to invest a lot of hammers/gold to get it through other means. So you could think of the large investment as giving yourself more/better options later.

EDIT: I just saw MrCynical's post and I agree that Medicine and Wall Street might be researched and built anyway. But, since we can't simply assume that (I've gotten by without both, especially on non-space race games), it's probably good to account for them as a worst case scenario analysis.

UncleJJ,

thank you for taking the time to respond, your accurate details are exactly why I sent you a PM regarding this.

-----about sid's sushi-----
sid's sushi may be a bad example of corporation investment. the extra food is nice and there are few other ways to get ahold of extra food.. leading to extra use of workshops and cottages

did you factor that in?? if my ironworks city can afford to run 0 farms because of the extra food the multiplied effects of the hammers would outwegh the costs I think.

or if a sub optimal plains city is running now 8 plains cottages instead of 8 plains farms because of the extra food.

I digress from my point.
----------------------------


IMO the 2 strongest corporations are mining inc and creative constructions. the latter has a lower upkeep for smaller cities but it balances out.

lets assume your initial calculations, but railroad is the critical tech.. or combustion if you want CC instead of mining inc.

for me this isn't really a beeline, at this stage of the game printing press, replacable parts etc are all nessessary techs

if I can get an extra 15 hammers for a city that is HUGE. sometimes I get the corp founded before building wall street, and use the extra hammers to get it done faster...

extra hammers mean new or captured cities get up to speed much quicker. courthouse granary library etc until they are good cities.

this also leads to more warmongerage :)

now at that stage of the game industrialism is not far off. so we're looking at an avg +100% after forge, factory, access to coal.

those 15 hammers are suddenly 30. or 60 in the ironworks city....

in this case, even if I am PAYING for that benefit.. the leveraged production is hard to match by the ai. if over the next 50??? (beancounting needed) turns I get my cities set up and they leverage those hammers to make sure they all have courthouse, forge, factory, coal plant
suddenly my production output is drastically higher than it was.

Unclejj, if you wouldn't mind doing a similar cost benefit analysis on this I would really apprciate the beancounting.

I'd post my save, but I'm playing the mod I mentioned with the late game nextwar techs/units and solver's patch. I'm playing a game with good ol frederick and I'm just before that point in the game. I will start collecting screenies. I have yet to shoot for the free great merchant, but was able to snag all 3 of the engineer wonders :D so a handy engineer is certain when I need it. I plan on going with creative constructions rather than mining inc. I don't have a need really for extra food so rather than sid's sushi I may wait for standard ethanol..

thats a whole different scenario. if you have say 10 of a resource, sid's sushi provides 5 food. cereal mills provides 8 food. standard ethanol produces 20 beakers.. which is stronger?? I think the food might be better but we'll see

NaZ

While these costs are true, I'd question whether it is fair to count these as sunk costs exclusively for the corporation. Medicine is going to get researched anyway, and carries a higher importance than previously due to the increased health problems in the industrial age. With a beeline for Sushi, odds are you'll be first to it, and hence may trade it for additional tech to counterbalance sunk cost.

I have already justified my reasoning for including Medicine as an investment cost. Trading it to other civs is a two edged sword and that should be dealt with by a Trading Account. You are beelining to Medicine specifically to get Sid's Sushi and therefore it is a legitimate cost for your strategy. Ask yourself what else you'd be researching at that stage of the game with another strategy, that is what it is costing you.

Medicine is a weak tech, I would much prefer the similarly costed Refrigeration and in my current game (based on SP) I am about to win a Domination victory and have not researched Medicine despite reaching Advanced Flight. From a health perspective the Supermarket is a much more cost effective building than a Hostpital. Of course if you do have Sid's Sushi and use that to fuel city growth AND build factories then you might need hostpitals as well as supermarkets. But I question the amount of hammers invested to make this work in most cities, it depends on the quality of the cities involved, large cities and factories do not normally go well together unless there are enormous amounts of hammers available (e.g. several good tile resources or settled engineers and priests)


I'd also query Wall Street as a sunk cost - whether you have a corporation or not, surely in just about any game you're going to build this anyway? Yes I prioritise it a lot more with a corporation strategy, but again, it'll get built without it.

Wall Street is an appalling wonder that should never be built unless you have a significant source of gold. It costs 600 :hammers: and there are no ways to speed it up as it is a Nat Wonder, so whipping is half effect and buying with US double cost. You have to build it the long hard way and it takes many turns unless you pick a city with good hammer output.

WS costs 600 hammers for +100% gold, compare that to a bank that costs 200 hammers and gives +50% gold, and you'll see it is less cost effective. I do not build WS unless I have a significant commerce or gold source. In your Sid's Sushi strategy it is a key component so you're building it for that purpose hence it is added to your set up costs. In fairness, I will allow you to add any extra income the HQ city gets from WS to help pay off the investment costs in this strategy.


What's wrong with including the HQ gold? Each branch is going to repay 15 gold there, and so makes a small, but noticeable difference in running costs. The only issue is if you don't get the HQ, which is very unlikely. Even on Immortal level the AI doesn't come close to beating me to medicine.

I don't really mind where you include the HQ income in your balance sheet as long as you only do it once. If you set it against running costs and don't use it to "pay off" the investment then you've written off all those set up costs and that's 13,500 gold + beakers that you'll never recover. That is a cost in resources attributable to the strategy that other strategies can use diffently.

In the example I gave in this case, I've given both the total maintenance, and the food output. Total cost per turn from corporation (including the additional cost from inflation) was 626gpt, and I can't see any reason not to count the 180gpt I recouping against that. They're both gold, and measured after all modifiers have been applied.

Ok, do it that way but don't forget you've just written off a 13,500 investment other players aren't making. That is all my method of accounting tells you. If you are running this Sid's Sushi strategy for economic reasons then how are you going to justify the costs versus other strategies that use the resources a different way?

As I've said, the strategy relies on additional foreign spread to counterbalance the costs. The benefit of a purely domestic corporation is (at least without Solver's patch) very dubious indeed. Ideally a civ would found at least one additional corporation, for purely foreign spread, and while again the upfront costs are quite high, a couple of thousand gold per turn, which can be easily generated from two corporations, soon repays it. With a tentative guess at another dozen exceutives, a GP and foreign branch costs, that's about 2000 for the GP, 1200 for the executives, and maybe 2400 for branch costs. It doesn't take too long to repay that (It's would only take a little over 30 turns if the AI didn't spread it at all. Given that the AI rapidly spreads it to all cities it can, you can see the potential here.

I am not happy about using the foreign spread aspect of any the corporation strategies, there is something wrong with that aspect of the game that needs fixing. The costs for the AI civs and their behaviour needs to be adjusted, otherwise it is, or could be, exploitative and ruins the late game (for me, even if others feel differently). I was specifically analysing the domestic aspects and said so. Apart from anything else it is very hard to predict how the AI will respond to a foreign spread branch of the strategy. Can you rely on the AI to spread your corporations and not to adopt certain civics that foil that approach?

However, you could spread the corporation to colonies, vassals and foreign civs and they will increase HQ gold. Again the costs and payback of this additional foreign investment can be accounted for in terms of an Investment Account and my method of using HQ income to "repay" the investment costs makes it easier to see what is happening since this is primarily an economic strategy. Your only direct benefit from extending the strategy to foreign cities is an increased income and you need to know how soon you will profit from the investment, hence comparing HQ costs to HQ income is the best method. The indirect benefit of ruining another civ's economy is hard to account for and is an exploit that spoils the game IMHO. Perhaps you have ideas of how to evaluate that economically.


You raise some fair points about sunk costs, but I don't find them that significant, and I think you're exaggerating them somewhat by including Wall Street and the cost of the tech.

I am not exaggerating either cost for my own games since I would not research Medicine or normally build WS. If your game circumstances are different, then perhaps you are combining and blending your Sid Sushi strategy with an earlier stategy (say a profitable religous shrine paying 30 gold/ turn) that already justifies building WS. That does reduce the costs but that makes it a joint Sushi and Religious strategy, which is fine but you have to define it as such and account for the set up costs accordingly. I can never see a need to research Medicine without wishing to pursue this corporation based strategy. But that is just the way I play and account for the costs, YMMV.


All of this is based on a game without Solver's patch. With Solver's patch corporations make a less effective weapon against the AI (though I don't consider that their true power), but the maintenance costs become trivial.
I hear Firaxis are considering some changes to corporation costs and to inflation to deal with players concerns. I will go with the official game patches in this area, but you can make adjustments to any figures I use yourselves for Solvers patch or any mods.

@UncleJJ:
I see. Interesting. So in your view it is easy enough to make profit on the Profit and Loss Account but difficult on the Investment account? Then what is your own verdict on the overall usefulness of corps?

I see corporations as an interesting and powerful addition to the game. In the right conditions they can be leveraged to facilitate and speed up a victory. In the wrong conditions they are an expensive diversion of resources that can be used better in other ways.


I think setting up the corp as early as possible certainly helps with increasing profitability on the Investment account. However, the less tangible benefits of corps might be able to justify the cost of setting them up. When talking about Sid's Sushi, as Mr Cynical has suggested, that would be flexibility. Other corps might give you something that would otherwise be difficult to come by, even if you are prepared to invest a lot of hammers/gold to get it through other means. So you could think of the large investment as giving yourself more/better options later.

You can set up corporations for a variety of reasons and domestically it is primarily for the benefits such as extra hammers, food and culture in your cities. They are an often rather expensive way to turn gold into these other resources and yes you're right they give more and better options in many cities. They're not a no brainer investment, you need to need to apply them carefully to relevant cities. I feel they increase the skill level required to play the game well in BtS and that is a welcome addition to the depth of play. I'm glad there are rival strategies that avoid and even counter act corporations. You seem to have to either commit to use them and then go wholeheartedly in that direction (e.g. build banks and adopt Free Trade) or alternatively avoid them all together (e.g. build factories, workshops, Caste System and SP for an SE).


EDIT: I just saw MrCynical's post and I agree that Medicine and Wall Street might be researched and built anyway. But, since we can't simply assume that (I've gotten by without both, especially on non-space race games), it's probably good to account for them as a worst case scenario analysis.
I doubt Medicine would be researched for any other reason than getting Sid's Sushi, unless you wanted to build Hostpitals for a "Red Cross" strategy. But I see little need for that with the powerful stack healing from medic 3 GGs and the new Woodsman 3 promotion. I suppose if you wanted to make a stack of troops with march promotions then a free medic promotion has virtue, but that is an expensive way to get a small benefit.

I've dealt with WS in my reply to him. I do build it in maybe 50% of games if I have good reason in a city with decent hammer production. There are often better uses for hammers and building it late game is questionable without a good gold return. Only corporation HQs or a multi shrine holy city justify it.

I don't really mind where you include the HQ income in your balance sheet as long as you only do it once. If you set it against running costs and don't use it to "pay off" the investment then you've written off all those set up costs and that's 13,500 gold + beakers that you'll never recover. That is a cost in resources attributable to the strategy that other strategies can use diffently.

This is just getting into semantics about accounting, not about the actual profitability of the strategy. That investment (and no, I still don't agree with your inclusion of medicine and Wall Street in this, but since you insist I'll use this exaggerated cost to highlight the potential), is largely to be paid off by foreign, not domestic spread as I've said. Still, we'll do it your way. It makes no difference to the strategy's viability.

To take an example from my most recent game, at Immortal:

At the end of the game, using your accounting method, my corporate expenses were 751gpt, at 181% inflation comes to a grand total of 2110gpt corporate expenses. Corporate income was 805 base, adjust for buildings gives profit of 2415gpt. So I'm making 305gpt profit from corporations, purely on gold, not even considering the food, production and cultural benefits they were giving. The ratio had been much more favourable earlier in the game, since inflation was climbing, and I stopped spamming corporations some time before the end as I was just cruising to a space race win.

This was with far from maximal foreign spread. Sushi had only been spread to about half the potential civs, since I wanted to be able to trade for seafood with the others, and as it was a hemispheres map there were many islands still lacking any corporations at the end. I'd even made the drastic error of spamming both corporations to a civ I subsequently conquered, leaving me with Mining Inc in cities I would normally never have spread it to, and I was still ahead.

Now let's look at investment;

1 great merchant and 1 great engineer: 4000 gold
30ish execs (islands map): 6000 gold
30ish branches: about 5000 gold
Wall Street: 1200 gold
Medicine (and I still don't consider this valid): 6700 gold

So even with your worst case scenario situation (and as a matter of fact I did have a shrine anyway in this game as well) that gives up front costs of 22900 gold. So it takes just 76 turns for the corporations to pay that back, even at the point where the corporation was at its lowest profitability; at the end with inflation at its maximum.

This is still dealing with pure gold. It takes just 76 turns to come out ahead on the investment before I even consider the benefits of the additonal food, etc.

I am not happy about using the foreign spread aspect of any the corporation strategies, there is something wrong with that aspect of the game that needs fixing. The costs for the AI civs and their behaviour needs to be adjusted, otherwise it is, or could be, exploitative and ruins the late game (for me, even if others feel differently). I was specifically analysing the domestic aspects and said so. Apart from anything else it is very hard to predict how the AI will respond to a foreign spread branch of the strategy.

If you feel a strategy is exploitative, then don't use it. I'm simply highlighting that in works. In many cases people are using Solver's patch which removes any problem with AI civ costs. I don't consider foreign city corporation spam to be an exploit for the simple reason that the AI also does it.

Can you rely on the AI to spread your corporations and not to adopt certain civics that foil that approach?

In a word; yes. If an AI is running Free market or enviromentalism, receives a foreign corporation in a city, and has no corporations of its own, it will invariably spam it to all of its cities on the same continent. It generallly does not spam to any island cities until the invention of flight and construction of airports. As to civics, the AI is quite predictable here as well. Unless any favourite civics are involved, it will run enviromentalism as soon as possible. Rather than messing around with espionage, the simplest way to get the AI to enviromentalism is simply to trade Medicine to them, unlocking Enviromentalism. As I've said, this tech has it's uses.

This predictability is more concerning than corporate costs, and could be considered exploitative. Solver's patch eliminates any problems with the AI spamming, as the maintenance costs become trivial compared to the corporate benefits. Its fondness for Enviromentalism (presumably you consider this civic to be awful as you never research medicine?) is therefore a problem.

The indirect benefit of ruining another civ's economy is hard to account for and is an exploit that spoils the game IMHO. Perhaps you have ideas of how to evaluate that economically.

I suppose you could figure out the maintenance costs the AI are paying, the benefit they receive based on rough conversions (e.g. using food to run merchants), and scale the value of the resulting harm or benefit based on AI position. For example you might consider it a beaker removed from a runaway AI (though now largely a thing of the past) worth a beaker gained by you. Any impact either way on a backward civ would be irrelevant, and the rest fall somewhere in between.

This is a huge amount of hassle though, so for simplicity's sake I assume I'm not getting any benefit on this front. With Solver's patch that is basically true. Without it, there is an indirect benefit, but probably not as drastic as you might think. There isn't for instance much of a drop in AI research spread after a corporation spam. I tend to starve the AI of the resources (as I hoard them for myself) which will also minimise maintenance costs.

I hear Firaxis are considering some changes to corporation costs and to inflation to deal with players concerns. I will go with the official game patches in this area, but you can make adjustments to any figures I use yourselves for Solvers patch or any mods.

Personally I don't use Solver's patch. It looks like Firaxis will reduce corporation maintenance, whether directly or by reducing inflation, but I'll wait on the official patch before rewriting my strategies. Solver's patch is severely unbalanced in the opposite direction. When you're generating an gold income well into 4 figures at 100% science, the game gets rather silly.

I research medicine and build hospitals and wall street a lot more often than pre-BTS even if I am not pursuing corporations. Levees give a substantial production increase to river commerce cities and most of them end up with full infrastructure in the late game.

Health is a problem in BtS with factories and water poisoning, and wall street+shrine+merchant specialists is still a good way to keep your science rate up.

The real issue on whether or not to found corporations is whether they will have enough time to pay off before the game is over. I think the 76 turn payoff estimate is rather pessimistic myself.

The real issue on whether or not to found corporations is whether they will have enough time to pay off before the game is over. I think the 76 turn payoff estimate is rather pessimistic myself.

...if you are founding them for money.

I really like Uncle JJ's analysis. That kind of look at what your return on investment is really makes a big difference in winning a game like this.

We already think about the ROI on early Axemen vs. Pyramids/Stonehenge/Great Wall (even if we don't think of it in entirely numerical terms). Why not take the same look at Corporations?

I do think that the additional benefits of particular corporations are worth a look, though. Getting the extra food from Sid's Sushi is very nice, but the food and culture together make a city that you drop on another civ's continent into a magnificent beachhead (the second border pop came in just 2 turns the last time I did this).

I think that the key is to use Corporations for their potential money as well as for their strategic benefits. Don't just drop your corporation on all your cities for the fun of it. Place the corps strategically in places that are appropriate for your game when you can afford the additional upkeep.

Completely cleared out this post to do a proper recap.

started next to monty, bulldozed him with chariots and built the great wall. espionage kept me in pace with tech.. and religion+diplomacy let me stay peaceful on my continent from that point.

through careful tech trading and espionage I was able to delay liberalism long enough that I could catch medicine!!! from it. (I had contact with AI on the other continent so directed espionage points to their tech leader)

from there I went constitution, corporations.. built wall street and founded sid's sushi. beelined to combustion, installed creative constructions. spammed it quickly to all of my cities then demolished one of my neighbors in short order with rifles, calvary, cannons.

next neighbor fell right after I got to assembly line.. panzers leveled him.. at this point the magnified power of creative constructions became apparent.. even almost all cottage cities were putting up a panzer every 5 turns. my neighbor was kicked off the continent and vassalized in only 8 turns. then I kicked the last off my continent and had it all to myself.

every single city had sid's sushi.. and almost all of them creative constructions (was in process of finishing.. only 3-4 didnt have it)

you can see in the pics the date creative was founded.. 1583ish. from there look at the power graph and you can see the immediate and dramatic spike. every single city captured magnified my net power.

I got lucky and elizabeth on the other continent got dogpiled. sent some panzers in transports and secured myself a beachhead. from there almost all of my cities had airports.. once the beachhead city did I was unloading 8-10 modern armor per turn plus assault mechs ;) (gotta love the fixed nextwar mod)

the expenses show the dramatic costs I was incurring.. but at 50% slider I was still in the green. It didn't matter the game was over 3 turns from where I took the screenshots. I also was able to deflect an AI invasion (they caught me not paying attention and took a city for all of 3 turns) instead of my modern armor taking a plane over to the other continent they stormed the captured city and retook it.

for the warmonger.. mining inc or creative constructions are valuable assets. I would say creative is stronger.. early on you don't get as many hammers (only because the resources are more scarce) but the culture means captured cities go to fat cross the turn after they come out of revolt. being able to found civilized jewelers was just a bonus.. each city that got it increased my net gpt.

I'll happily put up a save as well, but you'll have to have the mod I'm using. Uncle JJ if you want the save and the mod I can email them to you, PM me your addy and I'll shoot it over.

NaZ

just to further emphasize.. getting to creative constructions was nessessary anyway because combustion is a critical tech. by mass spamming it to all of my cities they went from 30 turns to build an airport to 5-8. every single city that was running the corp was able to produce a modern armor in just 5-6 turns after forge and factory w/ power. that is why my power rating skyrocketed. there was no way for the ai to stop me at that point..

it also let me build up arcologies, happiness buildings, and wonders of my choosing. sid's sushi is definately helpful but no where near as powerful.

one other thing.. by spamming it to the ai it basically forced several of them to change to state property. I wasn't making money off of them anymore which hurt the econ a bit, but it ment they could not benefit from the corps effects either.

I would love to collaborate on any strategic article regarding the specific strengths of leveraging different corps and how to use them to maximum effect

NaZ

In a recent game i was going for domination and needed to conquer just one more civ... I had infantry... They had tanks and planes... So it was looking grim... What saved me?... production.. Mining Inc giving me 35 :hammers: (I had a huge empire and 4 vassals)... double that(forge, factory, etc.) and you get a infantry in 2 turns just from Miing Inc.

Ok!.. I had my research down to 10% to keep up... but I was building some 10-15 units per turn with only 20 cities.

Corporation are good for winning, not for making money... Mining Inc can help your war like nothing else and sushi can give something almost priceless: :food:.

I play without solver's patch, and I think that corporations are good the way they are. If the next official patch will lower the upkeep, corporations will be overpowered.

even with solver's patch I don't think they are overpowered. eventually you are paying large gpt.. my last game it was a net loss of 500gpt so I had to reduce the slider to keep up.


what it does is gives a cottage econ a way to leverage that money into production without just paying to rush things.


also I noticed in my game the ai switched to state property to avoid having to pay for my corporations effects in their cities.

unclejj's point is also valid.. while it helped me race to a dom victory the setup time was quite an effect. by the time I was fully ready the ai was almost at tech pairity. but it helped me hit critical mass and put my civ to a production point the ai could not match.

however since you cant have mining inc and creative constructions they are able to match your production benefits if the ai goes in that direction.

NaZ

If I am not mistaken, you can have both mining Inc and creative inc, just not in the same city. Build both but spread only one into your cities, paying maintenance for the headquarters without Wall street is worth keeping it from the AI.

Personally, I think corporations are good, but only for large civs. More cities means more benefit from every resource, and more cities means more land which means you have more resources in the first place. Its an exponential feedback cycle which just runs away with itself.

However, if I am going for a corporation game, I tend to try to found religions at the very start. Then that means Wall Street applies to both the religion and the corporation HQ, which helps.

Its an exponential feedback cycle which just runs away with itself.

It's not exponential. The benefits (and costs) are roughly quadratic with the number of cities you have.

Back-of-the envelope-calculation:
(assuming a corporation consuming only one resource type, but the calculations can easily be modified to take several resources into account)

Total empire area, A = n S, where n=number of cities, S=average number of tiles uniquely covered by a city
Total resources, R = A D, where D=density of a given resource on the map
Total Benefit, B = n R b, where b is some conversion factor (e.g. 0.5 food per resource for Sids Sushi)

Therefore B=n R b = n A D b = n^2 S D b

B=n^2 S D b

So the total benefit scales roughly as n^2, where n is the number of cities. The multiplicative constants are the resource density, average city tile coverage (generally about the same as a BFC, taking into account overlap) and the resource-benefit conversion factor b.

Of course, this can be boosted by trading, but nevertheless, the amount of resources you have available for trade are also dependant on your empire area, so the general n^2 dependance still holds.

^^ This means that there is a point where further expansion of corp in our lands will start to pay less compared with the maintenance ( this also aplies to Solvers patch ). Any idea how to calculate it?

^^ This means that there is a point where further expansion of corp in our lands will start to pay less compared with the maintenance ( this also aplies to Solvers patch ).
As far as I see, it doesn't mean that.

Writing:
A=n*S (where n,S are as above)
R=A*D (as above)
B=m*R*b (R, b as above, m=number of cities running the corporation)
so B=m*b*n*S*D

C=m*(f + R)*j - I*m
Here j=corp. maintenance multiplier due to e.g. inflation (so j=1 with solvers patch)
f=is a base cost (see the OP), which is 7 if all your cities are size > 20, but in practice roughly around 6-6.5, though
R=number of resources consumed, as above
I=income per city with corp if you have corporate HQ, i.e. 0 if you dont, 5*(gold multiplier%) if you do. If you have all :gold: buildings in your H.Q. city then I=15)

So taking the benefit/cost ratio (assuming the resources the corporation produce are as valuable as gold per unit, so e.g. 1:food:=1:gold: for Sids Sushi etc.) you find:

B/C = (m*b*n*S*D)/(m*(f+R)*j-I*m) = b*n*S*D/(j*(f+n*D*S)-I)

so that the number of cities running the corporation vanishes from the expression. The total number of cities in general, however, still factors in, but both in the numerator and the denominator.

Obviously, taking the above ratio is based on assuming that it does cost you to expand to each city. Obviously, if you have zero resources of a given type and wall street in your HQ city, then you will (with solvers patch) be earning money for each expansion, so the above ratio becomes negative and thus useless. (For such situations it may be more beneficial to take the difference B-C).

^^ So with B/C = n*Y ( Y= b*S*D/(j*(f+R)-I) a assumed constant), this means that bigger empires have bigger ratios.... Shouldn't we put normal maintenance in here ( you can't use SP and corps at the same time and even SP is maintenance free )?

...wow beancounters :P

for the rest of us I have to sum it up like this.. the more territory I took over the stronger my production cities got which meant faster military production which equals more territory etc.

from the moment I founded the corp my power rating skyrocketed until I owned the entire continent.. then it was very straightforward to end it.

NaZ

^^ So with B/C = n*Y ( Y= b*S*D/(j*(f+R)-I) a assumed constant), this means that bigger empires have bigger ratios.... Shouldn't we put normal maintenance in here ( you can't use SP and corps at the same time and even SP is maintenance free )?

Sorry, I was unclear (I just edited my post), but R is also a function of the number of cities n, since R=A*D=n*S*D, so y is not a constant.

As n goes to infinity (assuming a very, very large map, with huge amounts of resources) then B/C=b/j, which is just the resource->benefit conversion factor divided by the inflation factor. (of course, b is rather small on such a large map)

...wow beancounters :P

for the rest of us I have to sum it up like this.. the more territory I took over the stronger my production cities got which meant faster military production which equals more territory etc.

from the moment I founded the corp my power rating skyrocketed until I owned the entire continent.. then it was very straightforward to end it.
NaZ
Yup. But the point is that your corporation based production bonus goes roughly as your number of cities squared, and not exponentially, which is a completely different kind of growth.

...wow beancounters :P

:lol: As ye sow, so shall ye reap... :lol:

^^Ok, overlooked the n dependancy of R. But I wanted to expose my personal belief that with a assimptoic aproach of B/C to b/j , when you factor the non corp maitenance of the cities necessary, there is a maximum of corp eficiency versus number of cities of empire ( you can't have maintenance free cities in civ and AFAIK the maitenance formula is something like M = z*e^(w*n ) with e being the Napier number and z and w unspecified constants and quadratic / exponential always has a maximum ( may not have relevance in our context, like if it exists with n<0)

even with solver's patch I don't think they are overpowered. eventually you are paying large gpt.. my last game it was a net loss of 500gpt so I had to reduce the slider to keep up.

from the moment I founded the corp my power rating skyrocketed until I owned the entire continent.. then it was very straightforward to end it.

Is it just me or are these two statements somewhat contradictory? ;)


Running a large :gold: deficit isn't in itself an indication that corporations are costly to your empire. You have to consider how many :hammers: you're getting for that gold. If you were getting 1000 :hammers: for 500 :gold: I think most people would say you were getting quite a bargain.

This failure to take into account the value of the :hammers:, :food:, etc. that you get from the corporation is the main flaw I see in UncleJJ's analysis of the corporation issue. Once the items you get from the corporation are added to the equation corps become profitable even without using Solver's patch. When the inflation cost is removed from the equation they just become overpowered.

Yup. But the point is that your corporation based production bonus goes roughly as your number of cities squared, and not exponentially, which is a completely different kind of growth.

It is certainly true that the production bonus goes up in proportion to the number of cities squared, but that production bonus can be used to increase the number of cities.

Given that my empire has X number of cities in it today, if I can take over Y number of cities in N turns with the resources I have now, I will be able to take over (X + Y)/X cities after I have assimilated those cities into my empire. As my empire continues to grow (even leaving out corporations), I will accelerate my rate of conquest. When my rate of growth is based on my current size, that's when you see an exponential growth.

The fact that the corporations increase your rate of conquest by the square of your size just makes it even more exponential-er.


If anyone here is wondering why we can't just automatically win every game of Civ if our empires are all growing exponentially, remember that the AI civs are also growing exponentially. :) That's why you need to grow more exponentially-er.

(Someday my grammar will be more gooder, but until then, I'll make do with the words that I gots.)

The fact that the corporations increase your rate of conquest by the square of your size just makes it even more exponential-er.

Yup. :) That's exactly true. Assuming that conquering a city roughly takes a fixed number of :hammers: (of course, this isn't true, since like you said, the AI is also growing), then the rate of conquest (i.e. the rate at which new cities are added) is:

dn/dt = (a*n+b*n^2)/w
Here "a" is the average number of non-corporation hammers per city, "b" is the corporate production benefit from above, "n" is the number of cities and "w" is some average hammer cost for conquering one city.
The time scale is some average number of turns between each conquest.

The solutions to this differential equation completely blow up due to the n^2 term. Here's a comparison of two growth rates, one with corporations (assuming the production and food benefits of the corporation are as large as a sizeable fraction of those from the city tiles + specialists..which is unrealistic, but even changing this, the general shapes hold), one without:
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z43/frob2900/Posts/expansionrate.gif
Red line is with corporations (tangent-like growth, the line becomes totally vertical at some point)
Green line is without (exponential growth)
The horizontal axis is some average time between each city conquered.
The vertical axis is number of cities acquired since the hypothetical "borg-like" war where you conquer an enemy city, put Mining Inc. and Sids Sushi in it, put in a factory+barracks and then start pumping out armies to get further cities :).

Of course, at some point you hit the ceiling and get a a conquest victory!


The graph assumes that the AI is a complete pushover and is not increasing his production power at the same scale as the player. With actual AI resistance the graphs will, of course not blow up like that ;)

well.. yeah corporations are very powerful. but they do use up a great person.. so you have to compare that to the great person's strengths and difficulty in obtaining. mining inc and creative constructions both require an engineer.. and while you get a merchant on your way to sid's sushi you don't get a free engineer so its more difficult.

compared to rush buying it is more powerful but requires quite a lot of investment in both hammers and time to spread the corporation.

I failed to mention that one of the AI on the other continent had founded mining inc and had spread it to all of his cities. but being a vassal it was too late for him to catch up to my power rating.

of cource you could end up resource screwed limiting its effects.. but the more you expand the more effect it has.

however since the AI doesn't reliably cottage spam.. you'll be in a downward spiral of econ.. that is until you get courthouses and econ buildings up to speed in those new cities.

I think if they impliment solver's patch then they might want to reduce the hammer conversion to something like sid's sushi where it is 1/2 food per resource.. effectively cutting the effects of the corporation in half.. or something like .75 to make it fair and balanced.

of cource the other tradeoff is the innability to run state property.. but now state property is a fixed 10% increase in production in all of your cities... not quite as powerful as running mining or CC but still able to compete a bit.

where I found CC to be somewhat potentially broken is combining it with aluminum inc. if you have 3 resources of coal then each city with it has access to 3 sets of aluminum.. which is a CC resource. and yes it does count to increasing the production effects.

even still.. the ai is capable of founding the corporations themselves and spreading them to you.. putting you in a reverse situation where you MUST attack them or suffer dire consequences to your econ. (or switch to mercantilism or state property)

@sisutil LOL :P
@frob if you look at the screenshot of my power graph it matches your curve pretty good considering. it started a small snowball at my capitol and just grew from there. each opponent fell quicker than the one before it. definately great for dom victories

but if you are going for space race.. then std ethanol might be better because research is what slows you down.. so you lose out on extra food.. hmm. extra production is useful regardless though.

sorry for it being a bit of a ramble but thanks for contributions, keep the thread alive it will be of strategic use to everyone

NaZ

@frob if you look at the screenshot of my power graph it matches your curve pretty good considering. it started a small snowball at my capitol and just grew from there. each opponent fell quicker than the one before it. definately great for dom victories
And that was with deploying the corporation immediately upon conquest and then spamming troops? I so, yes, it does seem like the snowball effect works, although it would be interesting to compare with a game where someone is attempting to snowball without corporations.

The quadratic dependance of the corporation :food:+:hammers: boost also relies on the assumption that you are conquering more and more resources as you go along (roughly an average amount per city conquered, which of course isn't exactly true if you are conquering a bunch of jungle/grasslands and running Mining Inc. or an inland region while running Sid's Sushi).

The production growth prediction for a corporate warmonger is extremely dramatic, even compared to the standard exponential one (for a classical "Land is Power" strategy), so it would be interesting to see if this does indeed happen in games. If so, then corporation spam warmongering could be a very powerful strategy, given a roughly homogeneous distribution of resources on the map (of course, one needs to keep an eye on :gold: spending at the same time, unless running Solver's patch ;))

I had set 2 of my lowest production cities to producing executives. sid's sushi was spread in advance of my DOW.. and creative constructions had 3 executives in my war stack. new cities were brought under corporate control before they came out of revolt.

their first build if they didnt have 1 was a courthouse then granary to start recuperating pop.

the effect magnified yes because of increased resources. also dilligent trades with the AI on the other continent while I was busy smacking everyone around.. little did they realize they were next.

and about costs.. I was forced to reduce my slider to 40% at one point until my new piles of workers got farms paved over with cottages under emancepation. I did take a hit to my econ but it was worth it.

one thing that made it easier was spreading sid's sushi to the other continent. at first I profited but it forced the ai to head for communism to run state property. the moment they turned the corp off they were willing to trade me surplus metals and fish which magnified the power as well.

trading for the resources also lets you fine tune how much you want to pay to have the corporation running. if it gets a little too much just cancel older deals for those resources and it can sometimes knock 100gpt or more off your costs

NaZ

I play without solver's patch, and I think that corporations are good the way they are. If the next official patch will lower the upkeep, corporations will be overpowered.

I fully agree, there are plenty of ways to use corporations at the momment, they are far from broken.

I noticed that your attachment shows Supermarket giving +20% gold. Only Mall gives that benefit. So "Add Supermarket = 16 GPT" should be removed, and UB comment should be add 10-20%, not 10-15%, if corporation payments follow the normal way.

I had meant the american UB when I put that up. there was a note below it about america, mali, english UB's effects. sorry I should have made that clearer.

NaZ

You forgot about the most powerful UB effect of them all: the Holy Roman rathaus! It cuts maintenance costs, including those from corporations, by 75%! So the price of corporations is cut in half. On my first Holy Roman game, I put Mining Inc. and Sid's Sushi in every single city, no foreign corporations except my Cambodian vassal, and ran away with a domination victory --no time to build the spaceship!

Holy Roman Corporate Empire!! :goodjob:

thats a damn good addition.. though in my calculations I had not included the maintanance costs in order to keep it simple for others.

from that standpoint the zulu also get a break with their 20% discount through their UB.

warmongers really profit from the increased production.. and a snowball effect as your territory expands.

NaZ

You forgot about the most powerful UB effect of them all: the Holy Roman rathaus! It cuts maintenance costs, including those from corporations, by 75%! So the price of corporations is cut in half. On my first Holy Roman game, I put Mining Inc. and Sid's Sushi in every single city, no foreign corporations except my Cambodian vassal, and ran away with a domination victory --no time to build the spaceship!

Holy Roman Corporate Empire!! :goodjob:

How much corporation maintenance does the Holy Roman empire pay under Free Market?

How much corporation maintenance does the Holy Roman empire pay under Free Market?

If I've understood it right, Free Market works before buildings. So it should be:

0,75*(1,00-0,75)=0,75*0,25=0,1875

So Rathaus and Free Market should together eliminate 81,25% of corporation maintenance costs.
(Meaning Ikhanda and Free Market would together eliminate 77,50% of corporation maintenance costs.)

Free Market works before buildings.
Where did you get that info?

My last game I got bombed with the AI's Corps. I was running the eco friendly civic with the +25% corp miant cost. The AI each founded 2 corps and started speading them all to me, in the end my echonomy was in the gutter. Oh well I should have changed civic but you live and learn.

meateater,

first.. beelining corporations is worth it.. if for no other reason than to protect yourself!

if you are falling victim to other corporations you have a few choices.

option 1. turn on mercantilism and turn off their corporations

option 2. turn on state property and disable all corporations

option 3. found a competing corporation and spread it as quickly as possible to uproot their corporations from your cities.

option 4. declare war on the controlling civ, and take the corporate headquarters by force which should mitigate 90% of the costs.

weather or not the 3rd is even an option is debateable, but the war option is often the best approach in most situations. you will be able to use one of the civics by this time so it is just a question of which will be of the best use.

now if its mining inc or creative constructions you can just leverage the production boost to help you with the war effort. if its something less useful then I'd consider a civics switch.

NaZ

Where did you get that info?

From another thread [Corporation Maintenance Explained], here's quote:

The Free Market Civic reduces Maintenance Costs from Corporations by 25%. The important thing to know about Free Market is that its reduction is at the very core of Corporate Fees and is not represented mathematically in any screen. Therefore, this reduction comes before Courthouses and Inflation!

I had a great time reading everyone's posts. So what happened to the continuing discussion?

not sure lol.. don't like to see my threads fall into obscurity.

corporations are a great addition to the game, more powerful and costly than religion spreading.

through wise use you can supercharge your civ, and it works out amazingly well for domination attempts. I assume you could also leverage for a cultural victory.. you should see sid's creative construction and jewlers in action.. over 500 culture per turn sooo quick to get to legendary status.

space race also benefits.. creative construction followed by aluminum inc.. every instance of aluminum available to that city magnifies creative constructions.. huge spike in production for building parts.

NaZ

I think it fell down because Firaxis has indicated they will be changing Corporation maintenance, and Inflation

in any case they need to work the Maintenance costs so that

In Free Market you would sometimes WANT a foreign corporation in your cities (although you would want that HQ, but you would be willing to spread a Foreign corp. sometimes)

In Environmentalism, you would NOT be willing to spread foreign corps, excep in Highly unusual circumstances, although you would be willing to spread Domestic Corps. [at least Wall Street ones]

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned: With Solver's patch, Mining Inc can very easily make you quite a lot of money. A simple example: you have two production cities with 20 base hammers each, and forge+factory+power (for a total output of 80 hammers over the two cities). You have Mining Inc founded in the Wall Street city, and it has enough resources to bring in 20 hammers per city. Expanding it to those two cities will probably cost ~30gpt (after the bonus from the HQ is accounted for), and double the hammer output of both for an extra 80 hammers per turn.
If one of those cities now builds Wealth, you will be looking at a net increase in gold of 50gpt (80 hammers-30 maintenance), but you will still be generating the same amount of hammers (and even better, the hammers are now focused in a single city). You can also alternate which city runs wealth while the other builds any necessary improvements or whatever, and when you really need to ramp up production, you have an extra 80 potential hammers that can be assigned at will.

So Mining Inc is well worth spreading pretty much everywhere that you can afford the health for production buildings.

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned: With Solver's patch, Mining Inc can very easily make you quite a lot of money. A simple example: you have two production cities with 20 base hammers each, and forge+factory+power (for a total output of 80 hammers over the two cities). You have Mining Inc founded in the Wall Street city, and it has enough resources to bring in 20 hammers per city. Expanding it to those two cities will probably cost ~30gpt (after the bonus from the HQ is accounted for), and double the hammer output of both for an extra 80 hammers per turn.
If one of those cities now builds Wealth, you will be looking at a net increase in gold of 50gpt (80 hammers-30 maintenance), but you will still be generating the same amount of hammers (and even better, the hammers are now focused in a single city). You can also alternate which city runs wealth while the other builds any necessary improvements or whatever, and when you really need to ramp up production, you have an extra 80 potential hammers that can be assigned at will.
So Mining Inc is well worth spreading pretty much everywhere that you can afford the health for production buildings.

that seems like an awful lot of effort and micro management for a mere 50 gpt.

that seems like an awful lot of effort and micro management for a mere 50 gpt.
You mean building two executives, spreading Mining Inc to two production cities, and setting one of those cities to wealth?

And the benefit is more than the gold anyway. You've got your hammers more concentrated, and you've got more hammers tucked away for when you really need them.