Ok, so I've played around a bit with corporations.

I must say it is a bit tedius spreading them around the world. I really hate the 3-exec limit, especially when there is already a $$$ cost to spreading them (which makes them different than the free-cost-to-spread missionaries).

This post is not about the oil and aluminum corps. I see those as hit and miss. If you're hurting for one of these resources then build the corporation and spread it to the cities that need it. Fair enough. I wouldn't be spreading those corporations around the world anyways!

I'm more concerned about the other ones. So I put in a pile of effort to spread them around the world. To my cities and to AI cities to offset my own maintenance costs. What is the return on this time and cost investment?

Bottom line: Is it actually helping me win and, more importantly, win earlier than if I avoided them?

I see a clear advantage to avoiding them: State Property. 10% more production and enhanced workshops. This gives a direct, and significant, bonus to space race or domination victory attempts.

I know that the corporations give certain advantages. Hey, more food, what's not to like? But is it really making an impact on winning? If I'm putting all this time and effort into spreading corps around would it have made a difference if I didn't spread them at all?

What are your experiences so far?

I must say that at least the production boost for newly settled cities is a big boost if using Mining Inc (and to a degree Creative Constr.).

Interesting. But I am faced with this dilemma: Let's say the city is mostly grassland (say it starts covered in a lot of jungle). I want to make a production city.

Scenario 1: I go with a mix of farms and workshops since the workshops without SP can't feed themselves. I add Mining Inc.

Scenario 2: I go with pure workshops under SP.

How many resources would you have to control for Mining Inc. to outweigh the production provided by the extra workshops (possibly including the bonus from caste system) plus the 10% bonus from SP?

A pure grasslands city isn't really a great example for that. If you aren't running SP, why would you make that a production city? - its crying out to be a commerce city.

I think the benefits lie more towards commerce - which is what Free Market is all about anyway. You can run lots more towns with extra food from Sids Sushi allowing towns on grassland hills and plains. Your commerce cities get enough production from mining inc and towns to build their improvements quickly.

Fair enough, but the example is just hypothetical. I LOVE pure grassland state property workshop production cities. I once had a grassland city with 18 state property workshops. It was a production monster.

Sure, I wouldn't make it a production city if not using state property, but I use it as an example just for the sake of argument: What is the break even point in that situation where mining inc. is more productive than SP???

Sure, I wouldn't make it a production city if not using state property, but I use it as an example just for the sake of argument: What is the break even point in that situation where mining inc. is more productive than SP???

My hunch is that it would depend upon how many Mining Inc. resources you have. For example, if you gave 20 or more resources, I think you'll get more production than state property. If for example, you have only about three, four or five resources for Mining Inc., then I think you would be better off with SP.

So I think it depends on how much surplus resources you have. That's why I think larger empires on huge maps benefit from the corporations. Larger empires = more resources.

Scenario 1: I go with a mix of farms and workshops since the workshops without SP can't feed themselves. I add Mining Inc.

Scenario 2: I go with pure workshops under SP.Scenario 1a: Put Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills in the city as well, and remove some of those farms in favor of workshops.

In my current game, Mining Inc is currently producing +21:hammers: and Cereal Mills is producing +10:food:. I'll get that in every city I spread these corporations to. These bonuses not only help my production cities, but the rest of my cities as well. State Property only helps those cities with workshops.

The cool thing about those two corporations is: when the city isn't building something, you can use the food to support merchant specialists, and the hammers to build wealth. This helps offset the mainenance from the corporations, while still giving you access to their bonuses when you need them.

I really feel like corporations are making a difference in my games. I've got three huge production monsters, my Wallstreet city is running all seven merchant specialists while working all its tiles, and I can't wait until I get Cereal Mills in my Oxford city. It'll be able to run seven scientist specialists, as well as 18 towns, an iron mine, and a gem mine. (I cottaged over three sugar resources, FYI)

It makes me feel like sending my spy to change you're civics to SP or Merc just to mess up you're economy for 5 turns lmao...

*sigh* if only the AI knew how...

I haven't seen the AI forcefully change my civics before...

Fair enough, but the example is just hypothetical. I LOVE pure grassland state property workshop production cities. I once had a grassland city with 18 state property workshops. It was a production monster.

Sure, I wouldn't make it a production city if not using state property, but I use it as an example just for the sake of argument: What is the break even point in that situation where mining inc. is more productive than SP???Just Mining Inc, or can we add another corporation as well?

Well, assuming maximum grassland and no rivers, a city can support 14 workshops with six farms. That means a non-SP workshop city can have a total of 42 hammers.

Under SP, that same city could produce 60 hammers, +10% for a total of 66 hammers. So in order to break even, corporations have to produce 24:hammers:. That's not too hard to do with just Mining, Inc alone. Toss in one of the food producers, and you can easily exceed that, especially with one that produces +18:food:.

The big question is whether or not the distance-from-capital maintenance saving you get from State Property is exceeded by the wealth-producing potential that corporations under free-market give you. Under the current patch, that's debatable. With the new patch, or Solver's unofficial patch, I think free-market has a slight edge.

Of course, one big advantage of State Property is that you don't have to spread it to your cities to take advantage of it...

It makes me feel like sending my spy to change you're civics to SP or Merc just to mess up you're economy for 5 turns lmao...

*sigh* if only the AI knew how...

I haven't seen the AI forcefully change my civics before...Ow... that would hurt. Not too much, because if I lose access to the corporation then I don't have to pay for its maintenance. But at a critical time, like in a race for a wonder...

I think I'd be more upset about the anarchy. (Or does a forced civics change not produce anarchy?)

Thankfully, the AI seems to be rather ineffective in using the espionage system, except to try to poison my water supply.

I don't like them. I find they add too much expense and give me nothing useful. Nothing I can't do better with a little micro managing. I'll never use them again. I think corps are as horrible a waste as the great artist is now for trying to settle a rioting population.

So BTS added some good things, but broke two important things.

Too bad blake ain't around anymore, because the AI could definitely use the new tools a lot better.

I'd like to see a peaceful AI change the Warmonger AI civics during a war with each other, Like force the warmonger to Pacifism or out of Police state.

There's also SE vs CE civics, If I were running a SE and Mansa
next door were running a CE, I'd force him out of Free speech and Emacipation and see his GNP Fall, The reverse can be the same, imagine if I were to not use Caste system for 5 turns, and lose that next Great person which could have been use for something or if Representation were off...:S

I'd also like to see the AI destroy my courthouses more often.

So in order to break even, corporations have to produce 24.

Doesn't mining inc give 1 hammer per surplus resource? That would be 24 resources, which is a fair amount on a standard-sized map.

I see the benefits of combining mining inc with one of the food corps. And I see the benefits of the food corps for allowing you to run specialists in addition to the workable tiles thus filling up oxford scientists, wall street merchants, IW engineers, GT artists, and the like. In that respect, the food corps are probably the best.

The question that still lingers for me however is how MUCH of an impact corporations make. I'm thinking concretely in terms of how many turns they can shave off a space race say... (I know that's hard to judge exactly, but those are the ways that I'm thinking about this...)

I think (and it seems to be a concensus) that corporations in there current iteration are a little toothless. I don't dispute they can be used effectively and some good players have shown ways in which this can be done but I think any feature of the game could be significantly nerfed and good players would still be able to take advantage of it. That's what they do, they're good players.

Currently if you've found a corp you have to think carefully about which cities to give it to and if the AI is spamming his/her corp in your cities then a civics change is a no-brainer.
If Corporations were boosted (lower inflation and maintenance) then it flips things a little as founding and spreading a corporation becomes a no brainer in your own cities although giving your oppenent an advantage for a bit of cash may not be so simple. Foriegn corporations coming in could still be advantageous but prudence is still necersary (as you strengthen your opponent as well as spending money yourself). There is no loss in strategy by making founding a corporation a no-brainer because it creates choices elsewhere. Do I give my rivals money and keep my corp benefits or go to State Property? should be the question, spreading corps in your own terriotory still has a lot of choice because of the way competition works. Having a corporation in every city should not necessarily be bad and certainly not if they are domestic.

The only problem with this is that the AI techs slowly leading to a player quickly grabbing corps being a great advantage. If there was a higher level of AI tech parity then founding corporations becomes a real race with a some unpredictabilty afforded by the Great Person system.

I hope the issues of AI teching and corp maintenance are addressed thus making economy civics choices alot more interesting.

Some of my comments on corps so far
1) On marathon speed the bonus are about 1/3 that of regular speed. So mining with 15 resources will give me maybe 5 hammers per city. Ditto for the food corps. Makes sense I guess considering the game speed.
2) I have no problems trading any corp (exception the oil and aluminum ones) to any sucker AI who has open borders and no state property. Let em have the hammers and food, I'll take the 15 gold per city and shatch them bankrupt themselves.
3) Right now I prefer the mining and sids suchi corp, added production and food per city without the more limited culture. Done correctly you should break even in paying for your cities, while getting the food/hammer bonus.
4) The issue is state prpperty and whether the +10% production and food for workshops outweigh a well spread and productive corp. I have quite figured it out yet but the corps spread the benefits evenly to every city (+5 hammers, +5 food) and is endependent of city location or existing structures. Yes a grassland workshop spammed with state property is a massive increase, but this does not help the costal city that is hammer deficient. Likewise the city with some tundra and limited food gets a massive boost from sids or cereals so you can use more of those mines and lumbermilled forrests. If you have too much food for certain cities you can always use it for specialists.

One final point (hit the return button too fast).

If you have a really large empire then I think state property's old benefit of no distance to the palace maintenance cost outweighs corps. But the 10% boost and workshop food alone do not warrent getting corps if you have the resources and GP.

Doesn't mining inc give 1 hammer per surplus resource? That would be 24 resources, which is a fair amount on a standard-sized map.That was why I asked if we could include one of the food corps. Corporations certainly help larger empires more than they do smaller ones, thanks to having more access to resources... but that's true of State Property as well. My current game, which is pulling in +21:hammers: is an anomaly: I've been extremely lucky popping resources from my mines. But I have noticed that I've been pulling in hammers in the high teens in the game.

I see the benefits of combining mining inc with one of the food corps. And I see the benefits of the food corps for allowing you to run specialists in addition to the workable tiles thus filling up oxford scientists, wall street merchants, IW engineers, GT artists, and the like. In that respect, the food corps are probably the best.Yep, the food corporations are definitely high on my list, followed closely by Mining Inc.

The question that still lingers for me however is how MUCH of an impact corporations make. I'm thinking concretely in terms of how many turns they can shave off a space race say... (I know that's hard to judge exactly, but those are the ways that I'm thinking about this...)It's hard to tell for sure, but things feel faster than I'm used to. Some examples:

Buildings build faster, so I can switch non-production cities back to producing weath a lot sooner. Most turns, I'm running a profit, with a huge CE empire, with 90-100% research slider. This is despite the high maintenance costs currently generated by corporations.

Building all the espionage buildings in a city doesn't feel like a chore.

My Heroic Epic city tends crank out even modern armor at 1/turn, and almost always maxes out its excess hammer pool. My West Point city cranks out these units at 2-3/turn.

I can support seven scientists in Oxford without having to farm over any of my towns, and I have started building towns in my Wall-Street city.

Once corporations come online, my wealth cities get their farms replaced by cottages, and start getting research buildings. On the flip side, my science cities start getting wealth buildings, and start running merchant specialists.

I was struggling with prince in Warlords... now I feel like I'll have to go up a level just to make it interesting. Time will tell, since I've gotten good starts on my first two prince-level games, and that's always worth a difficulty level.

1) On marathon speed the bonus are about 1/3 that of regular speed. So mining with 15 resources will give me maybe 5 hammers per city. Ditto for the food corps. Makes sense I guess considering the game speed.

Err... what? Corporation output is not affected by game speed, only map size. It wouldn't make any sense for it to be lower at marathon anyway, any more than it would make sense for all tiles to generate a third of their normal production.

If you have a really large empire then I think state property's old benefit of no distance to the palace maintenance cost outweighs corps. But the 10% boost and workshop food alone do not warrent getting corps if you have the resources and GP.

With a properly spammed foreign corporation your entire civ's non-corporate maintenance costs are utterly trivial. You should also have far more gold than your have much use for by the late game anyway.

Err... what? Corporation output is not affected by game speed, only map size. It wouldn't make any sense for it to be lower at marathon anyway, any more than it would make sense for all tiles to generate a third of their normal production.

On marathon speed I am getting something like 1 hammer for every 4 resources for mining, and 1 food per 4 resources.. I don't remeber the exact numbers but something to this nature. Everything take 3 times longer to build on marathon to match the game speed, makes sense to cut the corp bonus appropriately or else it's overpowered on marathon and doesn't fit into the game speed.


[QUOUE]
With a properly spammed foreign corporation your entire civ's non-corporate maintenance costs are utterly trivial. You should also have far more gold than your have much use for by the late game anyway.[/QUOTE]

OK, I won't argue this. I just wanted to point this out as another issue for deciding on state property. Also sometimes all the AIs are on state property anyway so spreading corps are not easy.

On marathon speed I am getting something like 1 hammer for every 4 resources for mining, and 1 food per 4 resources.. I don't remeber the exact numbers but something to this nature. Everything take 3 times longer to build on marathon to match the game speed, makes sense to cut the corp bonus appropriately or else it's overpowered on marathon and doesn't fit into the game speed.

You must have been playing on different sized maps - game speed as no impact on corporation output. Think about it. All the tiles generate the same amount of food/commerce/production at any game speed. It's everything else that's changed to fit round it - production and research costs are mostly three times higher.

Similarly, that already compensates for corporation output. If you cut corporation resources like that on marathon, they'd be three times weaker than on normal, since production costs already take into account the change in game speed. Fortunately the does not work as you suggest here, and game speed has no effect on corporation output.

3) Right now I prefer the mining and sids suchi corp, added production and food per city without the more limited culture. Done correctly you should break even in paying for your cities, while getting the food/hammer bonus.


Sid's Sushi produces culture, doesn't it?

Actually you are correct, sids give culture also. I tend to build it for the food though.

OK, I am going to reread and review my games because I am missing something or not remembering something correctly, but my game is on the home computer so it will have to wait. Great writeup on how corps work McCynical. I just seam to remember reading about the less production/food output for marathon and epic speeds and I do not get as much return as others are getting.

You must have been playing on different sized maps - game speed as no impact on corporation output. Think about it. All the tiles generate the same amount of food/commerce/production at any game speed. It's everything else that's changed to fit round it - production and research costs are mostly three times higher.

Similarly, that already compensates for corporation output. If you cut corporation resources like that on marathon, they'd be three times weaker than on normal, since production costs already take into account the change in game speed. Fortunately the does not work as you suggest here, and game speed has no effect on corporation output.

I apologize and stand corrected. I cannot find anything about corp benefits being speed dependant. I must have misread something somewhere.

My experiences with corporations are simple:

Too late

Corporations is a very late tech and by that time my cost for a Great Person is very high, so it could be another 50-100 turns until I get a GP and found the corporation HQ.

Plus corporations is on the way to Assembly Line, which is usually when I start upgrading my military and "liberating" enemy cities, leaving little room for the 200 gold cost for spreading (which means you have to wait 40 turns to break even on that original cost, unless the AI spreads it for you; which is rare.)

My experiences with corporations are simple:

Too late

Corporations is a very late tech and by that time my cost for a Great Person is very high, so it could be another 50-100 turns until I get a GP and found the corporation HQ.

Plus corporations is on the way to Assembly Line, which is usually when I start upgrading my military and "liberating" enemy cities, leaving little room for the 200 gold cost for spreading (which means you have to wait 40 turns to break even on that original cost, unless the AI spreads it for you; which is rare.)

Mining corp comes with railroad, which you need before you get combustion to fule your tanks and plains. Sids comes with refridgeration which is one short tech off of electricity which is also need for tanks. Cereals comes with medicine (I think) which you need to build hospitals to minimize polution from factories. Not sure of the others. So it doesn't really come late.

I think yur other 2 issues are valid, you do need to save up the appropriate GP (who really likes holding a GE or GM for centuries), and it makes no sense from an economic point to spread the corp to a city you will take over anyway. Corps seam to break even in your own cities (or close to it) and the profit is foreign cities.

One other point, you can spam the corps to vassals.

My sense on corporations based on my reading around here and playing with the game is that they are potentially--and I stress potentially--very powerful if in the hands of an experienced high-level player who finds himself bogged down in the late game where winning is not a foregone conclusion. They just require a lot of thought and careful planning and a very good understanding of how resources and commerce work.

Otherwise I think they come too late in the game and State Property just simplifies things for most of us. Winning the game seems to be just as feasible as ever without corporations. They are just another option but not entirely essential. Kind of like religions in that regard.

There is no loss in strategy by making founding a corporation a no-brainer because it creates choices elsewhere. Do I give my rivals money and keep my corp benefits or go to State Property? should be the question, spreading corps in your own terriotory still has a lot of choice because of the way competition works. Having a corporation in every city should not necessarily be bad and certainly not if they are domestic. QFT. I got sick of people saying "There would be no strategy if you can mindlessly spam corporations!"
There can still be interesting choices because a) getting to corporations is a race, b) each one is different, c) different civics give different choices, etc.

Of course it can be overpowered, but being an unqualified advatage doesn't suck out all strategy.

They seem to come too late in the game, and with too much cost and time to really prove all that useful. State Property FTW!

They can be decisive - effectively they allow you to super specialize your cities.

Eg latest game I was roughly tech equal but had lots of allies and thought a diplo win was viable. Beelined mass media. Unfortunately the biggest AI is Alex who is my awesome friend of many battles and religious ally. He has 20% of the worlds pop to my 19% and would split the confucian vote.

But what if I built UN in a city right next to Victoria (cash rushed) and either gifted it to her (or even better left the city defenseless for her to take). Then the confucians and Alex would all vote for me.

Problem is it would be a run off between her and Alex.

Enter Sids Sushi. Spam this into as many of my cities as I can. Lots of food to add population in a hurry. I could do this a little with farms, but lots of my cities have no fresh water and are working sea tiles. Now I can grow rapidly for a sprint towards victory.

So this meets your criteria - a diplo win acheived directly because of corporations, but 100s of years earlier than a space win would be achieved.

Right now Sid's Suchi lok sto have helped my game dramatically.

1) I can max out specialists in my 4 core cities.
2) I can use culture in my one distant city that has oil but is under culture pressure froma creative leader.
3) I am building a new city on the border of a friendly AI to spam Suchi there and culturally steel the only aluminum on the continent.

So is the corp helping me win faster, Probably. I can run ALOT more speciasts in my core cities, most likely space ship parts can have 6 engineers per city. I can teh faster because of the free scientists from Sid's food.

I have been able to avoid an unwanted was with a friendly AI and a Please AI because I could use culture to keep or get the resource I need.

Right now there is no financial benefit because I do not wall stret built yet, but when I do (waiting for bank 8 to be built) I should be swimming in cash (the Corp headquarters also has 2 shrines).

Sorry about all the typos in the previous post, I reaaly need to proof read myself more.

Another point about the corps, is that it really helps to found the late happiness wonders, and the Cristo redentor. I have found you can 2 seasfood that the AI cannot use and gold for each happiness tech. My guess is the AI does not realize how much they are helping you and looking only to unload so uneeded resources. The Cristo is great for swapping civics as needed, especially US/Rep and Free Market/Environ every turn.

It's an easy beeline, at least for Sid's, Physices/Electricity/Refridgeration/Radio/Mass Media although I do no recall if you need Biology for Refridgeration.

Sid's Sushi comes with Medicine, actually.

YEs, you are correct. I made that mistake in my recent game and teched refridgeration first. Sometimes I have a mental block, so sids is easier than cereal mills, one less tech.

The tree would be Scientific method/biology/medicine and for ceareal mills Physics/Electricity/refridgeration.

It's these tings that keep me as an average player rather than a good player.

Well, I've played 3 BTS games sofar using new leaders (Boudica, Lincoln, Suleiman) but I haven't really used corps in the most optimal way yet. My understanding of how they work, benefits and drawbacks is getting better, but was pretty much non-existent with my Boudica game.

One thing is pretty obvious to me though: corps can definatly secure you an earlier win than pre-BTS, but you really need to know how to integrate them in your overall strategy (and I'm not quite there yet :D ).

The food corps are definatly the best. You can use the food to feed specialist and those specialists can produce beakers, commerce or hammers - flexibility. The mining corp gives you hammers, which are not so easily 'transferable' to beakers or commerce, depending on the cities.

Another thing I consider a big thing in BTS and easily as important as corps: the Cristo and Mausolleum wonders - they are truly gamebreaking in the hands of a capable player/AI. Try attack an AI with the Mausolleum in one of his cities... :cry:

I agree with Cristo. The Masoleum extends the golden age. The statue of Zues gives 100% war weariness. Zues is pretty awesome but has not stopped me from being harrassed by the AI on Monarch as it did on Prince.

I agree with Cristo. The Masoleum extends the golden age. The statue of Zues gives 100% war weariness. Zues is pretty awesome but has not stopped me from being harrassed by the AI on Monarch as it did on Prince.

Oops - got them confused. :rolleyes: :lol:

I meant the Statue Of Zeus. I haven't tried to build the Mausoleum yet, since I usually don't go beyond the first GA in my games, but that's going to change I suspect, since the aspects of GA's with BTS has changed to the better. :)

Right now, Zeus is probably no.1 on the list of Wonders you wanna build yourself, just to keep it away from the AI players.

The masuleum is awesome too. My first Prince win with Agustus I ended up with four golden ages (1 GP, Taj, 2 GP, 3 GP) which was 96 turns are a golden age!!! I play marathon speed so it amounts to about 10-15% of the game as opposed to almost 25% a normal game speed.

Golden ages are much imporved but still not in relation to game speed.

Right now, Zeus is probably no.1 on the list of Wonders you wanna build yourself, just to keep it away from the AI players.

Of course, you could just attack the city that has Zeus first or at least make it a priority. Alternatively, Police State + Mount Rushmore + jails means that 100% of 0 is still just 0. Admittedly, neither is possible in every situation.

Of course, you could just attack the city that has Zeus first or at least make it a priority. Alternatively, Police State + Mount Rushmore + jails means that 100% of 0 is still just 0. Admittedly, neither is possible in every situation.

Funny you say this. Justinian has been continually harassing me by declaring war and doing amphibious landings. I have the great wall and Mausoleum so I have been getting great GG points and he's been getting war weariness. I see now through espionage he is teching facism even though the free GG has been gotten by Mansa Musa. MY guess is he's been tired of fihgting against that thing for so long he's teched it to being obsolete. I am currently lining tanks up on the shore.

The 100% war weariness offset comes late in the tech tree and costs in research becasue of the Police state civic.

Of course, you could just attack the city that has Zeus first or at least make it a priority. Alternatively, Police State + Mount Rushmore + jails means that 100% of 0 is still just 0. Admittedly, neither is possible in every situation.

Very doable and the thought occured to me but; the Wonder was located inland which meant I had to chew my way through at least 2-3 cities before reaching it. I tried to bribe other AI's to attack the AI owning the Zeus wonder, but no luck. As the game unfolded, it became pretty clear that I had to do it myself at some point - oh well, lesson learned.

BTW, sorry if this Wonder discussion is off-topic. :)

A couple things about corps in my games thus far:

1) I think they are slightly broken, so I stick with SP until fixed.
2) I usually have large empires, really need the 'no maint. from capital'
3) By the end of the game unhappiness b/c of no emancipation is REALLY high, forcing me to switch out of Caste which means SP isnt as efficent.

Eventually it looks like my games are headed down the corps road, but only once theyre fixed. If maybe the AI was smart such that when it sees you spamming yer corps to their cities it would switch to SP, maybe they would be more balanced. I dunno, it just seems stupid that you can overly hurt the AI by spamming corps into their cities~

Ok, so I've played around a bit with corporations.

I must say it is a bit tedius spreading them around the world. I really hate the 3-exec limit, especially when there is already a $$$ cost to spreading them (which makes them different than the free-cost-to-spread missionaries).

This post is not about the oil and aluminum corps. I see those as hit and miss. If you're hurting for one of these resources then build the corporation and spread it to the cities that need it. Fair enough. I wouldn't be spreading those corporations around the world anyways!

I'm more concerned about the other ones. So I put in a pile of effort to spread them around the world. To my cities and to AI cities to offset my own maintenance costs. What is the return on this time and cost investment?

Bottom line: Is it actually helping me win and, more importantly, win earlier than if I avoided them?

I see a clear advantage to avoiding them: State Property. 10% more production and enhanced workshops. This gives a direct, and significant, bonus to space race or domination victory attempts.

I know that the corporations give certain advantages. Hey, more food, what's not to like? But is it really making an impact on winning? If I'm putting all this time and effort into spreading corps around would it have made a difference if I didn't spread them at all?

What are your experiences so far?
Well, I can see how the corporations and produce culture, like the Jewelers one, would be of a great deal of help when going for a cultural victory. 40+ culture per turn, with multipliers, is nothing to sneeze at.

Still, corporations generally aren't as good as they should be. I think by cutting base inflation by at least 50%, maintenance by a third to one-half, and eliminating or severely reducing the cost of spreading a corporation to a new cit (No more 100+ gold to spread a corporation) that corporations would become very valuable. Until then, they're very difficult to use effectively, and after a certain point they become useless because of inflation. (Spreading corporations can be worth it initially, even with all the costs involved, but they become less so over time because of the severe inflation, which really can't be controlled - so instead of becoming more powerful over time, they become less of a help and more of a burden, except in certain specific cases)

The main problem I have with corporations is that you need to settle a bunch of off-shore cities to claim more resources (to trade for extra corp resources as well), but this hurts your economy without State Property. For the food corporations, unless you have a bunch of food-poor cities you pretty much need Representation to get research out of that food, because you can only run 3 scientists without Caste System until Laboratories if you don't have Caste System.

On a Pangaea map I'm not sure corporations are worth it...you have fewer coastal cities which help greatly towards offsetting city maintenance which you have to pay more if you run Free Market, and because there's less coast there are fewer seafood resources.

In short: you need to gear your entire economy and make sure the map is conducive to corporation abuse in order to make them worthwhile.

I'm less convinced State Property is needed. My offshore cities in my last game cost around 7 or so in maintenance with a courthouse, but one single trade route pulled in 6 commerce. I doubt State Property would result in more commerce. If you have a large inland empire maybe, but coastal cities generate so much trade now you don't need it - you just need to get courthouses and harbours up quickly.

I'm less convinced State Property is needed. My offshore cities in my last game cost around 7 or so in maintenance with a courthouse, but one single trade route pulled in 6 commerce. I doubt State Property would result in more commerce. If you have a large inland empire maybe, but coastal cities generate so much trade now you don't need it - you just need to get courthouses and harbours up quickly.

Mmm, I built Christo Redentor in my last game and was surprised to see that I was making more beakers and gold with Free Market than with SP, and this was with a large empire. It was just the extra trade route that made the difference apparently.

Mmm, I built Christo Redentor in my last game and was surprised to see that I was making more beakers and gold with Free Market than with SP, and this was with a large empire. It was just the extra trade route that made the difference apparently.


I did the same thing and I agree. But in BtS the trade off is not just about saving costs and the extra commerce as it used to be in Warlords.

Obviously if you have your own corporations, or even foreign ones you want to use, then FM is great because it reduces their costs as well as giving extra trade.

If you decide to not use corporations then the comparison is not just in terms of costs saved by SP versus commerce gained by FM. SP gives a very useful 10% production boost that adds to forges, OR and other production boosts. And it gives extra food for watermills and workshops. You have to offset any commerce gained from FM against the extra hammers and food SP gives. It depends on how well you've planned to make use of SP but with factories and power to make use of the extra hammers the increase in manufacturing can be astounding especially when paired with Caste System.

Right - use SP to avoid being infested by foreign corporations and to boost production. Use FM if you can start your own (since you can boost production with corps too). Both can support large empires effectively. Free Market will give more commerce with a largely coastal empire and SP will probably help more in cases where you have lots of land on a map with little coastline.

I've been testing corps and state property in my recent games. Heres my take.

Unless you regenerate map, or choose your starting civ beforehand, it will not always be possible to control a lot of cities. A couple games ago it was me and one other guy on opposite ends of a continent. If I conquered him too soon I would have no tech trading partner at all so I decided to let him live. I had a few cities, but not enough production, so I didn't really want to war in this game. Instead I used corps; I focused entirely on spreading to enemies. By the time i launched to space, my neighor was taking 40 turns to research rocketry. (Large, Epic)


In my last game I had a few neighbors and did a standard oracle/col/currency followed by axe rush. This left me with 4 cities that were tons of production but light on commerce. I ended up having to fight another neighbor, and when I took a few of his cities, maintenance was killing me. This plus the fact that I had a number of workshops meant that I had to go SP. Many will agree that if you need SP in a game youre going to stick with it for the whole game. This meant that even though I founded a corp (to see if I could build missionaries or make money under SP; you cant), I had no choice but to just leave it doing nothing. With SP one of my cities was bringing down over 200 hammers. Space elevator in 11 turns.


So the question is, are corps Ever worth it? I think the answer is yes, unless you always take more than say 10 cities on your landmass. Corps can easily make up for a lot of maintenance, and colonies allow you to control more territory without cost if you have cities on other landmasses. They also allow you to spread your corp around more.

My opinion is that if you reach corps and need to catch up on tech, spreading a corp is a great way. However if by the time you reach state property, you can out produce everyone and already lead in key techs, then SP is the way to go.

Well, if you beeline to Radio and get the Cristo Redentor early you can switch civics to Free Market, gold/pop rush executives and switch back to SP when you're done. I love that wonder :D . In fact I might try that and see how feasible it is.

I'm new to BtS, and I have founded Mining co and Sids and they seem to be helping me or at least breaking even with SP. I am also in a position to found Cereal, although I have almost none of the resources for that one. If I found a terrible inefficient corporation, can I use it as a weapon to spread it only into foreign cities? It makes like +2 food or so. By forcing my opponents into using SP, I suppose I would actually be helping them rather then hurting them. I'm not sure I fully understand corporations just yet.

I'm new to BtS, and I have founded Mining co and Sids and they seem to be helping me or at least breaking even with SP. I am also in a position to found Cereal, although I have almost none of the resources for that one. If I found a terrible inefficient corporation, can I use it as a weapon to spread it only into foreign cities? It makes like +2 food or so. By forcing my opponents into using SP, I suppose I would actually be helping them rather then hurting them. I'm not sure I fully understand corporations just yet.

First understand that certain corps compete with each other, so you cannot have both Sid's and Cereal in teh same city. Likewise Mining Inc competes with Creative construction and Jewelers. Alminum Inc and STandrad ethanol both compete with other corps. It's not like religions where you can found all and be happy.

Found corps within your own cities (you want it in the Wall Street City) will rarely make money but will give you specific benefits (more food means more speciaists, more culture helps to push borders and winn culturally, hammers build space parts and military faster) that ar ereally what you should gear the corps towards.

Spreading to corp to your rivals is debatable. They may go to SP which kills your corp and is a nasty decrease in income. If they stay in environmentalism or free market they get big benefits and will generally STOP trading those resources to you.

First understand that certain corps compete with each other, so you cannot have both Sid's and Cereal in teh same city. Likewise Mining Inc competes with Creative construction and Jewelers. Alminum Inc and STandrad ethanol both compete with other corps. It's not like religions where you can found all and be happy.

Found corps within your own cities (you want it in the Wall Street City) will rarely make money but will give you specific benefits (more food means more speciaists, more culture helps to push borders and winn culturally, hammers build space parts and military faster) that ar ereally what you should gear the corps towards.

Spreading to corp to your rivals is debatable. They may go to SP which kills your corp and is a nasty decrease in income. If they stay in environmentalism or free market they get big benefits and will generally STOP trading those resources to you.

So, the resources don't just come from your own territory? By spreading to another city, the benefit to them goes by the resources that they own? So if I have one corn and no other cereals, and I spread cereal corp to a civ with lots of wheat, rice and corn they get a higher benefit than I would? So to use the corp as a weapon, I want to spread ones where my opponent only has few of the resources? I'm still unclear on how this works.

OK, say you found the cereal corp. You have a total of 2 wheat, 1 corn, 1 rice in all your say 12 cities combined. If you spread the cereal corp to all 12 cities, you get +4 food to each (I am not sure off hand how much it actually is). The point is the Cereal corp will work in any city in your empire providing you have access to it somewhere.

Now, Say Mansa Musa has 4 rice, you can trade something he wants for additional rice, thus increasing the amount of food a corp city gets. Be warned, the more resources you have the higher the maintenance costs.

Now same situation, but you spread your corp to Mansa musa (costs maybe 100gold). You get 12 gold (BTS 3.13) in your wall street city (where the corp was founded) but now Mansa wants all the rice for his own corped city and cancels the trade. You are now back to your origional 4 food resources and chances are you let your corp cities grow assuming the extra MUsa rice was feeding it, thus you may have an unexpected food shortage.

Finally, say Musa has 5 cereal corped cities which amount to +60 gold in your wall street city!!! you just speant maybe 600gold but figure in 11 turns you will be making a prohit!!! The Musa switches to State Property, not only do you lose the 60 gold but he no longer has those corps in his cities if he switches back, big loss of income.

So the bottom line I have come up with is to
1) Found the corp to prevent the AI from founding it, partuclarly the ethanol corp.
2) Found the corp if YOU need that benefit. Sid's is the most powerful in my opinion and allows me the ability to run ALOT of specialists. Mining is next as that produces pure production hammers.

Hope this clears it up, it's not that bad once you play a game or 2.

I found Sid's Sushi to be very helpful in the late game so my cities would not starve or could at least keep growing, without having to run Environmentalism all the time. Mining Inc. was a decent production boost but again it was so late in the game I doubt it mattered as I had the game won.

I spread Sid's around to a few of my own cities, just the ones that were desperately needing food, and to a few foreign cities. The extra gold in the headquarters city (with Wall Street) was nice but again none of this was a game-winner for me. Just fun to play around with and maybe a bit tedious. The game overall is just tedious as hell when you reach the modern times and it's the major flaw of Civ in general. All the extra features are cool but just get more tediious as the game goes on.

It makes me feel like sending my spy to change you're civics to SP or Merc just to mess up you're economy for 5 turns lmao...

*sigh* if only the AI knew how...

I haven't seen the AI forcefully change my civics before...


OT: best forced change I've ever done was changing an AI's religion to my own 2 turns before it created the AP.

I always wonder if it's worth the effort. I know there is some huge post that talks about the roi of corps, but i wonder the same for missionairies (that is unless you're trying to get a civ to switch religions).

also, in SP, the cities that aren't runnign work shops are most likely running watermills. also the benefit of SP is you can use those GP for something besides founding a corp

I think by cutting base inflation by at least 50%, maintenance by a third to one-half, and eliminating or severely reducing the cost of spreading a corporation to a new cit (No more 100+ gold to spread a corporation) that corporations would become very valuable. Until then, they're very difficult to use effectively, and after a certain point they become useless because of inflation. (Spreading corporations can be worth it initially, even with all the costs involved, but they become less so over time because of the severe inflation, which really can't be controlled - so instead of becoming more powerful over time, they become less of a help and more of a burden, except in certain specific cases) This seems very important. I don't seem to get the benefit of corporations because all they make me is broke. I must be doing something wrong but I don't really get what. I have read this thread and had pointers but still not really clear with what needs to be taken into consideration. This is the second game I'm building a corp and both held me down significantly in terms of treasury. I spend an initial cost to spread the corp and after that I get -15:gold: per turn for corp maintenence and a...*dramatic drum*..a 5:gold: increased revenue in corp capital. Now that is one hell of a bankruptning formula. So I though "hey, lets push this maintenence cost onto the other civs". Off I went with the sushi executive to a civ that would accept corps settlement. And yes I did get rid of the maintenence cost but in return it cost me 234:gold: to spread the corp. 234/5=47 turns to break even. Not much left of the game to make an impact then. AND what if that civ suddenly switches to state property? I will be standing there looking like a clown with my 234:gold: outlay. Has anyone actually managed to be filthy rich thanks to corporations as the manual claim could happen "if handled correctly"? It seems people are debating marginal benefits here.

What am I doing wrong? The manual doesn't seem to tell the whole story, especially about the effect you say inflation have. Not sure what you mean? How can one get maintenece down to 1/3? 50% with courthouse, sure, but 1/3rd?
What are the basic things to consider when spreading a corporation?

@Alltidxx - It sounds like you're using one of the early patches of BtS (3.02 or 3.03, possibly even without Solver's patch). Corporation use is a lot easier under the most recent 3.13 patch, though I'd strongly advise using Bhruic's unofficial patch with it, as official 3.13 is rather buggy.

Some general points on corporations:

1)The HQ should go in a city with Wall street and bank/market/grocer. That gives +200% to gold, and so would give an income of 12gpt (15gpt on old patches) for each city. It doesn't take long to repay the executive cost (under 20 turns - and 234 gold is an unusually high initial outlay)

2)Once an AI has been "seeded" with one of your executives, they will often spam your corporation to the rest of your cities - this is essentially free money.

3)Spreading corporations in your own cities does not make gold. It is a means of converting gold into something more useful (food/production/science/culture). The trick is to spread your corporation sparingly in your own cities, where these benefits have most effect (e.g. food in a GP farm, or production in an ironworks/heroic epic city), and offset the costs with foreign branches.

AND what if that civ suddenly switches to state property? I will be standing there looking like a clown with my 234 outlay.

This is always a bit of a pain, and one reason why I'll occasionally run Enviromentalism even in a corporation heavy strategy - I can lock every civ into a corporation accepting civic with the UN. In practice though, it's rare to see a lot of civs running State property or mercantilism in the late game. Unless they have very large empires, most prefer Enviromentalism anyway.

What am I doing wrong? The manual doesn't seem to tell the whole story, especially about the effect you say inflation have. Not sure what you mean? How can one get maintenece down to 1/3? 50% with courthouse, sure, but 1/3rd?

I think that was a change Elrohir was suggesting, and that predates patch 3.13, which greatly reduced corporation costs, to the extent that the seem far too cheap to me after learning to get them working in pre-Solver conditions.

If you want a more detailed run down of how corporations work, basic strategies to use them, and how to make huge profits from them (really not that hard), I've written an article on the subject (the link is in my sig).

Those culture producing corps are amazing in a conquest game. Put an exec in your army and plunk one into each city. The borders spread like wildfire! Also, I have noticed that with the production corps, once you are finished building stuff in a perticular city you can build wealth and it's absolutely huge. Put one city on building wealth and you can forget about the cost of your corporation.

MrCynical,

Hey thanks alot. I will read the article. =)

i never have enough great people to build corporations. and im usually very close to a domination victory by that time anyway.