The patch has made corporate execs unlimited (thank heavens) thus taking away some of the annoyingness of spreading corporations later in the game. To the best of my knowledge, it also fixed some of the financial issues with corporations later in the game.

Ok, great.

However, I ask you: Are they worth the time and effort?

Late game turns are already lengthy and I repeatedly find myself wondering why should I invest the time and tedium to spread corporations. First of all, I have to consider sending a bunch of execs to a neighbour to offset the $ of spreading them to my own cities. Then I have to spread them to my own cities. Then I have to consider whether the impact I finally get from the corps is worth it....while I grumble about the AI switching into mercantilism on me and then deciding whether I can and want to get my hands on the UN and get everyone to go into environmentalism :confused:

I'm not one to question the value of surplus food, so I can see the value of Sid's sushi for the most part. So, I am willing to think that one has value even if I pay through the nose to only spread it to my own cities.

Perhaps if you're pursuing a cultural victory (there's not as much going on later in the game and you usually have a smaller empire) I can see the value of nabbing the synergistic corporations. Although I admit I don't play for cultural except once every few months I have an itch to try something new and will play for one.

Perhaps if you get unlucky and don't have aluminum, but I dunno.

I don't know. The fundamental question for me is this: Will corporations help me win/win faster than if I didn't use them? If they will help me win faster turn wise will it be significant enough that it justifies the increase in time it takes in real life to execute those turns?

I don't go for corporations that often (since I first got BtS, tried it, and got a bit frustrated with it) and don't usually miss them overmuch. Not to mention that I'm a fan of state property...

Can anyone convince me (I'm open to it) that corporations are worth my time? I think they're a great idea in principle as a gameplay feature but I just find them overly tedious (have you ever tried to spread a corp overseas before the patch to # of execs?!?).

Thks

I agree with you here, I also haven't found much use in corporations.
The initial cost is quite high, fees and hammers you spend for spreading it around as well as the great person to get started. The benefits, while useful, don't seem so big to offset all of that, with the possible exception of Sushi, and others in special situations.

I have also tried using them in a few games, but not found much of a real benefit. If someone can write some enlightening thoughts, that would be very interesting to see!

Also, the removal of the # of executives has led to bizarre AI behavior. I should have taken a screenshot but I've seen AI stockpiling over 30+ executives in one city.

And no, I don't use corporations much either. I can see standard ethanol or aluminum co. being useful if you don't have the resource and can't war for them either but that's about it.

I've not really experimented with them myself yet, but some people seem to like them:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=237717

30 executives in a city is a lot, but I think I've seen upwards of 70-80. I know in one of my earlier games Hannibal had two corporations, one with over 200 execs and one with about 120.

I have found them to be useful in some cases - Aluminum Co. has been my only source of that resource before, so that's nice. I did manage to spread one corp to the point that I could run 90% research and still make a profit, which was pretty cool.

thks for the link to the article. it was interesting and well-written. however, i already knew sushi has potential and, to a certain extent, mining inc. my question though is does the impact they give you justify the amount of time mucking around with them? that is something i'm still unconvinced about...

How about a post-patch civilized Jewellers? Would that not pull a good profit?

I would definitely say that there is a point to corporations in game terms. State Property isn't going to match up to a well provided Sushi and Mining Inc combo unless you're at the brink of domination anyway (and even then it's debatable). Not all corporations are equal though - I consider Standard Ethanol and Aluminium Co largely pointless unless lacking the resources. Civ Jewellers requires the least thought - it'll turn a profit wherever you spread it.

As to whether they're worth the time and micromanagement - only you can really answer that question. I don't find them too time consuming really - no worse than religion and an order of magnitude below an SE or a spy economy. Long term spamming to AIs is generally unnecesary - just send them one exec and leave them to do it.

Flight is a key tech for minimising corporation hassle - you can just airlift the exec to the desired city in any of your or your vassals/colonies' territories instead of messing around with ships. Negotiating for extra resources is straightforward enough. Figuring out which cities could benefit from extra food/production isn't that time consuming either.

At the very least I'd considered it worth dropping the appropriate corporations into your GP farms/production cities and any very small ones, plus giving them to the AI to spam by themselves.

^^Thks for the tips. I'll try to work on that, seems to make sense. I never really considered airlifting execs, that is something I'll have to work on. Cheers.

Late game turns are already lengthy and I repeatedly find myself wondering why should I invest the time and tedium to spread corporations. First of all, I have to consider sending a bunch of execs to a neighbour to offset the $ of spreading them to my own cities. Then I have to spread them to my own cities. Then I have to consider whether the impact I finally get from the corps is worth it....while I grumble about the AI switching into mercantilism on me and then deciding whether I can and want to get my hands on the UN and get everyone to go into environmentalism :confused:

This isn't really true any more (except perhaps at Deity level). Corporations are no longer affected by inflation and cost considerably less to maintain, so it's no longer imperitive to balance domestic spreading with foreign spreading.

With the right buildings, favourable civics and the HQ next to Wall Street, it's not that hard to break even or gain a profit just at the corporate maintenance level (that's not even considering the value of the benefits).

Check out my article, Corporate Maintenance Explained (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=249397) (specifically The Example (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=249397#Example)).

The GP value is the only thing I tend to agree with you on. By this point in the game, a Great Merchant is worth between 3000 and 4000g. So spending it to found Sid's Sushi is typically a very hard thing for me to do unless I'm seeking Culture or Space Race (since gold doesn't do much for me in either of those cases). For military, I'm probably already in CS/SP, so it's clear what to do.

The initial cost is quite high, fees and hammers you spend for spreading it around as well as the great person to get started. The benefits, while useful, don't seem so big to offset all of that, with the possible exception of Sushi, and others in special situations.

I have also tried using them in a few games, but not found much of a real benefit. If someone can write some enlightening thoughts, that would be very interesting to see!

Aside from the GP expended, the initial cost is only 50g + inflation, so you're looking at max of 100g towards the later game.

So 9 cities might cost between 500g and 1000g, which is usually only two or 3 turns of 100% gold at that stage of the game.

If you've played your cards right, you should be breaking even or turning a profit at the HQ, so you're bound to get that money back without even thinking about the benefits. However, if you consider the benefits, it's typically worth it.

By the time Corporations emerge in my games, I typically have 2 or 3 cities that can churn one out each turn, so it usually only takes about 10 or 15 turns to spread the Corporation to every city in my empire, which I think is totally worth it.

thks for the link to the article. it was interesting and well-written. however, i already knew sushi has potential and, to a certain extent, mining inc. my question though is does the impact they give you justify the amount of time mucking around with them? that is something i'm still unconvinced about...

I've only found foreign spreading to be tedious "mucking around". Since the executive tells how much the maintenance is going to be before founding, I think it's usually pretty simple to do a little math and figure out how much it's worth it.


-- my 2 :commerce:

ok thks guys i haven't played much with corporations since the patch and this feedback has given me incentive to try working with them again!

I only use Mining and either Sushi or Cereal Mills, because they seem to be the best at transforming money into production/commerce. Now that inflation doesn't affect corporations, I use a simple test to see if they are useful. For Mining, I check to see if the added production, after modifiers, is greater than the cost in gold. If so, I incorporate there. For Sushi, I first decide what to do with the food: either transform farms/windmills to workshops/watermills/mines, or add specialists, or transform farms to cottages (rare, since it's so late in the game). Then, I calculate how many added hammers/beakers/commerce will come in, and check to see if that's above the maintenance cost.

Then, if my economy starts crashing, I can turn one out of four or so production cities to Wealth, and that cancels out the affect of adding Mining to all the production cities: In most of my games (small/epic/emperor, domination wins) I've found that a good production city provides roughly 40-50 raw hammers and Mining Inc adds about 20, which with a +100% bonus comes out to 80 + 40 or 120. Instead of having four cities at 80 hammers, then, I'll have three at 120 (costing say 20 each in Corporation maintenance), and one building wealth, costing 20 in maintenance, but adding 100-120 coin. So, as long as each incorporation of Mining Inc adds more net production than it costs in maintenance, it can be used either to add production at the cost of money, or used with building Wealth to cost nothing. That adds flexibility, lets you turn on and off increased production, with few drawbacks.

since I started to implement Sid's Sushi in my games when I go into the endgame my highscores are 20-30% higher. This is mainly due to the extra population I breed with the extra food.

in the endgame I don't need the SP production bonus anymore since the army has been build. nor are the extra specialists of merc. needed since the science is done.

for spaceracegames I can image lots of scenario's where certain corps. are godsend.

My latest game as Mehmed saw me with a lot of coastal cities (cheap Lighthouse, Harbor), and Mining Inc was a real shot in the arm for fielding a large navy. By founding the corp in my wall street city, I wasn't hurting for money, either. It was also very useful to airlift execs into recently conquered cities in order to get basic buildings finished more quickly.

It seems like you have to get them out earlyish.

Just guessing, but they might be good for small civs. Example: your foreign corps give you more stuff without more cities. Example: you're stuck on an island with HR and cottage spam, and corps give you hammers.

If your game lasts until you can get infantry and the likes corporations will be a big help. Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc is insane... with a large empire everything goes berserk when you have them ;) Every city is a production city and every city have plenty of food, i tend to have 50-75% of my cities build wealth/research etc to help with my research rate because i haven't got anymore to build in them. (And at that point i usually have the largest most advanced army in the world so thats not important either)

I play domination games most of the time, so corporations gets superpowerful for me, because my empire size is quite decent at that time (more resources) so my opinion is considering those circumstances. (I tried a cultural once too, but the victory came late, but i churned out huge amounts of culture thanks to corps so that works well too :p)

The patch has made corporate execs unlimited (thank heavens) thus taking away some of the annoyingness of spreading corporations later in the game. To the best of my knowledge, it also fixed some of the financial issues with corporations later in the game.

Ok, great.

However, I ask you: Are they worth the time and effort?

Late game turns are already lengthy and I repeatedly find myself wondering why should I invest the time and tedium to spread corporations. First of all, I have to consider sending a bunch of execs to a neighbour to offset the $ of spreading them to my own cities. Then I have to spread them to my own cities. Then I have to consider whether the impact I finally get from the corps is worth it....while I grumble about the AI switching into mercantilism on me and then deciding whether I can and want to get my hands on the UN and get everyone to go into environmentalism :confused:

I'm not one to question the value of surplus food, so I can see the value of Sid's sushi for the most part. So, I am willing to think that one has value even if I pay through the nose to only spread it to my own cities.

Perhaps if you're pursuing a cultural victory (there's not as much going on later in the game and you usually have a smaller empire) I can see the value of nabbing the synergistic corporations. Although I admit I don't play for cultural except once every few months I have an itch to try something new and will play for one.

Perhaps if you get unlucky and don't have aluminum, but I dunno.

I don't know. The fundamental question for me is this: Will corporations help me win/win faster than if I didn't use them? If they will help me win faster turn wise will it be significant enough that it justifies the increase in time it takes in real life to execute those turns?

I don't go for corporations that often (since I first got BtS, tried it, and got a bit frustrated with it) and don't usually miss them overmuch. Not to mention that I'm a fan of state property...

Can anyone convince me (I'm open to it) that corporations are worth my time? I think they're a great idea in principle as a gameplay feature but I just find them overly tedious (have you ever tried to spread a corp overseas before the patch to # of execs?!?).

Thks

The answer I believe is yes, they help win the game faster using the following guidelines.

1) Build it in Wall Street.
2) Do NOT send the corp to any AI.
3) Ignore the financial return, they are neglible especially late in the game when corps ar eavailable.
4) Spread the corp to cities that can use it. If going for space you need only spread it to key production cities.
5) Founding as many corps as possible keeps them out of the AI hands.
6) Founding corps are one of the best uses for a GP late in the game.



The Seafaring Victoria RPC game in my signature was turned arround because of founding the Mining Corp at a key time, although whther the corp would have been needed if I weren't running the trade economy is questionable.

If you have plenty of the consumed resources, some corporations make things go completely crazy.

Yesterday I played with just one opponent on a standard map high on resources, so I ended up with dozens of most strategic resources. With Creative Com this gave +80 hammers, +270 culture or so.Civ Jewels gave +50 gold per city. I found myself spamming cities everywhere I could just to spread the corps in, on every unused tile in between cities and on tundra and ice. Build a courthouse, bank and forge in these cities in just three turns and then switch to wealth or research. Absurd, I tell you. But quite funny for once.

The Culture Triad of Creative Constructions, Sid's Sushi, and Civ Jeweller's is actually quite effective at speeding a late game turn to a Culture win. Spread to 3 Cities, negotiate for resources, wait to win. It's fast, and it's painless. In fact, it's so brainless that it may take the win for "least micromanaged win" ever. You don't have to found early religions, you don't have to manage a large empire, you don't even have to found the corporations yourself.

Just get the resources, establish the Corporations, cruise control to the win.

The Culture Triad of Creative Constructions, Sid's Sushi, and Civ Jeweller's is actually quite effective at speeding a late game turn to a Culture win. Spread to 3 Cities, negotiate for resources, wait to win. It's fast, and it's painless. In fact, it's so brainless that it may take the win for "least micromanaged win" ever. You don't have to found early religions, you don't have to manage a large empire, you don't even have to found the corporations yourself.

Just get the resources, establish the Corporations, cruise control to the win.
Why trade if you can take it by force? Combine Cultural victory, ressources and conquests! Late game culture wins after you have conquered those startegic ressources for the corps are really funny. You don't need wonders, religions or artists. Those culture corps are so strong if you have a big amount of ressources.
@futurehermit: if you don't like cultural wins because they are so passive for the second part of the game and you don't like the "cultured but weak-feeling" (Ok, Monty, i'll give you my brand new Music tech this time, because my three big cities are full of wonders but only defended by a single longbow.), the conquest-culture is the right thing for you. It works!

I haven't found corps to be terribly useful for spacerace. If one came my way I suppose I'd use it where appropriate, but nothing special to base my gameplan around. For late domination wins though, Mining can be huge, along with one of the food corps. I haven't played for cultural since pre-BTS, so I can't speak to that.

peace,
lilnev

I'm late to the debate but hermit I'm surprised by your doubt.

mining inc or creative constructions set you up for a snowball effect.

found in your wall street city to offset as much costs as possible. rapid spread across your empire and with forge+factory+power you are looking at a HUGE production boost.

well how best to leverage that.. hmm I think I'll smash my neighbor with 2x as many units as I could have managed otherwise.

as you take over territory you spread execs behind so that newly captured cities can get their forge,factory,power online and then produce either military or infrastructure.

mind you the more territory you control the greater the power of the corporation so you can snowball your overall production. you'll find your ability to spread your empire magnifying each and every turn as more and more cities fall.

usually by this point you've unlocked flight and so help them on the other continent. establish a beachhead and use your massive production to produce an airport in EVERY city just during the lag of the transports going over to the other continent.

now your magnified production should let you produce a tank every 3 turns or less per city. with unlimited airdrops into your new beachhead (send an exec with and get the corp founded or just rush buy the thing) you start dumping like 10+ tanks into the square per turn. not much the AI can really do to stop that.

NaZ

I like the sounds of that ^^^

I do tend to use some corporations. I avoid the mining corporation since I can have two or three others, or mining.
However, I'm not really a warmonger. I like going for the space ship or see if I can get the UN to work for me.
I have yet to get the UN to work for me, and often can't complete the spaceship before the turn limit.

The problem is, I can usually only spread one corporation through my empire before the game ends. I like building and researching everything... which is my downfall.
After researching my way to being able to establish corporations, I have to wait for the right great person since I leave the cities automated and the specialists randomize what great person I get. So I have to wait until one of my cities is nice enough to give me one.

What gets me, is I can put every Wonder I can to make a city give me an engineer, but it puts in four priests and suddenly that is the only type of great person I get.

I would hate to have to stop growth and production in a city just to get a great artist. Since my computer runs Civ4 slowly (takes a good 5 seconds to view a city, 2 to add/remove 1 item from queue), it already take me a long time to play a turn... add micromanaging the population of 4 cities. *sigh*

Creative Corps + Sid's Sushi is my favorite combination. Aside from the absurdly simple culture wins it allows you to do, during war, it pops enemy borders exceedingly fast, allowing you breathing room. It's nice not having to worry about artillery shelling you that's moved from within enemy cities.

Mining Inc's concentrated (and potent!) production bonus is so massive it's unfair. Plunk it down anywhere you don't need culture. Heck, buy out Creative Corps from anywhere that doesn't need culture anymore!

Nice to have?


Certainly.


Necessary?


No. Corporations are one of those "cool" features added into the game that don't serve much purpose (like the Espionage slider, f.e)

Corporations are one of those "cool" features added into the game that don't serve much purpose

I dont agree with this. Mining inc and one of the foods is like having 1 1/2 civs to play with.

I'm playing a game right now with Sushi and Mining Inc. I can definitely see the benefits of having them, but I don't see them winning the game for me earlier. Maybe if I get more practice with them. Part of the problem was I was having a heckuva time generating a GE early enough to make Mining Inc useful.

I dont agree with this. Mining inc and one of the foods is like having 1 1/2 civs to play with.

Sure, but by the time Corporations are available the game is already won or lost. They're nice to have, of course, I didn't say they were useless. Getting just the right GP late game and acctually spreading the corps is a bit tedious end-game... They're handy to have, but not necessary to win ;)

I'm playing a game right now with Sushi and Mining Inc. I can definitely see the benefits of having them, but I don't see them winning the game for me earlier. Maybe if I get more practice with them. Part of the problem was I was having a heckuva time generating a GE early enough to make Mining Inc useful.

After I get the last scientist that I want for the liberalism race, I immediately go to all my cities with a shot at producing a GP, and run a GE there. I'll save a GE, because at that point there's no wonder worth burning a GE for, and I'd prefer saving him for Mining over settling or a golden age.

I decided to go for a "take-your-time" domination win in the game I mentioned playing as Napoleon. When I had 16 cities and a stable economy at ca 1200AD I knew the game was in the bag whichever way I went for it. With tense relations with Bismarck on my planet and 3 relatively backwards civs overseas, I figured I would enjoy a leisurely domination push while enjoying all the late game has to offer.

I founded Mining Inc and Sushi and have spread them to all my cities. I must say they do help a LOT getting new cities online and productive earlier. Thus I can see their clear advantage when conquering territory and thus their worth in domination games. Even in my own established cities they seem to be helping balloon my cities nice and large (gpfarm is over size 30, most others in their 20s) and my IW city is producing anything spaceship related in only a handful of turns.

So, yeah, I can see their value. Do they shave turns off a victory? I bet they would now after getting some more experience with them, but I think you have to plan them into your gameplan. I think getting the GE is toughest because in the game I mentioned I missed the GE 4-5 times in a row thus delaying Mining Inc significantly. Maybe pushing for IW and/or Factories/Industrial Parks earlyish to get access to more engineers would be a good idea. The GM is no big deal because caste system makes it pretty easy to get one and there is also economics if you play your cards right.

I can also see how sushi would help a lot for running a SE (obviously).

Sure, but by the time Corporations are available the game is already won or lost. They're nice to have, of course, I didn't say they were useless. Getting just the right GP late game and acctually spreading the corps is a bit tedious end-game... They're handy to have, but not necessary to win ;)

You can pretty much win a late game cultural win using corporations. In fact, I wouldn't have won my last few games with cultural victory if not for corporations. And my cultural slider was only about 10-20%, and my tech pace was normal.

Using corporations to win cultural victory, to me, is simply much better than building towns in your 3 cultural cities, research the tech to get cathedrals and free speech, then go 100% culture, hence zero science, and fall hopelessly backward, and pray that the more advanced civ won't crush my obsolete army with modern weapons.

So to me, corporations are necessary in winning cultural victory.

yes but are they better than state property? State property is the daddy of all civics, and its value outweighs the need for any corporation, which are cool, ive used them a few times, but i find them a bit meh :rolleyes:

most of my games are won or lost by the time corporations become useful anyway.

futurehermit:

Having a GE when Corporations come online is almost a must. If you don't found Mining Inc for Space Race or Domination, you'll almost certainly find a use for it with Creative Constructions for beefing up cultural borders and for the Culture win.

I usually "create" a GE around that time by "maxxing" out Engineers in my IW city with IW, Factories, and Industrial Parks (if I still need the GE by then). If that doesn't work, I'll artificially boost my Engineer Points in key GP cities by building Factories and Industrial parks in all of them. Dumps my health into the ground like nothing, but totally worth it. Just run Environmentalism for a while until you get Refs.

Occasionally, I'll "save" a GE I didn't expect to get if it's near the time when Corporations come online.

To followup on whether corps can help you win faster, I am going to relate briefly my current game.

Playing as Julius Caesar. On a continent with Tokugawa who I cut off with a well placed city (Thankyou Snaaty). Toku had room for only 2 cities, then he settled off continent. I took those cities with Prats, then proceeded to peacefully expand in the other direction, getting alot of well placed cities.

At this point I essentially have an isolated start since Toku will not open borders. I build Swan Palace and adopted FR very early.

Since Toku is so lovable, he refused open borders with the other 5 AIs who were actually within galley range of myself. Since they were Monty/Khmer/Isabell/Roosevelt/Justinian they all hated each other and were thus in open warfare, tanking their teching abilities. When they finally found me it was obvious I had an easy chance at a space race win (all were cautious because of the early FR and example that the Swan palace can be a very useful wonder). I had Rome going well for wonders, Antium as a GP farm (with GL), and Kyoto with some wonders and hermitage to force Toku's cultural borders.

So where does this fit in with faster corp wins? We know it takes time to tech and build the SS. I managed to get a GE and GM which I used for Mining Inc (3 times production of Creative constructions) and sid's. I spammed all religions post factory and mass building culture. It is amazing but looks like I will obtain a cultural victory now alot faster than the SS I was shooting for. Each city is 1/3 of the way to legendary and I have not used a GA, nor swung the culture slider up yet (waiting to tech mass media).

The +11 hammers with factories/powerplants allowed very fast temple/cathedral construction and sid's offers lot's of food for specialists and culture. This is helping me win faster both in game time and real time.

Corps rule!!!!!

To followup on whether corps can help you win faster, I am going to relate briefly my current game.

Playing as Julius Caesar. On a continent with Tokugawa who I cut off with a well placed city (Thankyou Snaaty). Toku had room for only 2 cities, then he settled off continent. I took those cities with Prats, then proceeded to peacefully expand in the other direction, getting alot of well placed cities.

At this point I essentially have an isolated start since Toku will not open borders. I build Swan Palace and adopted FR very early.

Since Toku is so lovable, he refused open borders with the other 5 AIs who were actually within galley range of myself. Since they were Monty/Khmer/Isabell/Roosevelt/Justinian they all hated each other and were thus in open warfare, tanking their teching abilities. When they finally found me it was obvious I had an easy chance at a space race win (all were cautious because of the early FR and example that the Swan palace can be a very useful wonder). I had Rome going well for wonders, Antium as a GP farm (with GL), and Kyoto with some wonders and hermitage to force Toku's cultural borders.

So where does this fit in with faster corp wins? We know it takes time to tech and build the SS. I managed to get a GE and GM which I used for Mining Inc (3 times production of Creative constructions) and sid's. I spammed all religions post factory and mass building culture. It is amazing but looks like I will obtain a cultural victory now alot faster than the SS I was shooting for. Each city is 1/3 of the way to legendary and I have not used a GA, nor swung the culture slider up yet (waiting to tech mass media).

The +11 hammers with factories/powerplants allowed very fast temple/cathedral construction and sid's offers lot's of food for specialists and culture. This is helping me win faster both in game time and real time.

Corps rule!!!!!

What is a Swan Palace? A nickname for Shwedagon Paya perhaps?

What is a Swan Palace? A nickname for Shwedagon Paya perhaps?

Yep. I never remember the exact name, sorry for the confusion.

Yep. I never remember the exact name, sorry for the confusion.

No worries, I'll just add it in my old-timer translation dictionary under "Shields -> Hammers" :)

I've found that Corporations are like having extra cities. More maintenance, but also more production and more profit.

As long as I can handle the extra population for health and happy points, then I'm happy to put the corporations in my cities because I'll get much more bang for my buck by spreading them to my established cities and I'll turn my conquests into profitable cities much sooner with the extra culture from Sid's Sushi to get my 2nd turn border pops (and 3-5th turn second border pops) as well as extra food to whip like there's no tomorrow in the cities where that is appropriate.

Sid's Sushi turns your Globe Theater Whip/Draft city into an insane production nightmare for your opponents.

madscientist:

If you were gunning for a Cultural Win, Creative Constructions is a much better choice. No matter how much production Mining Inc gives you in excess of Creative Corps, it just won't match the cultural power that that Coporation gives you. Also, it doesn't conflict with Civ Jeweller's. The three together, once founded, can instantly give you a win-schedule of about 30 turns or less, depending on the religious and cultural state of your 3 target cities.

How about a post-patch civilized Jewellers? Would that not pull a good profit?

Civilized Jewelers is a great money maker! In a huge pangea map I've been able to make a few hundred extra :gold: a turn from it easily. The extra culture is a nice bonus. For me Civilized Jewelers is reason enough to not use state property. I loved state property until I found how powerful corporations can be. Now I just need to try mining inc/createcon and sushi together for the production/growth boost.

I must say that I love Civilized Jewelers for spreading to the AIs.

I can rake in over 50 gpt very easily with this, and it helps to fuel almost any victory condition.

Generally, I spread it to a few of my cities, then I use those to create more executives to spread to the AIs. Eventually, the whole thing definitely pays off (and sometimes makes me wish that I could have 100% science and culture :D).

Am I misusing corporations?

--ilovesimgolf

PS: Thank you so much for the article, MrCynical! :goodjob:

hermit if you are going to work towards an engineer and you DONT already have the pyramids then you need to take a hard look at your GP pool and run an engineer in a PURE state so that he comes out next or the one after that. because a single person will outweigh a wonder so you can get a GE as your 2nd or 3rd great person.

now this is where corporations have their cost... I end up sitting on that engineer all the way to mining inc. if I do get pyramids then I run an engineer the entire time and if I think I have a good shot at getting another than I'll use him on something else if needed.

so yeah you have to decide ahead of time if you are going to shoot for mining inc and make plans accordingly.

but for the warmonger there is NO reason not to do this. and the snowball is reinforced by the fact that as you expand you get more of the nessessary resources. I've seen mining inc at over +20 hammers.. then multpliers for buildings and it gets just gross. totally worth it.

and good grief you should see it in ironworks with heroic epic. modern armor every turn forever. ludicrous!

NaZ

so yeah you have to decide ahead of time if you are going to shoot for mining inc and make plans accordingly.

I don't think you necessarily have to do this, especially as Ironworks comes out just before Mining Inc is available. If I get an engineer early in the game I'll use him early in the game; corporations are not going to be worth giving up an advantage several hundred turns earlier. Keep an engineer in all GP-producing cities, and you'll get 5-10% from all GPs. When you're getting ready to incorporate Mining Inc, take off all specialists except for engineers. I've usually been able to get an engineer between liberalism and Railroads, by keeping watch on what GPs are being produced where.