Creative Construction FTW

[DaveMcW]

If you really need border pops, use all the hammers from Mining Inc. to build culture.

 

[Artichoker]

Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc. are the 2 most popular corporations on this forum, for a good reason...they have bonuses that add up quickly, and provide help toward almost all types of wins.

That said, both of these corps have weaknesses to balance their advantages. The major drawback of Mining Inc. is that it competes with the highest number of other corporations. This makes it undesirable in cases where you want to have the other corporation. In particular, they are Jewellers, Cre Con, and Aluminum Co.

The major drawback of Sid's Sushi is that it is too dependent on seafood resources. This means that when enemy destroyers and battleships pillage your seafood, your cities will starve. The penalty of starving can be quite steep if you're not prepared for it. Sid's Sushi competes with Std Ethanol and Cereal Mills.

 

[Crusher1]

Well I'm sure my late game sucks ^^, horribly! I almost never get a corporation. Matter of fact, I have only founded them on 3 occasions, ever. I find no problems winning on Immortal without them so *shrug*? I usually just run SP because I always seem to have a rather large empire. Ideal? Probably not. Successful? Yes.

 

[Jamuka]

Never use corps? How else are you supposed to run +300 gpt at 100%!

I don't even care which corp(s) I get, I just want ones the AI will spread voluntarily so I dont have to.

 

[mboettcher]

@artichoker

While Mining inc. does compete with all the other corps leaving you with basically a food corp option the viability of attempting to spread more than 2 corps is unrealistic. I find its already a hassle and drain enough to build executives and plan Great people for 2 corps

I'd argue the most difficult drawback of Mining is having to pop and sit on a Great Engineer early who can be settled or used to hurry a wonder.

 

[mboettcher]

which Great person is required for CC? GA right?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

which Great person is required for CC? GA right?

Engineer, actually.

 

[mboettcher]

Really? then why would you ever build CC over Mining?

 

[Stewie0416]

Really? then why would you ever build CC over Mining?

For the culture it produces. I personally think the pure productive power of Mining completely outweighs the culture aspects of CC. Sids and Mining are crazy together, although Sids I sometimes replace with Cereal when I don't have many seafood resources

 

[Ormur]

I often take Creative Constructions for late game cultural victories but for any other situation I'd take mining for that engineer instead. If I go corporate at all in those games I've usually planned ahead and kept a Great Merchant for Sushi culture anyway.

 

[Artichoker]

Well I'm sure my late game sucks ^^, horribly! I almost never get a corporation. Matter of fact, I have only founded them on 3 occasions, ever. I find no problems winning on Immortal without them so *shrug*? I usually just run SP because I always seem to have a rather large empire. Ideal? Probably not. Successful? Yes.

SP is definitely a bargain because of the low overhead it requires. In fact, if you win the Communism race, you get +1 GP instead of the -1 GP you get for founding a corporation.

Sometimes, however, the abundance of resources makes corporations strong. Add to that the combination of Free Market and Wall Street, and you can get some good cash flow in addition to the corporation bonuses.

@artichoker

While Mining inc. does compete with all the other corps leaving you with basically a food corp option the viability of attempting to spread more than 2 corps is unrealistic. I find its already a hassle and drain enough to build executives and plan Great people for 2 corps

I'd argue the most difficult drawback of Mining is having to pop and sit on a Great Engineer early who can be settled or used to hurry a wonder.

Even with only 2 corporations, sometimes you will want something other than a food corp for the 2nd one.

For example, Cre Con + Aluminum Co. can be a powerful combo for Space Race games in which you lack aluminum. For culture games, Cre Con + Civ Jewellers often becomes the winning combination.

 

[Antilogic]

Sids and Mining are crazy together, although Sids I sometimes replace with Cereal when I don't have many seafood resources

True. Kind of off-topic, but I always thought Cereal Mills should be boosted from 3/4 per farm resource to 1 (I'm playtesting this) or even 5/4. Due to the typical clumping of seafood resources, it usually isn't even competitive on the food front, much less the culture bonus you get from it. It gets to the point where only a sucker or a person playing on the Great Plains map type would select the Cereal Mills corporation.

 

[Shurdus]

Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc. are the 2 most popular corporations on this forum, for a good reason...they have bonuses that add up quickly, and provide help toward almost all types of wins.

That said, both of these corps have weaknesses to balance their advantages. The major drawback of Mining Inc. is that it competes with the highest number of other corporations. This makes it undesirable in cases where you want to have the other corporation. In particular, they are Jewellers, Cre Con, and Aluminum Co.

The major drawback of Sid's Sushi is that it is too dependent on seafood resources. This means that when enemy destroyers and battleships pillage your seafood, your cities will starve. The penalty of starving can be quite steep if you're not prepared for it. Sid's Sushi competes with Std Ethanol and Cereal Mills.

If they pillage your seafood your cities will starve indeed. The city working that seafood would starve anyway, the other cities would just fall back to the level of population they were on before founding SS. All in all it won't be that bad. You will want a better navy anyway with that corp, or at least have a contingency plan in case something like this happens.

SP is definitely a bargain because of the low overhead it requires. In fact, if you win the Communism race, you get +1 GP instead of the -1 GP you get for founding a corporation.

Eh? This I never heard before. Care to explain it?

 

[PhroX]

If I have the choice (ie no-one else has founded one), then unless I'm going for a Culture win, I'll pick Mining. I'll take the raw hammers over some culture anyday (just use said hammers to build a Theatre if necesary)

CC (along with Sid's and CJ) is awesome for a late game Culture victory though.

 

[vormuir]

Eh? This I never heard before. Care to explain it?

If you're the first to discover Communism, you get a Great Spy. (BTS only, obviously.) So you're +1 Great Person.

To found a corp, you have to spend a Great Person.

So if you decide to forego corporations entirely because you prefer State Property, /and/ you get Communism first, you'll be two GPs ahead.


Waldo

 

[Shurdus]

If you're the first to discover Communism, you get a Great Spy. (BTS only, obviously.) So you're +1 Great Person.

To found a corp, you have to spend a Great Person.

So if you decide to forego corporations entirely because you prefer State Property, /and/ you get Communism first, you'll be two GPs ahead.


Waldo

Oh right. Somehow I got the idea we were talking about maintenance in terms of gpt. In that light it made next to no sense. Then again no one mentioned it in that context.

I will stand in the corner and talk to myself now...

 

[champ82]

Gotta say, I do like CC. It is the best one to add to a newly conqured city IMO. Combining CC or any other culture corp with the Pavilion or Eifel Tower is devestating when conquering land.

However, I must admit that Mining is always better for space and is usually better for war, especially if you get the Mining / Sushi combo.

Then again, CC allows for Jewlers, which is really nice when you get a lot of corporations running in a lot of cities, the commerce comes in very handy.

I love all the corps.

 

[popejubal]

The big question that I put to myself for corporations is how long will my game last?

If I'm going to have a bunch of turns left after getting to the post-scientific-method era, then I'll go for corporations. It has an amazing return on investment if you give it long enough to make up for the spend cash/hammers for spreading the corp and long enough to make up for burning the Great Person in the first place.

If I'm going to be running the game long enough to make corporations worthwhile, then I'm probably going to want Sushi and Mining Inc. Both have great benefits when deployed in the appropriate cities and I'm perfectly happy to spread Sushi to empires that I'm going to be taking over soon anyway. I get the income immediately, the city gets bigger for better cash on takeover and I get the benefits (and costs) of the corporation as soon as the turn after the revolts end (just as if I brought executives along with my army).

I don't know that I want to spread Mining Inc to too many AI civs. Do I really want them to have a bunch of extra hammers? I'm not going to get a direct benefit (bigger cities to take over/more cash from city conquest/etc) from taking over a city that has Mining Inc in it to start and I'm going to have to beat more units to pry the city from the AI's cold dead fingers.

In any case, if I don't have that much more time before the game will end, then I'll probably just research Communism as early as possible, switch to State Property and start building Watermills and Workshops overtop of my Cottages/Towns. That gets me lots of hammers for more units to take out the AI. Sure, I don't get border pops quite as fast, but I get to take over the cities faster and more safely and that's more important to me. Crank up the Culture slider and build Culture in the new cities if you have to. You'll get your border pops soon enough.

 

[Hereditary Rule]

True. Kind of off-topic, but I always thought Cereal Mills should be boosted from 3/4 per farm resource to 1 (I'm playtesting this) or even 5/4. Due to the typical clumping of seafood resources, it usually isn't even competitive on the food front, much less the culture bonus you get from it. It gets to the point where only a sucker or a person playing on the Great Plains map type would select the Cereal Mills corporation.

If you don't need the culture, cereal is sometimes better than sushi, especially when you take trades into account. A Grain will net more than a fish/crab/clam will on 1:1 basis using the respective corp. If the grains/seafood in your empire are roughly equal when converted into corporate , and you are able to trade for ten more resources of either type from the AI, cereal will net more than sushi and is the better corp on a pure basis. The downside is it comes a little later in the tech tree.

I use cereal a fair amount, and am no sucker

Just quickly do the math before you found the corp you can determine which will net more for the given game.

 

[The Rook]

For example, Cre Con + Aluminum Co. can be a powerful combo for Space Race games in which you lack aluminum. For culture games, Cre Con + Civ Jewellers often becomes the winning combination.

CC has great synergy with Aluminum Co in any scenario where you have access to plenty of coal, as each resource counts as aluminum too!