Thank you for this thread. It is very good to see the actual formula! Thank you.
I want to point out five things:
1) Inflation was applied wrong in the example: 200% inflation would result in an extra 40.08 upkeep as Krikkitone pointed out, not in an extra 20.04 upkeep.
I'll double check tonight. To the best of my findings, inflation is calculated at the very end after the Courthouse. At that moment, the Courthouse was in place (reducing -40.07 to -20.04). So when inflation kicked in, the final expense of -20.04 was increase back to -40.07.
EDIT: I think funny. Semantics. 100% to me means
times 100%. To Firaxis it means
plus 100%.
I just changed the post to reflect how Firaxis thinks. (I'll fix the Excel file later.)
I'm not in front of my gaming computer at the moment ... I'll double check as soon as I'm there.
2) Free market is used to alleviate the maintenance costs.
Yes.
It's almost a necessity if you have an aggressive Corporate Strategy.
3) The difficulty level multiplier could easily be higher making it far less profitable as in the example.
It's not actually as bad as it seems. In the same example, bumping the level up to Deity increases the fees from -40.07 to -60.11 (net -30.1 w/ Wall Street HQs).
At higher difficulties, it will simply become more necessary to found and to balance Domestic:Foreign spreading of your Corporations.
4) Inflation can be higher than 200% as seen in some screenshots.
My calculator goes all the way up to 500%. I've seen a few 175% and 225% screenshots floating around, so I averaged them and used 200%.
It's also worth noting that most of the high inflation numbers are from dates well into the 2000's (one SS is even from 2100 AD!!!). I don't know about you guys, but it's been a long time since one of my games has finished much later than the early 1900's.
5) It is not always true that you can place all of your corporations in one big Wall Street city. Also, the benefits from the corporation cannot always be used to get money to pay for the maintenance for instance when they are mainly a culture bonus.
Krikkitone put together a really good post about this.
Corporations are intended primarily to
convert to other values (i.e.,
/
/
/
) -- not for
making (we already have religions for that).
Even though I used Merchants to "pad" the costs, that's really not the optimal use of Corporation Benefits. That 5.25 food should go back into the economy as Scientists or high-yield tiles.
5.25 food can be used to work ...
... 5 Grassland Hill Mines = 29
(w/ Railroads + Corp Yield)
29
* 2 (w/ Powered Factory) =
58
... 5 Plains Towns = 35
(w/ the right Civics)
35
* 2 (w/ Bank-University) =
70 whatever you want (49 & 21 at 70% Science).
Assuming you can replicate my example (which I know you can at least get damn close to), 58
or 70
isn't a bad trade, imho, for -3
(even -33
) -- especially in a 'podunk hick' town out in the Desert/Tundra.
I don't have a problem with the height of the maintenance from corporations, but with the fact that the profitability of the corporation depends on the level of inflation. You could easily found the corporation when it is a profitable building and later after the inflation has risen, you're stuck with a non-profitable building. That's a pretty weird game mechanic for something that costs you a great person and lots of money to spread around.
I'm still wrestling with this. I think we're all still learning the full value and use of Corporations, so I know we have a lot to learn.
However, very few of my games get into the very late years where it seems most of these high inflation issues are surfacing, so I don't really feel these horrendous costs people are talking about.
I also haven't looked into how the Inflation is scaling across game speeds (it's by suspicion that if Inflation levels are improperly high, they are probably only so on Normal speed because of the turn change to 500 ... somebody forgot to scale the inflation to, so as per a year:year comparison, Inflation is rising too fast on Normal) ... I don't know this one.
Otakujbski i have calculated how much are scaled corporations effects and these are the results
Duel X4
Tiny X2
Small X1,5
Standard X1
Large X0,75
Huge X0,50
So Civilized Jewelers for example is
DUEL +4 Gold +16 Culture/resource
Tiny +2Gold +8 Culture/resource
Small +1,5 gold + 6culture/resource
Standard +1 gold +4 culture/resource
Large +0,75 gold+3 culture/resource
Huge +0,50 gold +2 culture/resource
That's it? It's that simple? OMFG! Lollerskates.
I guess that's what mathematics at 2 AM'll do for you. I swear to you I thought it was more complicated than that.
Thanx .. I'll see if I can update the post and my Corporate Calculator some time tonight (prolly at 2 AM lol).
the .xls spreadsheets example resulted in -10.07 from the start
edit: so this was updated then?
Yeah .. I saved it with those calculations punched in. Just to save on confusion, I figured it would make more sense if the thing loaded the same example as in the post.