state property or corporations?

civvver

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I am having trouble deciding what would be more beneficial. I am on a huge terra map with about 30 cities, so somewhat spread out. I have tons of rivers so I am using a lot of watermills. But I also have a lot of seafood. I saved the great merchant from economics and got lucky last turn with a great engineer pop. I'm researching steam power right now so I'm about 10 turns from being able to found mining inc and maybe 20 turns from sid's sushi.

My slider is already running a deficit at 60% although my bpt is gigantic, I have a fair amount of specialists and just a ton of cities. I am worried though that spreading corporations to more than a handful of cities will crash me economy. It seems more suited to a space win where you have a few super cities crank out parts with the extra production. State property seems more suited for a military win since it keeps costs of cities down and bumps production everywhere.

How do you usually decide which route to go?
 
If I do go state property should I still found the corporations to deny them from the AI?
 
If you found the corporations in your Wall Street city, and have courthouses in every city you place the corp in, I suspect that the actual cost of the corporations is negligeable.
If handled correctly, they will bring you much more money and beakers in in the long run (which is their point). You need good production to make all these corp. agents though.

If you are that unsure about it, save your game and try both routes, so you get experience on what feels best for you, and how fast you can win the game with the respective choice.

Do not forget that in order to make corporations truly great, you have to arrange trades with the AI, so if you want to go all out for war, and have no vassals yet, state property may be the way to go.
 
If you found the corporations in your Wall Street city, and have courthouses in every city you place the corp in, I suspect that the actual cost of the corporations is negligeable.

Big sushi can go over 70 raw cost before the courthouse. So each city generally loses money, however the amount of population added (i think it was +30 food or so) truly surpasses the gold loss.

Corporations [generally] come after state property and require a great person to found them. A great engineer is not so easy to come by. If you have sushi, it's ok since the Iron Works city can be tuned to generate one, yet still not easy. Merchant is easier w/ caste a gp farm should be able to output one, or you can win economics; although winning both economics and liberalism is quite tough on higher difficulties (not impossible, yet).

There are hammers (more than half tank per executive irrc) and gold lost into spreading the corporation, esp. if the civilization is transcontinental (hence, a lot of resources and huge benefit from the corp) take time to recover, plus it does require micro management.

State property allows quicker conversion and usually ends up w/ spamming units. Corporations take significant time to set up but longtime benefits are significantly higher as well - having 30 extra food and/or 20 base hammers is nothing to scoff at. Remember having a city in the north pole w/ size of 18 (no sea food), established initially only to take a silver mine, only for 2 happiness.
 
You have to actually have those kinds of resources though. Founding and spreading a +4-5 sushi when many of your cities could match that food from SP tile improvements doesn't feel as strong as the far more idyllic 30 food example. Same goes for mining.

My problem with corps is that they're at their best when the game is well in hand, rather than helping you get to that point. Good closers or machines of fast space wins on marathon (where execs are cheaper and move faster), sure, but I don't find myself using them in the majority of games.

They are a bit less likely to get UN screwed though. Getting bumped into environmentalism hurts corps, it MURDERS SP.
 
Big sushi can go over 70 raw cost before the courthouse. So each city generally loses money, however the amount of population added (i think it was +30 food or so) truly surpasses the gold loss.

That is true! It will take a while to make it truly profitable if you have that much seafood/rice with Sushi. However, if you have a smaller amount of seafood (i estimate up to 20 raw cost before the courthouse, so 10 with it) it would even out the cost and just keep the benefits as each instance of the corporation adds 4 base gold to the Wall Street City which will give you roughly 10 gold with all the modifiers in place.

Of course, installing the corp in a city also costs gold. Does anyone know how exactly that cost is calculated?

I am envious because I never managed to get so much seafood to make Sushi cost as much as 70 before a courthouse! :lol:
 
What is also a factor is how densly your cities are packed. The denser they are packed, the more you have of them and the smaller they are, which is benificial for corporations, as the corporation cost increases with city size. You can also look at that the other way, once you have corporations, you can found new cities in every nook and cranny of your empire and have them contribute within a few turns. And give additional votes in the AP/UN.

If I decide to use corporations, I just put a GM/GE on ice when one pops up from the Middle Ages onward. There are not many World Wonders to build for a GE in thta time period anyway.
 
Smaller empire + cottage spam = definitely corporations.
Multi-landmass empires + hammer spam = definitely State Property

If somewhere in between, judge how many cities can benefit from a corp vs. state property (food for workshops/watermills 10% bonus to production). Many games can use either effectively enough to get military or space wins. If you're playing a custom continents game with 3+ continents and cities on all continents, you're going to want State Property.
 
This depends heavily on the leader you are using, and the particular situation. If you are playing an Org leader, state property is a waste of a trait, and with such a leader, you can run corporations in a huge empire. And if you want to see a corporation really get nasty, run it in a 30 (big) city empire.

With other leader types, I prefer state property on huge maps.
 
I've always just settled on State Property, though I'm sure a properly played corp would be optimal. Maybe it's cause I'm not on marathon, but by the time I can found Sushi the game is so close to over that I personally can't spread it fast enough to be worth the effort. Don't forget that merchant and engineer can also get you a golden age bonus.
 
This depends heavily on the leader you are using, and the particular situation. If you are playing an Org leader, state property is a waste of a trait, and with such a leader, you can run corporations in a huge empire.
What's the impact of organized to state property: none; Ok, it has some effect on the state property civic upkeep but that's all. It doesn't touch city expenses on their own.
Or you mean that building quick factories w/ organized is wrong. That alone makes running so called hammer economy an extra plus.
 
Some people also forget though that it's not SP vs. Corps, it's SP vs. Corps + Free Market. If you have good intercontinental trade routes, Free Market can give each city at least 5-6 commerce. So if you get lucky and can get 8 food from the food corp + 10-15 hammers (I've gotten 20+ before owning a continent) from the mining corp, I think that would tend to be be better than state property, except if you're a very sprawling empire, or just have that perfect map for hammer spam.

In general, an average corp will tend to be net even or so in terms of maintenance. If you're playing Zulu or HRE, then I'd say corps go up in value (since they get even more reduced maintenance). Another fun thing to do is if you have vassals, spread the corps to them, and for each city you spread it to, there's 12 GPT extra for you, which isn't that bad.
 
I know that vassal cities don't count as foreign when you're running Mercantilism. Are your corporations considered foreign if your vassals are also running Mercantilism?
 
Some people also forget though that it's not SP vs. Corps, it's SP vs. Corps + Free Market.

This is an important point. This could just be me, but I've had several games where when I was going through Scientific Method and (1) I was at a major army size and hammer disadvantage (2) both the AIs and I have rifling/steel but no modern military techs. The extra commerce from Free Market--eventually bolstered with Sushi specialists--can be enough to out-tech the AI to a modern military that allows you to cruise to an easy conquest win.

This seems to happen most frequently for me with Financial leaders (esp. Orange Bill, Ragnar) on archipelago maps. That's an extreme example (because SP is also less useful there) but it happens with other maps and leaders as well.

Although I think in many cases SP-driven hammers do probably make for a faster victory--in both game turns and time spent on micro.
 
state property as early as possible.
sushi rules, but it's late.
 
As already stated above by JBossch, ORG does not help against the Corp costs.

If you want to have really cheap corps, use Charlemagne. His UB rocks with corporations even more than it already does! :crazyeye:

Btw are corp's gold costs subtracted from the base gold from commerce/tax rate before modifiers are applied or are corp's gold costs subtracted from the already modified gold (by banks, etc)?
 
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