Corporate Maintenance Explained

This post was updated for the BtS 3.13 patch and subsequently reposted/moved to here.

Perfect! Thanks a lot!

Of course, this means that sending your corporations to other cities can make them lose about 10 gold/turn per corp. Do that to a few cities, and your enemies are going to feel a lot of pain.

Otakujbski really a fantastic job!
You should also add another parameter which influence corporations effect per city: map size.
On huge maps every resources give half effect than on standard map size so for example Sid's Sushi gives on a strandard map 0,50 food per resource on a huge map size 0,25 food per resource.Add this parameter and your fantastic job is complete

One side note, the benefits apparently scale with map size, do the costs scale with map size as well?

also in your example
-53.44 * 0.75 (Free Market) * 0.5 (courthouse) * 3 (+200% inflation)
-53.44 * 9/8=-60.12 from Treasury
2 Wall Street offices=+30 gold to Treasury

Net Treasury= -30 Gold
5.25 food= 6 Merchant Gold, 12 Gold with Banks
9 Hammers= 9 Wealth Gold, 18 with Factories

So it will Just balance out, if you put it back into Gold but you shouldn't do that... Corporations are NOT a way to get gold, they are a way to turn Gold into other things. (Culture, Hammers, Food, and Science to some degree)

For another comparison US v. Mining Co, 19 pop, FreeMarket, Courthouse, 200% Inflation
Resources 'raw hammers': Mining Co Cost: cost to rushbuy the same production in a US factory city..6 gold per 1 'raw' hammer

1 13.5 6
2 15.75 12
3 18 18* Equilibrium point 3 Resources
4 20.25 24
5 22.5 30
6 24.75 36
7 27 42
8 29.25 48
9 31.5 54
10 33.75 60


as for Food using General Mills, and Representation Merchants/Scientists (with all +100% boosters present)
Cost in Treasury Gold v. Gain in net Beakers/Treasury
1 13.5 4.5
2 15.75 9
3 18 13.5
4 20.25 18
5 22.5 22.5* Break even point
6 24.75 27
7 27 31.5
8 29.25 36
9 31.5 40.5
10 33.75 45

And that is only using specialists... imagine putting cottages instead of Farms + Windmills (if you want a CE route rather than an SE route)
So even a Foreign corp can have its benefits [Auto Gold Rushing.. of course that is Forced cheap gold rushing, but that is OK for the Cottage Spammer]

Of course all this makes Environmentalism worse than ever, since it is the only thing that doesn't help deal with Foreign corporations (either cutting cost or eliminating)


For a simpler way to calculate
Resources +5
*
1 + (Pop-1)/18 [so *2 for a pop of 19, * 1 for a pop of 1, *1.5 for a pop of 10]
*
0.75 for FM, 1.25 for Enviro, *1 for all else
*
Courthouse bonus (0.5 normal, 0.25 Rath, 0.3 Court+Inkhanda)
*
Inflation (1+Inflation percent)

I still think the current Inflation levels are too high, but If these are the actual values for corporate maintenance, then it seems like a good amount

PS do they give fractional Hammers+Food now? hadn't checked.

It really does depend on what the new Inflation numbers actually are.

Ignoring Culture

Side Tables: Sid's (assuming similar to GM)
+CC Similar to Mining
1 13.5 3
2 15.75 6
3 18 9
4 20.25 12
5 22.5 15
6 24.75 18
7 27 21
8 29.25 24
9 31.5 27
10 33.75 30 (Break even probably somewhere around 15 or so.. only good for the Culture)

Aluminum
1 13.5 6
2 15.75 12
3 18 18 * Break even (mind you that is 3 Coal)
4 20.25 24
5 22.5 30
6 24.75 36
7 27 42
8 29.25 48
9 31.5 54
10 33.75 60


Ethanol
1 13.5 4
2 15.75 8
3 18 12
4 20.25 16
5 22.5 20
6 24.75 24
7 27 28* Break Even point
8 29.25 32
9 31.5 36
10 33.75 40


Jewels
1 13.5 2
2 15.75 4
3 18 6
4 20.25 8
5 22.5 10
6 24.75 12
7 27 14
8 29.25 16
9 31.5 18
10 33.75 20
Probably no Break even point... but again they are there for the Culture

And all of those are Foreign Corporations

So of Foreign corporations
Mining+General Mills are OK assuming you are concentrating on commerce with Towns. General Mills is OK with a Representation SE

Aluminum Co. + Ethanol might be OK in Research heavy towns (good for Oxford) if you have a decent amount of the input Resources, or where you need the output resources

The others should only be used if you need the culture

Domestic ones will almost certainly be better than Foreign (sop Domestic CC is probably better than a Foreign MCo... but that is a more complicated decision)

So
Domestic/Mining/General Mills=Spread
'Cultural'+Research/Resource ones be more selective
of course competition must be taken into account in this case.

The AI seems to understand none of this and uses religious spam tactics to spread foreign corporations around their own empires. Hell, the AI often forgets that corporations compete.

Also, your conclusion is a terrible defense of the current system. "The combined Maintenance Fees in this situation total -53.44." You consider this acceptable why? If we follow your model, the corporation is only affordable if we spend most of its food benefits paying back its own costs and if we own the corporate HQ in our Wall Street city. Otherwise, two instances of a corporation seems to cost more than several cities or an entire SOD at war.

Anyone know if mainteinance costs also are scaled due to map size?If not on huge maps corporations are really not balanced.
For example Sid's Sushi gives 0,25 food per resource on huge maps.
If you have 4 fish you get only 1 additional food for 13,88 mainteinance fees, while on a standard map it would give 2 additional food for 13,88 mainteinance fees.

marioflag said:

Anyone know if mainteinance costs also are scaled due to map size?If not on huge maps corporations are really not balanced.
For example Sid's Sushi gives 0,25 food per resource on huge maps.
If you have 4 fish you get only 1 additional food for 13,88 mainteinance fees, while on a standard map it would give 2 additional food for 13,88 mainteinance fees.

Click to expand...

That's my next round of calculations. Map size was a little bit more ambiguous, and it was late when I figured out as much as I already did. Thanks for pointing that out ... I forgot to make note the Map Size is coming next.

If anybody wants to make that calculation for me, it would be much appreciated so I can just punch the data in instead of re-calculating everything.

EDIT: @Krik

As far as the Merchants, the has to go somewhere. Either it's being used to pay for 5 Grassland Hill Mines or 2 Plains Hill Mines or 2 Specialists or etc or etc, that is still generating economic units.

You also have to consider that my calculation was for one domestic city.

In the couple games I've played, I've spread my Corporations at roughly a 1:1 ratio domestic:foreign rate. Give that, even my -10 turns into +20 .

And yes, if you don't found the Corporation, then spread it like salt -- sparingly.

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.
2) Free market is used to alleviate the maintenance costs.
3) The difficulty level multiplier could easily be higher making it far less profitable as in the example.
4) Inflation can be higher than 200% as seen in some screenshots.
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.

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.

OTAKUjbski said:

That's my next round of calculations. Map size was a little bit more ambiguous, and it was late when I figured out as much as I already did. Thanks for pointing that out ... I forgot to make note the Map Size is coming next.

If anybody wants to make that calculation for me, it would be much appreciated so I can just punch the data in instead of re-calculating everything.

Click to expand...

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

the .xls spreadsheets example resulted in -10.07 from the start

edit: so this was updated then?

nothing is work on the .xls spreadsheet now. a change in companies or adding banks/markets does nothing

Roland Johansen said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

Roland Johansen said:

2) Free market is used to alleviate the maintenance costs.

Click to expand...

Yes. It's almost a necessity if you have an aggressive Corporate Strategy.

Roland Johansen said:

3) The difficulty level multiplier could easily be higher making it far less profitable as in the example.

Click to expand...

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.

Roland Johansen said:

4) Inflation can be higher than 200% as seen in some screenshots.

Click to expand...

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.

Roland Johansen said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

Roland Johansen said:

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.

Click to expand...

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.

marioflag said:

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

Click to expand...

marioflag said:

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

Click to expand...

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).

mrt144 said:

the .xls spreadsheets example resulted in -10.07 from the start

edit: so this was updated then?

Click to expand...

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.

the inflation calculation is wrong . 200% inflation in game results in 3 times the base cost (because inflation is calculated from the original THEN added to the original)

Simplicity2 said:

Of course, this means that sending your corporations to other cities can make them lose about 10 gold/turn per corp. Do that to a few cities, and your enemies are going to feel a lot of pain.

Click to expand...

Well, that would just force the AIs into Mercantilism or SP.

mrt144 said:

the inflation calculation is wrong . 200% inflation in game results in 3 times the base cost (because inflation is calculated from the original THEN added to the original)

Click to expand...

Lol. It's semantics. I think funny.

I think of inflation as times the percentage.
Firaxis thinks of inflation as plus the percentage.

I've changed it to represent the way Firaxis thinks (same math though).

what if I have a corp HQ, I run state property, but my neighbor has 5 cities with my corp's offices? Will I still receive the +5/office for those cities assuming my neighbor is running free market?

Which is insane, because that means that in the 2010 years or so a Corp in a Well developed city is still costing around 60 Gold per turn! There is no way we can use that for anything other then a Weapon, and what a weapon that is, for an environmental civ in an underdevelped City we're talking bleeding out 100+ Gold per turn!

How is this a balanced game mechanic?

It's really sad though, because if you remove inflation from the costs, Corps really would be what they are toted as.

Your math proves that, while they can be useful if used extremely wisely, corporations are a game breaking burden because the AI doesn't understand them.

Personally, in 3 BtS games thus far I've never been tempted to found one.

MrPopov said:

what if I have a corp HQ, I run state property, but my neighbor has 5 cities with my corp's offices? Will I still receive the +5/office for those cities assuming my neighbor is running free market?

Click to expand...

State Property is like erasing your civ of everything corporate as if it never existed.

No Corporate Fees. No Corporate Benefits. No Corporate income (at HQ). Nothing.