Corporation Strategy

I usually go for domination victories, so how do I use corporations such as civ jewelers and alumcorp to make money when I conquer the world?

Corporations don't necessarily make your empire money. If you have access to large amounts of the resources they use, the corporate payments empire-wide can actually be quite a bit higher than the gold your HQ city takes in. Corps are basically a way to turn gold and resources into something else, be it food, hammers, beakers, culture, or other resources. The only corp that gives gold as a "payout" is CivJewels. (This one may be the exception to the rule and give you a net gain financially- I'm not sure, I consider it a bottom-tier corp and have hardly ever used it.)

To use a corporation as a tool to help conquer, I'd mostly consider Mining or maybe CreCon, as these give base hammers. CM and Sushi increase food, which indirectly increases everything. And if you don't have Oil or Aluminum, then obviously look into Ethanol and AlumCo.

Note: I'm hardly an expert in late-game warring, so take all that with a ginormous grain of salt.

the problem I have with mining corp is that if I want to put that and alumcorp in a city to increase research and production, since they use the same resources I can't put them in the same cities, and createcon always ends up really expensive. plus I end up controlling a lot of resources. I think what I should do is build markets/grocers in my newly conquered cities, put Cereal Mills in them, and then use the food bonus so they can grow and have 4 merchants providing me income. The problem I run into is that when I go to conquer the new world, maintenance costs are insanely high for those overseas cities and sometimes I can't grant them independence, so I'm looking for ways to combat these costs because courthouses seem to do very little. Although, if I create a new civ overseas and spread civ jewelers/alumcorp to them, I can make all the dough and they have to deal with maintenance costs, right?

This is why the Rathaus would work so well with corporations, if only it wasn't tied to those starting techs and that leader...

I am right that foreign civs have to maintain the corporations maintenance costs if I spread the corporation to them, right? I've heard it somewhere.

Corporations lose money usually unless you spread them to AI civs. If you're conquering, you're better off running State Property and a hammer economy into wealth / research instead.

I think you're thinking of corps in a tangential perspective.

Corps are not there to make you money (except for civilized jewellers..... which un-modded does a really sh|tty job of it anyways) unless you are Holy Rome (and as mentioned before, it comes with those cringe-inducing starting techs/leader traits combo of Charlemagne.... maybe if you were playing with unrestricted leaders.... but then, their UU is lacklustre at best).

Corporations are there for you to provide a secondary use out of your bonus resource: they convert the resources (and your gold) into hammers/beakers/culture/food/whatever.

The issue with wanting them to make you gold (using civilized jewellers as an example), is that they essentially 'consume' your [resources + gold] -> [products]. And the more resources they consume, the higher their fees and production. But fees > products because fees also scale with your population as well as the number of resources consumed. So unless you are spreading them to a bunch of <4 population cities with access to tons of resources, you're very likely to be losing money.

Also, spreading them to foreign cities generally costs more (especially when trying to displace existing corps), so unless you can foresee keeping the corp in the foreign city (and cajole/bribe/extort/espionage the AI to keep out of state property), the break-even point will usually be too late to really make an impact.

Corporations can make lots of money in the right circumstances, and can be profitable even when in your own land. If you're building corporations for profit, and not for resource conversion, the key thing is to make sure the city you found the corporation in has as many commerce bonuses as possible. Thus, you want that city to have Wall Street, and also to have a bank, market, and grocer, for triple the regular commerce income. That works out to 12 gold per city with the corporation, so even if you're paying 9 GPT per city in maintenance after inflation is taken into account, you're still making money, and potentially quite a bit of money.

The overseas maintenance is killer, though. I generally go with State Property if I want to have cities on multiple continents in BTS, since otherwise it can be nearly impossible to sustain the overseas cities. And the maintenance costs would make corporations pointless for those overseas cities, even with the best home city for the corporation. But if your cities are only on one continent, corporations can indeed be profitable in your own cities.

Foreign civs do have to pay the maintenance costs for corporations present in their cities (as do you if foreign corporations are present). So it can be doubly-beneficial - making a little money plus some resources in your cities, while making you lots of money and costing your rivals money when in foreign cities. It does have to be weighed against the bonuses the foreign civ is getting, though - you might not want to spread Standard Ethanol to a rival that doesn't have any oil to begin with, even if it would cost them some money.

I'm wondering if you use Sid's on a water map, run Representation and Caste System, and hire exclusively Merchants as specialists what the economy would look like. Add in Trade Missions with the resulting Great Merchants and it might just do a fair job of it. I've never tried it though, generally stick to State Property myself.

How do Corps fit in with a OCC game?

If you're going for Domination, don't build culture-producing corporations in AI civs. Yes, you get the gold, but their cities become harder to flip.

Spare one Great Artist until you can build the CivJeweler. And plan ahead to have a huge money-producing city: Holy City with shrine (2 religions, if possible) + money bonuses (market, grocer, bank, Wall Street).

Building the wall street takes quite a lot of hammers, so make sure to build an executive first to establish a branch office somewhere else. While Wall Street is being built, you can build executives from that branch office. (Of course, one can 'interrupt' the build queue using Ctrl-Click, but one *really* wants the Wall Street to be built a.s.a.p., or the corporation maintenance cost will simply be murder).

And for overseas branches, build courthouses stat.

For late domination wins, Mining Inc is the best IMHO. Spread to your secondary production cities and your hybrid cities to turn them into production powerhouses. If you're in UnivSuff, you can "build" wealth in a few mining inc cities and hurry more units buying them. Standard Ethanol is another if you have an oil poor map and don't have access. Sids Sushi is great for drafting in Globe Theatre city, hyper drive your SE, and some culture.

I don't think I'd bother with Civilized Jewelers for a warmonger finish unless I spread to another civs vassal and rush buy most troops. And as others have said, State Property is probably a better route for domination wins in many cases

I'll go out on a limb and say that state property is probably a better route for domination wins in all cases*

Corporations aren't well designed/balanced/tested/thought out, and they aren't particularly good. They're a trap, like most infrastructure is. And they come waaaaaay too late in the game. You can run a profit with them eventually, but that's true of virtually anything. It's only a good idea if it is efficient, in other words if you can overcome your initial costs and snowball quicker than the alternatives (like say, units)
The Costs:
- One great engineer (a valuable, and maybe the hardest to get GP).
- Free market instead of state property. This is the real kicker, because for corporations to be powerful you need a lot of resources, i.e. a big map. And if you're conquering on a big map state property is the obvious right choice.
- All the hammers you are building the executives with.
- All the hammers you are using on otherwise extra courthouses so your economy doesn't implode.
- All the hammers you are wasting on getting enough banks & then on Wall Street, again just so your economy doesn't tank.
- The initial gold cost in spreading your corporation.
- Tech path restrictions, i.e. being forced to beeline railroad.
- Or worse, risk losing the race to found mining inc.

And yes i assumed you were going for mining inc in the costs, b.c it's the best corporation

Mainly though corporations just come too darn late. If you're going mining inc, you're poised to reep the rewards and conquer the entire world.... with modern armor in the 20th century.... If you went SP you could have pulverized the world in a nuclear holocaust centuries earlier

drewisfat said:

Mainly though corporations just come too darn late. If you're going mining inc, you're poised to reep the rewards and conquer the entire world.... with modern armor in the 20th century.... If you went SP you could have pulverized the world in a nuclear holocaust centuries earlier

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Let me fix that for you: If you went SP you could have pulverized the world with infantry and artillery centuries earlier.

The conventional wisdom is that corps are best for a space victory. Sushi might help boost a late cultural victory.

I do find corps to be fun, and will sometimes do them while conquering, even though it's less efficient. But then I know I'm doing a suboptimal choice. And even then I'm doing Mining, Inc. and Sid's Sushi, if my GPs line up.

Corps just mean "something else I have to manage" at a point in the game where I'm usually already way too busy managing wars. (assuming domination) Heck, at this point, I've even (say it ain't so) automated most of my workers because I don't have the desire to deal with them. And not checking my cities for those auto assigned spies. So if dom/con is the desired victory, SP for me is ALWAYS the proper choice.

I know corporations are the sub-optimal choice, but there is something a little bit awesome of opening your city screen and seeing the production of your cities sky rocket, along with their food and pop. SP might be more reliable and all around better, but corporations are more flashy. They are better though, in their Rise of Erebus iterations where they come earlier, and have no maintenance. Then they are over powered.

I find that generally, the best corporation for foreign spread is CivJewelers as it only gives a tiny amount of gold for its costs, so it can cost your rivals quite a lot and even if it is profitable, the AI rarely switches in US to take advantage of it.

What do you do if you're running state property & caste, and you get hit with emancipation unhappiness and the world considers you a villain for defying global emancipation and environmentalism? 60-80% culture slider sucks

drewisfat said:

- One great engineer (a valuable, and maybe the hardest to get GP).

Click to expand...

The great person required various by corporation, including artists, merchants, and scientists in addition to engineers (and only one per corporation).

You're focusing on a military victory, though. I find that I rarely want to go out conquering the whole world, however. Sometimes a nice, satisfying histographic or space victory is more enjoyable. Corporations may not be the best choice even then, but they're better than nuking everyone.

He mentioned a GE because he assumed Mining. I have to try to set aside a GE in pretty much every game, because I almost always found either Mining or CreCon. (Only way to get hammers from corps )

Corps is all about resources and number of cities. Many small cities 2 tiles apart makes it more profitable than big, spaced out cities. I had a game with cold, big, global highlands with many small tundracities and huge amount of resources. Mining inc gave 20+hammer/city and I produced more than the rest of the world. In cases like this founding mining inc is like reaching a victory kondition, its not even fun to finish game. SP is quite tilebased to build ws and wm. So when deciding corps vs SP evaluate your land for WS and WM vs amount of cities and corpresources. And dont forget citymaintenance.