Removing the spreading cost isn't a perfect solution for the inability of the AI to spread corporation, it's more of a hack. Instead of improving the AI so that it has the money to spread the corporation, I adjust the game rules so the AI can handle the rules. Because the spreading cost is only a small part of the cost of spreading a corporation, I don't think this changes the game a lot. There even was a player who responded in this thread who hadn't noticed the spreading cost.
If Firaxis hadn't introduced the gold cost to spreading a corporation, then I don't think players would have complained about adding them. We're also not complaining about adding a gold cost to spreading a religion and there are many parallels between those two.
This change to the spreading rules was one that I wondered if it would work and I'm thankful to Bhruic for answering that question. For me, the game is more bugged if the AI cannot efficiently spread a corporation and has lots of executives sitting around doing nothing compared to a game where the spreading costs are set to 0.
By the way, I've not suggested to make this an official of even unofficial rule change. It's just my way to get a more challenging AI.
Weird. I've spread about 60 corporations to my own cities and every single time it cost 50 gold (at epic speed). I guess, you've spread it a lot to foreign cities.
I try to spread corporations to friendly civs and vassals wherever possible, you are correct on that, but I typically spread JUST to home cities first, and the cost is still higher. I also try to get at least two corporations (cereal/sushi or mining/creative) if possible. Perhaps that's driving the cost? Although I seem to recall the cost for spreading inside my own cities/vassal cities still being a variable one, usually starting at $75-$80 and up. (IIRC. I haven't played a full game in a week or so thanks to work and a vacation.)
That would be a very interesting approach to increasing the (hammer) cost of buying out a franchise. The chance of failure must work somehow similar to how spreading a religion to a city with multiple religions works (each extra religion becomes more difficult to spread), but I don't know the details and don't know how to increase the chance of failure.
Maybe a slightly more sophisticated "hack" solution (at least until an elegant AI solution is available) would be:
1.) Eliminate cost for spreading corporations.
2.) Restore the cap on the total number of execs available.
3.) Significantly increase the
hammer cost of executives. Maybe double it.
This way, the human player won't be able to get away with just spamming corporations left and right, and a facsimile of the 'opportunity costs' of buying out a competing branch are restored, while at the same time the computer will be able to actually spread corporations within its own territory (and overseas) more efficiently.
Certainly, if it's feasible to increase the chance of failure during an attempted "buy-out" (in addition to the above suggestions,) that would, at the end of the day, make things balanced a little more toward the way the designers intended. Does anyone have an idea where I could look to find this? (Is it available in the usual python/XML files? Or do I have to crack into the SDK?)
Thoughts?