should they bring back corporations?

replacing spreading religion after the industrial era?

I find that by then im saving up faith for great people (scientists and engineers usually) and i never bother buying missionaries and prophets. I end up with a load of city states requesting my religion and i never comply. Maybe they could request the presence of your corporations instead?

The thing with corporations is they would seriously need to revamp it, I don't think doing the same thing they did with Religion would work

But they could make it that with a certain building (say Stock Exchenge) you could build up some sort of "Shares" as a resource similiar to Faith and that upon say 6-12 Shares you get a "Monoply" which allows you to gain more Shares per luxury resource in your empire. so say if you had 6 Gold, you would gain +7 Shares (+1 from Stock Exchenge, +6 from Gold) and less if you traded it away.

Religion with a new banner made corporations in Civ4 kind of boring and spammy, increasing the already busy late game.

If corporations make a return, as TheKingofBigOz noted, it should be more integrated in the game mechanics.

For example, it should start in the renaissance with you (the leader) granting charters for groups of people to form a corporation and the type and scope of that corporation will determine how your empire evolves over time.

So in short, my vision of it is that I see it more as a social policy type layer, with potentially units to move around but not the kind of missionary/preachy religion type units, but economic units you can place in another Civ's cities/capitals as a sign of Foreign direct investment or you may choose to invest locally.

At the same time, corporations can exert soft power (tourism) influence spreading your culture.

This would mean a revamp of trade routes/tourism as a whole if they were ever to add it into the post BNW build of the game, assuming there's a 3rd expansion lurking out there.

If added into Civ6 or a future game, Corporations should also be given some level of independence (gradiated from free market to state controlled) such that they will try to influence your foreign and domestic policies under free market scenarios, where the trade off is high gpt income/and other bonus for less control, over state controlled here you have more control but less gpt income.

Yes I think Corporations should make a return, but like others have said, they would need to be changed from the Civ4 mechanism. Some things I would like to see was stuff like:
- Each civ being able to found a national corporation. This would happen once you entered a specific era (either renaissance or industrial era).
- Ability to tune your corporation in different areas, which will interact with available resources.
- Ability to produce items in your factories you can sell for money and happiness after industrial era. Producing items would consume raw resources.
- Ability to add unique characteristics to your corporation, similar to how beliefs flavor your religion.
- Link between corporations and ideologies.
- Link between corporations and tourism/culture dominance.

i would prefer that ideology influence. with order you can set up a poorly run heavy industry selling cheap cars or something at a loss to try and subsidise your failing communist economy. with freedom, the corporation founds itself if your ppl are sufficiently wealthy and happy, and adds a production bonus to wartime production after a delay to retool and in peace time provides extra taxes which you can set rate of but otherwise dont have any control of its running. also if you have low taxes it might create some random technology wonder like the PC or laptop, or cellphone. or accelerates the internet wonder build time or something like that. perhaps just a free tech from a selected part of the tech tree (non military in peace or military in war)

I think adding another element of gameplay to the post-industrial world is a worthwhile cause. I don't think this thread should go into too many specifics as it's not in Ideas and Suggestions, but I favor the idea of moving some money around later game - ideally as a way to even the tables (e.g. The sprawling wide empire can make money with its industrial might vs the tiny scientific empire who's too busy making beakers to make hammers instead).

Final thought: linking corporations to Great Merchants somehow could be neat. I'll brainstorm some ideas and add them to the Merchant thread I've been mulling over.

Each Policy Tree could also offer some exclusive types of Corporations. For example, Rationalism unlocking High Tech science-generating Corporations, Patronage unlocking Multinational Corporations that generates influence over City-States, etc.

Corporations could do various things to increase one cities production, and maybe they can make a 'special' specialist that gets bonus effects when assigned to any, or a particular, building.

Be a nice mechanic within an existing structure. I initially wouldnt want it to mess with great people, but if you give the ability to teh great merchant, maybe it'd make them slightly more balanced to the other two.

With Corporations you can also add the random acts like strikes, layoff, unions, possible promotions with in the corp etc. This could add a lot to the game but also slows the game down with much more info to consider and watch turn by turn.

Also expand the Science Victory that launching a space ship into outer space is just a third of the step to victory. Add building a culture on a planet to be a SV. Or multiple space ships need to be launched to win?

The developers need to always take us die hards up and beyond expectations for the next level of Civ...meaning Civ 6 and Civ 7 etc. The intel chips and graphic cards are continuing to get only faster and better to provide better game play. The programmers can only get better at their jobs as they look into the future of game play etc. They surround themselves with very creative and smart people...employees.

Brew God