Corporation: The Power of Sushi

Great article MrCynical.

One (to me) glaring omission that I see is no mention of the happiness wonders. Hollywood, Broadway, and Rock n' Roll all give a 5-pack of a new resource. The AIs in particular, but also humans who need the extra happiness, are usually eager to trade their "extra" fish etc. Yes, they know it will help you, but they get a +1 happiness across their empire. From a diplomatic standpoint, it's a "win-win" situation.

Net effect to a corp strategy is that with one or more of these wonders you can easily punch your corp benefit to the max. I've had +40 food in my cities from Sushi on a Huge map.

Wodan

I'd also have to voice an obvious underrepresentation of culture considerations. Culture is hard to acquire in general, and you almost have to get a dedicated Religion strategy to get a Culture win in Warlords. This is not so with the advent of Corporations.

I've tested it out on several games already, so I have experience to back up the statement.

With the right kinds of resources and the right Corporations, a Culture win can be faster than a Space Race win for defaulting and doesn't make you as susceptible to a losing war.

With even just 2 Religions and Eiffel Tower and a modicum of effort to snag the right corporations and resources, your 3 Legendary Cities can be producing upwards of 700 culture per turn, without maxxing out the Culture slider. In many cases, you can produce 400+ Culture per turn with the slider at 0%

Creative Construction, Sid's Sushi, and Civ Jewellers together produce an obscene amount of culture, that can be multiplied by Civic and building modifiers. Also, getting this constellation of corporations allows you to concentrate them all in your Wall Street city, for massive gpt gains when you spam them into the right Civs.

For my part, I prefer Cereal Mills to Sid's Sushi for food because it's less susceptible to pillaging in a late game war. I favor Sid's if I'm going for a Cultural victory, Rice is common to both, but Cereal Mills translates 50% better into food. This essentially means that you only need to acquire and protect 33% less resources and 33% less gpt for the same amount of food.

30 Resources for Sid's converts to 15 food. You only need 20 Resources (and correspondingly less gold) to translate Cereal Mills into 15 food.

Both Standard Ethanol and Aluminum Co are strategic corporations. You can found Standard Ethanol in your main military cities if you want to more or less ensure their availability of oil, and use Alum Co to likewise ensure your supply of aluminum. Outside of strategic resource protection, their uses are limited.

Mining Inc, I'm currently not so fond of, because it clashes with so many others. If I'm going to found more than 2 Corps, Mining Inc isn't so good, particularly not in the Wall Street city. While CreateCon produces a much lower production bonus, the flexibility of using it for cultural defense, a possible culture win, and for foreign spamming with multiple Corps makes it a more flexible choice.

To be sure, Mining Inc is a godsend to your isolated and small cities, but in general, I'm currently a little ambivalent.

Interesting, Roxlimn. I'll have to try that. Though, I disagree that this makes a culture win faster. A good culture setup early game means that Eiffel Tower and Corps will not even be an option by the time you win.

To me, what you suggest is an equally viable, and equally (if not more) enjoyable strategy. Not faster, though. But, fast is not what the game is about (except perhaps in MP).

Wodan

I think Roxlimn is meaning about when you haven't been planning for a Cultural victory, but only turn towards that option late-game.

Beamup said:

I think Roxlimn is meaning about when you haven't been planning for a Cultural victory, but only turn towards that option late-game.

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Ah, that makes more sense.

Wodan

It also is ideal for a 'safe' culture win

by concentrating on tiles->food-> specialists->culture*
rather than tiles->commerce->culture
then you can keep the slider on 0% culture and not worry about the AI crushing your Riflemen Defense with Infantry
(especially if you get Sistine chapel)

Corps add enough base culture to make this viable and Sid's adds food for more specialists.

Sistine Chapel, I've found is a great booster for Culture, provided that you've invested in the Temple and Cathedral (which you will do, of course). The Artist Specialists you'll run won't only produce more culture, but running Artists itself generates GP points for the flood of Great Artists you'll be using.

Well written and informative article MrCynical, thanks heaps.

Just a thought -- to increase the reference value of this article, it would be nice to include the appropriate resources for each corporation, along with a list of that corporation's "competitors".

The Jewellers is definitely not a good option for domestic use unless desperate for the culture, but equally that makes it ideal to spread to the AI.

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I'm not experienced with Corps so a little confused. If the HQ for CJ has a market/bank/grocer in it, then why wouldn't you be getting a good overlay by spreading it domestically?

@Obsolete: It took me a while to track down where I'd said that, since it isn't in the article itself. That particular post was written when the latest patch was 3.02, and the most recent patch had a major effect on Civ jewellers. Prior to 3.13 (or Solver's unofficial patch), the maintenance costs of Civ Jewellers would be higher than the income (including that at the HQ) unless you had virtually no resources, or only spread it to tiny cities. Hence it was useless for spreading in your own cities unless you wanted the culture.

The reduction in corporate maintenance costs in 3.13 means that Civ Jewellers will now always turn a profit, even without the HQ income. It's therefore the simplest to use as you can just spam it everywhere and come out ahead, and also it's no longer quite as good for foreign spread as the AI will also profit from it.

I think I've got everything in the article updated to allow for the changes in the 3.13 patch, but some of the other old posts in the thread contain out of date info that is no longer accurate.

Alright, now the next question is.... why would the AI go around spreading your corporations? It generally doesn't like to trade techs with you unless you're getting a bit shafted out of the deal. But it doing your own work by spreading corps, so you reap big reward in your pockets just seems utterly foolish.

If it gains a little bonus from doing so, but you gain much more, the optimum choice would be to not do it at all.

Well the gain you get for an AI spreading your corporation is 12gpt per city. Even a foreign corporation could conceivably give enough benefits to a city to be worth spreading, despite the extra cash the human player gets (e.g. Sushi to a GP farm or Mining to a military production city). There are certainly occasions when it is worthwhile spreading a foreign corporation. If I were to lose Sushi on Mining, I'd certainly spread it even with a foreign HQ rather than sitting around and hoping the AI would spread it somewhere sensible (OK in practice I'd probably try and capture the HQ city, but you get the idea).

It does have to be said though that the AI is far too stupid to evaluate all this, and particularly in the early patches would spam every corporation to every city it had. This behaviour does seem to have been toned down a little in the 3.13 patch, though they still spread foreign corporations fairly fast. There's also the point that with the reduced maintenance costs even a foreign corporation branch can often be made profitable, so this behaviour is no longer as damaging to the AI as it used to be.

MrCynical said:

Once you have the corporations, don’t be afraid to buy resources for plain gpt if you have no alternative – the AI generally charges a tiny amount if you already have access to a resource.

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Great article! Not sure if anyone pointed this out already, but I have a tip to add to the "Efficient Resource Trading" section. When trading resources regularly, it makes sense to form 1:1 trades with AI such as Gold for Gems, Corn for Rice, etc. However, once you have corporations, as you mentioned in here, the AI generally charges a tiny amount if you already have access to a resource . It depends on the size of the AI empire and your empire but I've found it to be somewhere between 5-7 per resource. (probably more for strategic resources) So, you can make your deals with the AI a lot more profitable by NOT falling for the 1:1 trade in this case. Instead, pay straight up for all their corporation resources, and sell your extra non-corporation resources (if you have any) for to the AI after you have hoarded all their extra corporation resources. Here's a simple example to illustrate my point:

1. Traditional trade: Let's say you have Sid's Sushi and the AI has 3 extra clams for trade. You have one extra silver to trade. Now, you offer them silver and they offer you one clam in return. And then, to get the other 2 clams, you pay 5 each, so overall you're paying one silver and 10 in exchange for 3 clams.

2. Profitable trade: Pay for the clams upfront and then trade away your silver. So, you pay 5 for each of the clams as before, 15 total. Now the AI has some surplus per turn to trade back to you, in addition to whatever surplus per turn they had to begin with. Let's assume they have 15 per turn so you sell them your silver for that. Overall, you're paying only one silver in exchange for 3 clams - much better off than the 1st case.

Conclusion: When you are trading a corporation resource, remember that the per turn value of that resource is lower than the per turn value of a non-corporation resource, so form your trade deals wisely.

@Oedali: This is definitely a good suggestion on paper, but I'm finding it rather problematic to use in practice. The problem I'm hitting is that trading the AI 5gpt doesn't necessarily increase the amount of gpt they are willing to trade by 5. Sometimes it works, but much of the time they still won't trade any extra gpt. If an AI has no gpt initially to trade, it consistently stays at 0 (presumably the amount they're willing to trade in this situation is actually negative). It still doesn't always work for AI witha positive amount of gold per turn available though. I'm not entirely sure why this is the case, but I've never really investigated the mechanics of how much gold an AI is willing to trade per turn.

It's still worth trading gold for corp resources before trading resources for corp resources if you were going to trade gpt anyway to get all of them. It might work, and you lose nothing as long as you don't end up trading gold instead of useless duplicate resources.

The basic point that a corporation resource (i.e. a duplicate of a resource you already have) is treated by the AI as of much lower value than a normal resource is of course sound, and important for trading in both directions. If the AI has a corporation that you don't, they'll still only pay you a few gpt for any additional resources for it that you trade to them.

I was playing the GOTM1 for BTS and I did not save my great merchant for sushi co. I never got a merchant again until end of game when I launched my spaceship :/ Would have been so nice with at least 5+ more population per city.

Sushi was giving most food at end of game, around 1.5 times more food than the cereal company.

I will look up the article again for any tips on how to generate the great merchant necessary to create the sushi co. My guess would be to save the first merchant that pops up on your way. Merchant GPs might be rare :/

One way of generating merchant when Sushi is getting closer is to use caste system and run ***loads of merchants on suitable city, even starve that city a lot if the rewards will be enough. Caste is the key to getting merchant when wanted.

Julian Delphiki said:

One way of generating merchant when Sushi is getting closer is to use caste system and run ***loads of merchants on suitable city, even starve that city a lot if the rewards will be enough. Caste is the key to getting merchant when wanted.

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True, I should have switched to caste system and massed merchants on a seperate high food city. You want to be %100 sure that no other GreatPerson will pop tough :/ I only got 2 GreatMerchants whole game. Not sure what I did with the first one.

If I know I'm not going to win by late game and will want one or more corps such as Sushi, I'll simply keep a great merchant or whatever is needed by fortifying him in my capitol, even if he ends up sitting there most of the game.

Wodan

The BtS info center says Sid's Sushi only gives culture, no food bonus, was that changed in a patch or an error on the info center?

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/bts/#corporations