Corporation: The Power of Sushi

Definitely an error in the info centre. That should read 0.5 food and 2 culture per resource consumed.
 
Two things to add from my recent experience:

First: Use Sid's Sushi for Diplomatic victories ;). In my last game (on Monarch) as Peter it was me, Darius, Hammurabi and Asoka against Zara Yaqob and Hannibal, his vassal. Zara had a huge empire but was technologically backwards. There were about ten UN votes missing for a diplo victory for me and Zara was about to get Biology. What did I do? Founded Sid's Sushi, spread it to every city of mine and my Friends and after a short while there were (barely) sufficient votes. :) Saved me a quite a few years towards a spaceship launch...

(One might argue that this leader combo was nice, Darius and Asoka like Free Religion, Hammy likes Bureaucracy - so easy to please. Heck, if Hannibal hadn't been vassalized, Free Market would have done the trick for him as well...)

Second: A Hybrid Economy (Cottage Economy with three specialist cities: Oxford, Wall Street and Scotland Yard, see article in War Academy) goes well together with Sushi & Cereal Mills. You know exactly when your next GM will appear, simply look at Wall Street. Worked for me like a charm in my last games.
 
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.

Well your ideal GP farm should have the national epic in it, but beyond those couple great artist points, all of it's GPPs should be generated by specialists. This way it's trivial to tune your odds to near 99% of getting a specific specialist, be it scientist, merchant, artist or what have you. While it's true that that small % of getting an artist from the national epic will occasionally foil your plans, the vast majority of the time you will pop the specific great person you want. Late game around the time of corps well you get the national park, and will begin slowly diluting the pool with great scientist points as well, but really with caste system and maxed out specific specialists, the city will pop what it's supposed to nearly always. The worst case is 2 or 3 of the "wrong" type in a row, and those are extreme flukes of bad luck... When that sort of thing happens, I consider rushing out to by a lottery ticket cause I've just beaten some spectacular odds.

EDIT: As for culture wins, sure there is the all or nothing early culture rush approach taken by many. Stop research after the sistine chapel is built, and have multiple cathedrals in your 3 "to be legendary" cities. I find that nowadays in BTS it's a much better approach to play the tech tree normally. Early and mid game, definitely focus on getting as many religions inside your borders as possible, and get the temples and cathedrals built for sure, but don't endanger the entire game by shutting off research and cranking the culture slider! Just let your cities keep growing and building up culture, and be sure to get CreateCon or SidSushi founded. And if you can get even one of the late game wonders like Eiffel Tower, Broadway, etc, to shore up your 2nd or 3rd placed cities combined a booming Sushi Corp and suddenly your culture cities are rocking their way past 800 culture per turn... In one game, my capital broke 1000 culture per turn thanks to the eiffel tower, 3 cathedrals, createcon and sid's sushi... And of course a handful of sistine chapel boosted artists. And this is all without touching the culture slider, so meanwhile you are researching along as normal, or using a heavy espionage focus to keep tabs on your opponents and maintain tech parity. As mentioned in the OP, on many map types like Archipelago, Islands, Big and Small, Medium and SMall, you can easily be converting 25, 30, 40 resources into culture fairly easily. It also makes for (IMO) a much more interesting game than the all or nothing renaissance culture bid where you spend an hour hitting enter and praying you don't get swarmed by the AI. And you don't have to spend the middle ages spamming missionaries and temples all over the place... 2 or 3 religions/cathedrals is all you need if you hold out for corporations and radio, and all of your other cities are free to produce troops, research, espionage, unlike the pure culture approach which is extremely risky.
 
I love this guide! It has gotten to the point where I sweat out the last few turns of researching medicine or railroad for fear of losing one of my favorite corporations.


In my latest game, I got started on an ice continent, killed off my only neighbor, and then was so VERY lonely for a very long time. By the time I could sail settlers to the new world, Roosevelt had city spammed me out of anything useful. I was also religion free up until that point as well.

So, what will save the day for me? A corporation powered late cultural victory. Sushi and CC are in the three cities, and Mining is going into the other cities with Sushi to keep the rest of the empire well fed and well armed. The other cities are also busy cranking out missionaries and temples to help me build a half dozen cathedrals in each of the culture cities. All I think I really need at this point is to generate one more great person to allow me to create CJ, and I'll be golden.
 
I would like to point out that Standard Ethanol is good for much more than a desperate grab for oil. Sushi is hard to beat on watery maps with an abundance of seafood, but Standard Ethanol can be better than either food corporation on other maps (Pangaea, tropical Continents).

It provides a respectable science output that is comparable to Cereal Mill feeding Scientists under Representation, without the civic restrictions, specialists slot or cap issues.
In practice, the difference in maintenance/trade routes also favoured Standard Ethanol somewhat because corporation benefits are unaffected by city size while the costs increase; the guaranteed oil is also a nice benefit.

Although this might seem odd, I often find myself going for a food corporation if I run a Cottage/Hybrid Economy and Standard Ethanol if I finish the game with a Specialist Economy. Specialist cities will often be pushing the health cap anyway, and 6 food feeding 2 sickly scientists is less valuable than 6 food allowing me to run 3 more cottages. End yields: 12:science: vs. 3:hammers:21:commerce: compared to 16:science: from Standard Ethanol (assuming wheat is as common as sugar).
 
I've seen the argument for Standard Ethanol before, but I'm still not very convinced by it. It's true that, particularly if your cities are through the health cap, it can produce slightly more science than Sushi/Cereals for a comparable number of resources. However it has a lot of associated problems:

1)Lack of flexibility. Extra food can be used in a variety of ways, and is as useful in a GP farm as in a production city or a generic commerce/science city. Ethanol can only give science and, unless I found both it and a food corporation, this lack of flexibility will leave production cities, GP farms and cities on marginal terrain a lot weaker.

2)While you could of course found both a food corp and Ethanol, this is costing you an extra Great Scientist, and you can't stack them in the Wall Street city, which will increase overall costs somewhat (though possibly not as much as the maintenance/trade route gap of the additional population from a food corporation).

3)Standard Ethanol appears late, at Plastics. With the routes through the tech tree that I find effective, that's often more than a full age after Sushi. That delay really puts me off this corporation. If I'm going for domination or cultural victories I may even be winding down my research at this stage. There's also the apples to apples comparison of are you getting more from the marginal edge of Ethanol over Sushi scientists compared to the lightbulb value of the Great Scientist given the limited amount of time remaining.
 
3)Standard Ethanol appears late, at Plastics. With the routes through the tech tree that I find effective, that's often more than a full age after Sushi.
Do you find them effective because you usually leverage Sushi, or do you find them effective in their own merits and would do them even if Sushi did not exist?

...just asking. :)

Anyway Plastics is a quite effective beeline, because of the 3 Gorges primarily. So, it's not like that strategy sucks rocks or anything. Corps aside, I would think they are equitable. So, it's fair to say that Sushi and Ethanol could be compared on their own merits.

Wodan
 
Wodan said:
Do you find them effective because you usually leverage Sushi, or do you find them effective in their own merits and would do them even if Sushi did not exist?

Well, I'd go up to Biology as soon as possible for the extra food from farms, regardless of Sushi, and from there it's only one more tech (though no, I wouldn't bother with Medicine anywhere near as early if Sushi didn't exist). Plastics on the other hand I rarely bother with till quite late (mainly because I don't much like the 3GD - since my production cities tend to stay relatively small I don't tend to have much trouble with unhealthiness there, so I just use coal power).

Serious question - do you think you can get to Plastics anywhere near as early as Medicine, if in both cases you are beelining?
 
Well, I'd go up to Biology as soon as possible for the extra food from farms
Depends on how many farms you have, I suppose. If you're CE and only have a couple farms as needed to feed plains or hills cottages, then Biology wouldn't be all that much benefit.

regardless of Sushi, and from there it's only one more tech (though no, I wouldn't bother with Medicine anywhere near as early if Sushi didn't exist). Plastics on the other hand I rarely bother with till quite late (mainly because I don't much like the 3GD - since my production cities tend to stay relatively small I don't tend to have much trouble with unhealthiness there, so I just use coal power).
Yeah but that's a LOT of hammers to build those coal plants everywhere. the 3GD can be a huge savings, since you can churn it out with your top production city and/or spend a GE on it.

Serious question - do you think you can get to Plastics anywhere near as early as Medicine, if in both cases you are beelining?
Not really, but that's not the question. It's a cost:benefit issue. So that's why I ask, anyway. Just talking here...

Anyway, I think people tend to "discover" a strategy that resonates well with them and is very strong. Then they play that strategy almost to exclusion. So I guess I was wondering if that was your practice or if you explore other strategies as well. Obviously anybody who plays one strategy a lot will really perfect that strategy and max it. It's hard to compare to another strategy that they either don't play or have played only once or twice, and thus isn't nearly as "maxed out". Am I making sense?

Regardless no matter how we look at it, your Sushi strats are very strong and well worth playing. For variety if nothing else, doing a 3GD and Ethanol trick would be fun every now and then. To me anyway.

Wodan
 
Just to clarify, I wasn't claiming Standard Ethanol should be a priority in all games. I still pick Mining.Inc + Sid's Sushi more often than anything else. The relative abundance of seafood on most maps and early availability are often enough to make Sushi an obvious choice. I agree that, for optimal play, you would require a reason to not found Sid's Sushi.

Sometimes Sushi doesn't cut it though... be it because there aren't enough fishies on Pangaea or because I can't get the supply coming (the AI loves to pillage seafood. While I can probably defend my own, this might not apply to trade partners).
In those cases, Standard Ethanol is a valid alternative to Cereal Mills (if you don't have any daring plans like cottaging over every single farm).

Standard Ethanol is a conservative choice. It makes even ice cities with no workable tiles and no infrastructure an asset (ok, infrastructure isn't much of a problem if we also have Mining.Inc), doesn't forcing one into specific civics, doesn't cause cap issues or any other problems, provides a decent output per resource and doesn't inflate costs by pushing city size.
If food could be leveraged for something better than running additional scientists, something else fits the bill better; I never claimed otherwise.
 
In my Gandhi game (link below), I went with Mining Inc., mainly due to my land and the fact I was pursuing a space victory. I wanted the hammers to help build spaceship parts. Also, I didn't have the right kind of great person for Sid's.

I can report that the gold-for-hammers exchange on Mining, Inc. was fabulous.

I agree that Sid's is more flexible and powerful (since you can do so many different things with food), but it's also map- and situation-dependent.
 
Hi ,

Great Guide :goodjob:

just saying thanks for a wel done job !1


Yep Sushi it is , the benefits are so great thast it can turn a game around :)

Have a nice sushi day :)
 
i only go for sushi and mining. you can also find a civ with a lot of GPT, and they will pay even more for your resources as they are corporate buffed. I havent checked if the other civs MUST have it to pay more or not.

However i noticed that pre-patch you could win a game you were losing by spamming the board-hoarder with corps until their economy dies.
 
Is it best to found Corporations in Wall Street cities if you're going to use them for foreign spread? And what would the next best city candidate be for a domestic corporation? Whichever one generates the next highest amount of wealth?
 
If at all possible you should always found a corporation in the Wall Street city. The only reason to found them elsewhere is if you are for some reason founding competing corporations. For example, you might conceivably want to found Mining Inc for a bit of domestic spread, but want to spam Aluminium co. to the AIs. Then you'd want Mining Inc away from Wall Street. If you wanted to deny the AI HQs by founding all the corporations you'd obviously have to have some in a non-Wall Street city.

In practice I find it's very rare that I ever want to found competing corporations, so I just stack them all in the Wall Street city. Sushi (or Cereals sometimes) and Mining is probably the most common combination I use.

If you had to found one in a non Wall street city, there isn't much difference where you put it. You just want one with market/bank/grocer (which would logically be one of your high gold/commerce cities), but doesn't have to be the second best one.
 
If at all possible you should always found a corporation in the Wall Street city. The only reason to found them elsewhere is if you are for some reason founding competing corporations. For example, you might conceivably want to found Mining Inc for a bit of domestic spread, but want to spam Aluminium co. to the AIs. Then you'd want Mining Inc away from Wall Street. If you wanted to deny the AI HQs by founding all the corporations you'd obviously have to have some in a non-Wall Street city.

In practice I find it's very rare that I ever want to found competing corporations, so I just stack them all in the Wall Street city. Sushi (or Cereals sometimes) and Mining is probably the most common combination I use.

If you had to found one in a non Wall street city, there isn't much difference where you put it. You just want one with market/bank/grocer (which would logically be one of your high gold/commerce cities), but doesn't have to be the second best one.

you also run the risk of forcing everyone else into SP or Merc. I'd say the only one you would let the opponent found is Cereal and work on trading them rice for anything else they have.
 
Excellent guide. Just one little note:

"Corporations cost nothing under state property, but also give no benefits, and cannot be spread."

Being new to BTS, I understood this to mean corporations cost nothing to establish, but I found out later you mean they are free in maintenance. I thought I had found the perfect strategy by picking a spiritual leader, switching to state property to spam free corporations, then switching back to reap the benefits haha. Maybe you should edit this line to clarify what costs you are referring to.
 
I don't like the implementation of corporations at all, but I had to say nice guide on the basics of how they work. Much better then the manual or the civlopeidia. :goodjob:
 
This is a great thread; opened my eyes with regards to corps.

Has the latest patch (3.17) had any considerable effects on corporations - such that they would change the write-up in the OP?
 
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