Corporations & Guilds

I hope I am not alone in thinking that corporations (and guilds) are the most unbalanced part of RAND? When I say "unbalanced", I mean they tend to have outsized effects on cities, have strange requirements, and don't contribute much to the mod.

I think Realistic Corporation spread is probably a step in the right direction for corporations - in that it removes the minutia related to spreading corporations, but it also falls short. Corporation spread is not entirely satisfying and a bit strange, corporations might appear one turn, and disappear the next.

Then take the concept of corporation maintenance. I find this to be one of the more baffling aspects of corporations. Players have to pay maintenance to have corporation in their cities. At a purely logical level, that makes no sense. Are the corporations not producing a profit of their own? Are the maintenance costs subsidies? Are the corporations state-owned or private entities? Where is the profit going? What are the maintenance costs even for?

Guilds similarly make no sense. Why, to found a guild, do you have to build one of three national wonders, then another national wonder that is guild specific? Why build anything at all? Why don't guilds ever go obsolete? Should guilds go obsolete?

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Here's my ideas on what could be done to improve corporations. Instead of requiring a great person or buildings to found a guild or corporation, they should all found automatically. Not just automatically, but the founding odds should be primarily based on the number of resources that the corporation consumes, and your civilization has. In addition, existing corporate headquarters should decrease the founding odds.

When a corporation "founds" itself in one of a player's cities, they should get a popup allowing them to take action. The popup would look something like this:

Popup Text: Sire! A fledgling business in the local city of CITYNAME has organized itself into the CORPORATION_NAME and wishes to expand its influence throughout the globe!

Option 1: Excellent News. Let the free market take over.
Effects: Corporation HQ is founded in CITY.

Option 2: Subsidize them in exchange for rapid expansion!
Effects: Costs 250-750 gold, Corporation HQ is founded in CITY, Corporation spreads to 3 random cities in your civilization, No new corporations will found HQ in your empire for 60 turns.

Option 3: Bah, I control commerce in CIVILIZATION_NAME!
Effects: Corporation is not founded, seizes 100-250 gold from business owners, No new corporations will found HQ in your empire for 60 turns.

The idea is to present the player choices when a corporation founds, each choice being meaningful and providing the player control over the situation. Option 1 costs nothing, and lets the corporation found. Option 2 accelerates the corporation spread, but costs money, and the subsidization curtails competition, prohibiting new corporations from auto-founding in your empire for a bit. Option 3 gives the player the option to refuse the corporation and earn gold instead.

In addition to this corporation founding mechanic, I would also eliminate the concept of corporate maintenance entirely. It doesn't really make sense. I would replace it with nothing.

Corporations currently unlock some kind of unique corporate building in each city. These building effects are very powerful and all need to be brought into alignment with the current game balance. These buildings should also cause corporations to spread faster.

Corporation spread should be rewritten to be more realistic. After a corporation spreads to a city, there needs to be a "cooldown" period where the corporation can not shut down for 40-60 turns. After that, the chances of the corporation leaving the city should be zero unless the city loses access to the resources the corporation needs.

Civics should be altered to affect corporation spread mechanics, much like they affect religion spread. Coinage and Free Market civics should allow all corporations (even foreign corporations) to spread through your civilization. The Corporate civic should prevent foreign corporations from spreading further, and only allow domestic corporation spread. The Planned civic should prevent any corporation spread.

Finally, technologies. Technologies should be allowed to influence specific corporate spread rates. So a specific tech could increase a specific corporations spread rate. Maybe a tech like Mercantilism will cause the Mercer's Guild to spread 2-3x faster. Conversely, a tech could cause corporation spread rates to decrease, or go negative. This would allow for a gradual obsolete of guilds without having a hard and fast tech simply turn them off. Several techs spaced over time could slow and reverse the spread rate of guild corporations and cause them to close down.

The tech spread influence should help guilds and corporations to spread quickest when they are at their technological pinnacle and cause them to decline when they are not as relevant.

Finally, I'd get rid of the Realistic Corporations game option and make this all mandatory.

Sounds very good to me. I also only play with realistic corps. There's just one thing I'm not sure of: I think corps are supposed to be somewhat a good and bad thing (I guess this is why they had maintenance costs). If corps spread too much, you should have some penalty. This is why there were some civics blocking corps totally. What about this with your new system? Will the game require you to found as many corps as possible? I mean, the more corps you have, the better? I don't think it should be like this. This is the only thing I would be cautious about.

I don't use realistic corporations but I do like this idea. I think it would be a good idea to include some method for the player to influence corporation founding aside from randomly.

Just a suggestion, but maybe a weight on city yields would be good so a corporation doesn't found itself in that tiny remote tundra city you only built to secure a resource etc. Perhaps each corporation would have a yield they value most, ie cereal mills or Sids Sushi will found in one of the worlds top food cities, Mining Inc in a top production city, Civilized Jewelry in a top gold city, etc.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13440885 said:

Sounds very good to me. I also only play with realistic corps. There's just one thing I'm not sure of: I think corps are supposed to be somewhat a good and bad thing (I guess this is why they had maintenance costs). If corps spread too much, you should have some penalty.

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Corporations already create unhealthiness and in some cases, unhappiness. I don't think anything further is needed beyond that.

88GTS said:

I don't use realistic corporations but I do like this idea. I think it would be a good idea to include some method for the player to influence corporation founding aside from randomly.

Just a suggestion, but maybe a weight on city yields would be good so a corporation doesn't found itself in that tiny remote tundra city you only built to secure a resource etc. Perhaps each corporation would have a yield they value most, ie cereal mills or Sids Sushi will found in one of the worlds top food cities, Mining Inc in a top production city, Civilized Jewelry in a top gold city, etc.

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I plan on making city size a factor and yes, I agree corporations should found in relevant cities.

I assume that if this is the same for the mediaeval guilds as well, the Guilds option would be unnecessary as well. If you don't want them, just select that option during the event and be done with it.

It looks intriguing. I say go for it. Test it then we can see how games are played out. Then tweak as needed.

Arakhor said:

I assume that if this is the same for the mediaeval guilds as well, the Guilds option would be unnecessary as well. If you don't want them, just select that option during the event and be done with it.

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Well the AI's get the same options and an AI might allow a corporation to found. Unless a player was running a civic that completely blocked corporation spread and refused every corporation founding could they remain free of them.

I do want to get rid of the "Modern Corporations" and "Guilds" options though. But not until these changes are agreed upon and the implementation is solid.

This sound like a really good idea, I'm all for it.

So will we still have control over where and to whom it spreads once it founds? There's been times (Generally very "specific" cases though) when I didn't want it spreading to a certain city, or wanted to help out a vassal or teammate with a corporation I founded but did not want it popping up on a contested border, and so on. Sometimes I wanted to choose where it founds too but that's generally less important to me in a sense.

Other than that, idea looks good for the most part (And there are some Guilds IIRC that *never* obsolete, while most seem to die off with Machine Tools or similar) though we'd have to have a few games testing it out first - tweaking and all that

Rezca said:

So will we still have control over where and to whom it spreads once it founds? There's been times (Generally very "specific" cases though) when I didn't want it spreading to a certain city, or wanted to help out a vassal or teammate with a corporation I founded but did not want it popping up on a contested border, and so on. Sometimes I wanted to choose where it founds too but that's generally less important to me in a sense.

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No. Maybe. I think I might leave in the ability to create executives and spread the corporation...but only if you are using the Planned economic civic. I am unsure. Maybe.

Rezca said:

Other than that, idea looks good for the most part (And there are some Guilds IIRC that *never* obsolete, while most seem to die off with Machine Tools or similar) though we'd have to have a few games testing it out first - tweaking and all that

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I will remove all hard obsoletions of corporations. One thing I am thinking is that once a corporation spread rate for a corporation HQ you own becomes negative (you've researched techs that harm its spread to the point where it can not longer spread in your civilization) you will get a popup notice saying that "The Era of CORPORATION_NAME is over... Increased competition and new technologies have replaced the need for the corporation". Then over time, the corporation will retract over a few dozen turns, until finally, the HQ is abandoned.

I like this idea and the interaction civics will have with it. My suggestions to some lines that may appear in civics:

No corporations (already mentioned);
No foreign corporation spread (already mentioned);
Only domestic corporations;
Domestic Corporations can't leave cities;
Foreign Corporations can't force-remove a domestic corporation;

I agree with the idea of not letting corps be completely random. Some civics should play with this aspect (some may have more control then others, with the ability to build the Executive).

I must disagree that corps shouldn't have maintenance costs. They may give unhappy and unhealthy but many doesn't have drawbacks besides the maintenance cost. And maintenance costs do make sense, it's the only way to show the money going from the host nation to the HQ nation, and besides that it makes a difference in strategy between spreading your corp majorly internally or externally (do you want or other yields? Foreign spread grants more , while internal spread normally eats your and gives other yields). If maintenance cost is removed, national spread will always be more benefitial then foreign spread.

Also some civics could influence your corporation spread rate in domestic/foreign/vassal territories (like those of the new column created in the other thread).


My last opinion is about the cooldown period. I think there should be a big difference between Guilds and True Corps cooldown period. Guilds should have a modifier smaller then true corps. The time should influence this as well (be it from Era, Turns elapsed or some formula based on number of years), as Game Speed too. Civics can modify cooldown too (infinite cooldown for domestic corps would mean no domestic corp leaving cities options I mentioned above). What can't happen is a cooldown of 20 turns in 850AD that lasts until past 1000AD for an early guild. I agree corps coming and going from turn to turn is annoying and makes players just forget about corporation tracking in their empires, that isn't the aim in any era as well.

Spirictum said:

I like this idea and the interaction civics will have with it. My suggestions to some lines that may appear in civics:

No corporations (already mentioned);
No foreign corporation spread (already mentioned);
Only domestic corporations;
Domestic Corporations can't leave cities;
Foreign Corporations can't force-remove a domestic corporation;

I agree with the idea of not letting corps be completely random. Some civics should play with this aspect (some may have more control then others, with the ability to build the Executive).

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I did already mention a No Foreign corporation civic. I don't think it makes sense to have a civic that limits corporations to only domestic cities.

Spirictum said:

I must disagree that corps shouldn't have maintenance costs. They may give unhappy and unhealthy but many doesn't have drawbacks besides the maintenance cost. And maintenance costs do make sense, it's the only way to show the money going from the host nation to the HQ nation, and besides that makes a difference in strategy between spreading your corp majorly internally or externally (do you want or other yields? Foreign spread grants more , while internal spread normally eats your and gives other yields). If maintenance cost is removed, national spread will always be more benefitial then foreign spread.

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I was thinking about that, and I am not convinced that the HQ should even generate income.

Spirictum said:

My last opinion is about the cooldown period. I think there should be a big difference between Guilds and True Corps cooldown period. Guilds should have a modifier smaller then true corps. The time should influence this as well (be it from Era, Turns elapsed or some formula based on number of years), as Game Speed too. Civics can modify cooldown too (infinite cooldown for domestic corps would mean no domestic corp leaving cities options I mentioned above). What can't happen is a cooldown of 20 turns in 850AD that lasts until past 1000AD for an early guild. I agree corps coming and going from turn to turn is annoying and makes players just forget about corporation tracking in their empires, that isn't the aim in any era as well.

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If you read what I wrote originally, is that if a city has a corporation, and has access to the resources it needs to operate, it will not ever leave (unless the civilization has researched techs that would cause the corporation to decline). So I don't think these cooldown modifiers are relevant

Afforess said:

I did already mention a No Foreign corporation civic. I don't think it makes sense to have a civic that limits corporations to only domestic cities.



I was thinking about that, and I am not convinced that the HQ should even generate income.



If you read what I wrote originally, is that if a city has a corporation, and has access to the resources it needs to operate, it will not ever leave (unless the civilization has researched techs that would cause the corporation to decline). So I don't think these cooldown modifiers are relevant

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I know you did, that's why I put in parenthesis that it was already mentioned. But I didn't list a civic that doesn't let your corp spread to a foreign nation.

No corporations (already mentioned); Like State Property.

No foreign corporation spread (already mentioned); The Corporation example you gave. It doesn't remove existing foreign corps, but doesn't allow any further foreign corp spread.

Only domestic corporations; Like Mercantilism (remove all foreign corps).

Domestic Corporations can't leave cities; Imagining a possibility of corps just shutting down for adverse reasons (random), this civic option doesn't let it happen

Foreign Corporations can't force-remove a domestic corporation; A civic protecting national corps. This doesn't let a foreign competing corp to take the place of any national corp in your cities.



If the HQ doesn't generate income, what will be the big advantage of having it? Some small and points? Small nations will never benefit with founding a corp (or getting it through revolt or war), because they won't have enough resources as a big one to get a nice advantage, while if the HQ does give an income, having an HQ will be good for any nation despite its size. Without the income, once again the money coming from the host nation to the HQ nation won't be present. I would agree with your opinion if this was restricted to Guilds (early corps). But late corporations should have that (the US must love the McDonald's gets from foreign countries - like mine, Brazil - that fuels the taxes it has to pay to the government, taxes that are being partly collected from foreign money income).



I think corps should be able to leave for no apparent reason, but I also think it should be rare. The best approach I can think of is making the option "Domestic/All corps can't leave cities unless it's a takeover" in most civics of one or more columns. E.g. some early or uncaring civic could let corps be destroyed by furious locals, natural disasters or any other adversity, but most civics will have a policy regarding corp leaving. This shouldn't affect decaying corps. This could be somehow disabled for modern corps too (by civic effects, or "by force" only letting this feature happen with Guilds). Actually this leaving for no apparent reason option is the least important IMO, and won't make much difference in the game, but it would be more realistic and wouldn't change much the gameplay.

Afforess said:

Here's my ideas on what could be done to improve corporations. Instead of requiring a great person or buildings to found a guild or corporation, they should all found automatically. Not just automatically, but the founding odds should be primarily based on the number of resources that the corporation consumes, and your civilization has. In addition, existing corporate headquarters should decrease the founding odds.

When a corporation "founds" itself in one of a player's cities, they should get a popup allowing them to take action. The popup would look something like this:

Popup Text: Sire! A fledgling business in the local city of CITYNAME has organized itself into the CORPORATION_NAME and wishes to expand its influence throughout the globe!

Option 1: Excellent News. Let the free market take over.
Effects: Corporation HQ is founded in CITY.

Option 2: Subsidize them in exchange for rapid expansion!
Effects: Costs 250-750 gold, Corporation HQ is founded in CITY, Corporation spreads to 3 random cities in your civilization, No new corporations will found HQ in your empire for 60 turns.

Option 3: Bah, I control commerce in CIVILIZATION_NAME!
Effects: Corporation is not founded, seizes 100-250 gold from business owners, No new corporations will found HQ in your empire for 60 turns.

The idea is to present the player choices when a corporation founds, each choice being meaningful and providing the player control over the situation. Option 1 costs nothing, and lets the corporation found. Option 2 accelerates the corporation spread, but costs money, and the subsidization curtails competition, prohibiting new corporations from auto-founding in your empire for a bit. Option 3 gives the player the option to refuse the corporation and earn gold instead.

In addition to this corporation founding mechanic, I would also eliminate the concept of corporate maintenance entirely. It doesn't really make sense. I would replace it with nothing.

Corporations currently unlock some kind of unique corporate building in each city. These building effects are very powerful and all need to be brought into alignment with the current game balance. These buildings should also cause corporations to spread faster.

Corporation spread should be rewritten to be more realistic. After a corporation spreads to a city, there needs to be a "cooldown" period where the corporation can not shut down for 40-60 turns. After that, the chances of the corporation leaving the city should be zero unless the city loses access to the resources the corporation needs.

Civics should be altered to affect corporation spread mechanics, much like they affect religion spread. Coinage and Free Market civics should allow all corporations (even foreign corporations) to spread through your civilization. The Corporate civic should prevent foreign corporations from spreading further, and only allow domestic corporation spread. The Planned civic should prevent any corporation spread.

Finally, technologies. Technologies should be allowed to influence specific corporate spread rates. So a specific tech could increase a specific corporations spread rate. Maybe a tech like Mercantilism will cause the Mercer's Guild to spread 2-3x faster. Conversely, a tech could cause corporation spread rates to decrease, or go negative. This would allow for a gradual obsolete of guilds without having a hard and fast tech simply turn them off. Several techs spaced over time could slow and reverse the spread rate of guild corporations and cause them to close down.

The tech spread influence should help guilds and corporations to spread quickest when they are at their technological pinnacle and cause them to decline when they are not as relevant.

Finally, I'd get rid of the Realistic Corporations game option and make this all mandatory.

Click to expand...

I concur. I think corporations and guilds have sofar been pointless and have not contributed to the game.

Corporations and guilds are semi useless and just added there just to consume resources for cash. I wish guilds was useful to a point where I get a bonus of something interesting, like research or production by inventions the guild makes, and what research, resources,and other things I needed to found these invention, which help boost existing buildings. For example:

on turn 144 during the medieval era/renaissance after researching guilds, the guilds are enabled for that civilization. on turn 146, a message will pop up saying "A guild by the name of <insert random name> ask your <government title name> to allow construction of the <insert guild> HQ." With afforess idea, those options becomes available by choice, we can allow it to be found... however it needs to be a bit more revamped and overhauled...

This is when my idea comes in, each randomized guild will have a specialization, for example it could be the inventors specialization that all inventions make takes reduced amount of turns to discovered. inventions are used to help boost an existing buildings stats, for example, the tailor... if the guild invented the sowing machine, the tailor gains an extra bonus of +3 or more (all depends on balancing).

So what I'm saying is there should be a benefit that:

1) enable bonuses for existing buildings
2) specialization that focuses on boosting up military on various ways like what 1) could do.
3) allow inventions to exist that help out the civilization on anything that boost gold, research, currency, and others values
4) for realistic approach, certain inventions are locked till the required tech is researched.
5) certain inventions will require resources to be made, you might need iron deposit, and a glassware building to make windows as an example.

This idea makes guild and corporation more useful then just boost your economy and add in a reason to why we need corporations and guilds in the first place.

I agree corporations and guilds are semi-useless. I think even my proposed changes don't really eliminate the "why bother" factor. Even with all of my suggestions, there still remains a fundamental question of "what do corporations add to the game?". Right now, the answer is "not much at all". And nothing I have proposed answers that question to any satisfaction.

I think daredone02 is on the right track, at least in stating that corporations should provide an interesting bonus, and should be specialized.

I think corporations/guilds should move away from the generic "consumes resources in exchange for yield/commerce/happy/health" model that they basically are currently. Maybe for one or two corporations/guilds that makes sense, but not for most of them. This is sort of what might be more interesting:

Apothecaries Guild:
Friendly units in the city radius heal 4% / turn faster
Units built in the city automatically receive march promotion
Requires access to Glass

Blacksmiths Guild:
+1 to Forge
Melee Units built in the city automatically receive "Steel" promotion

• Steel promotion gives 1 extra first strike chance and 1 extra first strike

Requires access to Iron or Copper


I dunno. Does anyone have suggestions for the rest of the guilds/corporations? It's a lot of content. Feel free to suggest entirely new modifiers/effects.

Is there some sort of +% to an event happening if you have certain things?

For an example, let's take the even Wootz Steel: if you have Blacksmith's Guild, you should have a higher chance of this event happening.

I also remember there's an industrial (or modern era) event which gives you an option to either sell an oil product or use it for your army which gives you free military upkeep.

Tolni said:

I also remember there's an industrial (or modern era) event which gives you an option to either sell an oil product or use it for your army which gives you free military upkeep.

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I'm pretty sure it's modern, and I know that I've never once picked the 'Sell it on the Market' option because it was always utterly worthless. An amount which was only ever useful in the opening turns of the game

I think there's another thing to consider for Guilds/Corps: they sometimes give access to resources to civs that don't own such resources (equestrian guild for example, consumes wheat/corn to generate horses). This is a strategic effect which should be improved, IMO.

I agree. I also think it sounds a little odd that the Apothecaries' Guild wouldn't affect the health of the housing city at all - maybe it could grant a boost to hospitals and healers, rather than directly increasing the health bonus of the city.