Are corporations actually helping you win/win earlier?

Ok, so I've played around a bit with corporations.

I must say it is a bit tedius spreading them around the world. I really hate the 3-exec limit, especially when there is already a $$$ cost to spreading them (which makes them different than the free-cost-to-spread missionaries).

This post is not about the oil and aluminum corps. I see those as hit and miss. If you're hurting for one of these resources then build the corporation and spread it to the cities that need it. Fair enough. I wouldn't be spreading those corporations around the world anyways!

I'm more concerned about the other ones. So I put in a pile of effort to spread them around the world. To my cities and to AI cities to offset my own maintenance costs. What is the return on this time and cost investment?

Bottom line: Is it actually helping me win and, more importantly, win earlier than if I avoided them?

I see a clear advantage to avoiding them: State Property. 10% more production and enhanced workshops. This gives a direct, and significant, bonus to space race or domination victory attempts.

I know that the corporations give certain advantages. Hey, more food, what's not to like? But is it really making an impact on winning? If I'm putting all this time and effort into spreading corps around would it have made a difference if I didn't spread them at all?

What are your experiences so far?

I must say that at least the production boost for newly settled cities is a big boost if using Mining Inc (and to a degree Creative Constr.).

Interesting. But I am faced with this dilemma: Let's say the city is mostly grassland (say it starts covered in a lot of jungle). I want to make a production city.

Scenario 1: I go with a mix of farms and workshops since the workshops without SP can't feed themselves. I add Mining Inc.

Scenario 2: I go with pure workshops under SP.

How many resources would you have to control for Mining Inc. to outweigh the production provided by the extra workshops (possibly including the bonus from caste system) plus the 10% bonus from SP?

A pure grasslands city isn't really a great example for that. If you aren't running SP, why would you make that a production city? - its crying out to be a commerce city.

I think the benefits lie more towards commerce - which is what Free Market is all about anyway. You can run lots more towns with extra food from Sids Sushi allowing towns on grassland hills and plains. Your commerce cities get enough production from mining inc and towns to build their improvements quickly.

Fair enough, but the example is just hypothetical. I LOVE pure grassland state property workshop production cities. I once had a grassland city with 18 state property workshops. It was a production monster.

Sure, I wouldn't make it a production city if not using state property, but I use it as an example just for the sake of argument: What is the break even point in that situation where mining inc. is more productive than SP???

futurehermit said:

Sure, I wouldn't make it a production city if not using state property, but I use it as an example just for the sake of argument: What is the break even point in that situation where mining inc. is more productive than SP???

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My hunch is that it would depend upon how many Mining Inc. resources you have. For example, if you gave 20 or more resources, I think you'll get more production than state property. If for example, you have only about three, four or five resources for Mining Inc., then I think you would be better off with SP.

So I think it depends on how much surplus resources you have. That's why I think larger empires on huge maps benefit from the corporations. Larger empires = more resources.

futurehermit said:

Scenario 1: I go with a mix of farms and workshops since the workshops without SP can't feed themselves. I add Mining Inc.

Scenario 2: I go with pure workshops under SP.

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Scenario 1a: Put Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills in the city as well, and remove some of those farms in favor of workshops.

In my current game, Mining Inc is currently producing +21 and Cereal Mills is producing +10. I'll get that in every city I spread these corporations to. These bonuses not only help my production cities, but the rest of my cities as well. State Property only helps those cities with workshops.

The cool thing about those two corporations is: when the city isn't building something, you can use the food to support merchant specialists, and the hammers to build wealth. This helps offset the mainenance from the corporations, while still giving you access to their bonuses when you need them.

I really feel like corporations are making a difference in my games. I've got three huge production monsters, my Wallstreet city is running all seven merchant specialists while working all its tiles, and I can't wait until I get Cereal Mills in my Oxford city. It'll be able to run seven scientist specialists, as well as 18 towns, an iron mine, and a gem mine. (I cottaged over three sugar resources, FYI)

It makes me feel like sending my spy to change you're civics to SP or Merc just to mess up you're economy for 5 turns lmao...

*sigh* if only the AI knew how...

I haven't seen the AI forcefully change my civics before...

futurehermit said:

Fair enough, but the example is just hypothetical. I LOVE pure grassland state property workshop production cities. I once had a grassland city with 18 state property workshops. It was a production monster.

Sure, I wouldn't make it a production city if not using state property, but I use it as an example just for the sake of argument: What is the break even point in that situation where mining inc. is more productive than SP???

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Just Mining Inc, or can we add another corporation as well?

Well, assuming maximum grassland and no rivers, a city can support 14 workshops with six farms. That means a non-SP workshop city can have a total of 42 hammers.

Under SP, that same city could produce 60 hammers, +10% for a total of 66 hammers. So in order to break even, corporations have to produce 24. That's not too hard to do with just Mining, Inc alone. Toss in one of the food producers, and you can easily exceed that, especially with one that produces +18.

The big question is whether or not the distance-from-capital maintenance saving you get from State Property is exceeded by the wealth-producing potential that corporations under free-market give you. Under the current patch, that's debatable. With the new patch, or Solver's unofficial patch, I think free-market has a slight edge.

Of course, one big advantage of State Property is that you don't have to spread it to your cities to take advantage of it...

kniteowl said:

It makes me feel like sending my spy to change you're civics to SP or Merc just to mess up you're economy for 5 turns lmao...

*sigh* if only the AI knew how...

I haven't seen the AI forcefully change my civics before...

Click to expand...

Ow... that would hurt. Not too much, because if I lose access to the corporation then I don't have to pay for its maintenance. But at a critical time, like in a race for a wonder...

I think I'd be more upset about the anarchy. (Or does a forced civics change not produce anarchy?)

Thankfully, the AI seems to be rather ineffective in using the espionage system, except to try to poison my water supply.

I don't like them. I find they add too much expense and give me nothing useful. Nothing I can't do better with a little micro managing. I'll never use them again. I think corps are as horrible a waste as the great artist is now for trying to settle a rioting population.

So BTS added some good things, but broke two important things.

Too bad blake ain't around anymore, because the AI could definitely use the new tools a lot better.

I'd like to see a peaceful AI change the Warmonger AI civics during a war with each other, Like force the warmonger to Pacifism or out of Police state.

There's also SE vs CE civics, If I were running a SE and Mansa
next door were running a CE, I'd force him out of Free speech and Emacipation and see his GNP Fall, The reverse can be the same, imagine if I were to not use Caste system for 5 turns, and lose that next Great person which could have been use for something or if Representation were off...:S

I'd also like to see the AI destroy my courthouses more often.

So in order to break even, corporations have to produce 24.

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Doesn't mining inc give 1 hammer per surplus resource? That would be 24 resources, which is a fair amount on a standard-sized map.

I see the benefits of combining mining inc with one of the food corps. And I see the benefits of the food corps for allowing you to run specialists in addition to the workable tiles thus filling up oxford scientists, wall street merchants, IW engineers, GT artists, and the like. In that respect, the food corps are probably the best.

The question that still lingers for me however is how MUCH of an impact corporations make. I'm thinking concretely in terms of how many turns they can shave off a space race say... (I know that's hard to judge exactly, but those are the ways that I'm thinking about this...)

I think (and it seems to be a concensus) that corporations in there current iteration are a little toothless. I don't dispute they can be used effectively and some good players have shown ways in which this can be done but I think any feature of the game could be significantly nerfed and good players would still be able to take advantage of it. That's what they do, they're good players.

Currently if you've found a corp you have to think carefully about which cities to give it to and if the AI is spamming his/her corp in your cities then a civics change is a no-brainer.
If Corporations were boosted (lower inflation and maintenance) then it flips things a little as founding and spreading a corporation becomes a no brainer in your own cities although giving your oppenent an advantage for a bit of cash may not be so simple. Foriegn corporations coming in could still be advantageous but prudence is still necersary (as you strengthen your opponent as well as spending money yourself). There is no loss in strategy by making founding a corporation a no-brainer because it creates choices elsewhere. Do I give my rivals money and keep my corp benefits or go to State Property? should be the question, spreading corps in your own terriotory still has a lot of choice because of the way competition works. Having a corporation in every city should not necessarily be bad and certainly not if they are domestic.

The only problem with this is that the AI techs slowly leading to a player quickly grabbing corps being a great advantage. If there was a higher level of AI tech parity then founding corporations becomes a real race with a some unpredictabilty afforded by the Great Person system.

I hope the issues of AI teching and corp maintenance are addressed thus making economy civics choices alot more interesting.

Some of my comments on corps so far
1) On marathon speed the bonus are about 1/3 that of regular speed. So mining with 15 resources will give me maybe 5 hammers per city. Ditto for the food corps. Makes sense I guess considering the game speed.
2) I have no problems trading any corp (exception the oil and aluminum ones) to any sucker AI who has open borders and no state property. Let em have the hammers and food, I'll take the 15 gold per city and shatch them bankrupt themselves.
3) Right now I prefer the mining and sids suchi corp, added production and food per city without the more limited culture. Done correctly you should break even in paying for your cities, while getting the food/hammer bonus.
4) The issue is state prpperty and whether the +10% production and food for workshops outweigh a well spread and productive corp. I have quite figured it out yet but the corps spread the benefits evenly to every city (+5 hammers, +5 food) and is endependent of city location or existing structures. Yes a grassland workshop spammed with state property is a massive increase, but this does not help the costal city that is hammer deficient. Likewise the city with some tundra and limited food gets a massive boost from sids or cereals so you can use more of those mines and lumbermilled forrests. If you have too much food for certain cities you can always use it for specialists.

One final point (hit the return button too fast).

If you have a really large empire then I think state property's old benefit of no distance to the palace maintenance cost outweighs corps. But the 10% boost and workshop food alone do not warrent getting corps if you have the resources and GP.

futurehermit said:

Doesn't mining inc give 1 hammer per surplus resource? That would be 24 resources, which is a fair amount on a standard-sized map.

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That was why I asked if we could include one of the food corps. Corporations certainly help larger empires more than they do smaller ones, thanks to having more access to resources... but that's true of State Property as well. My current game, which is pulling in +21 is an anomaly: I've been extremely lucky popping resources from my mines. But I have noticed that I've been pulling in hammers in the high teens in the game.

I see the benefits of combining mining inc with one of the food corps. And I see the benefits of the food corps for allowing you to run specialists in addition to the workable tiles thus filling up oxford scientists, wall street merchants, IW engineers, GT artists, and the like. In that respect, the food corps are probably the best.

Click to expand...

Yep, the food corporations are definitely high on my list, followed closely by Mining Inc.

The question that still lingers for me however is how MUCH of an impact corporations make. I'm thinking concretely in terms of how many turns they can shave off a space race say... (I know that's hard to judge exactly, but those are the ways that I'm thinking about this...)

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It's hard to tell for sure, but things feel faster than I'm used to. Some examples:

Buildings build faster, so I can switch non-production cities back to producing weath a lot sooner. Most turns, I'm running a profit, with a huge CE empire, with 90-100% research slider. This is despite the high maintenance costs currently generated by corporations.

Building all the espionage buildings in a city doesn't feel like a chore.

My Heroic Epic city tends crank out even modern armor at 1/turn, and almost always maxes out its excess hammer pool. My West Point city cranks out these units at 2-3/turn.

I can support seven scientists in Oxford without having to farm over any of my towns, and I have started building towns in my Wall-Street city.

Once corporations come online, my wealth cities get their farms replaced by cottages, and start getting research buildings. On the flip side, my science cities start getting wealth buildings, and start running merchant specialists.

I was struggling with prince in Warlords... now I feel like I'll have to go up a level just to make it interesting. Time will tell, since I've gotten good starts on my first two prince-level games, and that's always worth a difficulty level.

madscientist said:

1) On marathon speed the bonus are about 1/3 that of regular speed. So mining with 15 resources will give me maybe 5 hammers per city. Ditto for the food corps. Makes sense I guess considering the game speed.

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Err... what? Corporation output is not affected by game speed, only map size. It wouldn't make any sense for it to be lower at marathon anyway, any more than it would make sense for all tiles to generate a third of their normal production.

If you have a really large empire then I think state property's old benefit of no distance to the palace maintenance cost outweighs corps. But the 10% boost and workshop food alone do not warrent getting corps if you have the resources and GP.

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With a properly spammed foreign corporation your entire civ's non-corporate maintenance costs are utterly trivial. You should also have far more gold than your have much use for by the late game anyway.

MrCynical said:

Err... what? Corporation output is not affected by game speed, only map size. It wouldn't make any sense for it to be lower at marathon anyway, any more than it would make sense for all tiles to generate a third of their normal production.

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On marathon speed I am getting something like 1 hammer for every 4 resources for mining, and 1 food per 4 resources.. I don't remeber the exact numbers but something to this nature. Everything take 3 times longer to build on marathon to match the game speed, makes sense to cut the corp bonus appropriately or else it's overpowered on marathon and doesn't fit into the game speed.


[QUOUE]
With a properly spammed foreign corporation your entire civ's non-corporate maintenance costs are utterly trivial. You should also have far more gold than your have much use for by the late game anyway.[/QUOTE]

OK, I won't argue this. I just wanted to point this out as another issue for deciding on state property. Also sometimes all the AIs are on state property anyway so spreading corps are not easy.

madscientist said:

On marathon speed I am getting something like 1 hammer for every 4 resources for mining, and 1 food per 4 resources.. I don't remeber the exact numbers but something to this nature. Everything take 3 times longer to build on marathon to match the game speed, makes sense to cut the corp bonus appropriately or else it's overpowered on marathon and doesn't fit into the game speed.

Click to expand...

You must have been playing on different sized maps - game speed as no impact on corporation output. Think about it. All the tiles generate the same amount of food/commerce/production at any game speed. It's everything else that's changed to fit round it - production and research costs are mostly three times higher.

Similarly, that already compensates for corporation output. If you cut corporation resources like that on marathon, they'd be three times weaker than on normal, since production costs already take into account the change in game speed. Fortunately the does not work as you suggest here, and game speed has no effect on corporation output.