Are corporations actually helping you win/win earlier?

[Random Oracle]

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.

Sid's Sushi produces culture, doesn't it?

 

[madscientist]

Actually you are correct, sids give culture also. I tend to build it for the food though.

 

[madscientist]

OK, I am going to reread and review my games because I am missing something or not remembering something correctly, but my game is on the home computer so it will have to wait. Great writeup on how corps work McCynical. I just seam to remember reading about the less production/food output for marathon and epic speeds and I do not get as much return as others are getting.

 

[madscientist]

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.

I apologize and stand corrected. I cannot find anything about corp benefits being speed dependant. I must have misread something somewhere.

 

[Dnomal]

My experiences with corporations are simple:

Too late

Corporations is a very late tech and by that time my cost for a Great Person is very high, so it could be another 50-100 turns until I get a GP and found the corporation HQ.

Plus corporations is on the way to Assembly Line, which is usually when I start upgrading my military and "liberating" enemy cities, leaving little room for the 200 gold cost for spreading (which means you have to wait 40 turns to break even on that original cost, unless the AI spreads it for you; which is rare.)

 

[madscientist]

My experiences with corporations are simple:

Too late

Corporations is a very late tech and by that time my cost for a Great Person is very high, so it could be another 50-100 turns until I get a GP and found the corporation HQ.

Plus corporations is on the way to Assembly Line, which is usually when I start upgrading my military and "liberating" enemy cities, leaving little room for the 200 gold cost for spreading (which means you have to wait 40 turns to break even on that original cost, unless the AI spreads it for you; which is rare.)

Mining corp comes with railroad, which you need before you get combustion to fule your tanks and plains. Sids comes with refridgeration which is one short tech off of electricity which is also need for tanks. Cereals comes with medicine (I think) which you need to build hospitals to minimize polution from factories. Not sure of the others. So it doesn't really come late.

I think yur other 2 issues are valid, you do need to save up the appropriate GP (who really likes holding a GE or GM for centuries), and it makes no sense from an economic point to spread the corp to a city you will take over anyway. Corps seam to break even in your own cities (or close to it) and the profit is foreign cities.

 

[madscientist]

One other point, you can spam the corps to vassals.

 

[LlamaCat]

My sense on corporations based on my reading around here and playing with the game is that they are potentially--and I stress potentially--very powerful if in the hands of an experienced high-level player who finds himself bogged down in the late game where winning is not a foregone conclusion. They just require a lot of thought and careful planning and a very good understanding of how resources and commerce work.

Otherwise I think they come too late in the game and State Property just simplifies things for most of us. Winning the game seems to be just as feasible as ever without corporations. They are just another option but not entirely essential. Kind of like religions in that regard.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

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.

QFT. I got sick of people saying "There would be no strategy if you can mindlessly spam corporations!"
There can still be interesting choices because a) getting to corporations is a race, b) each one is different, c) different civics give different choices, etc.

Of course it can be overpowered, but being an unqualified advatage doesn't suck out all strategy.

 

[illram]

They seem to come too late in the game, and with too much cost and time to really prove all that useful. State Property FTW!

 

[InvisibleStalke]

They can be decisive - effectively they allow you to super specialize your cities.

Eg latest game I was roughly tech equal but had lots of allies and thought a diplo win was viable. Beelined mass media. Unfortunately the biggest AI is Alex who is my awesome friend of many battles and religious ally. He has 20% of the worlds pop to my 19% and would split the confucian vote.

But what if I built UN in a city right next to Victoria (cash rushed) and either gifted it to her (or even better left the city defenseless for her to take). Then the confucians and Alex would all vote for me.

Problem is it would be a run off between her and Alex.

Enter Sids Sushi. Spam this into as many of my cities as I can. Lots of food to add population in a hurry. I could do this a little with farms, but lots of my cities have no fresh water and are working sea tiles. Now I can grow rapidly for a sprint towards victory.

So this meets your criteria - a diplo win acheived directly because of corporations, but 100s of years earlier than a space win would be achieved.

 

[madscientist]

Right now Sid's Suchi lok sto have helped my game dramatically.

1) I can max out specialists in my 4 core cities.
2) I can use culture in my one distant city that has oil but is under culture pressure froma creative leader.
3) I am building a new city on the border of a friendly AI to spam Suchi there and culturally steel the only aluminum on the continent.

So is the corp helping me win faster, Probably. I can run ALOT more speciasts in my core cities, most likely space ship parts can have 6 engineers per city. I can teh faster because of the free scientists from Sid's food.

I have been able to avoid an unwanted was with a friendly AI and a Please AI because I could use culture to keep or get the resource I need.

Right now there is no financial benefit because I do not wall stret built yet, but when I do (waiting for bank 8 to be built) I should be swimming in cash (the Corp headquarters also has 2 shrines).

 

[madscientist]

Sorry about all the typos in the previous post, I reaaly need to proof read myself more.

Another point about the corps, is that it really helps to found the late happiness wonders, and the Cristo redentor. I have found you can 2 seasfood that the AI cannot use and gold for each happiness tech. My guess is the AI does not realize how much they are helping you and looking only to unload so uneeded resources. The Cristo is great for swapping civics as needed, especially US/Rep and Free Market/Environ every turn.

It's an easy beeline, at least for Sid's, Physices/Electricity/Refridgeration/Radio/Mass Media although I do no recall if you need Biology for Refridgeration.

 

[Random Oracle]

Sid's Sushi comes with Medicine, actually.

 

[madscientist]

YEs, you are correct. I made that mistake in my recent game and teched refridgeration first. Sometimes I have a mental block, so sids is easier than cereal mills, one less tech.

The tree would be Scientific method/biology/medicine and for ceareal mills Physics/Electricity/refridgeration.

It's these tings that keep me as an average player rather than a good player.

 

[Agent Cooper]

Well, I've played 3 BTS games sofar using new leaders (Boudica, Lincoln, Suleiman) but I haven't really used corps in the most optimal way yet. My understanding of how they work, benefits and drawbacks is getting better, but was pretty much non-existent with my Boudica game.

One thing is pretty obvious to me though: corps can definatly secure you an earlier win than pre-BTS, but you really need to know how to integrate them in your overall strategy (and I'm not quite there yet ).

The food corps are definatly the best. You can use the food to feed specialist and those specialists can produce beakers, commerce or hammers - flexibility. The mining corp gives you hammers, which are not so easily 'transferable' to beakers or commerce, depending on the cities.

Another thing I consider a big thing in BTS and easily as important as corps: the Cristo and Mausolleum wonders - they are truly gamebreaking in the hands of a capable player/AI. Try attack an AI with the Mausolleum in one of his cities...

 

[madscientist]

I agree with Cristo. The Masoleum extends the golden age. The statue of Zues gives 100% war weariness. Zues is pretty awesome but has not stopped me from being harrassed by the AI on Monarch as it did on Prince.

 

[Agent Cooper]

I agree with Cristo. The Masoleum extends the golden age. The statue of Zues gives 100% war weariness. Zues is pretty awesome but has not stopped me from being harrassed by the AI on Monarch as it did on Prince.

Oops - got them confused.

I meant the Statue Of Zeus. I haven't tried to build the Mausoleum yet, since I usually don't go beyond the first GA in my games, but that's going to change I suspect, since the aspects of GA's with BTS has changed to the better.

Right now, Zeus is probably no.1 on the list of Wonders you wanna build yourself, just to keep it away from the AI players.

 

[madscientist]

The masuleum is awesome too. My first Prince win with Agustus I ended up with four golden ages (1 GP, Taj, 2 GP, 3 GP) which was 96 turns are a golden age!!! I play marathon speed so it amounts to about 10-15% of the game as opposed to almost 25% a normal game speed.

Golden ages are much imporved but still not in relation to game speed.

 

[Random Oracle]

Right now, Zeus is probably no.1 on the list of Wonders you wanna build yourself, just to keep it away from the AI players.

Of course, you could just attack the city that has Zeus first or at least make it a priority. Alternatively, Police State + Mount Rushmore + jails means that 100% of 0 is still just 0. Admittedly, neither is possible in every situation.