I am REALLY confused by corporations...they cost WAY too much money..

[AccipiterQ]

OK so I founded mining Inc. so that I could boost my production...but now every city I spread it to gets the production bonus BUT it costs about 30 gold per turn per city to have it!! How is this beneficial at all? If I spread it to more than 15 or 20 cities I'll be at 0% science! Is there any way (other than going with state prop) to get rid of a corporation in a city? I'm so sorry I founded a corporation . Also is this an effective tool to bankrupt rival civs? It sure seems like it.

 

[snipafist]

Solvers unofficial patch makes corporations useful, if still a little expensive if you don't plan properly. The vanilla game is, as you've observed, completely insane with corporation upkeep costs and it is rarely true that you would actively desire to found a corporation, much less spread it amongst your cities.

 

[MrCynical]

Corporations have to be used with caution, as they cost a considerable amount in maintenance. The trick is usually to ensure you spread the corporation to two or three foreign cities for every one of yours that gets it. Also, don't spread the corporation to cities that don't need it. For Mining Inc, stick to your Ironworks city, Heroic epic city, etc. I've written an article on corporation costs which covers this in more depth, just check the link in my sig.

Solver's unofficial patch greatly reduces corporation costs, but frankly goes too far the other way, so they're overpowered. It's still not certain exactly what the official patch will do, though Firaxis have said they'll reduce corporation costs to some extent.

There's no real way to remove a corporation from a city short of running State property (or mercantilism for foreign corps). You can replace the corporation with a competing one, but you can't reduce the number of corps in a city.

 

[DomA]

Solver's patch has a temporary solution (apparently, the effect of inflation will be adusted officially at some point, meaning unless someone re-mod it, corporations will eventually be more expensive than they are with Solver's patch).

Corporations are supposed to be costly, though. If you sell the goods to your own cities, they have to pay for it. They're designed to bring you revenues by spreading them to suckers abroad, but with the downside that you are selling a service to your rivals as well. If you want to spread it to your own civ, you have to be prepared for it, with courthouses (a must in any city you spread a corp to), wall street and all finanical buildings in the city that holds the HQ, by calculating that the benefit of the service for you is greater than the cost (you really need that oil!), or by making sure that the revenues from foreign cities are enough to cover any losses at home.

Think Wal-Mart. Small cities "merchants" fear it like the plague. Wal-Mart can cripple long established downtown businesses in no time - they just can't compete with the prices and the marketing power of WM, to which the revenues of course go (it's a simplistic explanation... WM also employ locals, pay taxes and buy from local providers, but for the sake of e.g. this oversimplifcation is quite a bit how the BTS corps work).

Some corps have interesting benefits at home (Sid Sushi, when well used can be quite helpful with the right buildings - the population and cultural boost handed me a rivals's six borders cities in a game); the ressource-providing ones, for when you'd need oil/aluminum to begin with to have a chance of conquering the rivals that have them), but the others are essentially toys to wage commercial wars abroad with.

They are semi-broken right now. Toning down the inflation is one thing (as I understand, Solver just remove the effect altogether), but the AI also needs tweaks - it doesn't use the corporations properly right now. The spamming at home phenomenon is probably explainable from the fact that the AI is totally "unaware" of the bugged astronomical inflation and doesn't take the losses into account, but more problematic (for me), is how poorly it fails to use the corporations strategically (in most of my games the AI found some corps, it kept them at home only), which makes them a bit overpowered for the human player.

 

[Evil Twin]

It's a balance issue (aside from the inflation bug, of course).
You can offset it by spreading corporations in other civs to gain money.
That is unless they adopt State Property. And they ALWAYS do.

 

[narmox]

You're basically converting gold into production (or food/culture/resources), in addition to the points explained above.

The only way possible to do so, in the game! Worth it if youv'e got a strong economy (and plan things properly, as above, and spread it to other nations too, as explained above)

Patrix

 

[1889]

More of the proper resources can also mitigate costs. Spreading corporations to rivals is most useful (to you) when they don't have access to those resources.

I like to colonize all those little islands and control all the worlds’ fish tiles then spread Sid’s Sushi all over the place.

I think if you use them with care corporation costs are not a serious detriment.

 

[jimbob27]

You're basically converting gold into production (or food/culture/resources), in addition to the points explained above.

The only way possible to do so, in the game! Worth it if youv'e got a strong economy (and plan things properly, as above, and spread it to other nations too, as explained above)

Patrix

Except the gems one. That converts 20 into about 5 every turn.

 

[AccipiterQ]

It's a balance issue (aside from the inflation bug, of course).
You can offset it by spreading corporations in other civs to gain money.
That is unless they adopt State Property. And they ALWAYS do.

I noticed. All THIRTEEN of my rivals have it.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Maybe that's why I couldn't spread Sid's Sushi to my rival in my first BTS game. I was psyched to utilize corporations, but I couldn't spread it to anyone. Grrrr... state property...

 

[DomA]

And they ALWAYS do.

It's what they typically will do, but I found a "long term" strategy to counter it, but it has pitfalls : massive spamming of Sid's Sushi will force some of them to adopt environmentalism eventually, and when they do it's time to spam the less useful corps and cripple their economy. You need them not to run SP from the get go, or be able to force them to switch civics, though and giving such a boost to rivals can have severe downsides - it's really situational.

I used corporations in order to win one game so far, and I guess the situation is mostly possible in more peaceful games, when a few civs are going for space race/cultural victories and so are you. I really needed to slow down the research of two rivals in particular, and conquest wasn't really an option... so it was espionnage to force them into free market, a Sid Sushi spam forcing them to switch to Environmentalism eventually to cope with the health problems and be able to increase their production capacity for the space race (in itself, SS slowed their research a few turns), followed by spamming two "useless" corps (and thus, the two rivals were no longer a space race threat as long as I built the Internet, useless to me except to deprive them of it). Catherine even switched to a Domination campaign instead, and from there it was a matter of carrot and stick, gifting her something valuable (a space race tech or money, usually) to make peace with Jao before she could make him capitulate, as vassalizing him she would only have needed a few more cities, so I estimated, to win through Domination. Eventually, my spaceship was launched, and as Catherine was one tech away from finshing hers and didn't want war, I brought Jao to his knees.

Sid Sushi can also be a good weapon if you want to create border problems between two civs.

Another small advantage to corporations is the astounding deals you can get in trade - especially if you have a few extra strategic ressources to spare. It's amazing the amount of seafood/rice and cash an extra coal or aluminum ressource can fetch sometimes...

 

[mrt144]

as i've already said many times, in their incarnation now, they are more trouble than they are worth, the AI is stupid with them, and the ways to use them are flawed.

this can be relieved by changing the costs of them, which it seems like they will be doing. thank god.

 

[Dominico]

I had fun with corps in my game. DomA you sound like you REALLY had fun! As said here in an earlier post if you dont put too many around its fine, i only had 2 or 3 in my cities and then spread some more to the ai to get some cash in.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

It's a balance issue (aside from the inflation bug, of course).
You can offset it by spreading corporations in other civs to gain money.
That is unless they adopt State Property. And they ALWAYS do.

However, later on they are much more likely to adopt Environmentalism than before. That is because 1. they are smarter and can see the advantages now and 2. because the advantages of Environmentalism are drastically better in BtS.

 

[DutchJob]

Sid's Sushi is useful for upping your score when you are going for a space victory.

introduce them near the end for pop. growth in cities with markets, grocers and banks plus other buildings where you can utilize the coming specialists.

and always place your HQ at Wall Street.

you'll lose money but that is ok when you have researched the techs needed for space parts.

i tend NOT to spread Sid's S. to other civs so they will sell me their excess sea specials and rice for more pop.

the others i haven't really worked with.

ciao