Advanced Corporations Analysis

[Bibor]

Advanced Corporation Effect Analysis (BTS 3.17)

Last edit 12.01.2009.

1. Introduction

When talking about corporations, there are several things to take into account:
- civ size (how much resources you have direct access to)
- diplomatic relations (how much resources you can get your hands on)
- map size and map type
and most importantly:
- what victory type are you going after?
- what types of cities need boosting and in what fashion?

It's not easy to say "these corporations are the best", because each corporation serves it's purpose.

2. The data and the formula

To prepare this guide I took average values from game I played with Japanese (no special buildings or abilities affecting corps).
Large fractal map, Monarch Difficulty, inflation ratio is 71% at Assembly Line, average city size is 18. I'll take decentralization as civic type just to make it average.

All this is important because of the Corporation branch cost calculation formula, as presented in OTAKUjbski's post Corporate Maintenance Explained, which is:
-1 * ( BaseHeadquarterCommerce + Resources * mapSize ) * PopulationModifier * Difficulty * CivicsModifier / InflationModifier

thus,

-1 * (4 + ResourceNumber * 0,75) * ((18+17)/18) * 1,2 * 1 / (71/100+1)
and divide by 2 for a standard Courthouse,
and add 12 for a corporate HQ in a city with all commerce modifiers and Wall street (add because the cost is displayed in negative), but reduce it by the inflation rate (it's gold doh), so I'd say the real bonus from the from the HQ is around 7 in this case. And 7 effective from Corporation HQ is what I used to determine how much a branch *really* costs in upkeep.

3. Analysis by Corporation

I added up all the resources available on the map. This presumes you can get your hands on 75% of total resources for the corporations(s) you want to run. Which is realistic. You can always adjust it to the % of resouces you have *really* available

And here are the numbers of maximum available resources (rounded down):

Mining Inc.
effect: +0,75 hammers per resource
Total 55 resources (Iron 21, Copper 10, Gold 10, Coal 12, Silver 2)
Available 41 resources for +30 and -16 in branch cost

Creative Constructions
effect: 0,37 hammers per resource, 2,25 culture per resource
total 60 resources (Iron 21, Stone 10, Marble 8, Copper 10, Aluminum 11)
Available 45 resources for +16 and +101 and -12 in branch cost

Civilized Jewelers
effect: 0,75 gold per resource and 3 culture per resource
total 20 resources (Diamonds 8, Gold 10, Silver 2)
Available 15 resources for 11.25 and 60 and -1 in branch cost

Aluminum Co.
effect: +2,25 science per resource, grants access to Aluminum
total 12 resources (Coal 12)
Available 9 resources for 20,25 and +1.5 benefit from branch

Cereal Mills
effect: 0,56 food per resource
total 25 resources (wheat 5, corn 12, rice 8)
Available 18 resources for 10 and -1.95 in branch cost

Sid's Sushi
effect: 0,37 food per resource and 1,5 culture per resource
total 43 resources (Clam 12, Crab 4, Fish 19, Rice 8)
Available 32 resources for 11.84 48 and -7.32 in branch cost

Standard Ethanol
effect 1.50 science per resource and grants access to Oil
total 40 resources (Sugar 20, Rice 8, corn 12)
Available 30 resources for 45 and -6.5 in branch cost

Not used resources:
Uranium 12, Oil 19

Continued.

 

[Bibor]

3. Building Modifiers

Hammer multipliers
Forge +25%, Factory + 25%, Power Plant +50%, (Iron Works presumably with both Iron and Coal for +100%)

Gold multipliers
Grocer +25%, Market +25%, Bank +50%, (Wall Street +100%)

Science Multipliers
Library +25%, Observatory +25%, University +25%, Research Institute +25%, (Oxford University +100%)

Culture Multipliers (standard setup for Cultural Victory)
Three Cathedrals +150%, one entertainment World Wonder +50%, Broadcast Tower +50%, (National Epic +100%)

4. The real effect of Corporations

Mining Inc.
in a production city +60 for 16 gold. Ratio 3.75 : 1
in an Iron Works city +120 for 16 gold. Ratio 7.5 : 1

Creative Constructions
1. in a production city with cultural struggle (just broadcast tower) +32 and +150 for 12 gold. Ratio 2.6 : 12.5 : 1
2. in a city going for culture win with Hollywood, 3 cathedrals, Broadcast Tower and in Free Speech: same hammers but +505 for 16 gold. Ratio 2.6 : 31 : 1
3. the above city but with National Epic +606 for 16 gold. Ratio 37 : 1

Civilized Jewelers
1. in a typical commerce farm city with a culture struggle (just broadcast tower) + 22.5 (although half of it is eaten by Inflation) and +90 for 1 gold. Pure gain of 90 culture for no cost.
2. A Wall Street city w/BCT same culture but +33.75
3. in a city going for culture win with Hollywood, 3 cathedrals, Broadcast Tower and in Free Speech: +22.5 (see above) and +300 for no cost.

Aluminum Co.
1. in a typical science city +40.5 and +1 or so . Pure gain.
2. in the Super Science City +60.75 and +1 or so . Pure gain.

Standard Ethanol
1. in a typical science city +90 for 6.5 . Ratio 14 : 1
2. in the Super Science City +135 for 6.5 Ratio 20 : 1

Sid's Sushi
1. In a normal city (broadcast tower only) 12 and +72 for 7.32 gold. Ratio 1.6 : 10 : 1, but in reality much more due to +6 extra population.
If we take the above representation scientists example it's +72 +72 for 7.32 gold or 10 : 10 : 1. The Sushi is really powerful

Cereal Mills
10 for 2 . Ratio is 2:1, but the gain is much more due to worked tiles and/or specialists[/B]. Can feed 5 more population.
5 scientists under representation would generate 60 in a science city, so the ratio is more like 30 : 1. Who says Cereal Mills is bad?

And remember, a corporation is just one Great Person away...

 

[fed1943]

Good work. About "corporations cost gold to maintain" I would say food corporations don't...usually,almost,pay themselves.
Wall Street HQ makes +4G into +12G. Courthouse in target city makes -24G
into -12G. So, a balance gold wise.
Your work will show how many resources/food are given with said -24G.
And even if the loss is greater than 24G, 2F=1 merchant=3/4,5/6 G.
Further food corps do not collide with the others.
Best regards,

 

[obsolete]

I always wondered why Sushi comes with the extra culture, and the Cereals doesn't.

 

[MrCynical]

Trying to come up with a direct comparison of the corporations is certainly worth the effort, though I have a few nitpicks with the calculations as they currently stand.

+75% for a typical production city
Forge +25% and Factory + 50% (with power)

+100% for a typical commerce city
Grocer +25%, Market +25%, Bank +25%

+75% for a science city without the late Research Institute
Library +25%, Observatory +25%, Academy +25%

A production city with forge, factory and power plant gives +100% hammers, not 75% (a factory with power plant gives 75% and the forge is another 25%). On the commerce (strictly speaking gold) city you've got the total correct, but you've mislabelled the bank as 25% instead of 50%. For the science city you're thinking of the university, not the academy to give 75% total. The Academy is the great scientist produced building which gives 50% on top of that, but of course is unlikely to be in many cities.

Corporations cost to maintain however. The average price depends on it's benefits and city size (I'm not sure about the proper formula behind it). In the game I counted resources from i had 35 excess ores for Mining inc. and it cost on average 17 gold. I will presume the cost for the maximum rates would be around 20 gold. With the corporative HQ bonus (12 gold in Wall Street city) it's 8 gold.

OTAKUjbski has written an excellent article: Corporation Maintenance Explained which outlines how maintenance works. The key points for this calculation are firstly that maintenance is dependent on number of resources (and hence will be a lot higher for say Mining Inc with 55 resources in the above example than for Aluminium Co with 12. Secondly that while corporation maintenance is adjusted so that it stays constant as inflation increases, the value show in the city screen is neither the full cost or consistent throughout the game. I can tell you from experience that Mining Inc with 55 resources is going to cost you a LOT more than 8gpt maintenance. For instance, a quick check in one of my games shows a city with 20 hammers from Mining Inc (26 resources) has a maintenance of 26gpt, or 14gpt with the HQ gold taken into account. That’s under the most optimal conditions: courthouse, free market and even with the inflation reducing random event.

If I have time I'll do the number crunching for the above numbers of resources under fairly standard conditions to add to the comparison.

If the above is true, then the benefits would be the following (converting science and gold to commerce at 1:1 ratio):

Mining Inc. adds ((71-8)/10,5)) for 6 best mine tiles to a city.
Creative Constructions adds ((38-8)/10,5) for 2,85 best mine tiles.
Civilized Jewelers adds ((30-8)/20) for 1,1 best town tiles.
Aluminum Co. adds ((47-8)/20) 1,95 best towns tiles.
Cereal Mills adds 3 best farm tiles.
Sid's Sushi adds 3 best farm tiles.
Standard Ethanol adds ((105-8)/20) for 4,85 best town tiles.

Strictly speaking with the building sets you've specified gold and science don't have the same value (gold's got 100% modifiers, science is only on 75%). Overall I would say 1:1 is a reasonable approximation, but your calculations aren't going to be consistent if you assume that and have the modifiers as specified.

The other snag is the way you're treating maintenance. You've used an unusual approach of looking at best possible tiles for comparing the value (amount of "stuff") for corporations generating hammers, food, gold/science/commerce. Looking at your calculations it works out about 1 food to 2 hammers to 4 commerce (since you're dividing by 5 for farms, 10.5 for mines and 20 for towns).

The relative values of food, hammers and commerce are of course debatable. I generally look at the specialists as the best way of converting them. You could certainly justify 1 food = 2 hammers based on engineers. 2 food gives 2 hammers from one engineer which will be doubled to 4 by full modifiers.

Commerce I think you're slightly overvaluing - certainly for the corporation phase of the game. A specialist can generate 6 gold/science under Representation, which will go to 12 with full modifiers. That would imply 1 food equals 6 commerce. That would fit neatly with hammers, since it would imply 1 hammer = 3 gold, which matches the rush buy rate. Now, that's probably an over estimation. Rush buying will mean you won't stick with Representation 100% of the time. The Kremlin can cut down the ratio to 1 hammer for 2.33 gold. Unhealthiness can muck things up in large cities. As a rough rule of thumb in the late game, I generally reckon 1 food = 2 hammers = 5 gold/science/commerce, assuming all tiles are already being worked (if not, food may be more valuable).

Anyway, I've got rather off the subject. My original point was that you've attempted to compare food to hammers to commerce, and performed your calculations assuming a 1 to 2 to 4 ratio. However you've just subtracted the maintenance value (which is gold) from the total f/h/c output of the corporation, so you're assuming a 1 to 1 to 1 ratio there.

E.g. for Civ Jewellers you're generating gold and paying maintenance, so the calculation is sound. (30 - 8)/ 20 = 1.1 is fine as all values are gold.

Mining Inc on the other hand isn't. You've taken it as (71-8)/10.5, subtracting gold directly from hammers. Using your 1:2:4 ratio this means you're treating the maintenance cost as twice as high as for Civ Jewellers. It should be ((71-(8/2))/10.5 = 6.38 "stuff", not 6 "stuff". Indeed if you fix the modifier to 100% as mentioned earlier it would work out as (82-4)/10.5 = 7.43 "stuff".

It may not seem a huge error, but when you take into account the real maintenance costs of a corporation with this kind of number of resources, it works out as very important. Basically it overestimates the value of the science/gold corporations and underestimates the hammer corporations (you seem to have ignored the maintenance in the food corporation lines).

Anyway, one point which does surprise me from the calculations is how far ahead of the pack Mining Inc is (especially when you factor in the above corrections). Guess it was a good move to make that one clash with so many of the other corporations. Civ Jewellers and Aluminium Co I expected to be quite weak, though if you take maintenance into account I don’t think Aluminium Co is quite as bad as your numbers suggest.

Creative Constructions has come out better than I expected (not sure why you say it’s better than Sushi/Cereals when both those are on 3 by your calculations vs. 2.85 for CC. If you take into account the 100% modifier and gold/hammer ratio, it works out at 3.81 “stuff” so that would be a valid conclusion from your numbers). The high number of resources will harm it on the maintenance side. It does have the obvious problem that it clashes with the runaway leader Mining Inc, which the food corps don’t.

Standard Ethanol has also come out higher than I expected. I’ve persistently written off this corporation due to its inflexible nature relative to the food corporations it clashes with. When you take maintenance into account this is going to come off a lot worse. A tentative maintenance calculation suggests a cost of 22gpt allowing for the HQ, and assuming you can run free market and are only on Noble level. Plug that into your calculation and you’re down to (105-22)/20 = 4.15 “stuff”. I still think this is a little high - possible issues are that this map has a LOT of sugar on it, and that I’m assuming very favourable conditions on the maintenance front.

Anyway, I think this is well worth doing. If the maintenance figures are plugged in for all of them and a quick check on how consistent the resource distribution is between maps is carried out it might produce some interesting results.

I always wondered why Sushi comes with the extra culture, and the Cereals doesn't.

Well, remember that Sushi is going to cost more in maintenance for the same amount of food since it requires more resources. I reckon the culture was added as a bit of a counterbalancing effect, though Sushi has other arguments for it on most maps relative to Cereals.

 

[Bibor]

Guys, thank you all for the comments, I will re-edit my initial post to be consistent with more precise calculations (and errors). Tomorrow

 

[slobberinbear]

I appreciate your efforts in the calculations. Based on the games I've played, I am not surprised at Mining, Inc.'s raw production power. With a big empire and/or great trading relationships, it can add 50-100% to a city's hammer output, and with careful placement of the corporate HQ (Holy Wall Street city), the gold cost is manageable.

RE: the food corporations, I never found an abundance of grains to justify Cereal Mills, unlike the relative cornucopia of seafood for Sid's Sushi. I'm not saying it's useless, it just didn't seem worth the effort. On most maps I am lucky to get one of each grain type, let alone multiples.

RE: Creative Constructions / Civilized Jewelers, I probably need to use them more to test 'em. They certainly look powerful for a Culture win (especially CC), but I can't help but wonder if it's too late in the day for most Cultural games by the time you are able to actually found the corporation.

 

[Yuufo]

Very interesting article!

What struck me at the beginning was that :
Iron 21, Copper 10, Gold 10, Coal 12, Silver 2

I always thought Iron and Copper were on a rough 1:1 ratio ; you show that in your game, it is likely more a 2:1 ratio. Does anyone know if this is a general rule, or rather a random result?

 

[Bibor]

There, I heavily re-edited my post to include more cohesive calculations on gains and expenses. I also dropped the "comparison to tile" idea and used a more realistic "comparison to gold", since corporations - after all - cost money.

My conclusion so far is that every corporation actually rocks. It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I wouldn't ditch Cereal's just yet. If you remove the culture effect, it has a far far better "bang for buck" than Sid's Sushi. The problem is... more often than not, there isn't enough bang to work with.

Very interesting article!

What struck me at the beginning was that :
Iron 21, Copper 10, Gold 10, Coal 12, Silver 2

I always thought Iron and Copper were on a rough 1:1 ratio ; you show that in your game, it is likely more a 2:1 ratio. Does anyone know if this is a general rule, or rather a random result?

I don't know. I took a very generic map, but it's late game. Obviously some things just popped out of nowhere. A silver, a few gold and a few iron mines just appeared on worked mines during the course of game. You might be right, but then again, it may be copper that's popping up. So I guess the total number of resources is more or less correct, since the resources that are being used by Mining Inc. are the most common to appear on map (+ gems).

 

[Bibor]

I appreciate your efforts in the calculations. Based on the games I've played, I am not surprised at Mining, Inc.'s raw production power. With a big empire and/or great trading relationships, it can add 50-100% to a city's hammer output, and with careful placement of the corporate HQ (Holy Wall Street city), the gold cost is manageable.

Agreed. My average cities produce around 60 hammers per turn. Adding Mining Inc. usually doubles that amount. As long as the Corp. HQ is in the Wall Street City, it doesn't need any other stuff except gold multipliers. Obviously it would be fantastic if it's also a Holy city for one or more religions, but I measure corporate branch prices by the effect they have on the city they are in, not the total amount of money I lost spreading the Corp. If I get 60 hammers for 12 gold, I'm happy to give away that 12 gold. After all, Hammers, Beakers and Food are immune to inflation, so I find it better to "waste" my money on corporations

the food corporations, I never found an abundance of grains to justify Cereal Mills, unlike the relative cornucopia of seafood for Sid's Sushi. I'm not saying it's useless, it just didn't seem worth the effort. On most maps I am lucky to get one of each grain type, let alone multiples.

Hm. Land food isn't *that* rare. But I think the two corps should be treated differently. Cereal Mills is more like a "lite" version of Sid's. Puts in less population but costs WAY LESS than Sid's. After all, if not running Environmentalism, health can become a problem.
It may not be so significant on small/medium maps, but if you have 70 cities, the cost difference between Sid's and Cereals *might* tip into Cereal's favor.

RE: Creative Constructions / Civilized Jewelers, I probably need to use them more to test 'em. They certainly look powerful for a Culture win (especially CC), but I can't help but wonder if it's too late in the day for most Cultural games by the time you are able to actually found the corporation.

My SSC in the game I took as a sample generates 266 per turn (marathon, building "science"). The extra +135 from Standard Ethanol would be ... a bit of a boost

 

[Bibor]

I always wondered why Sushi comes with the extra culture, and the Cereals doesn't.

I think the bang per buck ratio says it all

 

[vanatteveldt]

@obsolete "I always wondered why Sushi comes with the extra culture, and the Cereals doesn't."

Sushi is cool, dontcha know?

@CYBA
great article, thanks for the effort! Now if I can only find the patience to finish a game again...

 

[Hereditary Rule]

Cereal Mills gets a bad rap but I had one game where it was clearly preferred to Sushi. I didn't need the culture of sushi and I didn't control much coast. Also, via trades, I could get more food via grain trades than seafood trades. I founded Cereal Mills and enjoyed 1-2 extra food per city over what sushi would have given me. Usually Sushi is king of food but not always.

 

[UWHabs]

I think the bang per buck ratio says it all

Nonono, it's because people who eat sushi are cultured people, whereas people who eat cereal don't quite get the same reputation...

 

[CrusaderKevin]

@obsolete "I always wondered why Sushi comes with the extra culture, and the Cereals doesn't."

Sushi is cool, dontcha know?

@CYBA
great article, thanks for the effort! Now if I can only find the patience to finish a game again...

I like cereal better than raw fish: saves better on campaigns!

 

[Nials]

Excellent article