BOTM 100 Final Spoiler - Game Submitted or Abandoned

[Pangaea]

Oh, and I agree that SP is probably underestimated. Perhaps because Sushi and Mining gives you so much extra food and hammers, that it's a big "wow" factor in each game. Such a game changer.

But the great benefit to SP is that you can pretty much research at 100% for the entire mid and late game, especially if you build up some gold prior to Oxford. That is simply impossible with a Corporations approach, due to massive maintenance costs, and the cost of spreading the corporations to each city, and on top of that, reduced commerce because you often need to whip, even cold-whip (where Kremlin is fantastic) to spread the corps faster.

Have tried SP on a Rainforest map ages ago (a G-Minor or Major), and it was really good there, of course helped by a great amount of rivers once you remove all the jungle. Expensive in worker turns, but the land underneath is great. Usually lots of food too.

 

[Seraiel]

Well done Pollina .

I also thought, that the costs of spreading the Corporations are simply too high. With having 60 cities and spreading 2 Corporations for 70g / city each, I almost payed 10k of for the spread only. What's worse are the costs in , spreading 2 Corporations towards 60 cities costs 12.000 (more with cold-whip) . Then the 2 GPs that one needs which are about 2500 for the TM and another 2500 or for the GM or GS one would create instead of the GE. Together that's over 25.000 of something, believe it or not, but that's as much as a free Factory + Coal Plant in every city, and that without being ORG! With ORG, 25k are a Forge, a Factory and a Powerplant, or a different example, 12000 would have been 12000 via building Research, 14k additional would have been 50T of 100% research taking my own game as a reference in which I had 30 cities 50T before the end. The maintenance would have been lower aswell so I think I can almost completely safely assume, that State Property allows complete 100% research from reaching it until the end of the game and 12000 is complete Fusion!
The costs of Corporations are often overlooked, but I'm still not sure that State Property is the better choice. In this game it may have been because the colonial maintenance was really horrendous and when wanting to get close towards the domination-limit, there was no choice but to conquer more territory than one Forbidden Palace could cover, but still, I made some really major misdecisions in my game and had extraordinary bad luck in my wars. I assumed that a 14xx date would have been possible without that bad luck and especially without the major misdecisions, and if Pollina didn't make the such, then her date means that Corporations are about equal than State Property is and that they're simply different. What I was convinced of before I started going the Corps route in every game was, that State Property can be a very good choice if the game is shorter than 'til the end of the tech-tree. Zara being ORG however is benefitting Corporations because of the cheaper Courthouses, and the Spaceraces of kovacsflo in the HoF are uncommonly competetive, given that they're played with completely peaceful REX, State Property and Cottage-spam, it may be that State Property really is simply overlooked and that the games are still too short for Corporations to pay off.

Anyhow, my very big congratiulations to Pollina and her 1505 AD Space victory!!! In the HoF, this game would have gotten a #1 slot (best Prince / Standard / Normal is 1535 AD) and that says something!

Only hope left is the Gold Medal again then, though I actually don't need one anymore . Seems like getting fastest Space is becoming more difficult than I expected at first. This does has a positive side for me though, like this I may play another of my favourite type of games .
My score in this game btw. was:

Spoiler :

392k.

 

[Pollina]

@Seraiel

You’re thinking in terms of beakers cost. A wise old man (LowtherCastle) likes to point out that the best metric when aiming for fastest finish is turns saved or wasted. Here is how I would analyze whether or not corps were worth the investment in your game:


First, let’s look at the bpt required for 1 tech/turn in the endgame. As a rule of thumb, I use the cost of Satellites: ~8500 beakers this game. For 1 tech/turn an average beaker output of 8500 bpt (after applying the 1.2 prereq modifier) is needed during the endgame for getting the last 15 techs in 15 turns. (That’s ~7000 bpt without the modifier.) Even with a ridiculous high research rate, you won’t finish those 15 techs faster than in 15 turns, unless you fully bulb Lasers or Fission.

Then let’s look at your empire’s potential beaker output during the endgame under SP. That’s hard for me to estimate, but you settled more cities than I, so I would assume around 6000 bpt (without modifier).

Using these numbers, you would need 17 or 18 turns for the last 15 techs, so you lose 2-3 turns there. Add another turn you may lose while building SS parts, as that is a bit more difficult while running SP. So 3-4 turns lost during the endgame while running SP. (Or 3-4 turns saved with corps)

You say you spent 25k beakers on corp spread. I would argue you spent more due to building some infrastructure and wonders that are not needed when going for SP (banks, Wall Street, Forbidden Palace, Versailles, courthouses, (Kremlin), etc.). Then there’s also the higher maintenance before the benefits of corps kick in and a delay of key techs like Assembly Line, Electricity and Superconductors. But the exact number in beakers is not important. The more pertinent question is what your turns per tech ratio around the time of corp spread (roughly between 25th and 16th last tech) was and what it would have been while running SP (somewhere between 1.5 and 2 in my game). And consequently, how many turns did you sacrifice (invest) during that time to save 3-4 turns during the endgame? (Judging from other players’ HOF and BOTM logs the answer is typically in the 7-12 turns range on normal speed. Correct me if I’m way off here.)

So unless you could sustain at least a 2 turns/tech rate while spreading corps, I would think that they were a mistake in this game when aiming for fastest finish.

----------

Here is a nice example to illustrate the difference between both strategies, since you mentioned that HOF record:

Spoiler :

GPT:

Production:

Food:

The graphs are from the top 3 games on standard/normal/prince, all played with the same settings (HOF Challenge 10-2). Two of them use a SP strategy (Communism ~800 AD), the other one is a CM/Mining game. (Disclaimer: This was a land based map (Lakes), so the difference between the strategies is probably a lot bigger than what it would be on water maps. Cereal Mills on a land based map is obviously worse than Sushi on a water map.)

I'm not saying that SP is always better. On marathon and on epic speed and higher levels, corps are a no brainer... Unless you are playing on one of the 3 best map scripts for SP: Inland Sea, Great Plains, Rainforest.

 

[Seraiel]

@ Pollina:

I'll answer towards your post tomorrow . I read it instantly and found it enormously nice and informative so many thx, it really enriches the thread .

I had a question though and that was / is why you think that Corporations are a no-brainer on higher difficulties, what's so different about those difficulties? A Space Race on the lower difficulties is easier and can be won in less time according to the HoF, but 1. it's not that much of a difference, I have a 1500 AD Space Race on Deity / Tiny / Normal and 2. don't the maintenance-costs of Deity also scale the Corporations to become a lot more expensive? Also, the larger a map the more difficult it is to get a decent number of Corporation-resources so I'd at least think that the larger the map the better State Property becomes.

I'll look up how long I sat at 0% or how long I needed to reduce my research because of the Corps. I don't think that it was that much actually, I believe I really lost my game towards you because of the misdecisions which I made like to war against Justinian of whose cities I couldn't make any benefit but that costed me resources + the colony-trap that I fell into and that I realized when I had about 10 cities on the Stalin / Sury continent already + too early Oxford instead of REXing to more cities and letting the capital develop Villages before building such a costly National Wonder (+ 20 HA losses for 5 cities on Prince is really a lot and it caused my misdecision to draft / build 60 Oromos, but that's a minor point, the misdecision was to decide to war against Justinian because of not realizing that the round was simply too short for conquering 2 continents) . The costs for Corporations really weren't that much higher, it basically was 1 GE which I needed to generate for the WS + yes, the banks, but I'd have built Courthouses with Zara in any case because of ORG and I didn't need the Kremlin because I went Mining first and ran Caste from very early onwards. I got 22 or 23 GPs in that game . My research was Mining -> AL -> Sushi -> Electricity -> Superconductors btw. . Medicine was / is extra cost with running Corps but then I skipped Communism 'til very late again. Needing to research Medicine + the 3 GPs that are needed are 3-4T lost at minimum.

 

[Pollina]

I had a question though and that was / is why you think that Corporations are a no-brainer on higher difficulties, what's so different about those difficulties? A Space Race on the lower difficulties is easier and can be won in less time according to the HoF, but 1. it's not that much of a difference, I have a 1500 AD Space Race on Deity / Tiny / Normal and 2. don't the maintenance-costs of Deity also scale the Corporations to become a lot more expensive? Also, the larger a map the more difficult it is to get a decent number of Corporation-resources so I'd at least think that the larger the map the better State Property becomes.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. I meant corps are a no brainer on slow speeds, mostly due to higher costs of endgame techs and lower cost for corp spread. On lower difficulties and epic speed, SP can be competitive, but probably not on higher difficulties (with more expensive techs). Although with the right map script, I could see SP being competitive even on deity/epic.

I'm not convinced that the best approach to a corp strategy is to max out the number of corp resources. There may be an optimum with less resources and fewer cities settled (or corps only spread in key cities).

 

[marbe166]

Tried to go for Culture victory, but my nosy neighbour Churchill got a bit cross with me when the Jewish holy city of York revolted and joined the culturally superior Ethiopian Empire. As soon as I hade built the Temple of Solomon in York Churchill declared on me. At the time I had Oromo Warriors and Curassiers against his Infantry. Some tech trading later I advanced to Cavalry and Riflemen and later to Infantry I managed to fend him off and later take the English cities on the northern coast. Then he became a vassal to the Khmer, and dragged both the Khmer and the Persian into the war against me. When the Khmer was about to set foot on my continent with vastly superior units (no access to coal, oil, uranium or aluminium - ARGH!) I had no choice but to make peace, having failed to take London. The peace was quite cheap though. Stalin was a nuisance as well, he declared on me once and managed to take my city that was on his continent (rebuilt after razing a barbarian city), and then I had to declare on him as I was in a defensive pact with Boudica, and then he took my former barbarian city even further south.

In the end, I managed to get the capital to Legendary and the other two cities were about 15 turns away when the Khmer won a space victory in 2003.

 

[Pollina]

Here's my write up. I'll try to keep it concise, but feel free to ask for additional data, screenshots, etc.

--------------------------------------

The first spoiler thread showed that I had expanded very well in the early game, but was a bit behind in research. After the discussion there I took a step away from the game to come up with a strategy that would improve my research rate while still allowing me to expand some more. I decided on a 3 step plan:

1. Instead for going for a 25 AD GScientist, I tried for a 75 AD 80% GProphet to build a shrine. I figured the shrine would yield about the same as Oxford at that time (15 gpt vs. 20 bpt), at a much lower set-up cost. Oxford was delayed by ~200 years, which gave me time for stone hook-up and step 2.

2. I wanted two key wonders: Colossus (which I built 350 AD) and the Pyramids. The latter meant capturing Constantinople. I figured it was too late for a HA rush (and I didn't like wasting beakers on HBR), so I went for Machinery and maces after Paper (maps, circumnavigation). Justinian was nice enough to build MoM for me shortly before I declared war, and I captured it along with Mids, Stonehenge and the Buddhism shrine around 500 AD. My 8 maces captured a couple more Byzantine cities before Justinian capitulated.

3. I bulbed Education with the delayed GScientist and finished Oxford around 500 AD. As soon as it was finished and the Mids and MoM were mine, I started my first Golden Age to switch into Rep and Caste, then briefly into Merc and finally into State Property (760 AD).

My empire in 780 AD:

Spoiler :

After Communism I took a longer break to decide on my endgame strategy. I knew from games I had played in the past that I was headed for a finish between 1500 AD and 1535 AD. I wasn’t sure how my more commerce heavy economy would keep up in the endgame compared with a workshop and watermill economy under SP. As mentioned in the First Spoiler thread, I wanted to try out corps again, and I tried to convince myself that I could get a similar finish date with them, but I failed. SP just seemed at least 5 turns faster. (It didn’t help that popping the Mining GE would have delayed my chain of 4 consecutive Golden Ages, which I already started a bit too late.)

I wanted to conquer at least one more AI. Stalin was spamming units like crazy, and going for him would have been too expensive. I didn’t like Boudica’s land and Darius' 2 city empire wasn't all that tempting either, so I went for Sury with some maces and trebs and a couple oromos. I captured all but one of his cities and took his capitulation, as I was too afraid he would peace vassal to Stalin if I prolonged the war.

Tech-wise I went for Assembly Line after Communism, then Electricity->Superconductors, then the other space techs. Here are my tech rate milestones:

600 AD: 1000 bpt
1020 AD: 2000 bpt
1150 AD: 3000 bpt
1200 AD 4000 bpt
1300 AD 6600 bpt (maximum)

Building SS parts was a bit more difficult than what I’m used to. There weren’t very many forests left to chop and my IW city was decent, but not great. I was ~3000 beakers short of getting Genetics 1t earlier and needed 3 turns for Stase Chamber. As a result, I only launched my SS on the second turn after Ecology. I probably could have finished 1-2 turns earlier if I had settled 3-5 more cities.

Some more screenshots:

Spoiler :

Fun fact: I had my first random event in the 1200s (AD)! I had completely forgotten they were turned on and was pretty surprised when the popup appeared (~400 free gold, iirc).

 

[Seraiel]

Very good writeup Pollina, TY for it . The BPT-values will help me compare my game towards yours and then we'll learn more about Corporations vs. State Property. I'm currently in a slightly difficult situation time-wise but I think I can post the writeup at least 'til tomorrow 23.59 CET. Maybe I'm gonna need 1 day more again, but i'm definitely gonna write it, because this Corporation vs. State Property question is enormously interesting. TY again Pollina .

 

[WastinTime]

I was all over the map this game. Pun intended.
I thought I'd try SP space because of the colony maintenance (which IMO turned out to be less of a problem). I got all the way to A.Line, (factory, coalplant.)

My outside the box strategy was going to be a StateProp/Corp hybrid. Only one corp. No Mining. I was going to grow my top 20-30 cities with Sushi and then switch to State Prop and save 1000's gpt on expenses. Once the cities have grown to their happy cap (maybe size ~25+) is there really any need for sushi anymore if you're not going for score? Mining Inc on the other hand is useless once you switch to StateProp.

Then I learned I won space in BotM99, so I thought maybe I'd go score even tho I had not settled hardly any seafood yet.

So, unfortunately, I didn't get Sushi super early like a good score game would, but I was very aggressively spreading it. I would have liked to finish 20 turns sooner, but no sense tripping domination while your score is still going up.

I had 115 cities in the end. There was room for a couple more, but I didn't want to obsess since the first half of the game I wasn't even planning score.

My expenses were ~12,000 gpt, and of that, the colony expenses were around 700

At my peak, sushi provided 37 food.

 

[Seraiel]

Writeup BOTM-100 by Seraiel: 1 AD - 1570 AD:


The status of my empire 'til 1 AD was well discussed in the 1 AD spoiler thread. This is how it went on:

War against Churchill was horrible. I built 15 HAs initially and thought to be on the very safe side but already against the 1st city I lost 6 against 2 Archers and 1 Axe... I whipped 3 more only to be able to continue the war.
Against Churchill's capial I incited a Spy-revolt from the EP that I had on him 'til the beginning of the game:



275 AD it was mine. The war became a real drag, I lost 14 HAs against 4 cities (-.-) and then Churchill flew onto another continent:



This prolongued the war significantly, but I took that chance to get my war-buddy Stalin on friendly, I was able to trade Feudalism from him later.

Meanwhile at the home-front, things were looking better: 375 AD I 1T built Oxford:



This was too early imo. and 1-turning it was also not ideal imo. , because as you see, Oxford only gave +40 at that time (it actually gave even less, because I always worked the least developed Cottages, the screen is only for demonstration) . You see, that I whipped the city down to size 6 for 1-turning Oxford via whip-stacking, keeping it at size 10+ and slow-turning it would definitely have been better.

175 AD: Mausoleum of Maussollos (critical World Wonder for my Space Race approach) .

200 AD: The Colossus. I usually don't even bother with building that one because it's usually gone before it's even possible to build it on Deity, or the other options are simply to valuable, but in this game I recognized how good that Wonder actually is. It's ultra-cheap and even if only working few coastal tiles like i. e. the seafood + the tiles of the Moai-city, then it already generates benefit.

I btw. directly split up the Wonders in different groups of GPP, so that I'd not have polluted GP-Pools. The city that built the GLH also built the Colossus and generated 1-2 GMs during the round, it later even got the SoL. The city that built the MoM continued with building the Partheon, which I finished 540 AD. The city then began on building the TM.
The Parthenon was an awesome Wonder during that game, because I ran up to 6 cities as GP-Farms and got over 20 GPs during this game, I'm sure I got 2 extra GPs only because of the Parthenon.

As 2nd GP I chose a Great Prophet to build the Confucian Shrine. I thought that it'd be better than a GM or a GS, because it'd help me run 100% research for much more time and I calculated that his value, if seen over the round, was at least 1.5 times as high as the one of a GM:



Shortly after that I could have started my first GA but I delayed for very long, because a later GA ofc. is stronger, and I wanted to run a consecutive GA-chain until I'd have both Corps + Assembly Line, and for that it was still too early.

My research after Education first went towards Music followed by Nationalism -> Constitutution because my main goal was to get Banking as early as possible. Mercantilism + REP is a huge gain in BPT, especially on those maps where one can easily have intercontinental TRs and where one has more cities than would be needed for completely foreign TRs. I got Machinery by trade from Justinian (I delayed the research of it 'til the last moment and then he got it just in the turn where I would have needed to research it myself XD ) and then flew through towards Banking in 760 AD. I triggered a GA and this all fit very nicely with me just getting a GE out of my capital, which had the HGs + which had hired an Engineer, right before. I used that GA to revolt towards REP + Nationhood + Caste + Pacifism and then one of the phases of the game I liked the most started:

1. After Pollina and Jastrow had so many cities in 1 AD I had payed great attention to REX, having 22 cities at 760 AD. Now I took it one step further and prepared 2 large wars with Oromos. From fighting against Churchill I already had a 10 XP unit and I already had constructed the HE in between, so I drafted 47 Oromos and built another 13 + about 15 Galleys to transport all of them + my Settlers that were still flowing.
2. I chose Stalin + Justinian as my war-targets. Stalin was friendly, but chances to get any further techs from him very minimal and he had Wheat + a good number of Mining Resources. This should become one of the hardest wars I'd ever have thought.

Here is a screenshot of right before the invasion of Russia:



So it was an almost fully naval based attack on Stalins empire from 4 sides. I love wars like that in CIV. Unfortunately, Stalin built the Chicken Pizza on the 1st turn of the war right before I'd have taken 4 cities with Oromos and without Siege (I found Siege too expensive in this case because drafted units are so extremely cheap and I also thought that sieging cities would simply take too long on normal speed, so that it'd be better to simply amass units and roll over everyone) . The Chicken Pizza caused me some severe losses and I again had a lot of luck with the RNG (not) , which made me lose so many troops, that I even needed to re-direct between 10 and 20 Oromos I that initially should conquer Darius also to Stalin! In the end I had fought that war with almost 40 Oromos and not even enough to have a city garrison for each city survived...

Sidenote: On the screen you also see that I chained the next GA already, I think this one was from the TM, but I also kept generating GPs in 5-6 cities so chaining one GA after the other wasn't difficult. I btw. bulbed Printing Press and Chemistry, because I generated 2 more GS than I would have needed for the 2- and 3-GP-GA.

The capital had also developed extremely well 'til 1000 AD, this is a screenshot from within a GA right after PP:



So now Oxford really payed back.

Here is another very interesting sreen of the GLH + Colossus city btw. :



If you were attentive you ask yourself how that one can already be building the SoL. Well, after Banking I researched Democracy as a slight detour, because I wanted to try out that "Emancipation before Corporations" -approach that some other players played in GM-137:



In the end I was very happy to have gone that way. Not because of what they wrote (that Emancipation brought them x more turns of Cottage-growth and that that resulted in x more so that Democracy payed for itself over the whole game, that imo. is the wrong approach because the time 'til Corporations counts, and if Democracy is a delay towards those then it'd be a bad move imo. ) , but because I had heavily cottaged my mainland knowing that I'd try that approach and because this was Prince! On Deity, going for that approach imo. makes little sense, because the Deity-AIs are so nice to grow large, extremely well developed cities for the player, which have lots of fully grown Towns or at least Villages. Therefore it's adviseable to run a Hammer-economy in the home-cities because that one kicks in earlier and one can use the cities to build the Spaceship-parts later. On Prince however the AI is incompetent at developing anything, so it was really good to have the Cottage-cities at home and develop the conquered cities as Hammer-cities. I didn't have forseen this, so this was slightly lucky .

The tech-tempo in that round was way too fast though, which is why I'd really have liked the round to have been on Epic afterwards. Far before I had conquered Stalin and before my remaining troops even had the chance to reach Justinian I founded Mining (1120 AD) :



I had gotten another GE, because I had so many early Forges and ran Engineers in all cities, so I could 1T-build the Wallstreet.

Going Mining first showed to be a very good decision on normal speed. On Marathon (and also on Epic) it's definitely the right way to go Sushi first and to research Communism before that to get up the Kremlin to cold-whip the Executives. On Normal and Quick however those Executives are built so fast and they can only move such a short distance, that only the very first Executives will have longer build-times without using cold-whipping. Once one is at the 7th to 10th city, that city will already have a Factory + a PP because AL is such a short way from Mining that it makes sense to research it right afterwards and before Sushi, and with being ORG, the Factories were so cheap that this was np = 1T Execs after only a very short time and that without needing to sacrifice a lot of population because of whipping cold.

1250 AD I got Sushi:



This screenshot is therefore so interesting, because it shows the economy of my empire with Mining being decently spread, so with quite a lot of Corporation-maintenance already, and I made that screen right between the 3rd and the 4th GA so that "normal" values can be seen. You see, that my empire could conduct 2k BPT already (though I only could have sustained 1200) , and this was the moment at which I became alert, that the round could become a lot shorter than I expected:

From a Spacerace I played with Peter (HoF / Deity / Tiny / Normal / Terra / 1500 AD finish) I knew that I only had taken something like 30T from Corporations 'til the launch of the Spaceship, and that everything went really fast, because the Corporations made my research explode from 2000 BPT to over 10k of BPT in only 10T. I opened up that save again and I had taken some notes during that game, like I i. e. had written down how fast the BPT developed from Corporations onwards (with signs on the map) and it was true, only 30T from there 'til the launch.

My answer to this was the craziest and longest turn that I ever played in the whole time I played CIV, it took me a whole working day! I'd have not have had my cities ready to build the Spaceship in only 30T and I estimated that I'd be even faster, because my empire in this game was a lot bigger than the one on the tiny map (and tech-costs don't scale well, so on bigger maps one will simply have relatively more BPT) . I re-coordinated all Workers and even built some emergency Workers to get up enough Workshops in the cities that I chose which should build the Spaceship-parts. I even needed to re-coordinate the Corporations-spread, so that the Spaceship-cities would get the Corporations fast enough so they could at least grow to size 15+ or whatever was needed for that single SS-part. Here is a screen of the main-SS-production-area in 1250 AD:



Completely non-developed cities which I just had conquered from the AI and the conquest of Stalin isn't even complete yet, one city is even still revolting, the sizes of the cities are size 8 at most, some are surrounded by tons of Jungle.

And this is how the same land looked 20T later:



Land almost completely developed, some cities size 15+, Corporations spread ofc. , all infrastructure completed except for Laboratories (Research went from Sushi first towards Electricity and then directly towards Superconductors before going for Rocketry) .

You also see, that my empire is conducting over 7k BPT at that time and that it can sustain them and you see some signs on the map which show how precisely I planned the endgame from the turn that I mentioned with writing down the turn-numbers of every tech, calculating the hammers a city would need for a SS-part accurately to again be able to construct the complete SS in only 5T and so on.

The interesting part is during those 20T though, because Pollina mentioned that I'd save something like 3-4T through Corporations but she asked me how long I'd need to gain that advantage, so mainly how many turns I'd lose because of sitting at 0%, because the Corporations + the Corporation-spread eat up my whole :

• So 1120 AD Mining, my economy being able to sustain 1150 BPT @ 60%.
• 1150AD almost no difference, because with Mining first and no Kremlin-cold-whips the first Execs took long.
• 1200 AD: Mining in about 10 cities (yes, the inital spread was really slow without Factories and Kremlin-cold-whips) , 1750 BPT @ 65%.
• 1250 AD: Mining in about 20 cities, only 1550 BPT sustainable!
• 1300 AD: Mining in about half of all the cities, Sushi in 10+ cities, only 1150 sustainable @ 35%!!!
• 1350 AD: Cities are developed enough to build Wealth now and can fuel the deficit like that, therefore 3700 BPT sustainable at 100%

So there was a phase that started somewhere between 1200 and 1250 AD where my research slowly began to go down to then reach a very low point at 1300 AD. 1350 AD the economy already had fully recovered and the research was 3700 BPT (sustainable) . I need Pollina to analyze this with me. I think the problem aren't the Corporations themselves but it's the higher maintenance that I needed to pay, because of me having to pay that "colonial maintenance" malus that I didn't even know before. I'm quite sure that Pollina was able to sustain 100% research during all of that time, because her costs were a lot lower, and with not needing to build the Executives (which's costs were 12000 alone in my game) her overall BPT during that phase was a lot higher.
To use the concept of "lost turns" : With only being able to run about 50% of research during that time I basically lost about 5T during 1230 and 1330 AD. The loss starts before that though, because Communism can be reached far earlier than both Corporations, then also all of the extra costs like the 2 GPs to found the Corporations + the non-scaled cost for Corporation-spread whic is about 70 / city / Corporation (= over 8000 with 60 cities like in my case) . To convert that, the GE could have been a GM, so I could have had 2 extre GM Trade Missions netting about 5000 . I payed 8400 for the spread and it costed me 12000 . The 12000 are like 12000 and that is like , so I'd have saved roughly 25000 GNP. I conduct roughly 1500 BPT during that time, so I believe that I lost at least 17T only because of going for Corporations . If the gain from Corporations really is only 3-4T like Pollina calculated, then I'd have been between 13-14T faster if I had gone the State Property route, which would have resulted in an a 1500 or 1505 AD win .
This calculation isn't completely accurate but it's the nearest estimation that I'm going to make. I'm ok with knowing that Pollina's and my game were on par and that I would have had a chance to win if I only wouldn't have gone for those stupid, way too expensive Corporations, from which everyone only sees how they make the BPT explode, but noone actually pays attention to the extreme costs and sacrifices that need to be made for them.

GG Pollina.

 

[Pollina]

The 12000 are like 12000 and that is like , so I'd have saved roughly 25000 GNP. I conduct roughly 1500 BPT during that time, so I believe that I lost at least 17T only because of going for Corporations . If the gain from Corporations really is only 3-4T like Pollina calculated, then I'd have been between 13-14T faster if I had gone the State Property route, which would have resulted in an a 1500 or 1505 AD win .

I’m sure your decision to go for a Corporation strategy cost you a lot less turns.

- You got Assembly Line about 10t later than I. You grabbed Steel, Railroad, Democracy before it. I went for SciMeth, Communism, Bio first (cheaper techs). So I would think that I was already 8-9 turns ahead at that point (with more cities and higher sustainable bpt).
- Sushi lets you generate some extra Great People you would not get running SP. This should more or less balance out the GE and GM for founding the corps.
- You might have selected different war targets in a SP game. Having to go for Stalin for his corp resources cost you some turns I am sure.
- Below is a plot of your data in comparison with my bpt at a similar stage in the game (between 1030 AD and 1180 AD). The total beakers generated are roughly equal, but I generate them 8 turns faster. This does not take into account your lower sustainable beaker output due to not running SP before Corporation. I would think SP gave me a 9-10 turns advantage in the late midgame, and cost me 5 turns in the endgame. My initial estimates appear to be about right.

The biggest factors for fastest finish are expansion, empire management and war strategy (as it should be), not SP vs. Corps.

 

[Seraiel]

I'm not sure that you were that much ahead there already Pollina. I had to research Steam Power because of RR, lets leave out Democracy and say that it pays for itself via Emancipation + SoL, that leves Steel and Medicine in addition all as techs I needed to research while you had only Communism on your side. I believe that that is the main problem of the Corporations, that Communism can be reached a lot earlier and it instantly reduces the maintenance drastically, which in this scenario with Colony-maintenance was massive. Medicine is a complete tech that someone going the SP-route doesn't even need to research, you can add it to the cost which I summed up. I only took the information that you gave me Pollina, you said that Corps save 3-4T, I accumulated everything that I had to invest to get those Corps and all of that was as much as 13-14T of 100% research! If you add the reduced maintenance from State Property and then add Medicine it's even more Pollina. The question is how much State Property loses in the endgame when a Corps-empire can 1-turn every tech and 5T-build a Spaceship. I'm guessing it's not as much as I listed in the costs and add in this post.

Tell me at which date you got Communism Pollina and tell me exactly your BPT + tech-status + number of cities etc. and I'll make a comparison, I'm sure that I was not 8T behind at that point.

 

[Pangaea]

Reading the report above, I don't understand why you whipped the capital down like that to 1-turn Oxford. Okay, it feels good to 1-turn expensive things, but as you found out, the benefit actually wasn't very big, and a much smaller capital hurts for a long time.

This is also one of the reasons that, if I'm going to do that whole chain whipping shenanigans, then I prefer to do it gradually. Not 5 buildings or whatever in one go, taking the capital waaaaay down in size, but do one, regrow a bit, another one, etc. Easier to regrow from 6-8 4 times, than from 10 to 18 or whatever.

But perhaps more importantly, the capital here isn't really that well primed for early Oxford.

Admittedly I play a lot on "intuition" or what I can call it, I don't do spreadsheets or lots of math and stuff like that. Whipping the capital down like that would simply "feel wrong" to me.

Interesting discussion above. On a map like this, with basically several continents, SP is probably stronger due to no distance maintenance, and hence no colony maintenance. Corps is extremely strong too, but maybe not in this particular setting.

From playing, the main weakness with SP in spacegames is that it's slower to get out space parts due to lacking all those extra hammers from Mining, and also lacking some pop from Sushi (which can be a handful of engineers).

But the great problem with Corps is to gap the bridge between (typically) Sushi first and then to Mining and AL. Research basically comes to a halt because costs and maintenance explodes. The rewards when the empire recovers is absurdly high, but it does come later.

All things being equal, I suspect there isn't a great difference between them. Certainly not 10+ turns. As Pollina's graph illustrates, SP is more equal over time in research, while Corps almost literally go off the chart once you have the infra and can start building Wealth (and yet later, Research).

There is also less micro hell with SP, which can be nice

 

[Pollina]

I'm not sure that you were that much ahead there already Pollina. I had to research Steam Power because of RR, lets leave out Democracy and say that it pays for itself via Emancipation + SoL, that leves Steel and Medicine in addition all as techs I needed to research while you had only Communism on your side. I believe that that is the main problem of the Corporations, that Communism can be reached a lot earlier and it instantly reduces the maintenance drastically, which in this scenario with Colony-maintenance was massive. Medicine is a complete tech that someone going the SP-route doesn't even need to research, you can add it to the cost which I summed up. I only took the information that you gave me Pollina, you said that Corps save 3-4T, I accumulated everything that I had to invest to get those Corps and all of that was as much as 13-14T of 100% research! If you add the reduced maintenance from State Property and then add Medicine it's even more Pollina. The question is how much State Property loses in the endgame when a Corps-empire can 1-turn every tech and 5T-build a Spaceship. I'm guessing it's not as much as I listed in the costs and add in this post.

Tell me at which date you got Communism Pollina and tell me exactly your BPT + tech-status + number of cities etc. and I'll make a comparison, I'm sure that I was not 8T behind at that point.

Your 1120 AD screenshot shows you 5 turns away from Assembly Line. I can also tell that you didn't have Biology. I don't have a 1120 AD save, but I have a 1170 AD one. Here is my tech screen from that turn:

Spoiler :

Now tell me I wasn't well ahead of you.

Communism 760 AD
Biology 840 AD
Assembly Line 1050 AD
Superconductors 1160 AD

 

[Pollina]

From playing, the main weakness with SP in spacegames is that it's slower to get out space parts due to lacking all those extra hammers from Mining, and also lacking some pop from Sushi (which can be a handful of engineers).

On quick or normal speed, it's actually not too hard to launch 1t after Ecology. All you need are 2 cities with enough forests to chop (but that is not very likely on a Rainforest map). I did not have enough forests left or good production sites this game, so I lost 1t while building SS parts.

There is also less micro hell with SP, which can be nice

That's actually the main reason why I prefer SP.

 

[Seraiel]

I asked for a 760 AD screenshot Pollina, here is mine:



I bulb PP next turn so count that one too. You need to tell me how far you were ahead at that time. I just calculated and I could have had Communism at the same time if I had beelined it via skipping Guilds + Banking + skipping Nationalism + Constitutioin and therefore Chemistry -> SM -> Lib -> Communism. If you had all those techs however then I'd have been 12T behind you at that time already.

With 1170 AD it also depends again:



If you skipped Nationalism + Constitution + Economics + Corporation + Democracy then the difference could be as little as -5000 , which would only been 4T, if you had Nationalism + Constitution + Economics + Corporation like I expect then it would again be 12T and that would then mean that you didn't gain anything by State Property from 860 AD 'til 1170 AD but that you could have be 2T faster if you had gone Corps. The difference between our games comes from far earlier than State Property but to really get knowledge you need to take my screens and then add + subtract the exactly. I was able to conduct 750 BPT at 860 AD and 1200 BPT sustained in 1170 AD. Take the and divide through my BPT, then you know exactly how far I'm behind you. 0 is possible, up to 12 is also possible, but if I'm really 12T behind you, then I gained 2T in my endgame and that was with Corps, so than the Corps again would be a stronger choice than SP.

I don't want to compare who played the better game Pollina, that I know (you) , I want to learn if SP is better or if Corps is. And: I also want to become a better player, I want to know if your REX-approach was so much more powerful than my early Oxford approach that I was already x turns behind in 860 AD or so. Remember that in 1 AD, we were as far advanced as the other player, with me having a slight edge, but you had more, less developed cities. If you i. e. are 12T ahead in 860AD already, then you'd have gained 12T by the heavier REX between 1 AD and 860 AD. Do you understand me?

If you need any further data ask me and I'll look everything up, I make saves every turn.

 

[Pollina]

780 AD: I had Guilds and Banking, but no Nationalism. 32 cities, 730 bpt (break even, no GA)

1170 AD: Corporation is a prereq for AL, so I obviously had that. No Democracy.

 

[Seraiel]

See, that's what I mean.

In 780 AD I'm 3.5T behind you in terms of missing beakers / sustained research.

In 1170 AD I'm 10T behind, so the early State Property seems to have given you 6.5T in 39T. When you then add the 2 missing GPs, all the for the Execs, the extra techs, simply everything the result will something like 13T like I estimated in my writeup, if at all more, because I calculated in favour of the Corps (i. e. counting a 2500 trade-mission from a GM as 2500 though it would have obviously been more with multipliers) . Don't feel offended Pollina, you were slightly in front before Communism already so your better REX did get you an advantage, but the major difference why you win 10T earlier is that you went State Property so early. This is not saying you played worse or whatever, how could I, you're faster, you went State Property, making the right decision is the quality of a good player, you were better this time. State Property on these settings is a lot stronger than Corps though. It'd be interesting to compare 1250 AD, because then we could estimate how much benefit State Property gave you 'til the time when I became Corps. I assume that you're at least 15T ahead at that time already, and 1250 AD is only the point where Corps really start to kick in with their main costs, so i. e. 1350 AD I'll be 20T behind already and then, very very late comes the boost from Corps that you said gains about 3-4T against State Property, but then the 13T I estimated are really very close, because if I'm 3.5T behind before Communism, then 10T behind 39T later, then come the main costs of Corps and I drastically first lose turns (I estimate about 10 but not sure, spreading Corps actually is very expensive) and then in the end I gain 3-4T (like you estimated) again by them netting in roughly 13T lost mostly by Corps.

Seriously, on these settings, but I'd bet also on very many others, State Property is faster, the cost of spreading the corps is simply too high State Property gains so much benefit from so much earlier than the ultra-high GNP of a Corps empire in the end still cannot overtake the State Property empire again, because the game is simply too short. I believe in this and will definitely play my next HoF or GOTM Spaceraces with State Property and not with Corps, because I already suspected this when seeing the games from kovacsflo. If you want, look at them yourself, you'll be surprised with what you see, I only say Universal Suffrage + Free Speach + Emancipation + State Property + Free Religion.
Maybe Corps still have their place on smaller maps with the "No Vassals" option and on Marathon because of the cheaper Execs and the faster spread.

 

[WastinTime]

(i. e. counting a 2500 trade-mission from a GM

btw...I got 3700 from a trade mission

 

[Pollina]

@Seraiel

I’m not offended, I just think that your numbers are off.

First, you are not separating the effect of SP from the effect of expansion and war strategy. At 760 AD, I had 32 cities and you had 22. Expansion takes some time to pay off. A 10 cities difference will not necessarily give me a higher research output at that time, but should be noticeable 10-20 turns later. The difference between Merc and SP was ~100 bpt at the time I switched into SP. It would have been much less for you given your lower city count. Same for 1120 AD. I had 46 cities, you had 36. I was gaining ~400 bpt by running SP. Would have been closer to 300 bpt for you. I’m making 2500 bpt breaking even, you are losing 250 gpt while generating 1300 bpt. You can’t attribute that difference to SP vs. corps alone... Although it doesn’t make much sense to compare those numbers from the same turn. It should be better to compare your 1120AD numbers to my 1030 AD numbers (1970 bpt, -150 gpt, estimated ~350 bpt from SP). Tech progress is very similar at this point, so one could say I was 9 turns ahead at the time you got corps. That means I gained 5.5 turns between Communism and Corporation/Steam Power. I would attribute maybe 2-3 of those turns to SP.

You switched into Nationhood to draft Oromos which hurt your research rate, SP or not.

You also can’t take the beakers you sacrificed to set up corps, divide them by your bpt at the time of corp spread and expect the result to be the turns you were behind. It doesn’t work that way. Your lower bpt output is already a result of corp spread cost and higher maintenance. It would make more sense to divide the 25k (or whatever) by your potential beaker output (running SP) at that time. But that calculation has some problems too. The best metric is to compare how long it took you to get a certain number of techs at the time of corp spread and how long it would have taken you to get those techs while running SP. In my post above I did that comparison with generated beakers which is basically the same. Although, comparing your numbers with mine, we are again not separating SP from other effects.

The best way to find out what not going for SP cost you would be to go back to one of your earlier saves and play until Assembly Line or Industrialism while running SP, and compare game progress with your corp game.