Corporate Maintenance Explained
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Nikis-Knight
Deity
No, you can't. Don't know where you read that. Might need to sell the AI one of the needed resources if you want to open a branch in their city.
methane
Warlord
After going through this thread, I want to put forth what I think Firaxis wanted the corporation system to be (in an organized fashion), and then what the problem might be at higher levels.
Looking at the math that people have brought in this thread. I think Firaxis wanted corporations to have the following characteristics:
1) Corporations can be way to give up the flexibility of gold in order to get other things (hammers, culture, food) at a better rate than you can buy buying items. A production corporation can get you a better rate of gold for hammers than you get by 'buying' things. But you lose the flexibility inherent in gold. It's easy to go heavily into science for 15 turns and then go 100% in gold for 2 turns to rush buy some things, then go back to heavy science. You can't go back and forth from a corporation being active to a corporation not being active without changing civics. So if you spread a production corporation in all your cities, you should expect your best science output to be somewhat reduced, in exchange for more production than would have otherwise been possible under rush-buying.
Effectively what you're doing is specializing your city (towards production, towards culture, etc.) when you add a corporation. And when you're opponent adds a corporation to your city, he's specializing your city for you.
2) Corporations have a 'break even' point in terms of resources consumed. From the calculations others have done, for a given level and a given city size, there's a point where the 'benefits' in terms of production, culture, etc. equal the cost in maintenance of the corporation. The benefits appear to increase slightly more than the costs. If 6 resources is the break even for a corporation, then you're likely to hurt a civ by spreading it if he only has 5 resources, and help him if he has 7.
This is an interesting aspect that means late game trading can be more lively and late game wars might be launched to get a bunch of seafood resources.
3) The bigger the city, the bigger the 'break even' point. Your biggest cities are going to be the ones you're pushing wonders out of, the one you're trying to make great people with, the one's you're trying to get a cultural victory with, so firaxis wants to make it more expensive to add even more culture, specialists, or production to these cities. It may be worth it to pay a little more to add production to your wonder city or food to your GP city, but again you're giving up flexibility.
This can make for interesting decisions. Say the 'break even' point is 3 resources for a size 2 city and 8 resources for a size 12 city. If you have a size 2 city that you think will go to size 12, do you add a corporation if you have 6 resources? If so, do you artificially try and keep your city from passing size 9?
4) Having the corporate office slightly reduces the 'break even' point, so you should be more likely to spread those in your own cities. However, I think they wanted you to be willing to slectively spread some foreign corporations yourself (which doesn't appear to be worthwhile at higher levels).
5) Civics can change the 'break even' point. If the 'natural'
'break even' point is 6, it might be 5 under Free Market and 7 under Environmentalism.
6) The 'break even' point changes depending on difficulty level. This is could be a problem. From what others have said, it appears that 1-5 seems to be working at lower levels but not at higher levels.
Think about it. If you have an 'OK' player at Settler level, an 'OK' player at Noble, and an 'OK' player at deity, they're likely to have the same number of resources in an average game (because they each have the same ability relative to their level). So if the 'break even' point for an 'average' city increases dramatically with level, then it might always be a good idea for the settler player to spread coporations domestically, might sometimes be a good idea for the noble player to spread coporations domestically, and never be a good idea for the deity player to spread corporations. The 'break even' point is just out of his reach in terms of resources neccessary.
Other mechanics in this game don't work this way. You get the same benefit from spreading religions at each level in the game. You get the same benefit from wonders at each level in the game. It might not be a good idea to spend your time building wonders or spamming missionaries at higher levels, not because they cost more, but because the AI players may be developing better armies or better cities and you might find yourself dangerously behind by focusing on those things
I think corporations should work similarly. The 'break even' points should be roughly equal among the levels. The deity level players shouldn't find the corporate system unplayable, but they should find that if they focus too much on it the AI's might punish them for it.
7) The 'break even' point rises steadily as time goes on, because of inflation. This is just odd, and certainly hard to anticipate when you're first starting BTS. If you decouple corporate costs from inflation, the problem with 5 might resolve itself. What's most bizarre is that if you hit the industrial era in 1600, your new corporations might be quite good for centuries, but if you hit that era in 1850, they might start out not being worthwhile. I have a hard time thinking this was intended.
Edited to add: It might be interesting to have a mechanic where the 'break even' point gradually increased as the game went on. This would result in people steadily feeling pressure to add more resources to maintain the same level of cost/benefit ratio. But having it rise to quickly will just result in people never adding the corporation in the first place, and having it tied to how many turns since the game started (through inflation) rather than the number of turns the corporation was founded makes little sense.
Looking at the math that people have brought in this thread. I think Firaxis wanted corporations to have the following characteristics:
1) Corporations can be way to give up the flexibility of gold in order to get other things (hammers, culture, food) at a better rate than you can buy buying items. A production corporation can get you a better rate of gold for hammers than you get by 'buying' things. But you lose the flexibility inherent in gold. It's easy to go heavily into science for 15 turns and then go 100% in gold for 2 turns to rush buy some things, then go back to heavy science. You can't go back and forth from a corporation being active to a corporation not being active without changing civics. So if you spread a production corporation in all your cities, you should expect your best science output to be somewhat reduced, in exchange for more production than would have otherwise been possible under rush-buying.
Effectively what you're doing is specializing your city (towards production, towards culture, etc.) when you add a corporation. And when you're opponent adds a corporation to your city, he's specializing your city for you.
2) Corporations have a 'break even' point in terms of resources consumed. From the calculations others have done, for a given level and a given city size, there's a point where the 'benefits' in terms of production, culture, etc. equal the cost in maintenance of the corporation. The benefits appear to increase slightly more than the costs. If 6 resources is the break even for a corporation, then you're likely to hurt a civ by spreading it if he only has 5 resources, and help him if he has 7.
This is an interesting aspect that means late game trading can be more lively and late game wars might be launched to get a bunch of seafood resources.
3) The bigger the city, the bigger the 'break even' point. Your biggest cities are going to be the ones you're pushing wonders out of, the one you're trying to make great people with, the one's you're trying to get a cultural victory with, so firaxis wants to make it more expensive to add even more culture, specialists, or production to these cities. It may be worth it to pay a little more to add production to your wonder city or food to your GP city, but again you're giving up flexibility.
This can make for interesting decisions. Say the 'break even' point is 3 resources for a size 2 city and 8 resources for a size 12 city. If you have a size 2 city that you think will go to size 12, do you add a corporation if you have 6 resources? If so, do you artificially try and keep your city from passing size 9?
4) Having the corporate office slightly reduces the 'break even' point, so you should be more likely to spread those in your own cities. However, I think they wanted you to be willing to slectively spread some foreign corporations yourself (which doesn't appear to be worthwhile at higher levels).
5) Civics can change the 'break even' point. If the 'natural'
'break even' point is 6, it might be 5 under Free Market and 7 under Environmentalism.
6) The 'break even' point changes depending on difficulty level. This is could be a problem. From what others have said, it appears that 1-5 seems to be working at lower levels but not at higher levels.
Think about it. If you have an 'OK' player at Settler level, an 'OK' player at Noble, and an 'OK' player at deity, they're likely to have the same number of resources in an average game (because they each have the same ability relative to their level). So if the 'break even' point for an 'average' city increases dramatically with level, then it might always be a good idea for the settler player to spread coporations domestically, might sometimes be a good idea for the noble player to spread coporations domestically, and never be a good idea for the deity player to spread corporations. The 'break even' point is just out of his reach in terms of resources neccessary.
Other mechanics in this game don't work this way. You get the same benefit from spreading religions at each level in the game. You get the same benefit from wonders at each level in the game. It might not be a good idea to spend your time building wonders or spamming missionaries at higher levels, not because they cost more, but because the AI players may be developing better armies or better cities and you might find yourself dangerously behind by focusing on those things
I think corporations should work similarly. The 'break even' points should be roughly equal among the levels. The deity level players shouldn't find the corporate system unplayable, but they should find that if they focus too much on it the AI's might punish them for it.
7) The 'break even' point rises steadily as time goes on, because of inflation. This is just odd, and certainly hard to anticipate when you're first starting BTS. If you decouple corporate costs from inflation, the problem with 5 might resolve itself. What's most bizarre is that if you hit the industrial era in 1600, your new corporations might be quite good for centuries, but if you hit that era in 1850, they might start out not being worthwhile. I have a hard time thinking this was intended.
Edited to add: It might be interesting to have a mechanic where the 'break even' point gradually increased as the game went on. This would result in people steadily feeling pressure to add more resources to maintain the same level of cost/benefit ratio. But having it rise to quickly will just result in people never adding the corporation in the first place, and having it tied to how many turns since the game started (through inflation) rather than the number of turns the corporation was founded makes little sense.
Nikis-Knight
Deity
Well, after several early losses, I just had a game where I whooped on the aggressive AI. Also founded cereal mills and mining Inc in one city.
This was MONARCH difficulty, standard size and speed. I am Carthage.
Holy crap are corporations powerful! All you have to do is send 1 or 2 executives to each AI civ, and they'll take care of the rest! Don't spread to more than a few of yours until the AI has done your work for you. (Oh, but it helped alot to get the central bank event to lower inflation by 40% or whatever it was!
I used both these corporations in only my 'original' cities (I've since gained many more thanks to Hammarabi and Brennus and Sury declaring war.), and only 1 or 2 before spreading abroad. So that's about 5 or 6 cities with two corps each. I don't really care about the costs in this game, though.
Let's see some screen shots. I've been doing well for some time, this here IS really late game, 1996.
My capital--zero percent commerce.
Rival's civic choices
City screen of the Khmer, who recently declared war on me. Hey, I only gave them 3 or 4 executives, they did the rest! Don't blame me.
Recent shot of my inflation. Low because of only monarch difficulty, and I got the World Bank event. In this game whenI got that event I had to pay ~500 gold, and my gpt went up 200 or so immediately.
This kinda speaks for itself
So, in conclusion, the strategy to corps is to "mindlessly spam" them, so long as you hit your opponents first.
edit: oh yeah, +10 gpt of mining Inc.s commerce is from a quest. so it is really only spread to 56 cities. I built a total of 11 cereal and 17 mining execs. (I hit retire so I could check.)
This was MONARCH difficulty, standard size and speed. I am Carthage.
Holy crap are corporations powerful! All you have to do is send 1 or 2 executives to each AI civ, and they'll take care of the rest! Don't spread to more than a few of yours until the AI has done your work for you. (Oh, but it helped alot to get the central bank event to lower inflation by 40% or whatever it was!
I used both these corporations in only my 'original' cities (I've since gained many more thanks to Hammarabi and Brennus and Sury declaring war.), and only 1 or 2 before spreading abroad. So that's about 5 or 6 cities with two corps each. I don't really care about the costs in this game, though.
Let's see some screen shots. I've been doing well for some time, this here IS really late game, 1996.
My capital--zero percent commerce.
Rival's civic choices
City screen of the Khmer, who recently declared war on me. Hey, I only gave them 3 or 4 executives, they did the rest! Don't blame me.
Recent shot of my inflation. Low because of only monarch difficulty, and I got the World Bank event. In this game whenI got that event I had to pay ~500 gold, and my gpt went up 200 or so immediately.
This kinda speaks for itself
So, in conclusion, the strategy to corps is to "mindlessly spam" them, so long as you hit your opponents first.
edit: oh yeah, +10 gpt of mining Inc.s commerce is from a quest. so it is really only spread to 56 cities. I built a total of 11 cereal and 17 mining execs. (I hit retire so I could check.)
marioflag
History Addict
Actually i found that spreading corporations, which you have founded, in your 3 most productive cities really pays because you can produce even 1-3 corporations exec. per turn which means 5-15 gold per turn without multipliers.While you have to pay more mainteinance, spreading faster is really important because as you showed AI just spread them ASAP
Well, after several early losses, I just had a game where I whooped on the aggressive AI. Also founded cereal mills and mining Inc in one city.
This was MONARCH difficulty, standard size and speed. I am Carthage.
Holy crap are corporations powerful! All you have to do is send 1 or 2 executives to each AI civ, and they'll take care of the rest! Don't spread to more than a few of yours until the AI has done your work for you. (Oh, but it helped alot to get the central bank event to lower inflation by 40% or whatever it was!
I used both these corporations in only my 'original' cities (I've since gained many more thanks to Hammarabi and Brennus and Sury declaring war.), and only 1 or 2 before spreading abroad. So that's about 5 or 6 cities with two corps each. I don't really care about the costs in this game, though.
Let's see some screen shots. I've been doing well for some time, this here IS really late game, 1996.
View attachment 156915
My capital--zero percent commerce.
View attachment 156916
Rival's civic choices
View attachment 156917
City screen of the Khmer, who recently declared war on me. Hey, I only gave them 3 or 4 executives, they did the rest! Don't blame me.
View attachment 156918
Recent shot of my inflation. Low because of only monarch difficulty, and I got the World Bank event. In this game whenI got that event I had to pay ~500 gold, and my gpt went up 200 or so immediately.
View attachment 156921
This kinda speaks for itself
So, in conclusion, the strategy to corps is to "mindlessly spam" them, so long as you hit your opponents first.
edit: oh yeah, +10 gpt of mining Inc.s commerce is from a quest. so it is really only spread to 56 cities. I built a total of 11 cereal and 17 mining execs. (I hit retire so I could check.)
is this really the way it was meant to be though? and when is someone going to try this out on marathon/huge settings
marioflag
History Addict
is this really the way it was meant to be though? and when is someone going to try this out on marathon/huge settings
i play only at marathon and huge settings and i confirm what Nikis Knight says, in 60 turns since i have founded corporation i went from 70% research with a few gold in active to 100% research and 200 gold in active (which became a lot more with game going on) which was enough to give me the resources to become the powerhouse in my game.All i had to do was just spamming corp executives in every civ i had open borders and inside my 3 cities most productive to make executive spamming faster.
edit:they were also severely hit by their own corporation spamming.
Flak
vBülletin Förum
So let me get this straight. The whole point of corporations is to spread them to the AI, so they can inevitably spam them and you reak all the benefits. Hmmm.... Don't think I saw this mentioned in the Info Center. Maybe that needs updating.
Thats horrible.
The poor guy is running at 80% tax and still at -176
? there there khmer... 
Nikis-Knight
Deity
Problem seems to be an unclear vision of whether corporations were meant to be effective without the headquarters, or else an imperfect realization of the goals. The AI is well programmed for spreading corporations, IF they gave them a bit more benefit and me a bit less.
But if corporations are working as intended, the AI should rarely, if ever, build execs for foreign corps, cancel open borders once it is spread to them, and shun environmentalism if they do get hit.
Either the AI should be made better aware of the current system, or the system should match what the AI was made to do.
I like the variety and concepts here, and it is so close to realization. But what I did with the help of my enemies there doesn't seem quite right.
But if corporations are working as intended, the AI should rarely, if ever, build execs for foreign corps, cancel open borders once it is spread to them, and shun environmentalism if they do get hit.
Either the AI should be made better aware of the current system, or the system should match what the AI was made to do.
I like the variety and concepts here, and it is so close to realization. But what I did with the help of my enemies there doesn't seem quite right.
Well, the war has been going bad for him anyway (though he did start it!). So bad, that I can garuntee unit upkeep is not a problem.
well. The AI can counter balance stuff for sure. I was trying out a game where i spread corp with my small empire... I think my best rival got hit by the corp research disease. But guess what he done... he went for a cultural win and despite all my spying efforts. He won his cultural win while i struggled to get the basic space tech.
But founding and spamming corp to the AI is the ONLY way to play corporation if you want to incorporate them into your strategy.
But founding and spamming corp to the AI is the ONLY way to play corporation if you want to incorporate them into your strategy.
Dear Firaxis,
Kill yourself.
Moderator Action: Warned for trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Kill yourself.
Moderator Action: Warned for trolling.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
Flak
vBülletin Förum
An interesting real-life article that came out today; Foreign markets hot for U.S. firms. Some choice quotes:
I wonder if Firaxis developers just maybe didn't try to get too fancy with this thing, and simply couldn't quite encompass all of the complex issues that allow corporations to be what they really should be. Certainly a lot of the real-world countries that have foreign-based corporations in them don't seem to be sufferring from crippling inflation just to keep, for example, America or Japan afloat.
USAToday said:
John Silva said:
USAToday said:
I wonder if Firaxis developers just maybe didn't try to get too fancy with this thing, and simply couldn't quite encompass all of the complex issues that allow corporations to be what they really should be. Certainly a lot of the real-world countries that have foreign-based corporations in them don't seem to be sufferring from crippling inflation just to keep, for example, America or Japan afloat.
jkp1187
Unindicted Co-Conspirator
So, in conclusion, the strategy to corps is to "mindlessly spam" them, so long as you hit your opponents first.
edit: oh yeah, +10 gpt of mining Inc.s commerce is from a quest. so it is really only spread to 56 cities. I built a total of 11 cereal and 17 mining execs. (I hit retire so I could check.)
Oh my god, this is great....
I have to admit, I'd noticed this earlier as well, although not as dramatically as you pointed out. You have to grow your way past the inflation, keep expanding.
In a way....corporations seem to channel mercantilist theory. You need to go out, conquer new markets (colonies and vassals,) and spread your corporations to them quickly....because other markets might get closed off to your companies. Those who stay in Free Market run the risk of getting screwed by 'foreign competition'.
I definitely think if the "inflation-reducing" random event could be regularized to every civ via a National Wonder (Central Bank -- or maybe it would be better as an expensive National Project, so it couldn't be rushed?) Corporations would be more mutually-beneficial, and it wouldn't automatically be a no-brainer to give enemy civs a branch of, say, Mining, Inc.--especially if they're chugging along trying to build a spaceship.... It doesn't even have to be the full 40%. Even 10% or 20% might make a difference.
EDIT: I'm definitely more a fan of a 'national project' instead of a 'national wonder'....tie it to some pre-existing late-game technology and let Alan Greenspan's image be the icon!
By the way, has anyone ever seen the AI spread one of their corporate branches to one of your cities???? I have not as of yet.
Nikis-Knight
Deity
Thanks Alex, and sorry to have been harping on this. 
Personally I think it might just be fine if the noble levels of inflation and maintenance were applied to all levels. (I'd also recommend lowering the HQ income slightly, and/or scaling it to map size, i.e., duel =5, tiny/small = 4, standard = 3, large/huge = 2; but I haven't tested this.)
Personally I think it might just be fine if the noble levels of inflation and maintenance were applied to all levels. (I'd also recommend lowering the HQ income slightly, and/or scaling it to map size, i.e., duel =5, tiny/small = 4, standard = 3, large/huge = 2; but I haven't tested this.)will there be increased setup costs for corp offices to offset potential spamming? furhtermore will the AI to spread your corp too much?
marioflag
History Addict
Offtopic:
does FYI means = For Yor Interest ?
does FYI means = For Yor Interest ?
DrJambo
Crash-test dummy
For Your Information.
Thanks for the heads-up alexman, hopefully the AI won't capitulate in the late game anymore due to the presence of foreign corps. Do you have any idea how the changes will be made, e.g. dll or through xml tweaks? If so, I don't suppose you could hint at what precisely, so we could mod some changes ourselves in the interim while we wait for the patch?
Thanks for the heads-up alexman, hopefully the AI won't capitulate in the late game anymore due to the presence of foreign corps. Do you have any idea how the changes will be made, e.g. dll or through xml tweaks? If so, I don't suppose you could hint at what precisely, so we could mod some changes ourselves in the interim while we wait for the patch?
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