Corporate Maintenance Explained

[OTAKUjbski]

FYI Corporation maintenance in the patch will be reduced to account for inflation. Inflation will also be reduced, although not all the way back to Warlords levels.

Thanks for your feedback on this issue.

I guess that's that then, eh?

Can you PM me the new math so I don't have to re-calculate everything?

 

[jkp1187]

FYI Corporation maintenance in the patch will be reduced to account for inflation. Inflation will also be reduced, although not all the way back to Warlords levels.

Thanks for your feedback on this issue.

Alexman,

Thank you very much for following up on this issue. Let it not be said that Firaxis doesn't listen to its customers when there is an issue.

 

[largedarryl]

Well it's nice that it is going to "account" for inflation, not just be completely removed from the inflation calculation.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Some thoughts on the new corporate maintenance, and values that it Should take

to fit with the strategies of the different economic civics

1. If you have a corporation, more resources should still be something you want

2. A Domestic corp should probably be something you want to spread under Environmentalism (assuming you want the benefits)

3. A Foreign corp should be something you want under Free Market (assuming you want the benefits)

4. A foreign corp should probably be something you Don't want under Environmentalism

Based on that

Corporations have 2 costs a Base Cost and a Resource cost

For # 2 to be true, the Base Cost of a corp under
Environmentalism in a
Deity Game
in a large city
with a courthouse,
and Max Inflation, should not be more than 15, and possibly not more than 10 so that spreading a Wall Street based domestic corp will pay for itself (not counting resources) and possibly a Bank Based domestic one as well

For # 1 (and #3) to be true then the Resource cost of a corp should not exceed the benefit...
unfortunately some benefits are hard to $ value
1 Raw Beakers= 2 final cold cost (simply move slider down/up)
1 Raw Gold= 2 final gold cost Easiest

1 Raw Hammer ... 2 Gold through Wealth, 6 Gold through US, 4.67 Gold through replacing a Lumbermill/Mine with a Free Speech Town [5 Gold for Watermill with FS town... Windmills and Workshops complicate with Food]
Change those Values to 7 and 10 for US+FS town

1 Raw Food...3 Gold with a Merchant, 6 gold with a Representation Merchant, 7 Gold replacing a Biology Farm with a Free Speech Town.

1 Raw culture... well technically you can Get culture at a cost of 2 gold on the slider, but there is no way to turn it back (and the culture slider is usually there for Happiness primarily.. or culture wins)

Since Culture is the Hardest to calculate (and access to resources only has a Dilomatic Value)

the two easiest to look at are [Standard map values]
Mining corp=1 hammer per resource [4.7,5,7,10 possible gold values]
and
Cereal Mills=0.75 hammers per resource [using 6,7 a gold value of 4.5,5.25]

which means that under harsh conditions (Deity, Environmental...)
The cost of a corporate resource should probably be not any more than 4.5 (so that you can always get a benefit out of it... even if it is just expensive culture)

Now that means that with Free Market, you will get even more benefit out of the resources [Free Speech+Universal Suffrage and Massive cottage spam seems to lead to the best Corporate benefits/resource] so hopefully that added benefit (approximately 40% of the value of the resource if Environmentalism breaks even (3/4 v. 5/4)) would be enough to offset the base cost)

So based on those, assuming the civic , city size, difficulty and courthouse modifiers stay the same, and saying that inflation get adjusted to +150% (2.5 total multiplier)
that means
Base Cost ~3 [* 1.5 Deity *1.25 Environmental *0.5 Court *2 (city pop 19) * 2.5=~14] [or ~7.5 under Free Market Noble]
Resource Cost ~1[same multipliers ~4.7] [or ~2.5 under Free Market Noble.. almost enough for Wealth/normal Merchants to work]

 

[Roland Johansen]

I don't quite get the design philosophy to make corporations more expensive and less attractive in big cities. The formula clearly indicates the extra cost from a large population. In reality, corporations would love to settle in big cities with a large amount of customers in the neighbourhood. It would increase their efficiency.

Also in game terms it is not a logical choice. It means that creating small cities in the Arctic regions and adding corporations is more efficient than adding corporations in your major old cities. It's not something that the average player will expect when playing around with the corporations during his first game. And why should he expect such a game mechanic?

So either corporations give less resources (production, science, gold, culture) in smaller cities and are cheaper or they give the same amount of resources and cost the same. I would go for the second implementation, just because it is easier to understand.

 

[methane]

Interesting assumptions and calculations. I'd just like to note there's another way to see how the game calculates equivalents, the specialists.

If we assume 1 merchant=1 scientist=1 engineer=1 artist=1 spy,
we get:

Spoiler :

3 science =3 gold =2 hammers =1 science +4 culture =1 +4 espionage

which reduces to: 1 =1 =2/3 =2 =2

If we work with great specialists who have been settled into the city, we get:

Spoiler :

1 food 6 gold =1 hammer 6 science =3 hammers 3 science =3 gold 12 culture =3 science 12 espionage

which reduces to: 1 =1 =2/3 =2/3 =8/3 =8/3

Almost the same thing, though the values for culture and espionage are a bit more precise.

Working with the previous values, and introducing the factor of 2 (because of multipliers), we get:

1 in cost= 1/2 raw =1/2 raw =1/3 raw= 1/3 raw =4/3 raw =4/3 raw

 

[OTAKUjbski]

The OP was updated for the BtS 3.13 patch and subsequently reposted/moved to here in the Strategy Articles section.