r_rolo1
King of myself
NaZdReG , Methos posted in the BTS forum that you had to reinstall Solver's patch after the install of the 3.03 patch....
Corporation costs, an in depth analysis!
- Thread starter NaZdReG
- Start date
yeah I know. without solver's patch a lot of the work related to corporations wouldn't be possible at all.
I actually use a mod that has solver's patch integrated into it. only other things in the mod are the VERY endgame techs and weapons related to the nextwar mod (I just think they're cool
) but up to that point in the game it plays exactly like vanilla bts with solver's patch
NaZ
oh and about standard ethanol. usually there are 2-3 oil resources in your empire. with std ethanol you can trade those 3 away while keeping access to the critical resource
I actually use a mod that has solver's patch integrated into it. only other things in the mod are the VERY endgame techs and weapons related to the nextwar mod (I just think they're cool
) but up to that point in the game it plays exactly like vanilla bts with solver's patchNaZ
oh and about standard ethanol. usually there are 2-3 oil resources in your empire. with std ethanol you can trade those 3 away while keeping access to the critical resource
Nikis-Knight
Deity
I may be wrong about this, but I from counting yields, it seems strategic resources add hammers (+1) to each city (even apart from corporations.) So std. Ethanol also gets cities a minor production boost.
OTAKUjbski
TK421
If you're talking about the mouseover info from the City's resource pool, those are not applied to the city directly.
Those values only represent the raw +1
bonus those resources give to tiles they are present on.
Thalassicus
Bytes and Nibblers
You have to take in factors beyond pure fiscal gains and losses, beyond the accounting profit and look at more intangible economic profits. The point of corporations is not necessarily to make pure gold. The point is to do this:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5812700&postcount=49
It's like smac Sky Hydroponics Labs for Civ IV.
1) Massive food for new and old cities
2) Massive culture for new/conquered cities
3) Massive Score increase from population if you spread it to all your cities right before winning.
The idea is not so much to make gold as to convert late-game money into different resources. In this case I'm even making a profit because the 12 free specialists per city are turned into Merchants under Caste System.
My "calculated score if you win this turn" is over 100,000 and increasing by ~1,000/turn from the population boom.
I'm running science at 80% and with Representation, the colossal number of specialists giving +3 base
each is giving me two future techs every three turns as my spaceship races for Alpha Centauri in the 1800's (I wanted to try out the new spaceship victory, and it's actually pretty nice visually). The extra 
and 
from Future Techs is increasing the population cap to make even huger returns possible as I conquer or trade for all seafood on the map and max out Sushi's +
for the highest population score possible.
The purpose of a business, after all, is to take something of lesser value to society and turn it into something of greater value. Sid's Sushi converts useless surplus seafood resources into population and cultural expansion, with a possible cost or gain in gold on the side.
I just realized how ironic it is that Caste System is also the most useful labor civic (12 merchant specialists) under my current Corporation. You have your clerks, your management, your executives, your board members...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5812700&postcount=49
It's like smac Sky Hydroponics Labs for Civ IV.
1) Massive food for new and old cities
2) Massive culture for new/conquered cities
3) Massive Score increase from population if you spread it to all your cities right before winning.
The idea is not so much to make gold as to convert late-game money into different resources. In this case I'm even making a profit because the 12 free specialists per city are turned into Merchants under Caste System.
My "calculated score if you win this turn" is over 100,000 and increasing by ~1,000/turn from the population boom.
I'm running science at 80% and with Representation, the colossal number of specialists giving +3 base
each is giving me two future techs every three turns as my spaceship races for Alpha Centauri in the 1800's (I wanted to try out the new spaceship victory, and it's actually pretty nice visually). The extra and from Future Techs is increasing the population cap to make even huger returns possible as I conquer or trade for all seafood on the map and max out Sushi's + for the highest population score possible.The purpose of a business, after all, is to take something of lesser value to society and turn it into something of greater value. Sid's Sushi converts useless surplus seafood resources into population and cultural expansion, with a possible cost or gain in gold on the side.
I just realized how ironic it is that Caste System is also the most useful labor civic (12 merchant specialists) under my current Corporation. You have your clerks, your management, your executives, your board members...
Gnarfflinger
Wiseguy in Training
I'm not so sure. You could run Mining Inc in your cities that need hammers but not culture, Creative Constructions in cities that need hammers and culture. You can also have The Jewelers the same cities. If the civ has Oil, spread the Ethanol one to block the Cereal mills. Same with Aluminum...
Nikis-Knight
Deity
Are you sure? I've counted the yields before, and they seemed to be added in. I'll recheck next time.
having just played through a game to compare, I must say mining inc is indeed a double edged sword. while it has the same out put of creative constructions, the lockout of most other corporations PROTECTS you from ai encroachment. where as creative constructions would allow far more other companys to set up in your cities without paying takeover fees.
I guess it depends on how many GP's you have right then and what your plans are to go mining inc or creative constructions. but considering the atleast 35% hammer bonus from forge and factory its hard to pass up an extra 10-20 hammers per turn regardless of its cost.
NaZ
I guess it depends on how many GP's you have right then and what your plans are to go mining inc or creative constructions. but considering the atleast 35% hammer bonus from forge and factory its hard to pass up an extra 10-20 hammers per turn regardless of its cost.
NaZ
I am a bit late in replying to this thread but NaZdReG sent me a message I didn't read until just now, asking me to comment. So forgive my tardiness but I have a lot to say.
I am suspicious of many people's opinions on corporations, they either seem to be overly enthusiastic and corporations are the "best thing since sliced bread" or they are pessimistic and corporations too expensive and inflation ruins them in the late game. Opinions vary wildly depending on map type, difficulty level and the players personal playstyle. Some see it as a way to ruin AI economies and some see it as a way to energise a cultural victory. If it can be used to ruin an AI economy then I hope that gets fixed in a patch as I don't like that way of winning, but so far I've seen no hard evidence of that happening in my games, and although many players say it's happened in their games I wonder how closely they looked at the finances / benefits the corporations gave the AI.
There seem to be some very strange ways of thinking about and then accounting for the setup and maintenace costs of corporations and that makes many people's advice dubious. They are either double counting the income or not counting the benefits at their true worth or massively underestimating the set up costs. Many people get confused between their Investment Account and their Profit and Loss Account (Income Account).
We need a clear way of comparing the Investment costs of setting up a domestic corporation. Most players account for the office (basically 100 hammers, worth about 200 gold and 130 gold per office) and to regard that as an investment by the HQ that gets repaid at 10 gold or 15 gold per turn with Wall Street. In fact if you have no other reason to build Wall Street, like an existing shrine, then you can add its 600 hammers (worth 1200 gold) to the HQ set up costs and perhaps even a bank or two if you had to build those in a city in order to build WS.
Let's take a medium sized empire of 12 cities and calculate the set up costs of Sid's Sushi.
Assume it had more than 6 banks already but no good reason to build WS. Also assume it had no reason to research Medicine (costs about 6700 beakers on Monarch) except to grab Sid's Sushi and assume it has acquired and saved a GM to make the HQ (worth say 2000 gold on a trade mission). Then we spread the corporation offices at a cost of 100 hammers and 130 gold each to our 11 remaining cities.
With 1 = 2 
= 2 we have:
Wall Street 600 worth 1200
Medicine 6700 worth 6700
Great Merchant worth 2000
11 Excecutives 1100 worth 2200
11 Offices cost 1430
The total investment is therefore equivalent to 13530 gold + beakers. With 12 offices working through WS we have an investment return of 12 * 15 = 180 gold. That is a return of 1.3% per turn on the investment
and it would take 75 turns for the set up costs to be recovered. Yet we get people raving about the "Profits" they are making. The truth is they've sunk a great deal of their empire's resources in something that will take an age to pay back the investment (in terms of HQ income at least)
Most people would not include the high cost of researching Medicine in this account but another player running a Caste System + SP game would have no need of Medicine and would invest his beakers in other technologies, so I maintain it is justified to look at the problem this way. I did not include the research costs of Corporation (the tech) in the set up costs as that is needed for Assembly Line and all players will research or trade for it at this stage of the game, sooner or later.
Now lets look at the running costs and the benefits. They have a fixed component and a variable depending the number of resources and size of city. This has been investigated thoroughly by OTAKUjbski in this thread Corporate Maintenance Explained and explained further by Mr Cynical in this thread Corporation: The Power of Sushi so I don't propose to go into much detail. Also NaZdReg has prepared spreadsheets for a variety of situations in this thread.
Having made the large investment in resources to set up the HQ and 11 offices for Sid's Sushi it is obvious that we need enough seafood and rice resources to give a decent amount of food. There will be greatly increased costs that can be more than offset as Mr Cynical has shown:
I agree with all of what he's written here except that he should not include the HQ income in his running costs. That is on a separate account trying, forlornly, to repay the huge investement he's sunk into this Sid's Sushi strategy. That reduces his apparent profits considerably. I suspect (without going into great detail) that in this example he's spending a lot of gold (in maintenance plus inflation costs) to get back a lot of gold from his merchants plus beakers from Rep and GPPs. The value of the raw beakers depend on how good the research modifiers are and the value of the GPPs depend on whether he can squeeze at least another GP out of that city, if he can't they are worth nothing otherwise 1 GPP = about 1 beaker or gold (assuming his next GP costs 2000 GPPs).
I look forward to further discussion.
I am suspicious of many people's opinions on corporations, they either seem to be overly enthusiastic and corporations are the "best thing since sliced bread" or they are pessimistic and corporations too expensive and inflation ruins them in the late game. Opinions vary wildly depending on map type, difficulty level and the players personal playstyle. Some see it as a way to ruin AI economies and some see it as a way to energise a cultural victory. If it can be used to ruin an AI economy then I hope that gets fixed in a patch as I don't like that way of winning, but so far I've seen no hard evidence of that happening in my games, and although many players say it's happened in their games I wonder how closely they looked at the finances / benefits the corporations gave the AI.
There seem to be some very strange ways of thinking about and then accounting for the setup and maintenace costs of corporations and that makes many people's advice dubious. They are either double counting the income or not counting the benefits at their true worth or massively underestimating the set up costs. Many people get confused between their Investment Account and their Profit and Loss Account (Income Account).
We need a clear way of comparing the Investment costs of setting up a domestic corporation. Most players account for the office (basically 100 hammers, worth about 200 gold and 130 gold per office) and to regard that as an investment by the HQ that gets repaid at 10 gold or 15 gold per turn with Wall Street. In fact if you have no other reason to build Wall Street, like an existing shrine, then you can add its 600 hammers (worth 1200 gold) to the HQ set up costs and perhaps even a bank or two if you had to build those in a city in order to build WS.
Let's take a medium sized empire of 12 cities and calculate the set up costs of Sid's Sushi.
Assume it had more than 6 banks already but no good reason to build WS. Also assume it had no reason to research Medicine (costs about 6700 beakers on Monarch) except to grab Sid's Sushi and assume it has acquired and saved a GM to make the HQ (worth say 2000 gold on a trade mission). Then we spread the corporation offices at a cost of 100 hammers and 130 gold each to our 11 remaining cities.
With 1
= 2 = 2 we have:Wall Street 600
worth 1200Medicine 6700
worth 6700Great Merchant worth 2000
11 Excecutives 1100
worth 220011 Offices cost 1430
The total investment is therefore equivalent to 13530 gold + beakers. With 12 offices working through WS we have an investment return of 12 * 15 = 180 gold. That is a return of 1.3% per turn on the investment
and it would take 75 turns for the set up costs to be recovered. Yet we get people raving about the "Profits" they are making. The truth is they've sunk a great deal of their empire's resources in something that will take an age to pay back the investment (in terms of HQ income at least)Most people would not include the high cost of researching Medicine in this account but another player running a Caste System + SP game would have no need of Medicine and would invest his beakers in other technologies, so I maintain it is justified to look at the problem this way. I did not include the research costs of Corporation (the tech) in the set up costs as that is needed for Assembly Line and all players will research or trade for it at this stage of the game, sooner or later.
Now lets look at the running costs and the benefits. They have a fixed component and a variable depending the number of resources and size of city. This has been investigated thoroughly by OTAKUjbski in this thread Corporate Maintenance Explained and explained further by Mr Cynical in this thread Corporation: The Power of Sushi so I don't propose to go into much detail. Also NaZdReg has prepared spreadsheets for a variety of situations in this thread.
Having made the large investment in resources to set up the HQ and 11 offices for Sid's Sushi it is obvious that we need enough seafood and rice resources to give a decent amount of food. There will be greatly increased costs that can be more than offset as Mr Cynical has shown:
I agree with all of what he's written here except that he should not include the HQ income in his running costs. That is on a separate account trying, forlornly, to repay the huge investement he's sunk into this Sid's Sushi strategy. That reduces his apparent profits considerably. I suspect (without going into great detail) that in this example he's spending a lot of gold (in maintenance plus inflation costs) to get back a lot of gold from his merchants plus beakers from Rep and GPPs. The value of the raw beakers depend on how good the research modifiers are and the value of the GPPs depend on whether he can squeeze at least another GP out of that city, if he can't they are worth nothing otherwise 1 GPP = about 1 beaker or gold (assuming his next GP costs 2000 GPPs).
I look forward to further discussion.
MrCynical
Deity
UncleJJ said:
While these costs are true, I'd question whether it is fair to count these as sunk costs exclusively for the corporation. Medicine is going to get researched anyway, and carries a higher importance than previously due to the increased health problems in the industrial age. With a beeline for Sushi, odds are you'll be first to it, and hence may trade it for additional tech to counterbalance sunk cost.
I'd also query Wall Street as a sunk cost - whether you have a corporation or not, surely in just about any game you're going to build this anyway? Yes I prioritise it a lot more with a corporation strategy, but again, it'll get built without it.
The expense of the merchant and executives (construction and founding) is fair enough. Indeed on those lines my sunk costs will be higher, since there'll be probably a dozen more executives for foreign spread.
What's wrong with including the HQ gold? Each branch is going to repay 15 gold there, and so makes a small, but noticeable difference in running costs. The only issue is if you don't get the HQ, which is very unlikely. Even on Immortal level the AI doesn't come close to beating me to medicine.
In the example I gave in this case, I've given both the total maintenance, and the food output. Total cost per turn from corporation (including the additional cost from inflation) was 626gpt, and I can't see any reason not to count the 180gpt I recouping against that. They're both gold, and measured after all modifiers have been applied.
As I've said, the strategy relies on additional foreign spread to counterbalance the costs. The benefit of a purely domestic corporation is (at least without Solver's patch) very dubious indeed. Ideally a civ would found at least one additional corporation, for purely foreign spread, and while again the upfront costs are quite high, a couple of thousand gold per turn, which can be easily generated from two corporations, soon repays it. With a tentative guess at another dozen exceutives, a GP and foreign branch costs, that's about 2000 for the GP, 1200 for the executives, and maybe 2400 for branch costs. It doesn't take too long to repay that (It's would only take a little over 30 turns if the AI didn't spread it at all. Given that the AI rapidly spreads it to all cities it can, you can see the potential here.
In the example here, by the time my corporation expenses (factoring in inflation) were at 626gpt, the income purely from corporations was accounting for just over 2000 gold after all modifiers. That's with just two corporations, and the construction of under 30 executives. The additional 8 food and whatever culture in my cities came on top of that.
You raise some fair points about sunk costs, but I don't find them that significant, and I think you're exaggerating them somewhat by including Wall Street and the cost of the tech.
All of this is based on a game without Solver's patch. With Solver's patch corporations make a less effective weapon against the AI (though I don't consider that their true power), but the maintenance costs become trivial.
aelf
Ashen One
@UncleJJ:
I see. Interesting. So in your view it is easy enough to make profit on the Profit and Loss Account but difficult on the Investment account? Then what is your own verdict on the overall usefulness of corps?
I think setting up the corp as early as possible certainly helps with increasing profitability on the Investment account. However, the less tangible benefits of corps might be able to justify the cost of setting them up. When talking about Sid's Sushi, as Mr Cynical has suggested, that would be flexibility. Other corps might give you something that would otherwise be difficult to come by, even if you are prepared to invest a lot of hammers/gold to get it through other means. So you could think of the large investment as giving yourself more/better options later.
EDIT: I just saw MrCynical's post and I agree that Medicine and Wall Street might be researched and built anyway. But, since we can't simply assume that (I've gotten by without both, especially on non-space race games), it's probably good to account for them as a worst case scenario analysis.
I see. Interesting. So in your view it is easy enough to make profit on the Profit and Loss Account but difficult on the Investment account? Then what is your own verdict on the overall usefulness of corps?
I think setting up the corp as early as possible certainly helps with increasing profitability on the Investment account. However, the less tangible benefits of corps might be able to justify the cost of setting them up. When talking about Sid's Sushi, as Mr Cynical has suggested, that would be flexibility. Other corps might give you something that would otherwise be difficult to come by, even if you are prepared to invest a lot of hammers/gold to get it through other means. So you could think of the large investment as giving yourself more/better options later.
EDIT: I just saw MrCynical's post and I agree that Medicine and Wall Street might be researched and built anyway. But, since we can't simply assume that (I've gotten by without both, especially on non-space race games), it's probably good to account for them as a worst case scenario analysis.
UncleJJ,
thank you for taking the time to respond, your accurate details are exactly why I sent you a PM regarding this.
-----about sid's sushi-----
sid's sushi may be a bad example of corporation investment. the extra food is nice and there are few other ways to get ahold of extra food.. leading to extra use of workshops and cottages
did you factor that in?? if my ironworks city can afford to run 0 farms because of the extra food the multiplied effects of the hammers would outwegh the costs I think.
or if a sub optimal plains city is running now 8 plains cottages instead of 8 plains farms because of the extra food.
I digress from my point.
----------------------------
IMO the 2 strongest corporations are mining inc and creative constructions. the latter has a lower upkeep for smaller cities but it balances out.
lets assume your initial calculations, but railroad is the critical tech.. or combustion if you want CC instead of mining inc.
for me this isn't really a beeline, at this stage of the game printing press, replacable parts etc are all nessessary techs
if I can get an extra 15 hammers for a city that is HUGE. sometimes I get the corp founded before building wall street, and use the extra hammers to get it done faster...
extra hammers mean new or captured cities get up to speed much quicker. courthouse granary library etc until they are good cities.
this also leads to more warmongerage
now at that stage of the game industrialism is not far off. so we're looking at an avg +100% after forge, factory, access to coal.
those 15 hammers are suddenly 30. or 60 in the ironworks city....
in this case, even if I am PAYING for that benefit.. the leveraged production is hard to match by the ai. if over the next 50??? (beancounting needed) turns I get my cities set up and they leverage those hammers to make sure they all have courthouse, forge, factory, coal plant
suddenly my production output is drastically higher than it was.
Unclejj, if you wouldn't mind doing a similar cost benefit analysis on this I would really apprciate the beancounting.
I'd post my save, but I'm playing the mod I mentioned with the late game nextwar techs/units and solver's patch. I'm playing a game with good ol frederick and I'm just before that point in the game. I will start collecting screenies. I have yet to shoot for the free great merchant, but was able to snag all 3 of the engineer wonders
so a handy engineer is certain when I need it. I plan on going with creative constructions rather than mining inc. I don't have a need really for extra food so rather than sid's sushi I may wait for standard ethanol..
thats a whole different scenario. if you have say 10 of a resource, sid's sushi provides 5 food. cereal mills provides 8 food. standard ethanol produces 20 beakers.. which is stronger?? I think the food might be better but we'll see
NaZ
thank you for taking the time to respond, your accurate details are exactly why I sent you a PM regarding this.
-----about sid's sushi-----
sid's sushi may be a bad example of corporation investment. the extra food is nice and there are few other ways to get ahold of extra food.. leading to extra use of workshops and cottages
did you factor that in?? if my ironworks city can afford to run 0 farms because of the extra food the multiplied effects of the hammers would outwegh the costs I think.
or if a sub optimal plains city is running now 8 plains cottages instead of 8 plains farms because of the extra food.
I digress from my point.
----------------------------
IMO the 2 strongest corporations are mining inc and creative constructions. the latter has a lower upkeep for smaller cities but it balances out.
lets assume your initial calculations, but railroad is the critical tech.. or combustion if you want CC instead of mining inc.
for me this isn't really a beeline, at this stage of the game printing press, replacable parts etc are all nessessary techs
if I can get an extra 15 hammers for a city that is HUGE. sometimes I get the corp founded before building wall street, and use the extra hammers to get it done faster...
extra hammers mean new or captured cities get up to speed much quicker. courthouse granary library etc until they are good cities.
this also leads to more warmongerage
now at that stage of the game industrialism is not far off. so we're looking at an avg +100% after forge, factory, access to coal.
those 15 hammers are suddenly 30. or 60 in the ironworks city....
in this case, even if I am PAYING for that benefit.. the leveraged production is hard to match by the ai. if over the next 50??? (beancounting needed) turns I get my cities set up and they leverage those hammers to make sure they all have courthouse, forge, factory, coal plant
suddenly my production output is drastically higher than it was.
Unclejj, if you wouldn't mind doing a similar cost benefit analysis on this I would really apprciate the beancounting.
I'd post my save, but I'm playing the mod I mentioned with the late game nextwar techs/units and solver's patch. I'm playing a game with good ol frederick and I'm just before that point in the game. I will start collecting screenies. I have yet to shoot for the free great merchant, but was able to snag all 3 of the engineer wonders
so a handy engineer is certain when I need it. I plan on going with creative constructions rather than mining inc. I don't have a need really for extra food so rather than sid's sushi I may wait for standard ethanol..thats a whole different scenario. if you have say 10 of a resource, sid's sushi provides 5 food. cereal mills provides 8 food. standard ethanol produces 20 beakers.. which is stronger?? I think the food might be better but we'll see
NaZ
I have already justified my reasoning for including Medicine as an investment cost. Trading it to other civs is a two edged sword and that should be dealt with by a Trading Account. You are beelining to Medicine specifically to get Sid's Sushi and therefore it is a legitimate cost for your strategy. Ask yourself what else you'd be researching at that stage of the game with another strategy, that is what it is costing you.
Medicine is a weak tech, I would much prefer the similarly costed Refrigeration and in my current game (based on SP) I am about to win a Domination victory and have not researched Medicine despite reaching Advanced Flight. From a health perspective the Supermarket is a much more cost effective building than a Hostpital. Of course if you do have Sid's Sushi and use that to fuel city growth AND build factories then you might need hostpitals as well as supermarkets. But I question the amount of hammers invested to make this work in most cities, it depends on the quality of the cities involved, large cities and factories do not normally go well together unless there are enormous amounts of hammers available (e.g. several good tile resources or settled engineers and priests)
Wall Street is an appalling wonder that should never be built unless you have a significant source of gold. It costs 600
and there are no ways to speed it up as it is a Nat Wonder, so whipping is half effect and buying with US double cost. You have to build it the long hard way and it takes many turns unless you pick a city with good hammer output. WS costs 600 hammers for +100% gold, compare that to a bank that costs 200 hammers and gives +50% gold, and you'll see it is less cost effective. I do not build WS unless I have a significant commerce or gold source. In your Sid's Sushi strategy it is a key component so you're building it for that purpose hence it is added to your set up costs. In fairness, I will allow you to add any extra income the HQ city gets from WS to help pay off the investment costs in this strategy.
I don't really mind where you include the HQ income in your balance sheet as long as you only do it once. If you set it against running costs and don't use it to "pay off" the investment then you've written off all those set up costs and that's 13,500 gold + beakers that you'll never recover. That is a cost in resources attributable to the strategy that other strategies can use diffently.
Ok, do it that way but don't forget you've just written off a 13,500 investment other players aren't making. That is all my method of accounting tells you. If you are running this Sid's Sushi strategy for economic reasons then how are you going to justify the costs versus other strategies that use the resources a different way?
I am not happy about using the foreign spread aspect of any the corporation strategies, there is something wrong with that aspect of the game that needs fixing. The costs for the AI civs and their behaviour needs to be adjusted, otherwise it is, or could be, exploitative and ruins the late game (for me, even if others feel differently). I was specifically analysing the domestic aspects and said so. Apart from anything else it is very hard to predict how the AI will respond to a foreign spread branch of the strategy. Can you rely on the AI to spread your corporations and not to adopt certain civics that foil that approach?
However, you could spread the corporation to colonies, vassals and foreign civs and they will increase HQ gold. Again the costs and payback of this additional foreign investment can be accounted for in terms of an Investment Account and my method of using HQ income to "repay" the investment costs makes it easier to see what is happening since this is primarily an economic strategy. Your only direct benefit from extending the strategy to foreign cities is an increased income and you need to know how soon you will profit from the investment, hence comparing HQ costs to HQ income is the best method. The indirect benefit of ruining another civ's economy is hard to account for and is an exploit that spoils the game IMHO. Perhaps you have ideas of how to evaluate that economically.
I am not exaggerating either cost for my own games since I would not research Medicine or normally build WS. If your game circumstances are different, then perhaps you are combining and blending your Sid Sushi strategy with an earlier stategy (say a profitable religous shrine paying 30 gold/ turn) that already justifies building WS. That does reduce the costs but that makes it a joint Sushi and Religious strategy, which is fine but you have to define it as such and account for the set up costs accordingly. I can never see a need to research Medicine without wishing to pursue this corporation based strategy. But that is just the way I play and account for the costs, YMMV.
I hear Firaxis are considering some changes to corporation costs and to inflation to deal with players concerns. I will go with the official game patches in this area, but you can make adjustments to any figures I use yourselves for Solvers patch or any mods.
I see corporations as an interesting and powerful addition to the game. In the right conditions they can be leveraged to facilitate and speed up a victory. In the wrong conditions they are an expensive diversion of resources that can be used better in other ways.
You can set up corporations for a variety of reasons and domestically it is primarily for the benefits such as extra hammers, food and culture in your cities. They are an often rather expensive way to turn gold into these other resources and yes you're right they give more and better options in many cities. They're not a no brainer investment, you need to need to apply them carefully to relevant cities. I feel they increase the skill level required to play the game well in BtS and that is a welcome addition to the depth of play. I'm glad there are rival strategies that avoid and even counter act corporations. You seem to have to either commit to use them and then go wholeheartedly in that direction (e.g. build banks and adopt Free Trade) or alternatively avoid them all together (e.g. build factories, workshops, Caste System and SP for an SE).
I doubt Medicine would be researched for any other reason than getting Sid's Sushi, unless you wanted to build Hostpitals for a "Red Cross" strategy. But I see little need for that with the powerful stack healing from medic 3 GGs and the new Woodsman 3 promotion. I suppose if you wanted to make a stack of troops with march promotions then a free medic promotion has virtue, but that is an expensive way to get a small benefit.
I've dealt with WS in my reply to him. I do build it in maybe 50% of games if I have good reason in a city with decent hammer production. There are often better uses for hammers and building it late game is questionable without a good gold return. Only corporation HQs or a multi shrine holy city justify it.
MrCynical
Deity
UncleJJ said:
This is just getting into semantics about accounting, not about the actual profitability of the strategy. That investment (and no, I still don't agree with your inclusion of medicine and Wall Street in this, but since you insist I'll use this exaggerated cost to highlight the potential), is largely to be paid off by foreign, not domestic spread as I've said. Still, we'll do it your way. It makes no difference to the strategy's viability.
To take an example from my most recent game, at Immortal:
At the end of the game, using your accounting method, my corporate expenses were 751gpt, at 181% inflation comes to a grand total of 2110gpt corporate expenses. Corporate income was 805 base, adjust for buildings gives profit of 2415gpt. So I'm making 305gpt profit from corporations, purely on gold, not even considering the food, production and cultural benefits they were giving. The ratio had been much more favourable earlier in the game, since inflation was climbing, and I stopped spamming corporations some time before the end as I was just cruising to a space race win.
This was with far from maximal foreign spread. Sushi had only been spread to about half the potential civs, since I wanted to be able to trade for seafood with the others, and as it was a hemispheres map there were many islands still lacking any corporations at the end. I'd even made the drastic error of spamming both corporations to a civ I subsequently conquered, leaving me with Mining Inc in cities I would normally never have spread it to, and I was still ahead.
Now let's look at investment;
1 great merchant and 1 great engineer: 4000 gold
30ish execs (islands map): 6000 gold
30ish branches: about 5000 gold
Wall Street: 1200 gold
Medicine (and I still don't consider this valid): 6700 gold
So even with your worst case scenario situation (and as a matter of fact I did have a shrine anyway in this game as well) that gives up front costs of 22900 gold. So it takes just 76 turns for the corporations to pay that back, even at the point where the corporation was at its lowest profitability; at the end with inflation at its maximum.
This is still dealing with pure gold. It takes just 76 turns to come out ahead on the investment before I even consider the benefits of the additonal food, etc.
If you feel a strategy is exploitative, then don't use it. I'm simply highlighting that in works. In many cases people are using Solver's patch which removes any problem with AI civ costs. I don't consider foreign city corporation spam to be an exploit for the simple reason that the AI also does it.
In a word; yes. If an AI is running Free market or enviromentalism, receives a foreign corporation in a city, and has no corporations of its own, it will invariably spam it to all of its cities on the same continent. It generallly does not spam to any island cities until the invention of flight and construction of airports. As to civics, the AI is quite predictable here as well. Unless any favourite civics are involved, it will run enviromentalism as soon as possible. Rather than messing around with espionage, the simplest way to get the AI to enviromentalism is simply to trade Medicine to them, unlocking Enviromentalism. As I've said, this tech has it's uses.
This predictability is more concerning than corporate costs, and could be considered exploitative. Solver's patch eliminates any problems with the AI spamming, as the maintenance costs become trivial compared to the corporate benefits. Its fondness for Enviromentalism (presumably you consider this civic to be awful as you never research medicine?) is therefore a problem.
I suppose you could figure out the maintenance costs the AI are paying, the benefit they receive based on rough conversions (e.g. using food to run merchants), and scale the value of the resulting harm or benefit based on AI position. For example you might consider it a beaker removed from a runaway AI (though now largely a thing of the past) worth a beaker gained by you. Any impact either way on a backward civ would be irrelevant, and the rest fall somewhere in between.
This is a huge amount of hassle though, so for simplicity's sake I assume I'm not getting any benefit on this front. With Solver's patch that is basically true. Without it, there is an indirect benefit, but probably not as drastic as you might think. There isn't for instance much of a drop in AI research spread after a corporation spam. I tend to starve the AI of the resources (as I hoard them for myself) which will also minimise maintenance costs.
Personally I don't use Solver's patch. It looks like Firaxis will reduce corporation maintenance, whether directly or by reducing inflation, but I'll wait on the official patch before rewriting my strategies. Solver's patch is severely unbalanced in the opposite direction. When you're generating an gold income well into 4 figures at 100% science, the game gets rather silly.
I research medicine and build hospitals and wall street a lot more often than pre-BTS even if I am not pursuing corporations. Levees give a substantial production increase to river commerce cities and most of them end up with full infrastructure in the late game.
Health is a problem in BtS with factories and water poisoning, and wall street+shrine+merchant specialists is still a good way to keep your science rate up.
The real issue on whether or not to found corporations is whether they will have enough time to pay off before the game is over. I think the 76 turn payoff estimate is rather pessimistic myself.
Health is a problem in BtS with factories and water poisoning, and wall street+shrine+merchant specialists is still a good way to keep your science rate up.
The real issue on whether or not to found corporations is whether they will have enough time to pay off before the game is over. I think the 76 turn payoff estimate is rather pessimistic myself.
popejubal
Emperor
...if you are founding them for money.
I really like Uncle JJ's analysis. That kind of look at what your return on investment is really makes a big difference in winning a game like this.
We already think about the ROI on early Axemen vs. Pyramids/Stonehenge/Great Wall (even if we don't think of it in entirely numerical terms). Why not take the same look at Corporations?
I do think that the additional benefits of particular corporations are worth a look, though. Getting the extra food from Sid's Sushi is very nice, but the food and culture together make a city that you drop on another civ's continent into a magnificent beachhead (the second border pop came in just 2 turns the last time I did this).
I think that the key is to use Corporations for their potential money as well as for their strategic benefits. Don't just drop your corporation on all your cities for the fun of it. Place the corps strategically in places that are appropriate for your game when you can afford the additional upkeep.
Completely cleared out this post to do a proper recap.
started next to monty, bulldozed him with chariots and built the great wall. espionage kept me in pace with tech.. and religion+diplomacy let me stay peaceful on my continent from that point.
through careful tech trading and espionage I was able to delay liberalism long enough that I could catch medicine!!! from it. (I had contact with AI on the other continent so directed espionage points to their tech leader)
from there I went constitution, corporations.. built wall street and founded sid's sushi. beelined to combustion, installed creative constructions. spammed it quickly to all of my cities then demolished one of my neighbors in short order with rifles, calvary, cannons.
next neighbor fell right after I got to assembly line.. panzers leveled him.. at this point the magnified power of creative constructions became apparent.. even almost all cottage cities were putting up a panzer every 5 turns. my neighbor was kicked off the continent and vassalized in only 8 turns. then I kicked the last off my continent and had it all to myself.
every single city had sid's sushi.. and almost all of them creative constructions (was in process of finishing.. only 3-4 didnt have it)
you can see in the pics the date creative was founded.. 1583ish. from there look at the power graph and you can see the immediate and dramatic spike. every single city captured magnified my net power.
I got lucky and elizabeth on the other continent got dogpiled. sent some panzers in transports and secured myself a beachhead. from there almost all of my cities had airports.. once the beachhead city did I was unloading 8-10 modern armor per turn plus assault mechs (gotta love the fixed nextwar mod)
the expenses show the dramatic costs I was incurring.. but at 50% slider I was still in the green. It didn't matter the game was over 3 turns from where I took the screenshots. I also was able to deflect an AI invasion (they caught me not paying attention and took a city for all of 3 turns) instead of my modern armor taking a plane over to the other continent they stormed the captured city and retook it.
for the warmonger.. mining inc or creative constructions are valuable assets. I would say creative is stronger.. early on you don't get as many hammers (only because the resources are more scarce) but the culture means captured cities go to fat cross the turn after they come out of revolt. being able to found civilized jewelers was just a bonus.. each city that got it increased my net gpt.
I'll happily put up a save as well, but you'll have to have the mod I'm using. Uncle JJ if you want the save and the mod I can email them to you, PM me your addy and I'll shoot it over.
NaZ
started next to monty, bulldozed him with chariots and built the great wall. espionage kept me in pace with tech.. and religion+diplomacy let me stay peaceful on my continent from that point.
through careful tech trading and espionage I was able to delay liberalism long enough that I could catch medicine!!! from it. (I had contact with AI on the other continent so directed espionage points to their tech leader)
from there I went constitution, corporations.. built wall street and founded sid's sushi. beelined to combustion, installed creative constructions. spammed it quickly to all of my cities then demolished one of my neighbors in short order with rifles, calvary, cannons.
next neighbor fell right after I got to assembly line.. panzers leveled him.. at this point the magnified power of creative constructions became apparent.. even almost all cottage cities were putting up a panzer every 5 turns. my neighbor was kicked off the continent and vassalized in only 8 turns. then I kicked the last off my continent and had it all to myself.
every single city had sid's sushi.. and almost all of them creative constructions (was in process of finishing.. only 3-4 didnt have it)
you can see in the pics the date creative was founded.. 1583ish. from there look at the power graph and you can see the immediate and dramatic spike. every single city captured magnified my net power.
I got lucky and elizabeth on the other continent got dogpiled. sent some panzers in transports and secured myself a beachhead. from there almost all of my cities had airports.. once the beachhead city did I was unloading 8-10 modern armor per turn plus assault mechs
(gotta love the fixed nextwar mod)the expenses show the dramatic costs I was incurring.. but at 50% slider I was still in the green. It didn't matter the game was over 3 turns from where I took the screenshots. I also was able to deflect an AI invasion (they caught me not paying attention and took a city for all of 3 turns) instead of my modern armor taking a plane over to the other continent they stormed the captured city and retook it.
for the warmonger.. mining inc or creative constructions are valuable assets. I would say creative is stronger.. early on you don't get as many hammers (only because the resources are more scarce) but the culture means captured cities go to fat cross the turn after they come out of revolt. being able to found civilized jewelers was just a bonus.. each city that got it increased my net gpt.
I'll happily put up a save as well, but you'll have to have the mod I'm using. Uncle JJ if you want the save and the mod I can email them to you, PM me your addy and I'll shoot it over.
NaZ
just to further emphasize.. getting to creative constructions was nessessary anyway because combustion is a critical tech. by mass spamming it to all of my cities they went from 30 turns to build an airport to 5-8. every single city that was running the corp was able to produce a modern armor in just 5-6 turns after forge and factory w/ power. that is why my power rating skyrocketed. there was no way for the ai to stop me at that point..
it also let me build up arcologies, happiness buildings, and wonders of my choosing. sid's sushi is definately helpful but no where near as powerful.
one other thing.. by spamming it to the ai it basically forced several of them to change to state property. I wasn't making money off of them anymore which hurt the econ a bit, but it ment they could not benefit from the corps effects either.
I would love to collaborate on any strategic article regarding the specific strengths of leveraging different corps and how to use them to maximum effect
NaZ
it also let me build up arcologies, happiness buildings, and wonders of my choosing. sid's sushi is definately helpful but no where near as powerful.
one other thing.. by spamming it to the ai it basically forced several of them to change to state property. I wasn't making money off of them anymore which hurt the econ a bit, but it ment they could not benefit from the corps effects either.
I would love to collaborate on any strategic article regarding the specific strengths of leveraging different corps and how to use them to maximum effect
NaZ
vladstrutzu
Chieftain
In a recent game i was going for domination and needed to conquer just one more civ... I had infantry... They had tanks and planes... So it was looking grim... What saved me?... production.. Mining Inc giving me 35 (I had a huge empire and 4 vassals)... double that(forge, factory, etc.) and you get a infantry in 2 turns just from Miing Inc.
Ok!.. I had my research down to 10% to keep up... but I was building some 10-15 units per turn with only 20 cities.
Corporation are good for winning, not for making money... Mining Inc can help your war like nothing else and sushi can give something almost priceless:.
I play without solver's patch, and I think that corporations are good the way they are. If the next official patch will lower the upkeep, corporations will be overpowered.
(I had a huge empire and 4 vassals)... double that(forge, factory, etc.) and you get a infantry in 2 turns just from Miing Inc.Ok!.. I had my research down to 10% to keep up... but I was building some 10-15 units per turn with only 20 cities.
Corporation are good for winning, not for making money... Mining Inc can help your war like nothing else and sushi can give something almost priceless:
.I play without solver's patch, and I think that corporations are good the way they are. If the next official patch will lower the upkeep, corporations will be overpowered.
