Corporations: an idea for a future expansion!

[Ikael]

From the musings of the "expansion suggestions" tread, here I am yet again with far too much time in my hands, I present you... Civilization V's corporations! Feel ree to comment:

BASIC MECHANICS

- Corporations have to be founded and enhanced by a great merchant. You cannot found them before the industrial revolution.

- Corporations are founded in the same way as religions are: first arrived, first served

- There can only be one corporation at one city at a time

- You expand a corporation by paying gold. The further away from the headquarters and bigger a city is, the more costly it will be

- You can extirpate rival corporations either by spyionage, or trought legal action - pay a fee on the city to see it removed (small icon next to a city rather than the whole lawer unit micromanaging madness). Needless to say, the bigger the city, the bigger is the cost of the legal action or the spyionage action

- Corporations cost money to expand and to mantain, too. The manteinance costs goes up the more franchises are stablished, from an initial cost of 4 gold per turn up per franchise, up to a whooping 20 of gold per turn per franchise maximum

- Franchises have mostly negative consequences for the hosting civ, while yielding benefits for the corporation's headquarters. However, they do generate money for the civilization that hosts it. The more spreaded a corporation is, the higher will be the benefit yielded by its individual franchises, ranging from +1 gold to +10 gold (increasing on 1 gold per franchise in the world). That would mean that civilizations in dire need of cash will welcome its corporate overlords, while another more powerful civs interested in different matters will react in an hostile way towars corporate expansion. City states, however, a prime target for corporations...

- The only way to kill a corporation entirely is trought a "hostile takeover", an action that can only be carried by a great merchant. In order to make an hostile takeover, you need first to be completely free of the franchises of said corporation in your territory and consume a great merchant next to the headquarters of your rival's corporation

- Social policies do influenciate the corporations in certain ways:

Liberty: -50% to the manteinance costs of your own corporation franchises
Order: +50% to the costs of stablishing foreign corporations inside your empire
Autocracy: -50% to the costs of expanding a corporation to other civilizations
Commerce: +100% to the economic benefit of hosting foreign corporation franchises inside your empire


DIFFERENT CORPORATIONS

STANDARD RESOURCES

Prequisite: Biology

Steals 1 resource of either alluminum or oil for its founder worked on the city radious
Upgrade - industrial processing - You gain +2 production on its headquarters for each franchise

Uses: This is a corporation that if used right, can severely slow down an enemy's military efforts and space race victory conditions. Huge, massive annoyance to deal with, many civilizations would be willing to enter in war against you in order to recover their precious oil for their army and alluminium for their spaceships.

INTERNATIONAL PICTURES

Prequisite: Electricity

Steals 20% of the culture produced from its franchises towards its headquarters

Upgrade - mass entertainment: You gain +2 happiness on its headquarters for each stablished franchise

Uses: Denying the cultural victory to other civs never felt so much satisfying. It can either be used by a small civ headed towards cultural victory, or by a big civ looking to screw a cultural victory and having some sweet added hapiness effects to boot.


PHARMACOMPLEX

Prequisite: Medicine

Steals 10% of the food produced from its franchises towards its headquarters, it is easier to spy on said cities
Upgrade - patent property: You gain +5 science on its headquarters for each franchise

Uses: Yet another source of growth, the added bonus of science makes it a must have for small yet tall civs.

APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES

Prequisite: Electronics

Steals 20% science produced from its franchises towards its headquarters

Upgrade - Research & development - You gain +10% to spaceship production on your headquarters for each franchise (up to a +150% max)

Uses: Spaceship win all the way, and a great way to cripple your rival's technological efforts. An extremely focused corporation, that is for sure

WARFARE .INC

Prequisite: Automatic weapons

Cripples a 30% of the military production rate and city defenses, that city cannot host a nuclear bomb

Upgrade - war economy - Free franchise manteinance

Uses: If you wish peace, profit from war then!. Great for both diplomatic peacemongers and bloodlust dictators, its upgrade makes it the only corporation that can expand ad infinitum (as it happens on real life), meaning that you can effectively deny all your rival's military advantages with a little bit of patience. Huge synergies with autocracy, too!

GLOBAL NEWS MEDIA

Prequisite: Radio

You gain +3 culture on its headquarters per franchise, unlike other corporations, you gain -big - positive diplomatic modifiers within the civilizaton that host the franchise. -3 happiness on the cities that host its franchises if said civ enters in a war against yours

Upgrade - Elite think thank: CS with this corporation on it cannot vote civs other than yours on the UN (they can abstain, though), +15 permanent influence on them

Uses: A great corporation to employ if you are shooting for either a cultural or diplomatic victory, it is also the very only corporation that rather than incur into diplomatic penalties, it actually enhance your standing in the world - great for smaller civs that wants to stand away from the fray or warmongers with a reputation to clean up, a kind of an "insurance policy" of a corporation to have


Thoughts?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Too me, the idea sounds very reminiscent of corporations in CIV - which was a mechanic I didn't care for. In CIV I found the benefits I gained from corporations were far outweighed by the upkeep costs imposed by them. They were also, IMO, a general pain to deal with if you were interested in doing anything other than auto-spreading corporate execs you spammed out.

I do like how with Standard Resources, the headquarters would gain a resource at the expense of the host. That too me seems pretty realistic. You Warfare Inc., however, is way OP in favor of the headquarters.

I also feel that all of these corporations will just cause everyone to have major negative diplo modifiers towards the civ with the headquarters of a wide-reaching corporation. While this probably helps balance out all of the benefits of having a headquarters, I think the game has too many negative diplomacy modifiers to begin with.

I'm also leary at adding a whole new game mechanic after religion and espionage. I don't have anything against the idea of corporations - but my past experience with them from the last game left a bad taste in my mouth. And I don't want to have to micromanage anything else in the game.

 

[Ikael]

Too me, the idea sounds very reminiscent of corporations in CIV - which was a mechanic I didn't care for. In CIV I found the benefits I gained from corporations were far outweighed by the upkeep costs imposed by them. They were also, IMO, a general pain to deal with if you were interested in doing anything other than auto-spreading corporate execs you spammed out.

I agree with that general feeling, hence why the "interface approach" rather than the whole lawyer / corporation executive micromanaging. With this system, the only unit that you would have to take care of is the great merchant, and that is only for creating or eliminating a corporation.

My current approach when designing a new corporation mechanic is to create a late game factor that could heavily help or twarth a victory, depending on which type of corporation you chosed to give a shot.

I do like how with Standard Resources, the headquarters would gain a resource at the expense of the host. That too me seems pretty realistic. You Warfare Inc., however, is way OP in favor of the headquarters.

Warfare. Inc is more focused into crippling a rival rather than generating profit on your headquarters (hosting a corporation headquarters does not generates revenue). The more spread it is, the lowerst is your enemy capacity for warfare. Its upgrade allows it to expand to more cities, making it a good deterrent against bigger empires, but I don't know if completely eliminating manteinance costs is too much of a buff.

I also feel that all of these corporations will just cause everyone to have major negative diplo modifiers towards the civ with the headquarters of a wide-reaching corporation. While this probably helps balance out all of the benefits of having a headquarters, I think the game has too many negative diplomacy modifiers to begin with.

Thing is, having foreign corporations in your territory generates gold - even more so with the commerce policy, so it is a tit for that type of trade (do I want gold or science / culture / production / whatever?). Some corporations are inicuous depending on which victory you are aiming for, say, if you are planning to have a peaceful game, you wouldn't mind having Warfare. Inc in your cities, generating hefty profits for you. Other corporations such as the Global News Media does not generate negative effects per se. And then there are the city state, which are the propiatory victims of the whole corporation system

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I agree with that general feeling, hence why the "interface approach" rather than the whole lawyer / corporation executive micromanaging. With this system, the only unit that you would have to take care of is the great merchant, and that is only for creating or eliminating a corporation.

My current approach when designing a new corporation mechanic is to create a late game factor that could heavily help or twarth a victory, depending on which type of corporation you chosed to give a shot.

Apologies, I missed the interface approach.

Warfare. Inc is more focused into crippling a rival rather than generating profit on your headquarters (hosting a corporation headquarters does not generates revenue). The more spread it is, the lowerst is your enemy capacity for warfare. Its upgrade allows it to expand to more cities, making it a good deterrent against bigger empires, but I don't know if completely eliminating manteinance costs is too much of a buff.

I got what it does - I just think it does it too well.

Thing is, having foreign corporations in your territory generates gold - even more so with the commerce policy, so it is a tit for that type of trade (do I want gold or science / culture / production / whatever?). Some corporations are inicuous depending on which victory you are aiming for, say, if you are planning to have a peaceful game, you wouldn't mind having Warfare. Inc in your cities, generating hefty profits for you. Other corporations such as the Global News Media does not generate negative effects per se. And then there are the city state, which are the propiatory victims of the whole corporation system

I do like how having a corporation gives gold. IIRC in CIV foreign corporations cost you gold - it was a big pain. In fact, I think your own corps cost you gold as well, but of course you got whatever benefit the corporation provides.

As far as enhancing different styles of play, your idea does have merit. But how would you prevent a hostile civ from spreading corps that prevent your chosen play style without devolving into some serious micromanagment?

I'd use the spread religion and CS coup murder spam as examples.

Currently, we can't tell a civ to stop spreading a religion. We can create inquisitors to stop it, but you usually have to shuffle them around to cover your territory. You also have to make sure you keep track of where enemy prophets are at all times.

Late game, you may have noticed, the AI tries to murder spam as many coups as it can. It gets really old to deal with, really fast.

I can actually see how both of these nightmares could be applied to your corporations mechanic. Even if you can think of clever ways to deal with these situations as they may affect corporations, adding a whole nother system on top of the other too would be overkill, IMO.

But I'm interested to hear what other ppl think and you as well.

 

[Ikael]

I got what it does - I just think it does it too well.

You could very well be right ^^u perhaps a -50% manteinance costs would suffice, me thinks

As far as enhancing different styles of play, your idea does have merit. But how would you prevent a hostile civ from spreading corps that prevent your chosen play style without devolving into some serious micromanagment?

I'd use the spread religion and CS coup murder spam as examples.

This is the genious of the system: the more foreign corporations you have in your territory, the more gold per turn your cities will yield, which in turn would allow you to get rid of them faster via legal actions (gold spending). That means that a complete corporation spam into every single enemy city might be counterproductive, for you can make your rival civilization rich while impoverishing yourself due to corporation manteinance costs. A couple of well - placed franchises will do more harm to your rival than a non planned corporate overextension.

Currently, we can't tell a civ to stop spreading a religion. We can create inquisitors to stop it, but you usually have to shuffle them around to cover your territory. You also have to make sure you keep track of where enemy prophets are at all times.

Late game, you may have noticed, the AI tries to murder spam as many coups as it can. It gets really old to deal with, really fast.

I can actually see how both of these nightmares could be applied to your corporations mechanic. Even if you can think of clever ways to deal with these situations as they may affect corporations, adding a whole nother system on top of the other too would be overkill, IMO.

But I'm interested to hear what other ppl think and you as well.

Corporation expansion could be stopped (or encouraged, depending on the situation) either trought diplomatic demands ("we demand you to put a stop to your predatory business tactics in our land!"), by paying a gold fee ("legal action") to remove them from one of your own cities, or by spreading your own corporation there (the only way to remove an enemy corporation from a CS).

The only problem that I see is a city being taken over by a corporation, then cleaned again trought legal action only to be retaken by the aforementioned coporation, into a whole "back and forth" dynamic. A good way to stop this would be increased corporation corporation expansion / deletion costs depending on how many times it has tried to be implemented on the same city. That way one of the two rivals will eventually run out of money, or simply decide that a certain particular franchise is not worth the price. Also, another great, expeditive way to end with annoying coporations is the whole "hostile takeover" maneuver, which completely wipes out a corporation from existance by sacrifizing a merchant (a "oh no, you didn't" move if I ever seen one!).