Corporations

[sneaky]

I suggest you to reread the concept of corporation. You got the concepts all wrong. The designers clearly stated that corporation is there to screw your opponents. You create a corporation and spread it to OTHER CIVILIZATIONS, they pay the maintenance cost, you get the gold in your HQ. If you want to get the benefit of corporation in your own cities, then you have to be prepared to pay the price. If the price is too high, well don't spread it in your own cities.

Indeed, you can spread your own corporations into a few of your cities, but it is very important you also back them up with Courthouses and such. Also you need to put Wall Street, a grocer, a market, a bank etc in your HQ city and most important spread your corporations to your enemies to make money.

 

[Random Oracle]

I suggest you to reread the concept of corporation. You got the concepts all wrong. The designers clearly stated that corporation is there to screw your opponents. You create a corporation and spread it to OTHER CIVILIZATIONS, they pay the maintenance cost, you get the gold in your HQ. If you want to get the benefit of corporation in your own cities, then you have to be prepared to pay the price. If the price is too high, well don't spread it in your own cities.

So they basically limited everyone to running State Property or Mercantilism. Yeah, that makes sense.

 

[sneaky]

So they basically limited everyone to running State Property or Mercantilism. Yeah, that makes sense.

Read Solver's review of Corporations, he explains how they work and how he thinks State Property is even nerved too much because you can't use corporations anymore.

Building and spreading corporations is very viable, but it needs be done right and only if your economy can handle it. I guess a lot of people just haven't got it under control as of yet.

 

[weimingshi]

So they basically limited everyone to running State Property or Mercantilism. Yeah, that makes sense.

If you want to be evil. before you spread your corporations to other civ, manage to pass the resolution to adopt enviromentalism in UN meeting. Then spread it like mad to cripple their economy.

 

[MrWhereItsAt]

I suggest you to reread the concept of corporation. You got the concepts all wrong. The designers clearly stated that corporation is there to screw your opponents. You create a corporation and spread it to OTHER CIVILIZATIONS, they pay the maintenance cost, you get the gold in your HQ. If you want to get the benefit of corporation in your own cities, then you have to be prepared to pay the price. If the price is too high, well don't spread it in your own cities.

It seems a little fishy to me - creating corporations to screw your opponents by gaining some gold from them and costing them a bit more maintenance. Fine, as they can do the same to you. The balance is the extra food + shields. BUT the cost looks to be far greater than any gain.

Everything I read until now seemed to suggest that the cost of a Corp would be essentially equivalent to the bonuses you got if you had a fair number of resources, and it would be up to you to decide whether you needed the gold or the food/production etc. But to have such an ENORMOUS cost to Corporations' benefits makes them seem pretty ridiculous.

 

[homan1983]

I suggest you to reread the concept of corporation. You got the concepts all wrong. The designers clearly stated that corporation is there to screw your opponents. You create a corporation and spread it to OTHER CIVILIZATIONS, they pay the maintenance cost, you get the gold in your HQ. If you want to get the benefit of corporation in your own cities, then you have to be prepared to pay the price. If the price is too high, well don't spread it in your own cities.

You have no idea what you're talking about. That is NOT the intent of corporation.

Corporations badly placed can be bad, but in general they can also be good. They ARE like religions in many aspects but not all.

I suggest you back up your statement or simply not make it. As it stands its simply ridiculous.

What you're saying makes no sense AT ALL as well considering everyone can then go SP + CS.

You also can't pass a resolution if you don't get any votes which you wouldn't if what you're saying is true.
And finally even if you somehow managed to convince all those communist governments to pass this resolution then they can simply defy it.

Edit:
If you really think that it was "by design" that civs with corporations need to run 80% taxation just to keep up then you're a lost cause for humanity and its best simply not to discuss it with you

 

[phungus420]

Whoa, so corporations are not viable and are only useful as a weapon. That sucks, I think they messed up there.

2000 gold spent on corporate maintanance because of inflation is ludicrous. And no, you can't "fix that" or deal with it by having a "good" economy. That's just a broken game mechanic.

 

[homan1983]

Whoa, so corporations are not viable and are only useful as a weapon. That sucks, I think they messed up there.

2000 gold spent on corporate maintanance because of inflation is ludicrous. And no, you can't "fix that" or deal with it by having a "good" economy. That's just a broken game mechanic.

Not quite

2000 is just inflation alone. With the original cost of corporations [dont forget that] its more like 2500gold/turn

 

[sneaky]

You have no idea what you're talking about. That is NOT the intent of corporation.

Corporations badly placed can be bad, but in general they can also be good. They ARE like religions in many aspects but not all.

I suggest you back up your statement or simply not make it. As it stands its simply ridiculous.

What you're saying makes no sense AT ALL as well considering everyone can then go SP + CS.

You also can't pass a resolution if you don't get any votes which you wouldn't if what you're saying is true.
And finally even if you somehow managed to convince all those communist governments to pass this resolution then they can simply defy it.

Edit:
If you really think that it was "by design" that civs with corporations need to run 80% taxation just to keep up then you're a lost cause for humanity and its best simply not to discuss it with you

Chill out man, just become you messed up a game you don't need to take it out on everyone who doesn't agree with your assessment.

 

[phungus420]

Sneaky, you're not paying attention. And YOU don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Random Oracle]

Solver at least doesn't think Corporations are intended as weapons:

If you have a lot of money, you can try to increase the maintenance of a rival. Use your Executives to spread corporations to a rival’s city - you will get increased headquarters income, whereas the other civ will not be facing increased maintenance. It’s rarely worth it, given the costs of spreading a corporation, but it can be fun sometimes. This is something I’ve actually had the AI do to me – Ramesses had spread his corporation to all cities on a small secondary continent of mine. The cities weren’t good enough to benefit much from the corporation, however, my maintenance costs did skyrocket and I was forced to adopt Mercantilism in the end.

My point in the last post was that if Corporations are indeed merely a weapon, it would force everyone to adopt Mercantalism or State Property rendering all other options useless and making Corporations essentially useless as well. Clearly, Corporations should be able to provide to cost-effective benefits to the founder's cities when used correctly. If the inflation is indeed as bad as it seems (haven't reached that far in my games yet), then the whole concept is broken.

 

[sneaky]

Sneaky, you're not paying attention. And YOU don't know what you're talking about.

Oh really?
Thanks for making that clear to me Corporation King...

Solver at least doesn't think Corporations are intended as weapons:

My point in the last post was that if Corporations are indeed merely a weapon, it would force everyone to adopt Mercantalism or State Property rendering all other options useless and making Corporations essentially useless as well. Clearly, Corporations should be able to provide to cost-effective benefits to the founder's cities when used correctly. If the inflation is indeed as bad as it seems (haven't reached that far in my games yet), then the whole concept is broken.

Indeed, and I would expect that Solver knows quite a lot about how the system works. You need back it up with a lot of maintenance reducers and you need to spread carefully. Looking at the high upkeep I expect that homan1983 wasn't careful enough.

 

[homan1983]

Read Solver's review of Corporations, he explains how they work and how he thinks State Property is even nerved too much because you can't use corporations anymore.

Building and spreading corporations is very viable, but it needs be done right and only if your economy can handle it. I guess a lot of people just haven't got it under control as of yet.

Exactly, I dunno where weimingshi got the idea that "The designers clearly stated that corporation is there to screw your opponents."

It is supposed to be a whole new aspect of gameplay, not simply a different form of military conquest.

Basically they did with corporations what they hadn't dared do with religions. Now some corporations can't simply coexist: you must remove one to place others. Corporation is very close to religion, although its not a clone and I realize there are differences.

With religion there was an incentive to convert to the other guy's state religion because you got +culture in your cities and +1 with the option of another +1 from a temple and additional +3 for 1/3 of your cities with mosques or equivalents.

In the same way, corporations should give benefits in their branch cities that give those civs reason to take your corporations. In game as in real life, the countries that would accept corporations are those that can pay for the benefits - aka cottage economies, whilst specialists and workshop economies simply couldn't afford it even if they liked the.

Also corporations require as many of a resource as possible, so they would most likely be more beneficial to the already rich countries (as in real life).
For the less developed countries with only a few of the resources required, they may get more benefit from state property and instead simply selling off their raw materials to other rich states for them to use in corporations (again as in real life).

So again your black&white statement that corporations are simply a hammer to beat down on any and every opponent is stupid, especially so because you need open borders to spread them [hence they tend to be more your friends than enemies].

The decision of whether to choose SP or stay in an open market is much more complicated than simply "who owns the HQ".

Having said all this, the biggest benefit of course goes to the person with the HQ who like a religious shrine gets + per branch.

... again I'm simply bewildered that you think corporations are a negative thing and that you simply found the corporation but don't ever spread to your own cities only to others and in so doing, you destroy them.

 

[eric_]

If you really think that it was "by design" that civs with corporations need to run 80% taxation just to keep up then you're a lost cause for humanity and its best simply not to discuss it with you

I love comments like these! So constructive.

Homan, did you spam your own civilization with (a) corp(s)? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it best to build an HQ in the city that can best benefit from the bonus it affords, and then spam RIVALS with the corporation so as to leach money from them? The risk is that you give them, say, oil. If they need oil, and you spam them with the Standard Ethanol, they're not going to be inclined to flip to Merc or SP, unless they don't mind the lost ability to construct certain units. If they do flip, they can't build modern units, while you still can. If you want the money badly enough, you threaten to attack their now-outdated army unless they go back to corp-friendly civics.

 

[homan1983]

Oh really?
Indeed, and I would expect that Solver knows quite a lot about how the system works. You need back it up with a lot of maintenance reducers and you need to spread carefully. Looking at the high upkeep I expect that homan1983 wasn't careful enough.

You are somewhat right. However by the "high maintenance" he meant city maintenance going from 2-5 to 25-30 he didn't mean for inflation to make it 100 per city per turn.

a quote from that article which I just read:

At Headquarters, you get 4 gold when it expands to a new city, and assuming you have a Market, a Grocer, a Bank and the Wall Street in your HQ city (and you should!), that’s 16 gold.

It seems he is more reviewing the game as a player just like any of us.
For one thing, each corp actually gives 5
Secondly he doesn't seem to know the mechanics of the game. The wall street +100% is cumulative to the market/grocer/bank.
As such if it were 4 per city, then in the headquarter city it would NOT be 4+25%+25%+50% = 8 | 8+100% = 16, it would infact be 4+25%+25%+50%+100% = 12

 

[eric_]

If you really think that it was "by design" that civs with corporations need to run 80% taxation just to keep up then you're a lost cause for humanity and its best simply not to discuss it with you

Why on earth would you spread a corporation to any of your own cities that can't directly make use of the bonus it affords? Like, why would you put Standard Ethanol in anything but your most productive city (and MAYBE a second high-production city)? If you're doing that, you're just hitting yourself with maintenance fees that come with zero benefit for that city.

 

[Random Oracle]

Indeed, and I would expect that Solver knows quite a lot about how the system works. You need back it up with a lot of maintenance reducers and you need to spread carefully. Looking at the high upkeep I expect that homan1983 wasn't careful enough.

That remains to be seen, but those inflation numbers look just insane.

Speaking of Solver's article, I already disagree with some things:

At Headquarters, you get 4 gold when it expands to a new city, and assuming you have a Market, a Grocer, a Bank and the Wall Street in your HQ city (and you should!), that’s 16 gold.

This should be 12 gold since the city gets a 200% bonus to gold, shouldn't it? Of course, the base gain has been increased to 5 making it 15 gold in the Wall Street city per each new city, but the point remains.

State Property is a whole different issue. I have reliable sources telling me that it was last seen in the vicinity of Hunt Valley, loudly screaming for help, when it was brutally tackled by BtS designers before being hit on the head with something heavy. State Property disables all corporations in your civ, whether they are yours or foreign. It is my opinion that this change makes State Property too weak and generally ruins the economy column civic. State Property remains as useful as ever if you don’t/can’t have corporations, but as soon as you found a corporation, you can no longer switch to State Property, as the results will be bad. While you will probably gain in gold overall by switching to State Property, you will lose benefits of your corporations, which is simply unacceptable in many situations.

Consider the food corporations. You’ve spread them to your cities and are enjoying the benefits. Now, you switch to State Property… what happens? Mass starvation in your cities! While accurate historically, it’s not really optimal gameplay. Flexibility is thus lost, as you’re essentially forced into Free Market if you are using corporations.

Who in their right mind would found a corporation, spread it to his cities and grow dependant on it and then switch to State Property? It would make a lot more sense to plan ahead and simply not spend the great people on the corporations and perhaps beeline other, more important techs instead.

It is fitting to also end my comments about corporations with a complaint. My main complaint with the system is that corporations favour warmongers more than builders. Specifically, they tend to favour players who spent the first half of the game warmongering. How much you gain from corporations is directly related to how many resources you have – if you have a couple sources of Iron and Copper each, Mining Inc. is okay. But if you conquered a lot and now have a total of 10 sources of these metals, along with 2 Coals and 1 Silver, the corporation becomes a powerhouse. On the other hand, this is partially counterbalanced by the fact that warmongers may find it harder to pop a Great Person in time, and may thus simply lose the corporation to some smaller builder empire. That, needless to say, is a good casus belli.

I do think he has a point about larger empires having access to a larger pool of recourses, although I don't know how well this is balanced by the scaling costs. On the other hand, I have no idea why the warmongerer would have any problems setting up a GP farm himself.


Bear in mind that I haven't actually tested the corporations in practice yet so this is all theoretical from my part.

 

[sneaky]

I also noted those mistakes, but he admitted the article wasn't typo free. That said, I will take someone who played the game for months already word, if he claims that Corporations are powerful when used well.

 

[homan1983]

I love comments like these! So constructive.

Homan, did you spam your own civilization with (a) corp(s)? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it best to build an HQ in the city that can best benefit from the bonus it affords, and then spam RIVALS with the corporation so as to leach money from them? The risk is that you give them, say, oil. If they need oil, and you spam them with the Standard Ethanol, they're not going to be inclined to flip to Merc or SP, unless they don't mind the lost ability to construct certain units. If they do flip, they can't build modern units, while you still can. If you want the money badly enough, you threaten to attack their now-outdated army unless they go back to corp-friendly civics.

The purpose is to both "spam" them and your own cities.
If you found a corporation, first and foremost the most basic foundation of the corporation is your own civ - you can always rely on yourself and your own civics.

Just as with religions, you need to both spread it in your cities and also try to spread in other civs. However corporations are not as easy to spread as religion because they can sometimes have a bad effect and are made inactive with certain civics.

I ran the numbers before I spread my corps and knew what I was doing.

My HQ has Wall street so every city I spread a corp to gives me +15.
Now with courthouse I counted that At most, each corporation would cost me 20

This means that offsetting the 15 I would in fact only be paying 5 which is more than made up for with the 8-10 it gives.

You can also get pure by spreading to external entities where they have to foot the bill.

The problem comes when you read towards the endgame and inflation is 200%+ [in civ4 origional it was always ~70% etc. and by 2050 the LAST TURN it got to 100%] and instead of paying 20 now you're paying 60 per corporation or a total of 100:gold for all corps.

Corporation isn't implemented as simple a concept as "get the HQ and spread it to the others" since corps provide real benefits, such that even the outside civ helps you spread your own corporation.
But how could any city possibly EVERY be able to get 100 per turn from commerce whilst still running a respectable economy?

Also note that I'm running free market which gave me -25% cost, imagine with another civic or even worst with environmentalism.

 

[eric_]

Bear in mind that I haven't actually tested the corporations in practice yet so this is all theoretical from my part.

Me too. It just seems obvious to me that the home of a corporation HQ should be very carefully chosen, and should be spread domestically extremely selectively. Spamming another civ isn't so much to screw them, as they do get a benefit, it's more to beef up your own income. My thinking is that you ideally spread corps to OTHER civs at least to the extent necessary to offset the maintenance costs incurred by having them in your own civ but only in those cities that can make good use of having it.

I can imagine this leading to extremely interesting game dynamics. For instance, Civ A has oil, civ B doesn't, civ C has SEthanol. Civ C is more powerful than A and B, but A and B aren't that friendly. Civ B suddenly needs oil, and Civ C spreads SE to it, but after awhile it starts to drag B's economy down. At some point Civ A and Civ B repair relations, and Civ B manages to secure oil from Civ A, thus negating the need for the SE bonus and allowing Civ B to switch to SP. Now Civ C is stuck with SE maintenance costs with no outside income, and it has to take on Civ A and/or B to regain that income.

AWESOME.