Corporations

[weimingshi]

Hum... after rereading my post, I admit I wrote it too fast.

Anyways, I didn't play with corporations awhole lot yet. But from what I gathered so far. corporation is a cost to benefit decision. When you found a corporation, you can't just blindly spread it to all your cities. You have to select the cities where benefit will outweight cost to spread. Also corporations benefit and cost is scaled with the number of resources consumed. This makes the cost to benefit dilemma even more pronunced when your corporation consumes alot of resources. When your corporation only consume 1 resource, you pay abit of maintenace to get +1 food or hammer. you don't gain much but you don't loose much neither. But when it consumes 7 resources, you pay a lot of maintenance to get +7food or hammer. Now you will really see the impact of corporation both good and bad. Bottomline, you have to carefully choose the cities to spread corporations to.

Using corporations as weapon seems viable to me, I haven't tried it out myself yet, so not sure how useful it is. And this weapon is used against your "friends". Did you ever have one of those games where a friend like gandhi just skyrockets in research, you wish you can slow him down, but can't, because he is at +15 with you and have defensive pacts and all with you. Well now, corporation is the answer, spread mining co in his cities, he will get the extra production but have to lower research rate to pay for maintenance.

 

[eric_]

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.

OK, what benefit is gained by spreading Standard Ethanol to a commerce city?

 

[homan1983]

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.

We don't disagree.
I also agree that corporations are powerful - in fact the designers agree as well, hence boosting SP and giving CS +1 since they can't play the corporation game.

However the "power" of corporation isn't in the aspect of ruining the economy of your open border friends by making them run 90% tax and never be able to research again, that would be ridiculous. The bonus of corporation is the benefit it provides you, and your friends and the big benefit it provides the headquarter.

 

[homan1983]

OK, what benefit is gained by spreading Standard Ethanol to a commerce city?

Your headquarter gets +15

Furthermore, ethanol gives + for each resource consumed

 

[Random Oracle]

Yes, the Corporations do sound fantastic since they have drawbacks and benefits and you have to figure out how to use them the best. However, if the cost is indeed way more than 50 per city in the end game because of inflation, can there really be any benefit worth it?

 

[eric_]

Your headquarter gets +15

Furthermore, ethanol gives + for each resource consumed

Ah, so you don't want to spread it domestically beyond what is covered by that 15 + from foreign hosts of that corp. Obviously the increased science output must be considered as well.

 

[sneaky]

We don't disagree.
I also agree that corporations are powerful - in fact the designers agree as well, hence boosting SP and giving CS +1 since they can't play the corporation game.

However the "power" of corporation isn't in the aspect of ruining the economy of your open border friends by making them run 90% tax and never be able to research again, that would be ridiculous. The bonus of corporation is the benefit it provides you, and your friends and the big benefit it provides the headquarter.

I won't disagree with you, of course the first benefit of Corporations is the ability to produce additional , , , etc. I never claimed otherwise. That said, spreading your own corporations to your weaker neighbors who can not sustain such maintenance fees certainly is an option and strategy, but not the initial idea behind the corporations system and certainly not always an effective idea. But it may be something to consider.

By the way, I asked Solver but the Inflation costs and the ability to sustain corporations, when he answer I will get back to you.

 

[eric_]

However, if the cost is indeed way more than 50 per city in the end game because of inflation, can there really be any benefit worth it?

I would say, yes, it just means you want to spread it domestically VERY selectively. I still feel that spamming yourself with corps is a BAD idea, which is probably how it most differs from religion.

 

[homan1983]

I won't disagree with you, of course the first benefit of Corporations is the ability to produce additional , , , etc. I never claimed otherwise.

The problem is, when you first found corporations, you get the +10 for like 20 which you can afford, but as the game goes on, and inflation reaches 200%+ then it gets ridiculous.
I actually truly believe that the maintenance cost MUST stay, however the inflation is seriously screwing the end-game.

I dunno if you have played the game yet, but this problem I am mentioning is out of experience from 2 full games and once you do so as well I think you'll understand.

 

[sneaky]

The problem is, when you first found corporations, you get the +10 for like 20 which you can afford, but as the game goes on, and inflation reaches 200%+ then it gets ridiculous.
I actually truly believe that the maintenance cost MUST stay, however the inflation is seriously screwing the end-game.

I dunno if you have played the game yet, but this problem I am mentioning is out of experience from 2 full games and once you do so as well I think you'll understand.

I do understand what you are saying and will check back when I finally get to that era. My first two games ended fairly quickly, and in the third game I have not yet founded a corporation.
Also, like I said, I have asked Solver about what we might have been doing wrong. Maybe we are missing something when doing the math.

 

[Random Oracle]

I actually thought of a scenario in which it could make sense to found a corporation, spread it to your cities and then switch to State Property:

You could found a Corporation like Cereal Mills or Sid's Sushi and use the extra food to grow relatively new or food-starved cities quickly to a reasonable size. The maintenance cost shouldn't be too bad at first as it's partly based on the size of the city. When the cities are at an approriate size where they can still support themselves without the extra food from the Corporation you can switch to State Property and be happy with your large, low-maintenance cities. Sure, you could stay in Free Market and run a few extra specialists or whatever, but the real benefit of the extra food in this scenario is that it allows very fast growth if you have enough recources.

 

[El Koeno]

Just noticed Huayna Capac spreading "my" Sid's Sushi to a lot of his cities. Apparently the AIs don't see it as a weapon used against them. It also saves me from having to spend good hammers and gold to spread it to him .

 

[bonafide11]

I think corporations provides a major bonus to having vassals/colonies because it allows you to spread your corporations to weaker Civilizations in exchange for receiving gold, which makes sense because that is how capitalism works...

By the way, I saw someone say the corporations are rigged for the CE, not true at all. If anything, I think it weakened the CE.

 

[bonafide11]

Actually I noticed what seems to be a "bug." I founded both Sid's Sushi Corp. and the Cereal Mills Corp, and spread both to Shaka's cities. Later I noticed that Shaka was spreading Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mills to all of his cities, including ones that already had the competing corporation. The city of Ulundi literally switched between Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mills every couple turns. Now this doesn't help him at all because he has to pay a significant bonus to buy out and replace the competing corporation, and it's a waste of hammers to build executives to spread competing corporations into the same city. Since I owned both Corps., it really made no impact on me other than it was annoying to see the continuous cycle of "Sid's Sushi Corp has spread in Ulundi" one turn and two turns later seeing "Cereal Mills has spread in Ulundi." The AI should be smart enough to know which Corp provides a larger bonus to them and to stick with that instead of constantly switching between the two.

Anyone else notice this?

 

[eric_]

which makes sense because that is how capitalism works...

Well, that's how capitalism is exploited, anyway.

 

[klokwerk]

Actually I noticed what seems to be a "bug." I founded both Sid's Sushi Corp. and the Cereal Mills Corp, and spread both to Shaka's cities. Later I noticed that Shaka was spreading Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mills to all of his cities, including ones that already had the competing corporation. The city of Ulundi literally switched between Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mills every couple turns. Now this doesn't help him at all because he has to pay a significant bonus to buy out and replace the competing corporation, and it's a waste of hammers to build executives to spread competing corporations into the same city. Since I owned both Corps., it really made no impact on me other than it was annoying to see the continuous cycle of "Sid's Sushi Corp has spread in Ulundi" one turn and two turns later seeing "Cereal Mills has spread in Ulundi." The AI should be smart enough to know which Corp provides a larger bonus to them and to stick with that instead of constantly switching between the two.

Anyone else notice this?

Please post it in the bug reports forum, Blake would probably fix it in the next patch.

 

[homan1983]

Just noticed Huayna Capac spreading "my" Sid's Sushi to a lot of his cities. Apparently the AIs don't see it as a weapon used against them. It also saves me from having to spend good hammers and gold to spread it to him .

This alone should show that the intent of the designers was NOT that corporations be used as a weapon, but rather a tool. Now a tool can sometimes be a weapon, but is also (usually) used to perform tasks.

 

[DrJambo]

Does inflation need to rise by so much toward the end game? What does it achieve/balance, since as far as I'm aware Warlords didn't have it?

 

[homan1983]

I think they wanted inflation there because at the start you have no banks/markets/grocers and your cottages are still undeveloped. So without inflation you would in the end-game be able to run your fully developed economy with like 90-100% science.

The problem is, at some point all cottages get fully developed - however the inflation keeps rising, and rising and rising

It wasn't so bad before, since it went from like 0% at turn1 to 100% at the final turn (or so I'm told). But now it seems that well before the end date I'm getting well above 100%.

 

[mrt144]

I think they wanted inflation there because at the start you have no banks/markets/grocers and your cottages are still undeveloped. So without inflation you would in the end-game be able to run your fully developed economy with like 90-100% science.

The problem is, at some point all cottages get fully developed - however the inflation keeps rising, and rising and rising

It wasn't so bad before, since it went from like 0% at turn1 to 100% at the final turn (or so I'm told). But now it seems that well before the end date I'm getting well above 100%.

standard compounding inflation rate would work fine to remedy this.