Corporations

[captinkid]

What good are corporations?

I was in the late game and I founded Mining Inc. Seemed nice make a little bit of extra hammers for a little gold eh?

I spread it to all of my cities and my economy went from +700gold turn to -400gold a turn and all of my workers going on strike! 90% of my cities had to be switched to wealth just to break even!

What good is founding it? Or are they meant to be a weapon to use on your enemies?

Anyway my solution was to use STATE PROPERTY and wipe it out, my economy was back in two turns and I went on to win the game.

Something I am missing? My game was Monarch small world low water and 18 players.

 

[The Bruce]

As far as I can see you're not supposed to spam them wildly, but only use them in cases where you think the cities will benefit.

However the AI seems to do just this, so if you spread them to their cities they will spam them until they ruin their own economy.

By the time corporations come around I usually have more gold than I know what to do with, so it's not THAT bad, but would be good if you could eliminate a corporation from a city if an AI plants it there.

 

[Tristan daCunha]

Solver's unofficial patch nerfs corporation maintenance cost inflation which is probably behind your difficulty. His patch can be found via the thread pinned at the top of this forum.

 

[Bjorn190]

LOL put corporations in ALL towns?? OMG I put mining inc in my capitol, and in my troop building towns Com on u must have noticed the -40 gold hehe

 

[ferenginar]

I put mining corp in my capital, along with pentagon and a couple of great generals, and i was pumping out a four star battleship in one turn. It was well worth the cash.

 

[ljofa]

Creative Constructions and Civilized Jewellers are two pretty good corporations which can provide a culture boost to your cities in exchange for precious metals or older building materials. Spread these corporations to newly captured cities and their cultural borders will expand rapidly and fight back against another civ's borders. Use these with Free Speech to get a massive culture boost in your cities.

Don't forget your economic civic can affect corporation revenues - free market makes them cheaper, environmentalism makes them more expensive. I don't know how you went from +700 to -400 per turn but you must have been neglecting your cottages/hamlets/towns to be whacked with an 1100 per turn fall.

 

[Merkinball]

Did you have courthouses? Courthouses halve corporation maintainance cost.

Spam them to the AI's cities too. And have Wall Street in your corporate headquarters city. You get a solid gold boost for every foriegn city your corporation is in. There's a cost to install them, but they pay for themselves in a relatively short number of turns.

Placed properly, with savvy trading, you can super specialize cities.

 

[SkippyT]

I once had a great game as Gandhi..
Sid's Sushi Corporation put my Delhi from size 23 to size 32 on an Archipelago map.
I switched to Caste system and Pacifism..
The money I spent on it (-20 gold or so) was absolutely worth 108 GP points and 54 science beakers.

 

[Robcore]

Dam, i am playing an epic game right now and i dont want to quit just because of this.

I am playing as America, with Free Markets on and i built the Civilized Jewelers Corporation. I foolishly spammed them to most of my city's. I have noticed that each one of the city's had something like this effect:

+5 gold, +8 culture, -7 gold

I dont think one of them were making a profit from this. So to offset these costs should I spam the AI's cities with Executives? Will they benefit from the Culture and Gold or will I?

 

[LunaticSlave]

I used corps on like my 1st 5 or 6 games, was quite entertaining for a while but then anoyed me. I dont even use em anymore, prefer the caste system/state property combo fo the nice production bonus, plus ai is prety dumb at th emoment with corps, they just spread em mindlesly and criple their own economy. Ai always either on mercantilism or state property as well, only way is trying to get the UN 1st to do the enviormentalism thing, but i rarely get the UN before the ai.

Thats been my expirience at least XD

 

[skallben]

The main problem is that Corp. maintenance scales with normal inflation with a result in skyrocketing Corp. maintenance costs. I'd suggest you make benefits out of Corps. with caution and if maintenance gets out of hand you go State Property or Mercantilism.

 

[Scorpi]

Hmm.. When i play Next War i usually found Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc in my Wall Street city and spread them to all my cities. It costs a little but not nearly enough to cripple my economy, even under environmentalism, and it makes my hammer and food production skyrocket.

 

[LlamaCat]

corporations really give me a headache. I founded a couple in a recent game but the game would not let me build corporate executives... the little icon would not appear. I assume this is because I was somehow not having all or any of the necessary resources but I had tons of every resource so I could not figure out what I lacked and why. I don't understand why it would let me found the corporation in the first place if I could not spread it.

 

[mrt144]

As far as I can see you're not supposed to spam them wildly, but only use them in cases where you think the cities will benefit.

However the AI seems to do just this, so if you spread them to their cities they will spam them until they ruin their own economy.

By the time corporations come around I usually have more gold than I know what to do with, so it's not THAT bad, but would be good if you could eliminate a corporation from a city if an AI plants it there.

use state property or mercantilism. the answer isnt to create new feature that makes the AI unable to use or cope with corps while the human player can exploit. one of the biggest benefits of free market also has risks as it should be.

the strategy shouldnt be in a wackamole corp elimination, it should be in far larger civic decision like it is.

 

[mrt144]

after coming into the twilight of my first full game i think corps arent terribly broken but the way the ai does my job for me. ive sent a total of 5 execs worldwide and i now make 500+ gold every turn with 60 science 40 culture. this is totally because the ai spread sushi and creative far and wide.

so the ai needs to not spam itself.

as for domestic benefits i think they are totally worth it at a certain point. trading for all available seafood resources costs me 300+ gold (i have very few resources of my own) but gives me 9 food in all my cities which allows my ironworks city to push out 300+ hammers a turn on units.

also the wallstreet/capitol is size 33 with all squares worked and nearly full specialists.

the biggest benefit is the culture. i should coast into a cultural victory in 150 turns which would make it 2000 provided the space race doesnt get me first.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Hmm.. When i play Next War i usually found Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc in my Wall Street city and spread them to all my cities. It costs a little but not nearly enough to cripple my economy, even under environmentalism, and it makes my hammer and food production skyrocket.

That's because when you use advanced start or play a scenario starting in modern times, inflation is close to zero, I believe, and the maint. cost is less than it would be in an epic game at that time (1/2 to 1/3 as much.)

I think the problem with corporations is that the HQ gives too much gold. As much as 15 gold per city after modifiers, which means on maps with lots of cities you can make enough gold to entirely fund your empire. I think the HQ income should scale with map size, 1 on huge, 2 on large, 3 on normal, etc.

 

[Landstander]

I’m learning ALL about corporation maintenance in my current game…

The thing is, I'm Holy Rome, so the Rauthaus was making Corp spamming tolerable for a while. My economy actually peaked AFTER I spread Ceral Mills and Mining Inc to my important cities. In fact, everytime I spread a Corp, my net gold went up 2-6/trun (depending on my percentages). Awesome!
Then I founded Creative Construction and Civ Jeweler in a secondary city (no Wall St, of course). And each time I spread these, my net gold would drop 3-6/turn. No big deal, it all evened out, and I spread to other Civs for more income. My economy was peaking, big time!

Then, the boom ended. Turns past, and my income margin steadily dropped. I went from running 0-20% gold to running 30-50% gold, just to keep a steady income. The culprit, of course, was inflation.

Maybe this is the intended effect of the game? Afterall, with proper Corp distribution, I have my border cities producing CRAZY culture, production cities generating uber hammers, and all cities have mad food! Without inflation, I would be paying no price for all of these benefits.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Well, my view on that is that it doesn't make much sense for corps to be strong early and weak late. Perhaps without inflation the costs are too low, but then, we should find the ideal trade-off point and have it be fixed there, rather than a boom-and-bust model, imo.

 

[Landstander]

we should find the ideal trade-off point and have it be fixed there, rather than a boom-and-bust model, imo.

Agreed, this is not a very good game mechanism if every game with Corps ends up ruining the economy, or forcing the player into State Property. If only inflation was an ACTUAL part of the game and not some mysterious, unmanageable game mechanism. The game might as well say "a random, unknown force, that you have NO control over, has arbitrarily ruined your economy". Cause that is what it feels like.

 

[Elros]

A quick question regarding corps I'd like to get my head around before trying them. Do they use ALL examples of a resource in a city or just the excess? eg do you still access to coal for your powerplants?