Free Market vs. State property

[Gooblah]

As 55% of posters have stated, it's situational. I tend to use State Property, but that's because my play-style focuses on large maps with continent-spanning empires, so maintenance costs can quickly cripple an empire spread between several landmasses.

Plus, preparing for State Property is pretty easy - by the time Communism rolls around (I tend to prioritize Nationalism, Rifling, Steel, and then Communism), I have enough Workers to completely retool a medium-sized jungle city from cottages to workshops; suddenly it's rolling out a Rifleman or Cannon every two-three turns, and when this is compounded over several cities..let's just say my enemies feel the burn.

I'm also not very good at leveraging corporations, so that tends to affect my choice as well.

 

[MarigoldRan]

As 55% of posters have stated, it's situational. I tend to use State Property, but that's because my play-style focuses on large maps with continent-spanning empires, so maintenance costs can quickly cripple an empire spread between several landmasses.

Plus, preparing for State Property is pretty easy - by the time Communism rolls around (I tend to prioritize Nationalism, Rifling, Steel, and then Communism), I have enough Workers to completely retool a medium-sized jungle city from cottages to workshops; suddenly it's rolling out a Rifleman or Cannon every two-three turns, and when this is compounded over several cities..let's just say my enemies feel the burn.

I'm also not very good at leveraging corporations, so that tends to affect my choice as well.

Actually, I'm beginning to find that on huge maps, and continent-spanning empires, mining corp + Free Market = Insane.

The reason is because you have a lot more iron, gold, silver, copper, and coal (oh god, coal) on a huge map. And by leveraging it with mining corp and a hammer economy, you have a monstrous and flexible economy that can churn out 30-40 tanks per turn or allow 100% research at +4-5000 science per turn or more.

State Property doesn't stand a lick to it. The power of mining corp is that it works just as effectively on a city of size 1 as a city of size 20. So city-spamming on the tundra with mining corp, and building courthouse, forge, factory, and a power plant, is a great way of getting your economy to skyrocket.

The big problem with this strategy is that each turn takes 20 minutes to play. Unless you get lazy and set all your cities to wealth.

 

[coanda]

Corporations are slightly stronger on larger maps, but not massively so. To get the same number of hammers out of Mining Inc. on a Huge map, you need twice as many resources. Generally speaking, a standard map is 80x52 (4160 tiles), while a huge map is 128x80 (10240 tiles).* So you get about 25% more powerful corporations if you isolate all the world's resources on Huge. But generally you play Huge map scripts with more AI civs, so you're likely to end up with a smaller share of the world's resources.

*The sizes do depend on map script; the ones I gave are the defaults that most official map-scripts follow. For example, Huge-Terra is 128x160, not 128x80.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Actually, I'm beginning to find that on huge maps, and continent-spanning empires, mining corp + Free Market = Insane.

The reason is because you have a lot more iron, gold, silver, copper, and coal (oh god, coal) on a huge map. And by leveraging it with mining corp and a hammer economy, you have a monstrous and flexible economy that can churn out 30-40 tanks per turn or allow 100% research at +4-5000 science per turn or more.

State Property doesn't stand a lick to it. The power of mining corp is that it works just as effectively on a city of size 1 as a city of size 20. So city-spamming on the tundra with mining corp, and building courthouse, forge, factory, and a power plant, is a great way of getting your economy to skyrocket.

The big problem with this strategy is that each turn takes 20 minutes to play. Unless you get lazy and set all your cities to wealth.

Once you're in "rolling" mode:

- 1 city spams executives, press "r" when they come out.
- Waypoint all units to an area near where you are fighting or intend to fight
- queue loop units so they keep being produced

Then:

- play your turn in less than 1 minute
- wait 2x as long to get to the next turn .

 

[MarigoldRan]

The problem is shipping them across continents and/or using airports (otherwise known as protoss warp-gate/teleportation devices. Functionally, the airport is equivalent.)

Once you have airports, you can instantaneously warp-in newly created units into newly captured territory. Unfortunately, to do it, it requires a lot of clicking.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Corporations are slightly stronger on larger maps, but not massively so. To get the same number of hammers out of Mining Inc. on a Huge map, you need twice as many resources. Generally speaking, a standard map is 80x52 (4160 tiles), while a huge map is 128x80 (10240 tiles).* So you get about 25% more powerful corporations if you isolate all the world's resources on Huge. But generally you play Huge map scripts with more AI civs, so you're likely to end up with a smaller share of the world's resources.

*The sizes do depend on map script; the ones I gave are the defaults that most official map-scripts follow. For example, Huge-Terra is 128x160, not 128x80.

Trading. For iron and copper, and what-not.

That and Earth maps. Dear god. Earth maps.

 

[JammerUno]

SP for me, usually.

The investment for building banks, WS, and execs is big, vs. virtually no outlay for SP. Another issue I have with corps is that they come at a terrible time, where SP comes cheap to anyone who bulbed to lib with an MT war since both chem and scimeth can be bulbed from there. It comes at the perfect moment in the game. Not like corps in that respect.

 

[GKey]

^^ Good summary. Exactly that. And no 15 hammers in crap cities with Mining Inc will outweight that.

 

[Dirk1302]

^If you can't see the benefit of +15 H in each city it's useless to argue the point further.

@JammerUno.
You only need a bank (+ market/grocer) in HQ city. WS is nice of course to build it in HQ you need some 5 other banks, not too difficult by that time if you have mining inc. Or go without WS, then you'll lose some money on the corps but the benefits will still out weight the loss. You do need a courthouse in each corp city. SP is great if you have tons of workshops, if not there are cases where FM will be roughly equal to or better than SP even without corps. As for timing Mining and Sushi are doable, the rest of the corps aren't as good and indeed come too late.

 

[JammerUno]

I think SP outproduces mining inc when you don't have sushi. If you get both, it's superior. That's assuming no massive amounts of mature cottages though.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The problem is shipping them across continents and/or using airports (otherwise known as protoss warp-gate/teleportation devices. Functionally, the airport is equivalent.)

Once you have airports, you can instantaneously warp-in newly created units into newly captured territory. Unfortunately, to do it, it requires a lot of clicking.

So much so that I won't do it. I'd rather transport ship. That way, you can toss a wave of 20-30 units at once over the ocean. IIRC even on maps like earth18 if you route to africa-south america you can make the trip in a single turn once you have transports + maybe a promo (or circumnavigation, or refrigeration etc). Instant airlift targeting is of course faster, but you're in mop up right? Do you NEED to be there 5 turns sooner? Unless you're playing for HoF score finishes or it's a very tight game I don't see the point.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^If you can't see the benefit of +15 H in each city it's useless to argue the point further.

@JammerUno.
You only need a bank (+ market/grocer) in HQ city. WS is nice of course to build it in HQ you need some 5 other banks, not too difficult by that time if you have mining inc. Or go without WS, then you'll lose some money on the corps but the benefits will still out weight the loss. You do need a courthouse in each corp city. SP is great if you have tons of workshops, if not there are cases where FM will be roughly equal to or better than SP even without corps. As for timing Mining and Sushi are doable, the rest of the corps aren't as good and indeed come too late.

IMO sushi is a bit overrated (outside of its notorious score milking role, of course, where it's the obvious best). It takes long to transfer the food points to useful outputs esp if not in kremlin slavery and the growth comes with maintenance also. Using it to feed spes can be nice but you have to have the , , AND manage to trade for lots of resources and even with all of THAT you still have some time until it pays back. If sushi is just being used to feed workshops or marginally add some specs (IE not strong enough to run many) I'd shelve it. The reason it works so well for score is that for SCORE purposes, raw growth (even into mass unhappiness/unhealth) is the goal and thus its payback is extremely fast just before finishing that domination .

Mining inc pays back investment much, much faster and you need fewer total resource trades to make it good.

 

[DanielTorrence]

The reason is because you have a lot more iron, gold, silver, copper, and coal (oh god, coal) on a huge map. And by leveraging it with mining corp and a hammer economy, you have a monstrous and flexible economy that can churn out 30-40 tanks per turn or allow 100% research at +4-5000 science per turn or more.

How in the world is this research rate possible? I am usually playing Emperor on normal maps and even with conquering up to domination limit I never had such such a production/BPT-rate? Sounds amazing, hope to get there some day...

 

[Dirk1302]

^40 cities, set enough to wealth to research at 100% and you're there.

@TMIT, i don't have enough experience with Sushi. Extra food sounds nice as you can leverage it with slavery or running extra specs. If not in rep those extra specs don't do that much and i can see that it takes longer to set up. In short Hammers from Mining are free and usable directly. Food as always needs to be leveraged as growing and getting unhealthy/unhappy is not an attractive option.

I have played some games with mining and it's the extra hammers that make it rather easy to set up this corp.

 

[Skallagrimson]

IMO the key to making either SP ...*or*... FM/corps work better is to be a huge empire. For SP the hugeness is to be able to abuse the shrug off of maintenance costs and multiply the hammer and food bonuses across a number of cities. For FM/corps the need for hugeness is to block the U.N. from a forced switch to Environmentalism.

If I'm not huge I will often go to SP anyway just so the AI sitting at the UN won't be (as) obsessed with Environmentalism, and if that civic does hit, then at least I'm not facing the evil decision between a nerfed corp or -5 happy (every freaking couple of turns because they'll do the enviro-nuke time after time after time after F'ING TIME...) In fact if small (culture runs) I pretty much take it as a given I'll be forced enviro sooner or later so just prepare for it. Get those forest preserves ready...

 

[kossin]

Here's an example of corps+10k beakers.

SGOTM12
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10003784&postcount=905

 

[iggymnrr]

Here's a screen with SP breaking 12k.

Spoiler :