Guide Request: Corporations

[thecraftybee]

Unless I know the game is going to be tight and thus exciting, I tend to quit around Modern/Atomic, whether I'm losing miserably or ahead significantly.

As a result, I tend to have minimal experience with Corporations. Could someone with more experience possibly make a guide. I think I'm maximising them, but I feel as though there may be hidden tips and tricks that I'm missing that can pull out a little more from this game mechanic.

What is the franchise limit?
How exactly do the Ideology tenets affect Corps?
How do you think each Corp rates compared to the others?
Are there any bugs, and if so, any Corps I should avoid as being OP/UP?
Do you have any best practice or tips and tricks you can share?
Plus anything else you think is worthwhile.
How does war affect Corporations?

A minor quibble: could the tooltips (I'm using EUI so not sure if that is masking anything) be fleshed out, even if it is to say, this is a Culture/GP/Science based Corpation etc. I never remember what each one is and then head into the civopaedia to confirm.

Thanks

Also, would be great if Stalker could do one of his magic balancing threads on these too - but preferably after a guide has been completed.

 

[Strigvir]

>What is the franchise limit?
The maximum of franchises you can establish.
>How exactly do the Ideology tenets affect Corps?
Isn't it written on tenet descriptions?
>How do you think each Corp rates compared to the others?
Corporation isn't really a choice, since it depends on resources you and your conquered neighbours have.
>Do you have any best practice or tips and tricks you can share?
They work off monopolies, so banning a particular luxury denies the monopoly owner from building a corporation. If you can propose, check if other monopolies of the corporation of your choice are present and ban accordingly. However it's trickier if a civ shares the same monopoly with you.
>How does war affect Corporations?
Corporation-related buildings are destroyed upon city capture and franchises are established only on trade route completion, so do the math.

 

[thecraftybee]

>What is the franchise limit?
The maximum of franchises you can establish.

But how is this calculated? Is it a set number, is it based off the number of cities you have, the number of monopoly luxes, number of trade routes, number of harbours/caravansaries?. If I know what it is based on, I can work to try and increase them. Is this visible anywhere in the UI, either vanilla or EUI?

How do franchises spread? From trade routes originating from a HQ or office to a city without one? If I send a trade route to a city with a foreign franchise from my city without one or an office, will I eventually get a franchise of that corp? Will I get any benefits of choosing a trade route destination with a foreign corp franchise? Are there other ways to spread franchises?

>>How exactly do the Ideology tenets affect Corps?
Isn't it written on tenet descriptions?

Syndicalism: what does it mean exactly, counts for double? It uses up two of your franchise limit, or you get double the effect from trade routes? Or something else?

Nationalisation: seems obvious enough, this gives you the benefit of franchises to internal trade routes with your cities with. But if a competitor Corp gets a franchise set up in one of my cities, will that prevent me from building an office? Or if I do, will I lose that franchise?

Transnationalism: how does this spread and how is it different to normal spread? Is there any reason, or any way, to choose which city is chosen? Will it be a city that I can interact with or will it choose a city in Australia if I'm playing as England?]

Basically, I want to understand the maths and basics of the mechanics to see if I can get more out of them.

>>How do you think each Corp rates compared to the others?
Corporation isn't really a choice, since it depends on resources you and your conquered neighbours have.

Sometimes you do have a choice. I tend to play on NQ maps with each person starting in an area with a regional lux so it is fairly easy to get a monopoly on your own lux or possibly more if you take someone out early.

>>Do you have any best practice or tips and tricks you can share?
They work off monopolies, so banning a particular luxury denies the monopoly owner from building a corporation. If you can propose, check if other monopolies of the corporation of your choice are present and ban accordingly. However it's trickier if a civ shares the same monopoly with you.

Thanks - great insight. Anyone know any more tidbits like this?

>>How does war affect Corporations?
Corporation-related buildings are destroyed upon city capture and franchises are established only on trade route completion, so do the math.

Ah so this is how franchises occur. If I'm England and get a franchise in Orleans, will that prevent Germany getting a franchise there? Or will their franchise coexist with mine in Orleans if their trade route finishes a few turns after mine? Will it overwrite mine?

 

[Strigvir]

But how is this calculated? Is it a set number, is it based off the number of cities you have, the number of monopoly luxes, number of trade routes, number of harbours/caravansaries?. If I know what it is based on, I can work to try and increase them. Is this visible anywhere in the UI, either vanilla or EUI?

It based off the maximum trades routes, but not linearly, since as Venice I didn't get two times as much possible franchises.

How do franchises spread? From trade routes originating from a HQ or office to a city without one? If I send a trade route to a city with a foreign franchise from my city without one or an office, will I eventually get a franchise of that corp? Will I get any benefits of choosing a trade route destination with a foreign corp franchise? Are there other ways to spread franchises?

Civilopedia and Office descriptions explain it all.

Syndicalism: what does it mean exactly, counts for double? It uses up two of your franchise limit, or you get double the effect from trade routes? Or something else?

It's double effect from franchise bonus to offices.

Nationalisation: seems obvious enough, this gives you the benefit of franchises to internal trade routes with your cities with. But if a competitor Corp gets a franchise set up in one of my cities, will that prevent me from building an office? Or if I do, will I lose that franchise?

Not really obvious, since offices count towards the cap of franchises, but the franchises established before taking the tenet are not removed. You can technically get the most franchise trade routes established possible with it, but it will be a mish-mash of internal and external trade routes on an ideology starved for gold.

Transnationalism: how does this spread and how is it different to normal spread? Is there any reason, or any way, to choose which city is chosen? Will it be a city that I can interact with or will it choose a city in Australia if I'm playing as England?

It spreads randomly and yes, it can spread to an inland city of another continent. It can do this potentially faster than the trade routes, but after you max the cap all that left is a 20% cap increase, which is 2 additional franchises at best. While all other level 2 tenets are straight up bonuses which don't require any trade-offs.

All in all, none of the corporation tenets worth picking.

Sometimes you do have a choice. I tend to play on NQ maps with each person starting in an area with a regional lux so it is fairly easy to get a monopoly on your own lux or possibly more if you take someone out early.

That's what I am talking about, your possible corporation pool is limited at the map generation stage. For this reason you won't see Stalker's threads regarding corporation balance in any foreseeable future, because good luck getting something like Hexxon reliably for the testing purposes.

Ah so this is how franchises occur. If I'm England and get a franchise in Orleans, will that prevent Germany getting a franchise there? Or will their franchise coexist with mine in Orleans if their trade route finishes a few turns after mine? Will it overwrite mine?

Franchises are not counter exclusive.

 

[Glidergun]

Franchise limit is based on max trade routes, I think. It's not a one-to-one correlation, but having more trade routes available means more franchises.

Syndicalism makes the franchises double the flat bonus on your offices. For example, a Trader Sid's Office will generate 4 gold per established franchise. If you have a franchise limit of 8 and have hit it, you will get 32 gold from your Offices. If you have Syndicalism, and two of the franchises are in cities that qualify, you will get 40 gold (6x4=24 from standard franchises, and 2x8=16 from Syndicalism franchises).

Franchises don't compete, so getting foreign franchises in your cities won't affect Nationalization one way or the other.

Transnationalism just gives a small chance for a franchise to pop up in random foreign cities every turn. It's mostly irrelevant and even slightly detrimental, since you can't decide to put them in safe trading partners. The most important part of the tenet is the boost to franchise maximum.

Autocracy's double strategic resource tenet can boost you into being able to build Centaurus Extractors, Firaxite Materials, or Hexxon Refineries.

Hexxon's a very weird corp, as is Civ Jewelers to a lesser extent. All the others just give you yields, but Hexxon gives you strategic resources and Civ Jewelers ramps up GP generation. Hexxon's enabling resources are also a little wonky; if you're lucky enough to get Perfume or Incense you can found it instead of scrabbling for resources on the map, but Uranium is revealed too late to matter for founding it, and Oil and Coal are the things it gives you in the first place! The last resource, Glass, is the trick: it means that it's fairly easy to get the right monopoly if you conquer one or two mercantile city states. Hexxon is kind of a secondary production corp, since it gives you enough coal to actually throw the relevant buildings all over the place,

Although Giorgio Armeier is the culture corp, it interacts most strongly with that victory type by defending against culture pushes, though it can increase boredom in foreign cities. Jewelers is the one with the most benefits for culture victory, since it boosts the rates of the Historical Events and cultural GP that clinch them.

 

[thecraftybee]

Thanks guys.