How to use corporations effectively

[Killroyan]

I would like to discuss the one time 100-140 gold to get a corp in a city for just a little bonus. The little bonus is often something like 6-12 hammers or 6 food and 24 culture easily. That means that that one time corp is paid back in less then 20 turns (saying 1 hammer is worth 1 gold for instance). The advantages of the corp outweigh the costs normally by far. Found a corp in a wall street city and you get 12 gold back per turn (minus the upkeep cost of -4 normally average) so the earn back time is reduced immensely. Not even counting the fact that cities with sushi and mining for instance grow enormously fast and build a lot faster, thus more income from trade routes/specialists/buildings/etc.... Corporations is one of the reasons I hardly use state property anymore. If you have some land to settle get new cities with corp agents and voila instant cities within a couple of turn and a courthouse/library/granary etc....

The problem is propably the fact that you have very little resources from a certain corp. Say you found cerial and only have 2-3 food resources for it, then it is not worth it propably. But if you can trade up to 6-8 resources for it, then you will see how well corps work. A little advice, try a fantasy map with crazy resources (for instance rice as a crazy resource and then see how incredible powerfull corps can become).

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Or a rainforest map - rice is everywhere on rainforest maps, you'll have 10 at least...

 

[mirthadir]

If you are considering CM, you should also consider SE, particularly if you intend to turn the new pop into . SE gives pretty good return rates on its own and you can sell the oil for lots of resources or cold hard (if you want to be evil, spy burn the AI's oil and sell them yours the same turn).

The real problem with Corps is how long will the game last. Their RoR is pretty good, but the game is getting really short about then (particularly for late corps like CM or SE)

 

[Fibonacci1123]

Food corporations (Sushi and CM) should generally be spread to your key cities first: Oxford, NE, IW, HE (in no particular order). After that your developed cities, which should have all their multiplier buildings present, can best use the extra population the food creates.

While you can use food corps to rapidly grow a small city, this is more situational. I have found it worth it to turn a city with a bunch of hills and little food into a production center.

 

[Artichoker]

I really don't see the point in corporations. They just seem to make me loose a massive amount of money and for a little bonus in production or culture.

When / how should I use them?

Corporations are a great part of the game that can help your economy immensely. Here are the key points to using corporations effectively:

1) Timing is everything!

Look out for opportunities to get the key corporations. Based on the available opportunites, try to have the right Great Person type at the same time that you get the tech to unlock the corporation.

2) Do some long-term planning of what corporations you will be using.

Since each new corporation requires a new Great Person and a new technology, it will be very unlikely that you will get all of your corporations at the same time. Try to prioritize your corporations based on what you need.

In my experience, Mining, Inc. is usually the highest-priority corporation, based on its position in the tech tree. But this means that AIs will also try to get it early. If you're lucky, the AIs will choose State Property, which means that they won't try to compete with you to found those corporations. If you can get this one corporation, it will easily justify a choice of Free Market over State Property.

3) Consider going for a culture victory

Corporations are one of the best ways to go for a culture victory, or go for a "hybrid goal" of culture/space/diplomatic (in some games, you will want to do this).

If you're looking to avoid competing corporations (to maximize your income from Wall Street), then Civ Jewellers / Creative Constructions / Sid's Sushi makes the best combination of corporations for culture.

 

[mirthadir]

Food corporations (Sushi and CM) should generally be spread to your key cities first: Oxford, NE, IW, HE (in no particular order). After that your developed cities, which should have all their multiplier buildings present, can best use the extra population the food creates.

While you can use food corps to rapidly grow a small city, this is more situational. I have found it worth it to turn a city with a bunch of hills and little food into a production center.

Umm ... no. Sushi and CM should go to your unit pumps first (you might not go to HE or WP cities if you are churning high promo units there) as it is a world of difference in getting out an exec each turn as opposed to once every 5 turns or whatever you get in a simple NE city due to the exponential nature of corps spread you can effectively leave hundreds of on the table with spreading to cities that can't immediately pump more execs. Next you want to hit your small cities first, is of no inherent value, you can grow more pop to work food deficit tiles, specs, or whip the new pop into ; an arguement can be made that cities where you will change farms or windmills into other improvements can be as efficient with some multipliers (e.g. flipping a riverside farm -> wm in oxford is quite lucrative). You large cities suffer such a massive efficiency penalty waiting to grow new pop that you are virtually always further ahead to go for the small cities first.

A small city with high pop normally should become either a dedicated output city, would be the easiest (mine/WS everything and run some engineers) but that can be hard to manage sans Kremlin or AW if you have no tiles with hammers you can work (e.g. all coast/specials) and few engineer slots. If I'm running a rushbuy economy, then running merchants is pretty good (rush buy the MGB, run 4 merchants if not in caste, and then drop in ). Science is pretty much meh, unless you are in rep in which case it looks pretty good overall (particularly if you can rushbuy, whip or use a corp for the infra). The most efficient is EP - you can just get so many EPs from buildings and you can easily nab 5 spy slots; given the extremely high valuation of EP in the game, this can beat most of the others hands down; of course exploiting EP is tedious as all get out but hey.

Artichoker:
For culture you also want to toss AlCo into the mix if you can. The Al produced by AlCo increases the yields of CreCon and gives you some science to boot. The best mix (and normally the theoretically most powerful overall for a lot of maps) would be Sushi/CreCon/AlCo/CivJ).

Mining Inc can also be very useful for culture, a strong Mining Inc in a nice culture IW city can let you stack all the radio/MM wonders for some pretty insane multipliers and base culture in one late city.

Also I don't think I mentioned this elsewhere, but getting AI-AI embargoes/wars going is a good way to free up resources to power your corps. The AP can be quite handy here.