Introduction to the Corporation Rework Initiative

timschuett · Jun 5, 2014

Ok, Since 2 of the Senior Mod staff have suggested "Someone should look at the corporations" to me today, I'm gonna take a hint. I'm going to tackle the issue of corporation imbalance/inconsistency and creation over the next few weeks.

I'm playing my first game into the industrial era and, man, the corporations are pretty off. Instead of whine about it and hope that Mod team gets around to a fix I can palate, I'll try my hand at contributing.

Please note, I have little programming experience and it took me nearly an hour to get the security permissions correct when I first installed C2C v33. This might be painful for me, but I figure the best way I can say thank you for the long hours put in by TB, SO, Hydro, Faust and the many others I'm forgetting is to do something to make C2C even better.

Since Vanilla BTS, I had some issues with the corporation resources and yields. My usual solution was to change some of the consumed resources and commerce yields in the xml file. Which was cheating, but I got over it. With C2C, the number of corps and resources has compounded the problems with what I feel was always an off-kilter system. The result is a corporation scheme that is very uneven and is negatively affecting my gameplay. My Proposed Solution will progress in the following stages:

#1 A Complete Inventory of Current Corporations as Represented in the Civilopedia, including modern corporations module.
This will probably be a spreadsheet with each corporation's relevant values
I'm including the optional corps b/c if this entire process is done properly (big if), then I would like to see all the corporations merged into the core. This will create a consistent benefit to gameplay, strategy and city specialization.
Complete, See the following links spelling out the current state of Corporations and Resources

CORPORATION SPREADSHEET
MANUFACTURED RESOURCES
MAP RESOURCES
#2 Identification of current issues, inconsistencies and imbalances of the corporations that presently exist
I'd really like the community's input and ideas on this topic, What irks you about the corporation layout?
Edit: Here's where it stands as of 09 June
CURRENT CORPORATION ISSUES
#3 Brainstorm New Ideas and Approaches to Corporations
Like I mentioned above, I have limited programming ability, but what can we do in the confines of the current system? (Think, what competes with what? Why does Corp ABC consume Resource 123 and not 456? How many resources are too many or too few? Should we use map resources or manufactured resources? Should there be a guideline to how many corps are in competition? Why don't more corporations produce a resource? etc.)
One idea that is only barely used is the Ultimate soldier corp increasing XP and Military unit Production. I love that idea, where else can we expand it to?

#4 Compile New Ideas with suggested Fixes for Concurrent Corporations and Audit for Consistency
This will likely take the form of another spreadsheet including new corporations, and their relevant values along with the 23 we have now (if they all make the cut). I'd like to see at least 30 corporations once I'm done, but that is also up to debate.

#5 Ask the Grown-ups for Help moving #4 into xml
Like I said, I'm a Noob at that. This is clearly the single most laborious step. I look forward to learning how to do it.

With any luck, we might have this straightened out by v36.

Any input/constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. I'm not trying to seize control of anything, I just want to do my part. If anyone else feels they are more qualified, I am happy to cede direction of this project to them.

Thanks in advance,
Tim

timschuett · Jun 5, 2014

~~Reserved For Spreadsheet~~

Ok, Here is the spreadsheet for #1 above. Let me know if I missed anything

Added A Googledoc spreadsheet of RWN's Manufactured Resources Few if any are used, and some I couldn't find in the civilopedia. They are highlighted in yellow. Help is appreciated on ID the missing resources.

Also Here is a googledoc for The current corporations with some slight reformatting from the .pdf

Anyone has permission to comment in the google doc. Knock yourselves out.

Thunderbrd · Jun 5, 2014

I just posted a reply to the other post without seeing you'd already progressed into this quite nicely. Well done!

Ok, so here's a list of some things to consider:

1)I've been wanting to make it possible for corporations that have a competing resource to both exist in the same city, splitting the use of that resource by a ratio of influence strengths between them.

This would tie in with the Generic Properties and Ideas projects I've been hinting at for a while now and plan to work on immediately after release due to the quickly growing needs emerging for both.

Since it may take a little bit for those projects to get smoothed out right, I would not give it too great an immediate consideration, but you might want to identify some resources that a corp wouldn't use without this overlapping accessibility and ones they would use if the overlaps were enabled.

2) We should really consider all of the resources we now have in C2C. There's a great many new ones and as it stands relatively few are included in the corporation side which makes our corps obviously not designed to fit with C2C.

3) When I first started considering modding, corps were the first thing I really looked at. I didn't move on some ideas that were generated then so I'd like to mention the one concept that I'd always wished I'd proceeded with but never did:

Many corporations are ways to take basic materials and convert it to a manufactured product. Then there are corporations which take those manufactured products to market. So if some corps generate new manufactured resources then others would USE those resources we would have a really cool system. We have a TON of manufactured resources not used by any corporations now so the commercial corporate world could start to be developed through those already.

4) I feel our current Corporation unlocked buildings are one of the major imbalances in the late game. I believe they're there because of an inability to balance the corporation structure within itself. So many resources on the map and generated by buildings can make resources easily struggle to profit because they're... well... too successful too easily. The more resources a corp gets access to the more powerful it spits out what it provides but the more costly it becomes too. There needs to be struck a balance between the two somehow which is a big part of why I want to see them be able to share resources between them where more than one resource accessing corporation exists within a city.

But back to the buildings... they need rebalancing. And any new corporations need to have their own buildings considered into this balance picture too.

5) If I were guessing, trying to get each player of many players capable of founding a nearly equal amount of corps would be a good goal but of course if we're allowing overlaps then perhaps we still need to restrict foundings of corporations throughout a nation to follow the same exclusion rules cities currently maintain themselves so that we can still make the determination of what corporations to found remain a bit of that strategic tetris game of 'how many can I get that will all stay non-competing with one another' as it is now. If that's how we'll play that out then it will still matter to take stock of how many corporations one player can get and in what combination that's to be achieved. This is of course the most complex side of it all and deeply analyzing (and then expressing) those foundable sets is one thing I really hope can come of this project. (Hope I haven't lost ya here.)

If well planned out, my wife and I will be more than happy to generate buttons necessary for these. I'm sure Sparth would be happy to help with skins for new Exec units. (Right Sparth?) And I'd be happy to go through and fully explain the xml tags in detail so as to clarify how to work with the xml.

I'll probably be needing DH's help for some of the UI for the ideas stuff though but it's a project that deeply affects (as in 'enables') his modding goals too. In fact, it's his goals that generated the concept in the first place. Corporations would only be another way to use it all.

I'll explain more on that in a week or two...

Sparth · Jun 6, 2014

timschuett said:
~~Reserved For Spreadsheet~~

Ok, Here is the spreadsheet for #1 above. Let me know if I missed anything

For spreadsheets use links to Google Docs. Is faster.

And welcome in C2C team

timschuett · Jun 6, 2014

Sparth said:
For spreadsheets use links to Google Docs. Is faster.

And welcome in C2C team

Understood. Thanx, Its nice to be here.

LumenAngel · Jun 6, 2014

Thunderbrd said:
2) We should really consider all of the resources we now have in C2C. There's a great many new ones and as it stands relatively few are included in the corporation side which makes our corps obviously not designed to fit with C2C.

We already had a good brainstorming about this in the other thread about corporation...

timschuett · Jun 6, 2014

LumenAngel said:
We already had a good brainstorming about this in the other thread about corporation...

Would you mind posting a link to any prior discussions you feel are relevant? I can try and hunt em down, but I'd rather spend as much time Spreadsheeting the resources and corps as possible. Copy and paste if you'd like

timschuett · Jun 6, 2014

MAP RESOURCES
MANUFACTURED RESOURCES
TRADE GOODS
Here are links to google doc spreadsheets that list alphabetically our current Map, Manufactured and Trade Resources. Thanks to RWN for sharing those with me. They are a work in progress and represent what I understand to be an effort to determine the relevance of individual resources more than their compatibility with Corporations.

At current count, there are 108 map resources, 14 trade goods, and
between 239-261 manufactured resources depending - and feel free to help on this - on whether RWN's list or the civilopedia for v34 is more accurate.

In the next few weeks, I'm planning on adding values and organizing these in various ways: current use by a corporation; rough estimate of era of relevance (ie. Carcass, early. Antigrav generator, late. Automobiles, mid); General characteristic of the resource (eg. manufactured, agricultural, food, consumer products, raw material, Military, Transport) among others as the spirit moves me. I will then use those guidelines to help organize the "resource reshuffle" that is going to happen as well as identify where new corporations might be appropriate.

Thunderbrd · Jun 6, 2014

It's quite a job to analyze all this thoroughly. You've certainly got your work cut out for you but it's incredibly appreciated help. (those links aren't working for me so make sure you're security/access settings allow anyone to at least view the doc)

Rwn · Jun 6, 2014

timschuett said:
At current count, there are 108 map resources, 14 trade goods, and
between 239-261 manufactured resources depending - and feel free to help on this - on whether RWN's list or the civilopedia for v34 is more accurate.

There were 107 map resources and 260 manufactured resources (there's a blank line in your spreadsheet) in SVN 7442; I thus assume some of them were added since official v34 release. Also, I think Faustmouse added some new uses for rarely used resources, so the list might no be totally up to date in terms of resource utilization.

timschuett · Jun 6, 2014

I said I'd reply to this today and almost had forgotten.

Thunderbrd said:
I just posted a reply to the other post without seeing you'd already progressed into this quite nicely. Well done!

Ok, so here's a list of some things to consider:

1)I've been wanting to make it possible for corporations that have a competing resource to both exist in the same city, splitting the use of that resource by a ratio of influence strengths between them.

This would tie in with the Generic Properties and Ideas projects I've been hinting at for a while now and plan to work on immediately after release due to the quickly growing needs emerging for both.

Since it may take a little bit for those projects to get smoothed out right, I would not give it too great an immediate consideration, but you might want to identify some resources that a corp wouldn't use without this overlapping accessibility and ones they would use if the overlaps were enabled.

2) We should really consider all of the resources we now have in C2C. There's a great many new ones and as it stands relatively few are included in the corporation side which makes our corps obviously not designed to fit with C2C.
Absolutely. I've already begun working on that; see the previous spreadsheet post

3) When I first started considering modding, corps were the first thing I really looked at. I didn't move on some ideas that were generated then so I'd like to mention the one concept that I'd always wished I'd proceeded with but never did:

Many corporations are ways to take basic materials and convert it to a manufactured product. Then there are corporations which take those manufactured products to market. So if some corps generate new manufactured resources then others would USE those resources we would have a really cool system. We have a TON of manufactured resources not used by any corporations now so the commercial corporate world could start to be developed through those already.
Couldn't agree more. This is along the lines of the corporate synergies I had alluded to in the other thread.
One of my biggest problems I had with corporations was the seemingly capricious way the resources were assigned combined with the rigid way competiton was interpreted. Case in point, Aluminum Co and Mining Inc. I get that both of them use coal, but they both use it in a mutually supportive way. As I see it, MI gets it out of the ground, and AC uses it to smelt Bauxite (actually, its electric arc nowadays, but i digress) AC should actually be a customer of MI, not a competitor. Both benefit from that arrangement.

AS I see it, that can be achieved through the supply chain model of corporations that you describe above, But it may result in the creation of MORE resources (

4) I feel our current Corporation unlocked buildings are one of the major imbalances in the late game. I believe they're there because of an inability to balance the corporation structure within itself. So many resources on the map and generated by buildings can make resources easily struggle to profit because they're... well... too successful too easily. The more resources a corp gets access to the more powerful it spits out what it provides but the more costly it becomes too. There needs to be struck a balance between the two somehow which is a big part of why I want to see them be able to share resources between them where more than one resource accessing corporation exists within a city.

But back to the buildings... they need rebalancing. And any new corporations need to have their own buildings considered into this balance picture too.
This may actually help address #3 above. If we are trying to set up corporate supply chains where one corp produces resources the next corp uses as a raw material, then the buildings will be key. Instead of (or in addition to) providing commerce bonuses (+x% to ,,,), each corp building could produce the next version of a resource. I imagine that most of these already exist in the 261 manufactured resources we have at last count. But an example would be:
Bauxite Ore ==> Mining Inc Bauxite Refinery ==>1 Refined Bauxite resource.
Coal ==>Mining Inc Coal Processor ==> 1 Processed Coal resource.
Then you'd have:
Refined Bauxite ==>
and________________Aluminum Co Smelter Facility ===> Aluminum Ingots
Processed Coal ==>

This would sidestep the idea you set out in #1, at least until you have the properties finished.
5) If I were guessing, trying to get each player of many players capable of founding a nearly equal amount of corps would be a good goal but of course if we're allowing overlaps then perhaps we still need to restrict foundings of corporations throughout a nation to follow the same exclusion rules cities currently maintain themselves so that we can still make the determination of what corporations to found remain a bit of that strategic tetris game of 'how many can I get that will all stay non-competing with one another' as it is now. If that's how we'll play that out then it will still matter to take stock of how many corporations one player can get and in what combination that's to be achieved. This is of course the most complex side of it all and deeply analyzing (and then expressing) those foundable sets is one thing I really hope can come of this project. (Hope I haven't lost ya here.)
I Agree. Part of the fun is trying to balance the right mix of corps for a given city, However, the rigidity of the "competition" rule is really a buzz kill. If a corp competes in a city with another corp over a single resource, then, as Highlander says, "There can be only one." That's unrealistic. I like the Idea you set up in #1, but that would also not limit the number of corps you can have. I have to think more about a solution to this one

If well planned out, my wife and I will be more than happy to generate buttons necessary for these. I'm sure Sparth would be happy to help with skins for new Exec units. (Right Sparth?) And I'd be happy to go through and fully explain the xml tags in detail so as to clarify how to work with the xml.

I'll probably be needing DH's help for some of the UI for the ideas stuff though but it's a project that deeply affects (as in 'enables') his modding goals too. In fact, it's his goals that generated the concept in the first place. Corporations would only be another way to use it all.

I'll explain more on that in a week or two...Man, I can't stand the suspense!

Rwn · Jun 6, 2014

timschuett said:
rough estimate of era of relevance (ie. Carcass, early. Antigrav generator, late. Automobiles, mid)

You might find the list below (attached in txt) useful for that (iGridX is the horizontal position of the tech on the tech tree, the smaller the earlier). It's based on the same SVN 7442 as the other list.

Spoiler :

timschuett · Jun 6, 2014

Rwn said:
There were 107 map resources and 260 manufactured resources (there's a blank line in your spreadsheet) in SVN 7442; I thus assume some of them were added since official v34 release. Also, I think Faustmouse added some new uses for rarely used resources, so the list might no be totally up to date in terms of resource utilization.

Good Catch on the blank. Also, thanks for the heads-up on the updated resource utilization. I'm not sure yet how relevant that may be, but I wanted to take your spreadsheet and turn it into something I can manipulate. No use reinventing The Wheel.

~~Anyone know the proper names for the highlighted resources?~~

Nevermind, Done.

And thanks again Rwn. The Spreadsheets are merged with the reveal tech and iGrid info

Thunderbrd · Jun 6, 2014

@Rwn: Can you include the obsoletion tech some bonuses have on that chart too please?

Couldn't agree more. This is along the lines of the corporate synergies I had alluded to in the other thread.
One of my biggest problems I had with corporations was the seemingly capricious way the resources were assigned combined with the rigid way competiton was interpreted. Case in point, Aluminum Co and Mining Inc. I get that both of them use coal, but they both use it in a mutually supportive way. As I see it, MI gets it out of the ground, and AC uses it to smelt Bauxite (actually, its electric arc nowadays, but i digress) AC should actually be a customer of MI, not a competitor. Both benefit from that arrangement.

AS I see it, that can be achieved through the supply chain model of corporations that you describe above, But it may result in the creation of MORE resources (

Exactly and that's where some products are then useful immediately. For example, one corporation produces Pillows and another, like Steers and Lowluck, sells them (makes use of them.)

This may actually help address #3 above. If we are trying to set up corporate supply chains where one corp produces resources the next corp uses as a raw material, then the buildings will be key. Instead of (or in addition to) providing commerce bonuses (+x% to ,,,), each corp building could produce the next version of a resource. I imagine that most of these already exist in the 261 manufactured resources we have at last count. But an example would be:
Bauxite Ore ==> Mining Inc Bauxite Refinery ==>1 Refined Bauxite resource.
Coal ==>Mining Inc Coal Processor ==> 1 Processed Coal resource.
Then you'd have:
Refined Bauxite ==>
and________________Aluminum Co Smelter Facility ===> Aluminum Ingots
Processed Coal ==>

This would sidestep the idea you set out in #1, at least until you have the properties finished.

Remember too (I know you know this) that corps alone can produce resources like the way Alumco does. So the buildings can be a useful tool but are not entirely necessary.

What we WILL be needing are some more buildings for each corporation that help them to compete, like dedicated Ad Agencies, stores, etc... Those will have a prereq of having enough % of influence in a city and will then add more influence each round. More on that with a deeper expulsion of the planned Ideas project.

We shouldn't need to sidestep things ... I don't think it'll take all that long to setup the Ideas project. Maybe it'll take up to a few weeks after the release perhaps.

I Agree. Part of the fun is trying to balance the right mix of corps for a given city, However, the rigidity of the "competition" rule is really a buzz kill. If a corp competes in a city with another corp over a single resource, then, as Highlander says, "There can be only one." That's unrealistic. I like the Idea you set up in #1, but that would also not limit the number of corps you can have. I have to think more about a solution to this one

There MAY be another way, a simpler way, to limit the number of corps a player may found by generalized categories. My wife has an interesting idea for World Wonders restricted by categories that may well be very applicable here to present an entirely alternative approach to keeping a player from hogging all of one category of corporation...

For now, just start working these out without concern for all that direct competition stuff... we'll circumvent the 'There can be only one' issue with something much more interesting

Sparth · Jun 6, 2014

My dream is to see someday in C2C corporate wars, totaly independent from normal nations wars. Including corporate military or mercenary units.

Rwn · Jun 6, 2014

Thunderbrd said:
@Rwn: Can you include the obsoletion tech some bonuses have on that chart too please?

Yes, here it is.

Dancing Hoskuld · Jun 6, 2014

timschuett said:
MAP RESOURCES
MANUFACTURED RESOURCES
TRADE GOODS
Here are links to google doc spreadsheets that list alphabetically our current Map, Manufactured and Trade Resources. Thanks to RWN for sharing those with me. They are a work in progress and represent what I understand to be an effort to determine the relevance of individual resources more than their compatibility with Corporations.

At current count, there are 108 map resources, 14 trade goods, and
between 239-261 manufactured resources depending - and feel free to help on this - on whether RWN's list or the civilopedia for v34 is more accurate.

In the next few weeks, I'm planning on adding values and organizing these in various ways: current use by a corporation; rough estimate of era of relevance (ie. Carcass, early. Antigrav generator, late. Automobiles, mid); General characteristic of the resource (eg. manufactured, agricultural, food, consumer products, raw material, Military, Transport) among others as the spirit moves me. I will then use those guidelines to help organize the "resource reshuffle" that is going to happen as well as identify where new corporations might be appropriate.

There are a few resources in Manufactured that should be in Trade Goods. The aim was to ensure that there were some goods that were just for trade to keep the trade system working.

timschuett · Jun 6, 2014

So I compiled the previous spreadsheets with the Corporations that currently use each on. Makes for some pretty Easy analysis. A couple quick observations:

1. 6 of 23 Corporations use Potato as a resource, making it the most heavily competed for resource since the Irish Potato Famine.
2. There are 107 Map Resources, Only 41 of them are used by at least 1 corporation. (38.3%)
3. There are 260 Manufactured Resources, Only 3 of them are used by at least 1 corporation (1.1%)
4. There are 14 Trade goods, Only 3 of them are used, albeit twice, but by the same 2 corps. (21.4%)

Now that we can begin to quantify the problem, we can begin to plan solutions.

timschuett · Jun 6, 2014

Dancing Hoskuld said:
There are a few resources in Manufactured that should be in Trade Goods. The aim was to ensure that there were some goods that were just for trade to keep the trade system working.

By trade, I assume you mean in the diplomacy screen, not trade routes.

Which of those Manf resources do you think belong as trade goods? Is a distinction even necessary from the standpoint of a corp? I simply subdivided the list that way because that how Rwn got em to me.

Thunderbrd · Jun 6, 2014

timschuett said:
So I compiled the previous spreadsheets with the Corporations that currently use each on. Makes for some pretty Easy analysis. A couple quick observations:

1. 6 of 23 Corporations use Potato as a resource, making it the most heavily competed for resource since the Irish Potato Famine.
2. There are 107 Map Resources, Only 41 of them are used by at least 1 corporation. (38.3%)
3. There are 260 Manufactured Resources, Only 3 of them are used by at least 1 corporation (1.1%)
4. There are 14 Trade goods, Only 3 of them are used, albeit twice, but by the same 2 corps. (21.4%)

Now that we can begin to quantify the problem, we can begin to plan solutions.

I've been thinking that simply looking at the Nasdaq and NY Stock Exchange lists and looking from the top of those lists down to get a concept of the strongest real world corporations and duplicating their functions for game effect is probably the easiest way to end up covering most everything.

So my suggestion, in a nutshell, is look to RL to help with great examples all over the place.

Introduction to the Corporation Rework Initiative

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