OCC and Corporation Questions

[Game_Addy]

I generally play OCC at Prince for now, as Gandhi of India. What would you guys suggest running for National Wonders for a SE, and Space Victory? Currently, I use:
National Epic
Oxford
Globe Theater
Iron Works
National Park

Would there be, as an old teacher said, a "more-better" choice of National Wonders? And if I have Coal, say from a trade, or inside my boundaries, but not in the fat cross, or even within the cross, but with NAt'l Forest, will I gain the bonus of IW?

In addition, I have another question, is NAtional Park worthy of a spot? I like it, but many others don't for some reason. I generally leave about 4-6 Forested Grasslands for Preserves, as the other 14 tiles have either farms, workshops or mines, with a surplus of food for more specialists. Would there be a reason to mow them down? I mean, the forested grassland gives 2 food and 1 Shield. Enough for a specialist and a citizen and 1 Hammer. The farm gives 4 food and no hammers(I can't recall if RRs give another food. Don't think so though).

And finally, how effective have you found Corporations to be? With such a small amount of supplies within my empire, I find them negligable, and I don't recall being able to tap into my neighbor's sources if I found a branch there(though I may be wrong on that part). At 0percent research, I'm usually rolling in dough, so all I needed them for was extra food(SS/SM) for more specialist beakers.

 

[dualdoc]

Ironworks will not use coal if you build the National Park in the same city, but you can still use coal to build railroads there. For this reason, the Ironworks only has any value in OCC if you have iron.

The National Park is, in my opinion, the best OCC national wonder. If you aren't on the coast with a variety of seafood, it is absolutely essential. Without it, you basically can't afford the Ironworks pollution, or that of a powered factory, and your maximum population will be far less. You could ameliorate the unhealth with lots of forests, but that just makes the National Park even more valuable. With a lot of preserves, you might not need the Globe.

In OCC, you should never found a corporation since it is invariably better to settle the great person (who has time to build a lot of executives to make money off of it?). If one spreads to you, then it might be OK, since as you say, money is rarely a constraint in OCC. I have gotten them from the AIs before, but you can't do anything to encourage it other than running Free Market or Environmentalism and maintaining an open border (which you should be doing for the trade revenue, which is often really good for a mega city).

 

[KMadCandy]

Ironworks will not use coal if you build the National Park in the same city, but you can still use coal to build railroads there. For this reason, the Ironworks only has any value in OCC if you have iron.

it does allow three engineer specialists, which are hard to come by. so it has some value that way... enough to give up another national wonder if you don't have iron or coal, probably not. but yes, you're right that you don't get coal credit for it in OCC if you have NPark.

 

[Gooblah]

Ironworks + National Park= No unhealthiness, 3 Engineer specialists, and either 100% or 75 % boost in production (I know its base 50%, but do the two resources individually add 25% or 50%?). This is still pretty good. Plus, the two production style alternatives to Ironworks, Heroic Epic and Moai Statues, are good only in some circumstances. Heroic Epic does not contribute to production at all, unless you're building military units, and even then, Ironworks beats it out since it gives hammers to everything, and it offers practically the same boost. Moai Statues only help if you're doing an Archipelago or on-the-coast OCC, which are usually not that great to start out with. If you're doing a one-4 tile archipelago island as your base, that's anywhere from 16-20 extra base production, which is quite tiny in mid-late game, and the Statues cost a lot of hammers in the early-game. On-the-coast OCCs get even less out of it, since they'll only get 10-15...

 

[Err0l]

I've found Corporations quite handy, especially Mining Inc., but perhaps it was because I was playing a tiny Balanced map with 17 AIs ^^

 

[MrCynical]

Your national wonder combination looks OK. The national park is a two edged sword since it reduces the effectiveness of Ironworks, but eliminating the health cap often is worth it. Paired with the Globe, your city can reach exceptionally large sizes.

As to corporations, they're relatively more powerful in an OCC, since all their gold production is focused into a single city anyway. It's not enough that I'd bother with Wall Street, but it's certainly better to use a GM to get Sushi than to settle it as a superspecialist. No your empire won't have many resources within its borders, but the AI will trade duplicate resources dirt cheap. The last time I was playing an OCC I was importing about 30 lots of seafood at 3 or 4 gpt each. Given I was running at a huge profit at 100% science thanks to foreign branches, this was a really good deal.

One small caveat of corporations in an OCC - you can't found Aluminium Co. if you have the National Park.