Ok, corporations? Pointless?

[futurehermit]

The patch has made corporate execs unlimited (thank heavens) thus taking away some of the annoyingness of spreading corporations later in the game. To the best of my knowledge, it also fixed some of the financial issues with corporations later in the game.

Ok, great.

However, I ask you: Are they worth the time and effort?

Late game turns are already lengthy and I repeatedly find myself wondering why should I invest the time and tedium to spread corporations. First of all, I have to consider sending a bunch of execs to a neighbour to offset the $ of spreading them to my own cities. Then I have to spread them to my own cities. Then I have to consider whether the impact I finally get from the corps is worth it....while I grumble about the AI switching into mercantilism on me and then deciding whether I can and want to get my hands on the UN and get everyone to go into environmentalism

I'm not one to question the value of surplus food, so I can see the value of Sid's sushi for the most part. So, I am willing to think that one has value even if I pay through the nose to only spread it to my own cities.

Perhaps if you're pursuing a cultural victory (there's not as much going on later in the game and you usually have a smaller empire) I can see the value of nabbing the synergistic corporations. Although I admit I don't play for cultural except once every few months I have an itch to try something new and will play for one.

Perhaps if you get unlucky and don't have aluminum, but I dunno.

I don't know. The fundamental question for me is this: Will corporations help me win/win faster than if I didn't use them? If they will help me win faster turn wise will it be significant enough that it justifies the increase in time it takes in real life to execute those turns?

I don't go for corporations that often (since I first got BtS, tried it, and got a bit frustrated with it) and don't usually miss them overmuch. Not to mention that I'm a fan of state property...

Can anyone convince me (I'm open to it) that corporations are worth my time? I think they're a great idea in principle as a gameplay feature but I just find them overly tedious (have you ever tried to spread a corp overseas before the patch to # of execs?!?).

Thks

 

[Thrar]

I agree with you here, I also haven't found much use in corporations.
The initial cost is quite high, fees and hammers you spend for spreading it around as well as the great person to get started. The benefits, while useful, don't seem so big to offset all of that, with the possible exception of Sushi, and others in special situations.

I have also tried using them in a few games, but not found much of a real benefit. If someone can write some enlightening thoughts, that would be very interesting to see!

 

[shyuhe]

Also, the removal of the # of executives has led to bizarre AI behavior. I should have taken a screenshot but I've seen AI stockpiling over 30+ executives in one city.

And no, I don't use corporations much either. I can see standard ethanol or aluminum co. being useful if you don't have the resource and can't war for them either but that's about it.

 

[MikeH]

I've not really experimented with them myself yet, but some people seem to like them:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=237717

 

[TheAmazingYant]

30 executives in a city is a lot, but I think I've seen upwards of 70-80. I know in one of my earlier games Hannibal had two corporations, one with over 200 execs and one with about 120.

I have found them to be useful in some cases - Aluminum Co. has been my only source of that resource before, so that's nice. I did manage to spread one corp to the point that I could run 90% research and still make a profit, which was pretty cool.

 

[futurehermit]

thks for the link to the article. it was interesting and well-written. however, i already knew sushi has potential and, to a certain extent, mining inc. my question though is does the impact they give you justify the amount of time mucking around with them? that is something i'm still unconvinced about...

 

[Nickzilla]

How about a post-patch civilized Jewellers? Would that not pull a good profit?

 

[MrCynical]

I would definitely say that there is a point to corporations in game terms. State Property isn't going to match up to a well provided Sushi and Mining Inc combo unless you're at the brink of domination anyway (and even then it's debatable). Not all corporations are equal though - I consider Standard Ethanol and Aluminium Co largely pointless unless lacking the resources. Civ Jewellers requires the least thought - it'll turn a profit wherever you spread it.

As to whether they're worth the time and micromanagement - only you can really answer that question. I don't find them too time consuming really - no worse than religion and an order of magnitude below an SE or a spy economy. Long term spamming to AIs is generally unnecesary - just send them one exec and leave them to do it.

Flight is a key tech for minimising corporation hassle - you can just airlift the exec to the desired city in any of your or your vassals/colonies' territories instead of messing around with ships. Negotiating for extra resources is straightforward enough. Figuring out which cities could benefit from extra food/production isn't that time consuming either.

At the very least I'd considered it worth dropping the appropriate corporations into your GP farms/production cities and any very small ones, plus giving them to the AI to spam by themselves.

 

[futurehermit]

^^Thks for the tips. I'll try to work on that, seems to make sense. I never really considered airlifting execs, that is something I'll have to work on. Cheers.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Late game turns are already lengthy and I repeatedly find myself wondering why should I invest the time and tedium to spread corporations. First of all, I have to consider sending a bunch of execs to a neighbour to offset the $ of spreading them to my own cities. Then I have to spread them to my own cities. Then I have to consider whether the impact I finally get from the corps is worth it....while I grumble about the AI switching into mercantilism on me and then deciding whether I can and want to get my hands on the UN and get everyone to go into environmentalism

This isn't really true any more (except perhaps at Deity level). Corporations are no longer affected by inflation and cost considerably less to maintain, so it's no longer imperitive to balance domestic spreading with foreign spreading.

With the right buildings, favourable civics and the HQ next to Wall Street, it's not that hard to break even or gain a profit just at the corporate maintenance level (that's not even considering the value of the benefits).

Check out my article, Corporate Maintenance Explained (specifically The Example).

The GP value is the only thing I tend to agree with you on. By this point in the game, a Great Merchant is worth between 3000 and 4000g. So spending it to found Sid's Sushi is typically a very hard thing for me to do unless I'm seeking Culture or Space Race (since gold doesn't do much for me in either of those cases). For military, I'm probably already in CS/SP, so it's clear what to do.

The initial cost is quite high, fees and hammers you spend for spreading it around as well as the great person to get started. The benefits, while useful, don't seem so big to offset all of that, with the possible exception of Sushi, and others in special situations.

I have also tried using them in a few games, but not found much of a real benefit. If someone can write some enlightening thoughts, that would be very interesting to see!

Aside from the GP expended, the initial cost is only 50g + inflation, so you're looking at max of 100g towards the later game.

So 9 cities might cost between 500g and 1000g, which is usually only two or 3 turns of 100% gold at that stage of the game.

If you've played your cards right, you should be breaking even or turning a profit at the HQ, so you're bound to get that money back without even thinking about the benefits. However, if you consider the benefits, it's typically worth it.

By the time Corporations emerge in my games, I typically have 2 or 3 cities that can churn one out each turn, so it usually only takes about 10 or 15 turns to spread the Corporation to every city in my empire, which I think is totally worth it.

thks for the link to the article. it was interesting and well-written. however, i already knew sushi has potential and, to a certain extent, mining inc. my question though is does the impact they give you justify the amount of time mucking around with them? that is something i'm still unconvinced about...

I've only found foreign spreading to be tedious "mucking around". Since the executive tells how much the maintenance is going to be before founding, I think it's usually pretty simple to do a little math and figure out how much it's worth it.


-- my 2

 

[futurehermit]

ok thks guys i haven't played much with corporations since the patch and this feedback has given me incentive to try working with them again!

 

[Phrederick]

I only use Mining and either Sushi or Cereal Mills, because they seem to be the best at transforming money into production/commerce. Now that inflation doesn't affect corporations, I use a simple test to see if they are useful. For Mining, I check to see if the added production, after modifiers, is greater than the cost in gold. If so, I incorporate there. For Sushi, I first decide what to do with the food: either transform farms/windmills to workshops/watermills/mines, or add specialists, or transform farms to cottages (rare, since it's so late in the game). Then, I calculate how many added hammers/beakers/commerce will come in, and check to see if that's above the maintenance cost.

Then, if my economy starts crashing, I can turn one out of four or so production cities to Wealth, and that cancels out the affect of adding Mining to all the production cities: In most of my games (small/epic/emperor, domination wins) I've found that a good production city provides roughly 40-50 raw hammers and Mining Inc adds about 20, which with a +100% bonus comes out to 80 + 40 or 120. Instead of having four cities at 80 hammers, then, I'll have three at 120 (costing say 20 each in Corporation maintenance), and one building wealth, costing 20 in maintenance, but adding 100-120 coin. So, as long as each incorporation of Mining Inc adds more net production than it costs in maintenance, it can be used either to add production at the cost of money, or used with building Wealth to cost nothing. That adds flexibility, lets you turn on and off increased production, with few drawbacks.

 

[DutchJob]

since I started to implement Sid's Sushi in my games when I go into the endgame my highscores are 20-30% higher. This is mainly due to the extra population I breed with the extra food.

in the endgame I don't need the SP production bonus anymore since the army has been build. nor are the extra specialists of merc. needed since the science is done.

for spaceracegames I can image lots of scenario's where certain corps. are godsend.

 

[Bandobras Took]

My latest game as Mehmed saw me with a lot of coastal cities (cheap Lighthouse, Harbor), and Mining Inc was a real shot in the arm for fielding a large navy. By founding the corp in my wall street city, I wasn't hurting for money, either. It was also very useful to airlift execs into recently conquered cities in order to get basic buildings finished more quickly.

 

[Jet]

It seems like you have to get them out earlyish.

Just guessing, but they might be good for small civs. Example: your foreign corps give you more stuff without more cities. Example: you're stuck on an island with HR and cottage spam, and corps give you hammers.

 

[Sjaramei]

If your game lasts until you can get infantry and the likes corporations will be a big help. Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc is insane... with a large empire everything goes berserk when you have them Every city is a production city and every city have plenty of food, i tend to have 50-75% of my cities build wealth/research etc to help with my research rate because i haven't got anymore to build in them. (And at that point i usually have the largest most advanced army in the world so thats not important either)

I play domination games most of the time, so corporations gets superpowerful for me, because my empire size is quite decent at that time (more resources) so my opinion is considering those circumstances. (I tried a cultural once too, but the victory came late, but i churned out huge amounts of culture thanks to corps so that works well too )

 

[madscientist]

The patch has made corporate execs unlimited (thank heavens) thus taking away some of the annoyingness of spreading corporations later in the game. To the best of my knowledge, it also fixed some of the financial issues with corporations later in the game.

Ok, great.

However, I ask you: Are they worth the time and effort?

Late game turns are already lengthy and I repeatedly find myself wondering why should I invest the time and tedium to spread corporations. First of all, I have to consider sending a bunch of execs to a neighbour to offset the $ of spreading them to my own cities. Then I have to spread them to my own cities. Then I have to consider whether the impact I finally get from the corps is worth it....while I grumble about the AI switching into mercantilism on me and then deciding whether I can and want to get my hands on the UN and get everyone to go into environmentalism

I'm not one to question the value of surplus food, so I can see the value of Sid's sushi for the most part. So, I am willing to think that one has value even if I pay through the nose to only spread it to my own cities.

Perhaps if you're pursuing a cultural victory (there's not as much going on later in the game and you usually have a smaller empire) I can see the value of nabbing the synergistic corporations. Although I admit I don't play for cultural except once every few months I have an itch to try something new and will play for one.

Perhaps if you get unlucky and don't have aluminum, but I dunno.

I don't know. The fundamental question for me is this: Will corporations help me win/win faster than if I didn't use them? If they will help me win faster turn wise will it be significant enough that it justifies the increase in time it takes in real life to execute those turns?

I don't go for corporations that often (since I first got BtS, tried it, and got a bit frustrated with it) and don't usually miss them overmuch. Not to mention that I'm a fan of state property...

Can anyone convince me (I'm open to it) that corporations are worth my time? I think they're a great idea in principle as a gameplay feature but I just find them overly tedious (have you ever tried to spread a corp overseas before the patch to # of execs?!?).

Thks

The answer I believe is yes, they help win the game faster using the following guidelines.

1) Build it in Wall Street.
2) Do NOT send the corp to any AI.
3) Ignore the financial return, they are neglible especially late in the game when corps ar eavailable.
4) Spread the corp to cities that can use it. If going for space you need only spread it to key production cities.
5) Founding as many corps as possible keeps them out of the AI hands.
6) Founding corps are one of the best uses for a GP late in the game.



The Seafaring Victoria RPC game in my signature was turned arround because of founding the Mining Corp at a key time, although whther the corp would have been needed if I weren't running the trade economy is questionable.

 

[Junuxx]

If you have plenty of the consumed resources, some corporations make things go completely crazy.

Yesterday I played with just one opponent on a standard map high on resources, so I ended up with dozens of most strategic resources. With Creative Com this gave +80 hammers, +270 culture or so.Civ Jewels gave +50 gold per city. I found myself spamming cities everywhere I could just to spread the corps in, on every unused tile in between cities and on tundra and ice. Build a courthouse, bank and forge in these cities in just three turns and then switch to wealth or research. Absurd, I tell you. But quite funny for once.

 

[Roxlimn]

The Culture Triad of Creative Constructions, Sid's Sushi, and Civ Jeweller's is actually quite effective at speeding a late game turn to a Culture win. Spread to 3 Cities, negotiate for resources, wait to win. It's fast, and it's painless. In fact, it's so brainless that it may take the win for "least micromanaged win" ever. You don't have to found early religions, you don't have to manage a large empire, you don't even have to found the corporations yourself.

Just get the resources, establish the Corporations, cruise control to the win.

 

[Hawe Hawe]

The Culture Triad of Creative Constructions, Sid's Sushi, and Civ Jeweller's is actually quite effective at speeding a late game turn to a Culture win. Spread to 3 Cities, negotiate for resources, wait to win. It's fast, and it's painless. In fact, it's so brainless that it may take the win for "least micromanaged win" ever. You don't have to found early religions, you don't have to manage a large empire, you don't even have to found the corporations yourself.

Just get the resources, establish the Corporations, cruise control to the win.

Why trade if you can take it by force? Combine Cultural victory, ressources and conquests! Late game culture wins after you have conquered those startegic ressources for the corps are really funny. You don't need wonders, religions or artists. Those culture corps are so strong if you have a big amount of ressources.
@futurehermit: if you don't like cultural wins because they are so passive for the second part of the game and you don't like the "cultured but weak-feeling" (Ok, Monty, i'll give you my brand new Music tech this time, because my three big cities are full of wonders but only defended by a single longbow.), the conquest-culture is the right thing for you. It works!