Optimising use of wealth into hammers

[utopian201]

I was thinking 'wouldn't it be great if the surrounding cities could contribute their hammers to the capital', then remembered universal suffrage enables exactly this; you could build wealth in surrounding cities, then spend that gold in the capital (at 3 gold for 1 hammer, or 2gold/hammer with the kremlin)

That sounds great, but Mining inc gives another avenue for turning gold into hammers - eg my last game, I was in free market (-25% corp maintenance) and had rathauses (-75% city maintenance which also help with corp maintenance), so mousing over mining inc in my cities, I had +7 hammers at the cost of 5 gold or something like that - so 1 gold bought more than 1 hammer.

1. Does that mean once you have mining inc, its no longer worth it it to rush production with gold? If your surrounding cities build wealth, you're spending 2 or 3 gold per hammer in the capital. Which is even worse, because now you're spending 5 gold in corp maintenace to get 7 hammers to build wealth = 2.3 gold to spend in the capital? Say you had forge + powered factory, then 7 hammers = 12.25 hammers =~4 gold.
2. If I plan on having a city support another citiy's production, then I shouldn't spread mining inc to it, since theres no point paying 5 corp maintenance to get 4 gold back to spend in the capital - does that sound right?

 

[a pen-dragon]

Assuming BtS 3.19:

Short version: rush buying with US is weak and only should be used in edge cases, even with the kremlin it is only acceptable. Corporations are not worth it for such low yields, as the alternative is state property, which provides plenty of production without having to found (-1 great person) and spread (-thousands ) a corporation.

really short version: SP beats corporations in most casual games.

Long version:
Lets start with your setting, you want other cities to support your capital, specifically by contributing production. First, this raises the question of why you want to do so. There is only limited infrastructure one really wants to build and combining the usually ok production spot the capital is in with bureau provides sufficient production to build it.

If it is not infrastructure you want to build, why bother? Units can be built in multiple cities, granted not all will have settled great generals, but not every unit needs to be highly promoted. In most cases a few units to break tough defenders are sufficient with the other units only being there to clean up the rest.
Spaceship parts also greatly benefit from being produced in multiple cities (also they can not be rushed anyway). It will be used sometimes, but that is usually because one does not want to tech further and has a gold surplus that might as well be used.

Now, let me expand on US being inefficient. The problem is that it does not scale with present production modifiers, so basically you are converting 3 (2 with kremlin) hammers in one city into 1 in another one, losing at least 50%. This is ok-ish when you are producing more gold than you need without producing wealth. It may also be worth it if you have surplus gold and need to have critical infrastructure up one turn sooner or need a few quick units, although in both cases slavery might be better. The other big problem for US is that you need gold for research.

Lets consider SP vs. corporations: SP provides a flat 10% production modifier as well as +1 for workshops. The latter is huge, as it allows to workshop most of the worked tiles to gain huge amount of production. It also sets distance maintenance to 0, which can go into hundreds of gold per turn won, even for medium sized empires.

Corporations OTOH provide a bonus based on how many resources you control. They get better the bigger your empire is. The problem is that a really big empire with strong corporations does not need them to win the game, meaning that they are either weak or superfluous, excepting some HoF games, where the aim is e.g. to get really early space victories, where the strategy is to sit just below the domination threshold. They are roughly gold neutral with courthouses and headquarters in a city with wall street.

Furthermore it appears you made a few mistakes in your calculation.

forge + powered factory, then 7 hammers = 12.25 hammers =~4 gold

forge + factory + power results in a production modifier of 100% and the hammer output is converted 1:1 to gold. So it should be something like:
7 base = 14 = 14 = 4.67 in the city where things are bought.

Thus in your example mining inc would provide a small benefit.

Summarizing, while rushbuying may sound like a good idea the numbers do not support this. There simply are better options to supercharge production in the late game.

That said, US might be worth it in the late game if you have lots of towns and can switch into it, but only because of the production bonus on towns, not because of rushbuying.

 

[utopian201]

thanks, a lot of the search results are from 18 or so years ago and they were espousing how 'powerful' rush buying was, but I was a bit skeptical after looking deeper into the maths - it is hard to determine whether something from 18 years ago that was considered the meta is still valid now; how could all those forum users be wrong?

 

[civac]

Mining Inc can be very good if you pull a lot of hammers with it. Probably around 10 minimum. I had way more but on standard maps usually there is not that many resources.

 

[a pen-dragon]

how could all those forum users be wrong?

There are two reasons. First, the game has evolved since then. The final patch for BtS appeared in (I think?) June 2009, so earlier posts will refer to earlier versions of the game where some balancing was different.

Second, how we play the game has evolved, as there has been quite a bit of theory crafting since then.

 

[sampsa]

I think everyone was busy playing instead of working things out. It was exactly the same in for example online poker.