State Property, Environmentalism and the using Corporations

[Karalysia]

In almost all my games I've found that State Property is simply the best economic civic there is and I'm usually running it all the time as I understand their best for larger empires right but I find it works great for any size empire. I produce far more when running state property compared to mercantilism or free market.

Also when, if ever should you run environmentalism? I've never found a good use for it.

Also I've never found much use for corporations, the AI always beats me to founding any corporations so I've never actually had one is the AI just lucky or do I need to change the way I play to get corporations?

The civics I usually run are Police State, State Property, Free Religion, and I forget the last one.

 

[DaveMcW]

SP really is the best civic.

 

[z0wb13]

wow! aren't there lots of volcanoes in iceland? do you live beside a volcano!

there are lots of threads discussing civics. but you should explain why the ones that you run: police state, state property, free religion and the other 2 are the best in all situations. people need to know that;p

 

[madscientist]

If your running Police State then you are war-mongering and likely State Property is the best civic.

However, if you want to empire build and head to space, UN, or a culture ending then corporations can be a big part of the game.

Both strats work well and are usually game dependent.

 

[Ataxerxes]

In almost all my games I've found that State Property is simply the best economic civic there is and I'm usually running it all the time as I understand their best for larger empires right but I find it works great for any size empire. I produce far more when running state property compared to mercantilism or free market.

Also when, if ever should you run environmentalism? I've never found a good use for it.

Also I've never found much use for corporations, the AI always beats me to founding any corporations so I've never actually had one is the AI just lucky or do I need to change the way I play to get corporations?

The civics I usually run are Police State, State Property, Free Religion, and I forget the last one.

That only adds up to three Civics with two you forgot. State Property is often the best especially if you're not using corporations. I sometimes use Environmentalism in an OCC, but it's usually not a good choice.

I only run Police State if I'm heavily building military. Representation and US are better economic civics. Since I only have a specialized cities building military, I don't usually run Police State.

Free Religion is nice, but so are Organized and Pacifism in some situations. Whether or not I run FR is usually based on diplomacy.

 

[CajNatalie]

I've figured Environmentalism is best for an empire with a good proportion of fully grown cities.
Basically you can use your Health boost to turn those 'fully grown' cities into 'growing' so they can get to the biggest possible sizes.
So if you spaced your cities with minimal overlap, you could then take advantage of all 20 plots and excess specialists without breaking your Health cap, and therefore reaping the rewards of super-metropolises and still being eligible for We Love You celebrations to make them pay for themselves.

This, if true, means that Environmentalism, whilst looking to have potential to be very highly rewarding, is the toughest to reap the full benefits of.
I'm considering trying for Environmentalist empires from now on to see how this works... once I need a health boost in one of my major cities, I'll go straight ahead and switch from SP to EN.

 

[Derakon]

I've only been tempted to use Environmentalism in one game -- it was a water-heavy map, and I had only four health resources (rice, pigs, clams, fish). My cities were pretty much permanently unhealthy -- at the end, my average life expectancy was 47! Even with that, I stuck with Free Market because I was horribly dependent on trade.

Didn't stop me from having half the world's population packed onto one of the three continents...

 

[Paperbag_Hobo]

I always find it hard to stay in state property. I never feel like I have enough watermills to justify it.

If you want to see a good example of an environmentalism game, watch TMIT's Justinian game I believe. He gets early medicine for sushi, goes into environmentalism and uses the health to run coal factories in most his cities.

 

[Gwynnja]

State property is awesome, but it requires more micro/worker turns than free market. I may play a bit below my difficulty level, but by the time the SP/FM debate comes up I've often got the game in the bag. I get lazy towards the end of the game and don't want to war, so I stay in Representation or Universal Suffrage. Bureaucracy/Free Market is game dependent as are most of the religious civics. Once everyone else switches into Emancipation it's hard to go against the grain unless I'm going for a cultural victory in which case Caste is the way to go.

 

[Paw]

If I can get the Great People and found mining inc and sushi's before the AI does, then I'll probably stay in free market and take advantage of being in free market.

If I can't get those corps, or if my empire is already really large by the time they roll around, I'll just go with SP. Much less hassle.

 

[Tristan_C]

SP really is the best civic.

Slavery


op,
If you're loaded on mature cottages without a ton of space left for SP workshops, AND you can get requisite GPs without them sitting around for ages, consider free market and corps because they're way stronger in the late game. Try to run Theo with Police State instead of FR.

 

[mirthadir]

There has been a spirited discussion about the merits of SP vs FM ongoing on the boards. You can produce FAR more outputs hammers:, , , , ) with corps (the most cost efficient often being CerealM, Crecon, CivJ, AlCo); however there is a very non-trivial startup cost and for a lot of typical beelines a delayed onset (getting the later techs like medicine or combustion); SP is pretty much instant. If the game is going to last a long time, corps can win out handily. If the game is close to ending, SP is likely better.

Founding corps typically just requires that you have the means to get the GP needed in a timely fashion. For instance using a golden age to flip into caste and then to run all of your city's pop as merchants (you can only starve one pop per turn) to get the GM for Sushi. You might consider this as far back as the Taj. Another good way to effect this is to get the AI into SP quickly; much of time the AI will run SP as soon as you trade it communism. This makes it harder for an AI to found a corps.

Environmentalism shines the most on hilly maps (obviously highlands, but also tectonics and even some hilly fractals) and low situations. Windmills in enviro are rock solid improvements and enough of them can pay for corps with enviro or beat SPs economic benefits. Another shot is vote locking the AI in enviro (via the UN vote), either to breakup SP-SP AI lovefests or to get a comparative advantage off the AIs. Last shot, if your health is low, hitting forge + factory + power is pretty harsh, enviro can offset all of that with ease.

 

[z0wb13]

...Windmills in enviro are rock solid improvements and enough of them can pay for corps with enviro or beat SPs economic benefits....

i agree with all of the rest of this post, but only half of this sentence. i mean, corps are great, and enviro windmills are great, but running corps empire-wide under environmentalism is *generally prohibitively expensive. although, it could work okay if you have the corps spread selectively.

 

[mirthadir]

i agree with all of the rest of this post, but only half of this sentence. i mean, corps are great, and enviro windmills are great, but running corps empire-wide under environmentalism is *generally prohibitively expensive. although, it could work okay if you have the corps spread selectively.

Depends on how many of the suckers you have and what your mods are. For instance let's say you have something horridly hilly like certain sections of a tectonics map. On average, each city gains 12 from windmills under enviro. With mods that's 24 . Now what about corporation costs? Well let's say that you are paying, on average 18 gpt for each city's corps. With FM that comes down to 13.5 gpt (I can't recall if there are rounding errors in there) with Enviro the cost goes up to 22.5. The difference then is 9 gpt. This leaves us further ahead in enviro by 15 gpt. The kicker then becomes weighing the against the TR . This can go either way if the is trivial (e.g. Kremlin rushbuy economy so no industrialization) or insanely good (e.g. you get 4 additional specs for 3 3 ).

Note, this analysis assumes that it would be worth it to run the same corps (whatever they are) under FM. If you are already running the corps, then the cost is sunk and you may as well flip to enviro if you have enough WMs to make it worthwhile.

Now maybe you could something better with the gpt than running a corporation (starting without corps setup sunk), but maybe not. Let's suppose that the above is giving just 4 , that means you can can run two merchants for 6 which becomes 12 with multipliers and another 8 modified from HQ in your WS city. Getting the last 2.5 gpt out can be done by: running rep; gaining some more gold out of increased GPP, running more efficient specs (like AW priests or spies), or having a UB that modifies the numbers. Even if it is marginal there may be other benefits, like denial and voting rights, which tip the scales to running the corps. Also one common tactic I use is to to vote lock AIs into environmentalism - they get screwed out of a LOT of SP food or may have far less efficient corporation setups; relative benefit should also not be ignored.

This is a rare phenomena, but highlands maps and some tectonics see it reasonably often.

 

[revengeofmakno]

State Property is such an easy way out when you have a spread-out empire.
Generally, if corporations are not in the plan, that is where I end up.

I can't think of a single occasion in which Environmentalism was the logical choice to bring victory. It helps health for sure but that is a problem that should already have been addressed by the time Environmentalism is available. If there are specific cities with lingering health problems, then build a hospital. It can also yield money if you have lots of windmills in forests but then again, money is something you should have under control by that time. Certainly, there are other ways to get it (and more of it). Conceptually, it is interesting but just not useful in a practical way.

 

[Derakon]

Revengeofmakno: sometimes, health resources simply aren't available. This is probably less true on the larger maps, but I play on small maps to save time (both in terms of how long turns take and in terms of CPU power required) and it does sometimes happen that there be a total dearth of available resources of either happiness or health. Remember the AIs won't trade away their only instance of a resource, so if they have the only corn on the map, you don't get any.

That said, this is pretty rare even for small maps.

 

[revengeofmakno]

Sometimes, health resources simply aren't available. This is probably less true on the larger maps, ....
...That said, this is pretty rare even for small maps.

Yes, sometimes those resources are tough to get but if you are still in the game by the time Medicine is available, the need would have already been there for a VERY long time and so if you have not resolved it, you would have been taken down or it would be something that everyone chronically suffered from (possible on the small maps you referred to).
In any case, Medicine also allows for hospitals which are +3 health and the worst case could be solved via the National Park. So, while I'll grant you that it is possible to come up with a situation in which Environmentalism has impact, it is indeed rare and even more rare that its advantages would move one to adopt it instead of StateProperty or FreeMarket plus a food corp plus patching in some Hospitals and the National Park. SP and FM come earlier and match well with clearly defined winning strategies.

Frankly, I think Environmentalism is underpowered. I'd recommend reducing or removing the hit it gives to Corporations and maybe having it give a culture boost to cities. Then, I can see it at least being part of a clear path to a cultural victory.

 

[Artichoker]

Yes, sometimes those resources are tough to get but if you are still in the game by the time Medicine is available, the need would have already been there for a VERY long time and so if you have not resolved it, you would have been taken down or it would be something that everyone chronically suffered from (possible on the small maps you referred to).
In any case, Medicine also allows for hospitals which are +3 health and the worst case could be solved via the National Park. So, while I'll grant you that it is possible to come up with a situation in which Environmentalism has impact, it is indeed rare and even more rare that its advantages would move one to adopt it instead of StateProperty or FreeMarket plus a food corp plus patching in some Hospitals and the National Park. SP and FM come earlier and match well with clearly defined winning strategies.

Frankly, I think Environmentalism is underpowered. I'd recommend reducing or removing the hit it gives to Corporations and maybe having it give a culture boost to cities. Then, I can see it at least being part of a clear path to a cultural victory.

Health caps are lower as the difficulty level increases.

Also, Medicine is useful as a beeline tech (meaning that you will get it earlier than other techs), simply for its trade value. When you consider that the tech is commonly gained before other techs in its era, it makes the viability of Environmentalism better.

 

[mirthadir]

State Property is such an easy way out when you have a spread-out empire.
Generally, if corporations are not in the plan, that is where I end up.

I can't think of a single occasion in which Environmentalism was the logical choice to bring victory. It helps health for sure but that is a problem that should already have been addressed by the time Environmentalism is available. If there are specific cities with lingering health problems, then build a hospital. It can also yield money if you have lots of windmills in forests but then again, money is something you should have under control by that time. Certainly, there are other ways to get it (and more of it). Conceptually, it is interesting but just not useful in a practical way.

Well the most obvious one is a FIN civ on a highlands map with scads of windmills running the Kremlin with Rushbuy. In this case = = production. "Money" is just a convertable resource - if you have too much you can either burn it off in production via rushbuy/upgrades, deficit research, or by converting tiles from and (if you are using merchants) to . To whit if you really can't use the "money" provided by windmills then you can start flipping them to mines - which may result in more than you get from SP while still being competitive with the reduced upkeep.

Sometimes even if you drop in a hospital (or even add the grocer too) you just have too little ; I agree this is rare but it happens. Taking a beeline to AL (for an infantry war) or Industrialism (for a tank war) can make it very worthwhile to run SP into Enviro if you are short on resources and high on pop (say running a heavy SE).

 

[Paw]

I can't think of a single occasion in which Environmentalism was the logical choice to bring victory. It helps health for sure but that is a problem that should already have been addressed by the time Environmentalism is available.

One City challenge, environmentalism is frequently the best choice to help squeeze out more population for more specialists.