The Best Corporation?

[Gwynnja]

What's all this talk about conflicting? I almost only ever found Mining Inc and either Sid's or Cereal's Mills (never both). Are these considered National Wonders that you can only have 2 of per city? What conflict?

Certain corporations compete with one another and cannot both be in the same city.
Aluminum Co. competes with Mining Inc.
Cereal Mills competes with Sid's Sushi and Standard Ethanol
Civilized Jewelers competes with Mining Inc.
Creative Constructions competes with Mining Inc.
Mining Inc. competes with Aluminum Co., Civilized Jewelers, and Creative Construction
Sid's Sushi competes with Cereal Mills and Standard Ethanol
Standard Ethanol competes with Cereal Mills and Sid's Sushi

 

[Iranon]

The most important corporation to me is Mining.Inc, by far... it's a very powerful effect that's useful straight away.

The usefulness of food corporations varies greatly from game to game. By the time I can found Sushi, I already have an influx of food from Biology and might not have the health/happiness limits to take proper advantage of it. On the other hand, it might be just what the doctor ordered if I'm planning for some extensive Kremlin-assisted whipping or can use the food surplus for a total cottage spam even on plains tiles or something like that.
Sometimes I just don't want to go through the trouble and wait for Standard Ethanol instead; usually when I have immediate needs and am loth to spam executives now let alone to build the infrastructure that allows bigger cities. Generally speaking, I consider Sushi more powerful though so if I have the breathing room to push it through the roof I will.

 

[Tephros]

I'd like to see a poll on which one people like best. I'd found sushi on a pangea map mostly so that I can run 0% gold while still staying in the black and stop building gold-increasing buildings outside of the wall street city.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Certain corporations compete with one another and cannot both be in the same city.
Aluminum Co. competes with Mining Inc.
Cereal Mills competes with Sid's Sushi and Standard Ethanol
Civilized Jewelers competes with Mining Inc.
Creative Constructions competes with Mining Inc.
Mining Inc. competes with Aluminum Co., Civilized Jewelers, and Creative Construction
Sid's Sushi competes with Cereal Mills and Standard Ethanol
Standard Ethanol competes with Cereal Mills and Sid's Sushi

Ok thanks, I never realized this... Like so many things in this game... So many concepts are still blurry in my head after playing it for at least 2 years, I'm not sure that's normal.

 

[nbcman]

What's all this talk about conflicting? I almost only ever found Mining Inc and either Sid's or Cereal's Mills (never both). Are these considered National Wonders that you can only have 2 of per city? What conflict?

If the corporations use the same resources, there can be only one of two corps in that city. So you can't have Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mills in the same city. Theoretically you can have up to 4 corps in a city: Creative Constructions, Civilized Jewelers, Aluminum Inc, and either Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills.

 

[nanomage]

If the corporations use the same resources, there can be only one of two corps in that city. So you can't have Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mills in the same city. Theoretically you can have up to 4 corps in a city: Creative Constructions, Civilized Jewelers, Aluminum Inc, and either Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills.

and this is insanely powerful!
Cjewels, CCons, Alum.inc+ Suchi provide you an awesome ~+300 culture per turn in a city, any city gets to Influential status almost instantly and simply blows away all the opponents culturel presence. Cibjewels helps to pay for all this. This indeed shows how corps can dwarf the modest bonuses from SP.

 

[Rub'Rum]

If the corporations use the same resources, there can be only one of two corps in that city. So you can't have Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mills in the same city. Theoretically you can have up to 4 corps in a city: Creative Constructions, Civilized Jewelers, Aluminum Inc, and either Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills.

It seems to me Sid's Sushi and Cereal Mills use different resources, unless rice is used in Sid's Sushi?

 

[Single Malt]

Sids Sushi uses rice

 

[Skallagrimson]

Sid's Sushi hands down imo. Mining Inc. a close second.

Certainly the 2 most versatile, and always my first choices.

Creative constructions and cereal mills are my corp. plan b's.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I'd like to see a poll on which one people like best. I'd found sushi on a pangea map mostly so that I can run 0% gold while still staying in the black and stop building gold-increasing buildings outside of the wall street city.

To me the biggest boost is through the food/hammers bonuses the cities get. Got a starving city on plains hills that you forgot to raze when you took it from some idiot AI? Sushi. Now it's growing again. Got a city working only 1 tile due to culture pressure from an AI? Mining, inc., now that bad boy's building like a prod city.

Wall Street for the HQ means it either turns a slight profit to spread, or at least doesn't come out as terribly expensive.

 

[civvver]

Generally empire size dictates whether I go down the Corp or State Property line. Organized leaders always go Corps regardless of empire size, one reason why I favor that trait.

Even when warmongering? State prop seems a lot better if you're going for domination. Corps take time to spread and to get full value and can cost a lot in the middle of a war.

 

[Nials]

If I have a useless vassal and I'm looking to use foreign corporation spread, I also like to demand all of my vassal's corporation resources down to one single resource unit. Then I can go nuts spreading the corporation to said vassal's cities, giving him minimal benefit but turning a profit myself.

Unfortunately, situations where I tend to end up with a vassal of dubious value are rare and often only happen when I'm already mopping up a Domination game.

 

[Gwynnja]

If I have a useless vassal and I'm looking to use foreign corporation spread, I also like to demand all of my vassal's corporation resources down to one single resource unit. Then I can go nuts spreading the corporation to said vassal's cities, giving him minimal benefit but turning a profit myself.

Unfortunately, situations where I tend to end up with a vassal of dubious value are rare and often only happen when I'm already mopping up a Domination game.

That seems somewhat inefficient. You have to spend a certain amount of gold when you burn the executive (not sure how it's calculated but it seems ~100) and hammers on building the executives. I think it might be better to put mining and sid's hq in a secondary gold city and then put cereal, jewelry, and/or creative in wall street, gift an executive to a rival, and let them spam away. The problem with this however is that it requires all sorts of different GP to be generated and then saved rather than gaining the immediate benefit of bulbing/settling/otherwise using.

 

[lightsedge]

As someone said before, which corporation to pick is situational. Often it depends on having the right GP, technology, and resources. Empire size and geo-politics (war) may be even bigger factors. For example:

Currently, I'm playing a game where I have a sprawling empire, with 15-20 cities on my main continent, which I own entirely, and multiple island holdings - recently settled or conquered - each with 3-4 cities. I have over 2x the score of the nearest AI, and a modest tech lead - actually a large tech lead over some of them (infantry vs. LB). I just conquered a small, backwards AI, so I have a fairly powerful army, which could easily roll over other backwards AIs. That's just what I'm going to do, in addition to settling more islands, since my tech rate is holding up well at 70-80%.

Should I use corporations?

Certainly I would get a large boost in food or hammers, since I have a pretty large land holding. In this case I would lean towards something like Mining Inc., since I want to get newly acquired cities up and running economically ASAP. Food is not as good for this, because I don't want to run Slavery - someone else is running Emancipation already, and I need Emancipation for my cottage economy. This is not to say food isn't useful though, since it would be very helpful in letting me build more hammer and commerce improvements. In my situation, having a culture-producing corp would help pop borders and help border cities if I wanted to vassalize, but it's just a nice-to-have.

But there's an opportunity cost. I'm currently running state property, to eliminate city maintenance costs due to distance. The food is nice too. And my empire will only get bigger. My leader is organized, but I'm sure state property is still helping. I'd also have spend hammers on execs. However, my guess is that if the corporation is spread to enough cities, it surpasses state property economically. Does anyone have any idea when this is?

Tempting as they are, I think corporations might not be worth it if I can maintain my current military advantage to win. I have the Mausoleum too, so maybe I should just use GPs for golden ages. If I were to go for a space victory though, I'd definitely get corporations.

 

[Ibian]

The way i see it, corps are a good way for a small empire to catch up. But if you dont need them to win, and if it might even be a real hassle to deal with, why bother?

On a side note, same goes for GP - sometimes there is just no good place to plop down a dedicated farm, and in these cases i just let them trickle in from whatever wonders i have and maybe run a couple scientists if i have enough food somewhere. It all depends.

 

[Skallagrimson]

The trade-off with corporations is the bonus boost versus the cost.

With Free Market you get maintenance costs from distance to the capital (or FP or V), but you can run corps for food/hammers/culture boosts, which with a large empire will be significant.

With State Property you get the reduced maintenance but none of the food/hammers/culture bonuses from corporations.

Having tried a few games where I stayed Free Market corporate in spite of overseas wars, I would say it only becomes prohibitive if you intend to keep land overseas that you can't reduce maintenance for with a FP or a V (preferably capturing V when held by an AI). Otherwise the bonuses outweigh the costs.

 

[Nials]

I have over 2x the score of the nearest AI, and a modest tech lead - actually a large tech lead over some of them (infantry vs. LB). I just conquered a small, backwards AI, so I have a fairly powerful army, which could easily roll over other backwards AIs. That's just what I'm going to do, in addition to settling more islands, since my tech rate is holding up well at 70-80%.

Should I use corporations?

Sounds like the game is already won

 

[nbcman]

Currently, I'm playing a game where I have a sprawling empire, with 15-20 cities on my main continent, which I own entirely, and multiple island holdings - recently settled or conquered - each with 3-4 cities. I have over 2x the score of the nearest AI, and a modest tech lead - actually a large tech lead over some of them (infantry vs. LB). I just conquered a small, backwards AI, so I have a fairly powerful army, which could easily roll over other backwards AIs. That's just what I'm going to do, in addition to settling more islands, since my tech rate is holding up well at 70-80%.

Should I use corporations?

If you are that far advanced, just roll over the AIs and go for domination. Use your hammers for building military units not corp execs.

 

[mrt144]

I'd say that Civ Jewelers is the best

A. It can generate a positive cash flow
B. It generates culture
C. It can be spread along with 3 other corporations

 

[UWHabs]

My last game, I was ahead in score and land (I just finished wiping out Shaka), but was a few techs behind my overseas partners.

However, once Biology hit, I started raking in the profits:

First off, my farms got boosted.
Second, I had 3 really good cottage cities, so I could finally afford to switch out of vassalage and into free speech.
Third, I finally got my GP farm set up (I didn't have a good food farm beforehand, so I waited until I got the National Park for my GP farm).
4th, I got sushi and mining, and spread them to all my cities.

I was tracking it - with Wall Street in my HQ city, I was either breaking even or losing maybe 1-2 coins per turn. Throw on a double shrine city (thank you Asoka, although it would have been nice to get the shrine money before 1800 or so) as that wall street city, and it alone was at 700 coins per turn - nearly half my income was from that one city!

That's with +11 hammers and +9 or so food per turn each from the corporations. Basically, I just had 2-3 cities spam executives like crazy, and had both of them in all my cities (even my little filler cities, I had my executives there before the settlers. Nothing better than having a city of size 1 get +10 food and +12 hammers building that courthouse).

By the end of the game (space race win), I was up to 3000 beakers per turn, and practically all my cities were running 4-5 engineers. That's the key - I was probably 20 base hammers ahead in all my cities thanks to corporations. And it doesn't cost me anything (being in Free Market helped, I'm sure). Throw on forge/factory/power, and that's 40 hammers a turn in my top 10-15 cities. I had cities at the end with 40 or 50 base hammers (over 100 a turn even when building research) that were just building research, since I had enough other cities building my spaceship components. Even though Joao and Frederick both built apollo before me, neither of them had any components on their ship until I launched. I really should have tried to not build anything, then the turn after I finished the last techs, build one component per city. I'm sure I could have still finished ahead of anyone else.