To space: State Property or Corporations?

[Pangaea]

Playing a game where I was all set on going to space, using State Property. Then a low-chance GE pops up, and I may need to change all the plans. However, what is best? Has there been any kind of comparison, if such a thing is possible? We kind of need to start down the relevant path pretty early, in terms of buildings and technologies, and even Great People we are trying to get.

The impression I have is that Corporations is better, but requires much more micromanagement. And perhaps the best games in the Hall of Fame bear witness to this.

The advantage with SP+Caste is food-neutral (green) workshops with high production, in addition to next to no maintenance costs, even from colonies. Can tech with a high science slider throughout. But it doesn't have the massive output of food and specialists of the Corporations route.

You mainly want science multiplier buildings because most of the time you'll run a high science slider, and Courthouses are next to pointless.

Corporations have much higher science output towards the end - if you can afford the costs, which are very immense. There tends to be a pretty slow period teching wise when spreading corporations. It costs gold, and you don't have the great benefits yet from high population and running many Representation specialists. There can be a real danger of going broke, and exploits/techniques may be needed to break even at 0% science. But once you're over the hump and population skyrockets, you can run heaps upon heaps of specialists, and science skyrockets as well.

You want Banks and other gold multiplier buildings, otherwise you'll go broke, and Courthouses are an absolute must to tackle the very steep corporation maintenance costs.

Is Corporations always better, though, or does it depend on map settings. Type of map, and map size? Anything else? Is there a situation where you think Communism is the better approach? (Apart from not getting that precious Great Engineer for Mining Inc).

 

[Kaitzilla]

This is a good question!

I'd say Corporations are usually stronger, especially on Marathon when spread is relatively faster and cheaper.
Communism is great on faster speeds and when you can't acquire lots of resources because the AI is being difficult.




Regarding the enormous costs on high difficulties using Sushi (+30 on Big+Small is easy), I've often wondered what would happen if someone whipped out all the buildings at low population using Kremlin.
Then grew their cities to work max tiles (Pop 20 ish), worked specialists to slow down growth as the rest of the cities grew to Size 20, and then switched into State Property to work max Workshops and Watermills.

The sudden switch would remove all corporation costs and benefits, but does huge really help past Size 20 anyway?
Workshops don't take a lot of worker turns to spam, and the vanished distance penalty is always nice.

I'm not sure how competitive it could be against any Space Race date that included Mining Inc?
The free Great Merchant ensures this strategy would always work, unlike the always iffy Mining Inc. Great Engineer.

 

[Powerfaker]

An additional point:
The 2 GP spent on founding the corps probably means one less GA.

The corps approach wouldn't stop me from beelining communism early to get SP. Only comm is a detour from the techpath, so I don't see an either/or here.

Go corps or not =>I think basically the amount of

from Sushi is decisive. Could 5 be enough to beat SP? Intuitively I would think more like 8+.

 

[Bibor]

I'm not a deity player, but I will share my thougts nevertheless.
Not against corporations or anything, but sometimes I wonder if they are worth the effort. First, you need to save up a great engineer, which might or might not be possible. Great merchants are easier to come by. Then you have to beeline these techs to be able to found the corps (Corporations tech included) before the AI does. I play on Emperor, so this part is not a problem.
Then we get to the question of required resources. Granted, all three important ones (Mining Inc, Sid's and Cereal) have generous resource requirements, but depending on the size of your empire, diplomatic situation, map type and size, the amount of resources you're able to get might not be all that great. For medium-sized empires that don't have enough ""internal" resources, "resource for resource" trades make most sense, as AIs tend to ask for ridiculous amounts of GPT instead. However, only a very specific set of resouces are viable to be traded away (like sugar, dyes or hit singles), because either you need the rest, are not willing to trade away (like oil or aluminum) or they get obsolete.

People praise Sid's sushi, but realistically, most coastal cities are average at best. If you don't need culture, Cereal Mills yield more food per resource and grocers are way better than hospitals.

Then there's the question of the number of hammers one needs to invest into corps to work. 6 banks, courthouses in all cities and Wall Street are pretty much mandatory. Neither of these buildings is cheap, but I guess at least one of them will be (if financial, organized or industrous). If most of you play like Chris (Absolute Zero), most of your cities will be whipped to the bone and it's a fair question whether banks for example would even return the investment before the game ends.

In comparison, state property requires only a single tech (a dead end one, that's true), comes fairly early and requires only one piece of infrastructure: workers. The only question here is can you keep the UN from kicking you out of Caste and State Property.

From what I've seen in threads on these forums in the last 10 years, state property can easily outperform corporations on all levels of difficulty and performs way better when faced with imminent defeat, because it can switch to espionage mode to stall the AI space programme and steal techs, while providing a ridiculous amount of units to stomp over culture targets.

 

[DrCron]

at least one of them will be (if financial...

Banks are not cheaper with the Financial trait since... I don't even remember.

If most of you play like Chris (Absolute Zero), most of your cities will be whipped to the bone

While I really like Chris' videos, there are several Deity strategies that he pretty much never goes for.

can you keep the UN from kicking you out of Caste and State Property

Even without Caste I find SP to be really good. I also tend to go for it, but mostly because I'm too lazy to do all the preparation that corporations need. If done properly, however, I think corporations provide a more efficient result for space victories. Otherwise the most experienced players would have completely abandoned them (which is far from the case). Of course we are talking about Sushi and mining inc., I don't think anyone goes for any other corp.

 

[Imploding]

Yeah, as previous people and OP have mentioned.. I think the mapsize, amount of food, metal and amount of cities is the biggest decider between these to strategies. I'm by no means a experienced corperation player.. but i would need some serious benefits from the corps for them to give value. So i guess.. corporations will be more beneficial on large maps, with lots of "metal" or "seafood".. and a big empire.. and more standard game with maybe 6-10 cities on a standard map Corporations just wont cut it.

Not 100 % conviced tho, and would be nice to se someone run a testgame

Get a empire to a position where "now i can safely go to space and win" 10-15 cities and run a simulation.. corporation vs SP. Would be fun to follow

 

[elmurcis]

Bigger empire, larger map = more resources for both (Mining and best food corp) corporations but same time city maintence can be massive (specially with multiple land mass empire where city number on another landmass after some 6 or 7 cities starts to skyrocket colony maintence part - when conquering some Ai land for example, can see 30 or even 40+ gold/turn after out of revolt when city is huge and lost CH during revolt) and SP literally (8 top, 4 with CH) can save 10-15% of slider (same time losing FM extra trade route that could give extra 6-8-10 commerce/city)...

 

[sampsa]

I'd say Corporations are usually stronger, especially on Marathon when spread is relatively faster and cheaper.

I think this is an important point, corps gain a lot of strength on slower speeds.

 

[Bibor]

While I really like Chris' videos, there are several Deity strategies that he pretty much never goes for.

I'd really, really like to see writeups or videos with these, if you could provide links.

 

[sampsa]

If most of you play like Chris (Absolute Zero), most of your cities will be whipped to the bone and it's a fair question whether banks for example would even return the investment before the game ends.

All players have their own preferences (or even quirks) and the lack of deity video material leads to many players looking at AZs games and trying to imitate him. This leads not only learning from him, but also possibly learning some habits or simply replicating the mistakes he makes.

I have not seen all of his videos, but I think he mostly goes for rather straight-forward conquest strategies, in which it makes sense to whip units. If you are going for space, which is what this thread is about, whipping cities to the bone doesn't make much sense, because at some point there is nothing you need to whip (because some building doesn't pay back in time, like you noted). Instead you should have big cities working good tiles building wealth/research.

There are tons of deity material on this site, you just need to dig it up, download some saves, investigate them and try to understand what the player is doing.

 

[Pangaea]

I have also wondered about this. How about doing the experiment, and try both approaches one at a time? Would be very interesting to see.

In the game I'm talking about, I could possibly be in a position to test both. But space games also last a very long time, and a great deal of factors may diverge between them, making direct comparisons difficult or impossible/worthless. Even this early (Bio/Comm., but not much more), if I had gone "all in" for Corporations earlier, I'd have got out much more multiplier buildings, and of course Courthouses, and not bothered as much with multiplier buildings. The setups need to be very different -- although in the end you probably end up with much the same buildings due to the longevity of the games.

I'm not a deity player, but I will share my thougts nevertheless.
Not against corporations or anything, but sometimes I wonder if they are worth the effort. First, you need to save up a great engineer, which might or might not be possible. Great merchants are easier to come by. Then you have to beeline these techs to be able to found the corps (Corporations tech included) before the AI does. I play on Emperor, so this part is not a problem.
Then we get to the question of required resources. Granted, all three important ones (Mining Inc, Sid's and Cereal) have generous resource requirements, but depending on the size of your empire, diplomatic situation, map type and size, the amount of resources you're able to get might not be all that great. For medium-sized empires that don't have enough ""internal" resources, "resource for resource" trades make most sense, as AIs tend to ask for ridiculous amounts of GPT instead. However, only a very specific set of resouces are viable to be traded away (like sugar, dyes or hit singles), because either you need the rest, are not willing to trade away (like oil or aluminum) or they get obsolete.

People praise Sid's sushi, but realistically, most coastal cities are average at best. If you don't need culture, Cereal Mills yield more food per resource and grocers are way better than hospitals.

Then there's the question of the number of hammers one needs to invest into corps to work. 6 banks, courthouses in all cities and Wall Street are pretty much mandatory. Neither of these buildings is cheap, but I guess at least one of them will be (if financial, organized or industrous). If most of you play like Chris (Absolute Zero), most of your cities will be whipped to the bone and it's a fair question whether banks for example would even return the investment before the game ends.

In comparison, state property requires only a single tech (a dead end one, that's true), comes fairly early and requires only one piece of infrastructure: workers. The only question here is can you keep the UN from kicking you out of Caste and State Property.

From what I've seen in threads on these forums in the last 10 years, state property can easily outperform corporations on all levels of difficulty and performs way better when faced with imminent defeat, because it can switch to espionage mode to stall the AI space programme and steal techs, while providing a ridiculous amount of units to stomp over culture targets.

The Great Engineer is the big hickup. Sushi alone is pretty good of course, but without Mining to boost hammers, the Corps route isn't as strong as it can be. This is often down to luck, unless you're able to get a GE as the first or second GP, from Forge+Mids(+HG) for instance.

Another problem with the Corps route is that with Sid's Sushi, culture will go nuts, and you're bound to start pushing out borders. In a space game that could pretty easily lead to problem keeping below the domination limit, and tripping the 'wrong' victory. Not a big problem for normal games, but for the Hall of Fame it is.

My gut feeling is that corporations is the stronger move, unless perhaps you're playing on Quick or have a small empire (which typically isn't the case in a space game). Particularly on Marathon speed, it's hard to see SP being the best approach. The more interesting setups is where the lines cross, at what settings could SP be better than Corps. I don't know, but it would be very interesting to hear from people who have tried both approaches with similar settings, or even in the same game.

 

[Bibor]

All players have their own preferences (or even quirks) and the lack of deity video material leads to many players looking at AZs games and trying to imitate him.

If you know good Immortal videos (beside TMIT's), please linky

 

[DrCron]

If you know good Immortal videos (beside TMIT's), please linky

I'm not a good deity player but I uploaded a few CIV 4 videos to my channel, although they don't apply to this topic. For example, I followed the guide in this forum for fast cultural victories and did a video about it on deity:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_rvgIlHFK-2wGK0ekZ1R3-ubUb-xSReR

I also uploaded an immortal victory with Shaka (on a NC game from this forum too), but it really wasn't a good game, I made a bunch of mistakes and took too long to win:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_rvgIlHFK-1nflNgDD_D0DJMW8LRrzym

 

[sampsa]

If you know good Immortal videos (beside TMIT's), please linky

I don't know. On the latest AZ game, Hammurabi part 1 there is a link in the comments to some chinese site, might want to check it out.

For example, I followed the guide in this forum for fast cultural victories and did a video about it on deity:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_rvgIlHFK-2wGK0ekZ1R3-ubUb-xSReR

Thanks for that, it's a nice video to watch for someone like me who has never seriously investigated cultural victories.

 

[dutchfire]

The Great Engineer is the big hickup. Sushi alone is pretty good of course, but without Mining to boost hammers, the Corps route isn't as strong as it can be. This is often down to luck, unless you're able to get a GE as the first or second GP, from Forge+Mids(+HG) for instance.

Not being able to use your first GP for centuries is pretty painful though, since it essentially shifts the benefits of all later GPeople backwards.

 

[DrCron]

someone like me who has never seriously investigated cultural victories

The main thing to remember is to not build the GL, even though you want to be 1st to literature and you want a map with marble.

 

[Pangaea]

In the game that prompted this question, I'm trying the corporations route due to the lucky GE. It's always a little shocking, but the economic crash when spreading Sushi is very severe. Having built a pile of banks/grocers/markets and running the slider at 0% with a good amount of cities on Wealth, I'm still barely breaking even. Have had to postpone spreading Sushi in some instances, because there isn't enough gold to spread it, or because Courthouses are a little slow to get up in new locations.

This is certainly no problem with State Property, but the benefits with Sushi+Mining are also substantial -- they just come a little later down the line. Also, having 20+ per turn in a new city certainly makes growing it a little easier

 

[Pangaea]

Going for Mining first probably makes more sense tbh. It's what I used to do, but have now been coloured by all the talk of Sushi first. Maybe for another game. Too late now.

 

[sampsa]

Going for Mining first probably makes more sense tbh. It's what I used to do, but have now been coloured by all the talk of Sushi first. Maybe for another game. Too late now.

I don't know much about the subject, but I think it's possible that a stronger position (HOF-start?) can sustain better the cost of spreading Sushi first.

 

[Pangaea]

I don't know much about the subject, but I think it's possible that a stronger position (HOF-start?) can sustain better the cost of spreading Sushi first.

A strong start position mainly helps in the early game. Don't think it matters all that much any more in the mid to end game. Of course having a couple of golds or whatever is good throughout, and boosted more by Buro, but with a big empire, even a strong HoF buro boosted capital isn't the main contributor to the research/gold rate.

I'm such a slow player (like faffing about too much, checking cities and stats/graphs)*, so although I like space games, I don't play very many games. Therefore it's always a bit of a surprise how hard the economic hit from spreading Sushi is. It's simply not possible to keep researching at a good rate. Routinely I need to turn off research for long stretches of time, because the costs are enormous, and then you also have the direct cost of spreading Sushi itself.

For the next game, maybe I will try State Property, or Mining first. Like I said, it's what I used to do a couple of years back, until all the talk of Sushi first swayed me to try out that approach. Sushi is incredibly strong of course, but it takes time to kick into gear.

edit:
* haha, some nice examples here: http://hof.civfanatics.net/civ4/challenge.php?show=game10&series=0

It's 'only' OCC, so much faster games, yet...
ozbenno: 1h30
neilmeister: 3h51
Pangaea: 21h20