Understanding Corporations and Franchises

Stalker0

Baller Magnus
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Dec 31, 2005
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CrazyG asked for a better understanding of corporations and franchises, and I can't say no to them!

Spoiler :

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Founding a Corporation

In order to found a corporation, you must do 3 things:
  • Possess at least 1 monopoly. Which monopoly you have determines which corporation you can found.
  • Gain the technology "Corporations"
  • Complete the "World Wonder" for that specific corporation. If another civ founds that corporation first, you lost out on it just like any other world wonder.
  • Note that you may be offered more than 1 corporation depending on the monopolies you have. However, you can only have 1 corporation, other options vanish once you get your corp.
Corporation Headquarters
This is created when you found the Corporation in the city you built the world wonder. It counts as a corporate office for all purposes. The headquarters give you the benefits noted in the "summary" area for the corp.

Corporation Office
These are built as a building in each of your cities, and provide specific benefits to the city once its built. All corporate offices gain benefits for EVERY franchise you have (see below), which means that growing your franchises when you have a lot of corporate offices can very rapidly increase the bonus of the corporation.

Franchises
This is the most complex element of the corporation and involves multiple components.

Franchise Limit
There is a maximum amount of franchises you can have in the game, which is determined by the following:
  • 3 at base
  • +1 for every Trade Route slot you have. Aka if I can have a maximum of 7 trade routes, I get a +7 here.
  • +.5 for every corporate office you have built.
Once you hit this limit, you can no longer gain additional franchises.

Gaining Franchises
You gain franchises through the following methods:
  • Passive: (Needs review and finalization) Every turn there is a 5% chance that a franchise appears in a random city.
  • Trade Routes: Whenever you complete an external trade route, the origin city has a corporate office, and you don't already have a franchise in that city, you gain a franchise in that city. This means when your considering trade routes, take a look at the TR duration. The shorter the duration, the faster your franchises will get online.
Franchise Bonuses
Important to note that the franchise bonuses are for the external city that got your franchise, not for you! The bonus is normally quite small and innocuous. To understand the bonus to you for your franchises, look under the corporate office benefits.

Example: The Hexxon Refinery corporate office bonus is +1 oil and coal for every 3 Global Franchises. So lets say you have 9 franchises currently and 8 corporate offices. This means every corporate office generates 3 oil and 3 coal (9 franchises / 3), so a total of 24 oil and 24 coal for your entire civ. As you can see, corporation bonuses can get very powerful!!

Franchise Tenents
Each ideology has a specific tenent that benefits your franchises.
  • Nationalization (Order): This throws out the standard franchise model. You don't get a franchise limit or franchises in the standard way. Instead, every one of your corporate offices counts as a franchise as soon as its built. This means an Order corporation will get online MUCH faster than Freedom or Autocracy, but tends to have a lower number of franchises total. In addition, while Freedom or Autocracy can get hit by a war that knocks out their trade, Order's corporation is immune from external concerns.

  • Syndicalism (Autocracy): You get +5 to your franchise limit right off the bat. In addition, whenever you create franchise in an external city that you are Popular or higher influence wise, you get a bonus franchise. This franchise DOES NOT count against your franchise limit. Autocracy has the slowest speed at acquiring franchises, but played correctly, can have the absolute highest number of franchises of any ideology.

  • Transnationalism (Freedom): Your passive franchise spread increases from 5% to 25%, which turns this from a "whatever" bonus into a serious way to spread your franchises (effectively gaining a franchise every 4 turns). Your franchise limit is also 25% higher. Lastly, every town you have made counts as an immediate franchise (which increases your franchise limit, so the town is effectively a "free" bonus franchise). Freedom is the middle ground between Order and Autocracy, it gets some of the immediate franchise speed of order and scales better, but doesn't scale as high as Autocracy can.
Franchise Trade Route Bonus
Once you establish a franchise in a city, if you maintain a Trade Route with that city, you gain a bonus in your origin city while the Trade Route is active. For example, with Hexxon Refinery, you gain +10% production bonus.

Specific Corporation Strategies

Centaurus Extractors
While the corporate office bonus is "nice", its not really that appealing. The secret power of Centarus is in the Trade Route franchise bonus, you get a +10% science for every trade route going to a franchised city! You can use this in your capital to double or sometimes even triple its science output! Unlike most corporations, its not as important to get as many franchises as possible. Instead, you want to establish Franchises quickly, and then start resending trade routes to them. Freedom is a great choice for this corporation, as Transnationalism's passive bonus can continue to increase your franchises while your sending your Trade Routes to the same old cities. Order is TERRIBLE for this franchise, as nationalization prevents you from utilizing the TR bonus!!!

Civilized Jewlers
Probably the strongest corporation in the game, or at least the most flexible. You get +10% GPP for each franchise. Your goal is rapid franchising, which can turn your cities into Great People powerhouses. Ultimately this is the most flexible corporation, as you can decide which Great People to go for to get the bonuses you want.

Firaxite Materials
This one starts off strong with a nice +20% boost to building production from the corporate headquarters. While the TR bonus sounds nice (50%) at the end of the day its really a pittance at this point in the game (this is NOT centaurus!). The real science comes from franchises, so again you want to push franchises hard with this corp. Once of the best hidden features of firaxite is that your TRs cannot be plundered, which can be a very strong benefit when your in a hostile world.

Giorgio Armeier
You really can't go wrong with this corporation. Its founding bonuses gives you an extra +2 culture for EVERY specialist. You get a solid franchise bonus, AND a great trade route bonus. The trick here is not to go too franchise heavy, at some point, the +10% culture in your capital is going to dwarf the little bit of extra culture a new franchise gives, so make the switch over which it makes sense to do so.

Hexxon Refinery
Ultimately this is best when used as a strong war footing, as the bonuses for this corp just don't impress like many of the others, and you will get outscaled in the late game. With this corp you will never lack for oil and coal, and can often snag the monopolies of both of them.

Trader Sid's
I would argue this is the weakest corp in the game currently. More gold is just....meh. The TR bonus is very weak, you want to focus hard on franchises.

TwoKay Foods
The needs reduction on this corp is surprisingly powerful, often able to just knock out unhappiness across your civ. Beyond that...food city. You'll want to make sure you have hospitals in all cities with this corp, as the food you will generate will be obscene, and you can utilize the hospitals food -> science conversion to give you an ok science boost while you grow out of this world.
 
How relevant are franchise limits in general? I don't think I've ever noticed that I reached it, which suggests to me that either it never happens, or it happens but doesn't have a noticeable impact.
 
How relevant are franchise limits in general? I don't think I've ever noticed that I reached it, which suggests to me that either it never happens, or it happens but doesn't have a noticeable impact.
I do pretty often myself, not every game but often enough that I notice
 
oh so nationalization does not apply the trade route bonus if you establish an internal trade route from an office to another?
 
More info on corporations:
  • A monopoly can be rendered useless for founding a corporation if it is banned in the World Congress.
  • Each unique corporation can only be built once among all civilizations. If you build a Firaxite Materials, Nobody else will be able to build it, regardless of whether they have an eligible monopoly.
Because of the two points above, it is recommended to check everyone's monopolies and ban those of your rivals before Modern Era. Moreover, check if you can block someone from building the only monopoly eligible to them by building it first; sometimes, it is better to found a second best option for you if it means leaving someone else without an eligible corporation.
 
One more point I'll add is sanctioning a civ immediately destroys it's franchises in foreign cities, setting them back to square one even if they lift sanctions.
 
Looking at Syndicalism, I find that it works pretty well with a vassal play :
  • Taking it means you got the Autocracy Ideology,
  • It paires very well with Iron Fist since your vassals will be getting less culture and can't rebel (safe trade routes to them),
  • You also get a free +50% tourism toward them (for being vassals),
  • So with less culture and more tourism they quickly reach the Popular milestone,
  • Being sanctioned ban trade routes and franchises from everyone but your vassals.
 
You'll need to pre-sanction yourself if you know it'll happen anyway.
Looking at Syndicalism, I find that it works pretty well with a vassal play :
  • Taking it means you got the Autocracy Ideology,
  • It paires very well with Iron Fist since your vassals will be getting less culture and can't rebel (safe trade routes to them),
  • You also get a free +50% tourism toward them (for being vassals),
  • So with less culture and more tourism they quickly reach the Popular milestone,
  • Being sanctioned ban trade routes and franchises from everyone but your vassals.
 
You'll need to pre-sanction yourself if you know it'll happen anyway.
I'm not sure what you mean by that ? AFAIK you do not lose existing franchises in vassal territories the very moment you get sanctionned, so you wouldn't have to pre-sanction yourself
 
I'm not sure what you mean by that ? AFAIK you do not lose existing franchises in vassal territories the very moment you get sanctionned, so you wouldn't have to pre-sanction yourself
You do (and CS franchises too), unless that was fixed already.
 
Excellent guide!

"Trade Routes: Whenever you complete an external trade route, the origin city has a corporate office, and you don't already have a franchise in that city, you gain a franchise in that city. This means when your considering trade routes, take a look at the TR duration. The shorter the duration, the faster your franchises will get online."

I wonder if the office needs to exist in the origin city when you start the trade route, or if it's enough to exist before the trade route finishes. Do you know that?
 
Excellent guide!

"Trade Routes: Whenever you complete an external trade route, the origin city has a corporate office, and you don't already have a franchise in that city, you gain a franchise in that city. This means when your considering trade routes, take a look at the TR duration. The shorter the duration, the faster your franchises will get online."

I wonder if the office needs to exist in the origin city when you start the trade route, or if it's enough to exist before the trade route finishes. Do you know that?
They just need to be there when the TR finishes, I have seen that in my own games.
 
Trader Sid's
I would argue this is the weakest corp in the game currently. More gold is just....meh. The TR bonus is very weak, you want to focus hard on franchises.

I agree with this assessment. What would you suggest needs to buff Trader's Sid? I remember when Twokay was only the food bonus, and was kind of the worst corp then, and all it needed was that needs reduction bonus and brought it back in line with the others.

I feel like it needs a good office bonus like TwoKay, but the only one that immediately makes sense for a gold focused corporation (aren't they all gold focused ultimately?) Would be a flat % reduction in purchase costs (like what the Stock Exchange gives). At least that would help direct me to the strategies where gold purchases help a lot.
 
To buff Trader Sid's you'll need to add a bonus that helps spending gold instead of making things cheaper. Maybe a cooldown reduction to gold purchasing civilians?
 
I agree with this assessment. What would you suggest needs to buff Trader's Sid? I remember when Twokay was only the food bonus, and was kind of the worst corp then, and all it needed was that needs reduction bonus and brought it back in line with the others.

I feel like it needs a good office bonus like TwoKay, but the only one that immediately makes sense for a gold focused corporation (aren't they all gold focused ultimately?) Would be a flat % reduction in purchase costs (like what the Stock Exchange gives). At least that would help direct me to the strategies where gold purchases help a lot.
With Trader Sid's I often had more gold than I needed. A cost reduction is overkill.

What about a conversion of spent gold to science and / or culture, like the bank gives?
 
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