Why am I too stupid to understand corporations?

[homan1983]

I also agree. They can be used as a weapon and probably very effectively even, but they are primarily meant as a benefit for your own cities.
That said, the best situation would probably be to selectively put some corporations in your own cities, but also put some in the cities of your colonies and vassals. Not to destroy their economies, but to reap the HQ costs and help them at the same time. I think this could be very effective for both you and the vassal. After that you can even try and irritate some of your real enemies with your corporations, but that's icing on the cake.

The great thing about corporations is that it can be anything you want.

If you have some productive tiles and some money, you can put the corporations on some cities.

So with mining co. or creative constructions you can put them in cities that have more multiplies such as the iron works, heroic epic or cities with military academies.

If you have many trade agreements and your economy is very much a commerce based one, you may be able to afford to spread your corporation to 80%+ of your cities, because they are working more commerce tiles to pay for the corporation.

The great thing with the concept was that is is very multi-dimensional.

So for example if corporations cost 40 per city I would think to myself:

"well if I can get each city to get 20 extra commerce at least, and make BMG then I could pay it off and make some profit from the HQ".

"if I can get each city to get 15 extra commerce, then with the HQ as well I can break even".


The problem I have isn't that it costs a lot, but that the costs change whereas my income stays the same.

So this same thing that I calculated would be profitable now, in 30 turns time Ill be thinking "oh crap those corporations are just about breaking even, damn I shoulda gone SP/CS so I dont have to deal with all this crap and also deal with diplomacy for resources"

and in another 30 turns you'll be thinking:

"damn those corporations are costing me 120 per turn per city, they aren't even giving half their costs' worth of resources"


Wouldn't it be great if the cost of corporations were fixed so that we can depend on them?
Even if they make it expensive I would understand (although then it would be more like Science Academies and Mil. Academies by being very selectively placed instead of potentially being both a selectively placed model (for semi-productive semi-commercial countries and a whole new economic system for fully commercial countries.)

 

[QwertyKey]

I agree, they seem broken. I haven't had much experience with corporations, but based on reading every post in this thread, and several other discussions about corporations, it does seem that they are broken. I think the best way to fix them would be either - to somehow have corporations not influenced in the inflation, have the maintenance costs lowered so that the inflation is less, or have bonuses multiplied by the inflation.

 

[klokwerk]

The problem should be fixed in a patch by decreasing corp maintenance or inflation (or decreasing the effect of inflation on corp maintenance).

The corp system is good, the costs just need a bit of tweaking in my opinion.

 

[icemanjsg]

I don't think they are suppose to be used to paralyze the computer so when you have modern armor they still have infantry, because it takes them 88 turns for industrialism.

 

[aelf]

Have any of guys tried spreading corporations to your cities on a small or tiny map?

Yes, corporations can be very expensive. I was playing on a small map the other day and founded Mining Co. (which is IMO the best corporation, since it's useful and it's the earliest). I spread it to 3-4 of my cities and the maintenance, coupled with that of (not so useful) corporations in several enemy cities I captured, eventually meant I had to drop my research slider by about 20%. But the effects of Mining Co. were huge. It was giving my best production cities a lot of extra hammers. Want to crank out those late game wonders? No problem. Want lots of units quickly? Easy (each those cities were producing a tank every 2 turns). Other cities, which did not stand to gain much from the corporation, did not get it. Plain and simple. The gold I got from the HQ, which I built in my Wall Street city, was only a bonus to help offset some of the costs.

Corporations can be used to great effect. If you want to make use of them on a wider scale, run Free Market. If you fear you can't keep up with the rat race, switch to Mercantilism or State Property. It's not as if people weren't complaining about how city upkeep was a killer and how State Property was the best civic anyway. It just shows the typical way people choose to play. Now, though, you don't benefit from corporations under State Property, so you do have to think twice sometimes.

 

[mrt144]

the biggest problem i have with people saying things like "just spread them judiciously in your own cities" is that under the only civic that provides a discount to you for having domestic corps, you are so utterly and compeletely vulnerable to foreign corps coming in, that it is not worth it.

in fact the AI should be exploiting free market players just as players would exploit a free market AI.

 

[aelf]

the biggest problem i have with people saying things like "just spread them judiciously in your own cities" is that under the only civic that provides a discount to you for having domestic corps, you are so utterly and compeletely vulnerable to foreign corps coming in, that it is not worth it.

in fact the AI should be exploiting free market players just as players would exploit a free market AI.

Easy. Run free market when the AIs are not able to spread their corporations in your civ in a massive way.

Also, this isn't related to being judicious in spreading corps in your own cities.

 

[LlamaCat]

wow looks like corporations are going to be the new hot topic I can't wait to found one and see what happens. I think the points about high inflation seem to be valid, on the other hand I can see people here are still using them for great benefit if used carefully. it sounds like they designed something a little more complicated than the religion concept.

 

[mrt144]

Easy. Run free market when the AIs are not able to spread their corporations in your civ in a massive way.

Also, this isn't related to being judicious in spreading corps in your own cities.

and when would that be? when youre on an island and have a full force navy or no open borders agreements?

a switch to mercantilism just makes the inflation computation problem worse. also having spent GPs and gold to create your own corps and then switch to something rhat makes then worse or unplayable isnt fun.

you need to look at the big picture of: "are corps worth it compared to the alternatives given the circumstances neccesary to their optimal performance vs the circumstances neccesary for the alternative's performance."

state property has so little requirement to maximize it's benefit, and so little cost compared to corps, so that coupled with caste system, they could actually outperfom corps production given same city buildings, and using specialists. at a far smaller cost.

 

[NikNak]

My issue with corporations the way they are, is that there is little to no incentive to use them with regards to their name. If this is the way they are supposed to work, then they really should've been something else altogether because the game mechanic is completely counter-intuitive to how they work.

A corporation should be beneficial to whatever city in which they are located. There should be a straight cost associated, but the trade/resource benefit should outweigh the economic impact. Where a corporation should have a large influence is in the research and civic areas. Corporations spur people to conduct research that primarily benefits them and not neccessarily the society, and they lobby for laws and politicians that are sympathetic to their needs.

What we have in the game is more like "Black Markets" since they can be incredibly detrimental to an economy by making inflation outrageous (as an outgrowth of crime and corruption), yet they do spur growth with an influx of trade and culture.

 

[Valadon]

I have not played far enough into the game to get the chance to use corps. but I have noticed in the forums that this topic generates the most amazingly opposed opinions and experiences (and angry arguments, except maybe for the Hitler threads; strange, that the Dismal Science should generate so much heat).

We have seemingly good players saying diametrically opposite things and offering diametrically opposed experiences. I don't know what to think or who to believe; will have to see for myself. But one thing seems clear: some players are saying that they have achieved good results using Corporations, not theory, but have gotten good results in actual games they have played. That means that the Corps. cannot be 'broken' or nobody would ever get good results. But, I know little about computers. Is it possible for there to be a bug that only works in some games but not others, off the same disk on the same computer?

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I agree with you. I think corporations can currently be used as a weapon but that was not Firaxis' real intention for them. Besides, why design a weapon that can be countered completely by switching to Mercantilism or State Property?

I don't know, maybe this is the intention, but it's not what I thought or what it seemed to be advertised as.

But, see, here's the other thing, this provides an incentive for the non-HQ holding civ to attack the HQ-holding civ. If you wanna run FM, but another civ has a corp HQ and has spread it to your cities to an extent that is crippling, well, you might just need to attack and raze that HQ city...

Razing HQ's has no effect other than denying that player the gold. You would still have all instances of the corp in your cities. (90% certain of this.) There is a way to get rid of all of one type of a corp--found a competing corporation in another civs HQ. All instances of the first corp will be replaces with the new one. It might do it from just spreading to the HQ, I don't know, but I hope not since that seems a bit unfair in any case.

Have the designers explicitly stated The Way in which we are to use Corporations?

I don't *think* so, though it was said that they are an incentive to gather additional resources and act sort of as a late game religion. Common sense (which shouldn't be a hard and fast rule in game design, but should be a starting point) would suggest they help a city get rewards or change one type of resource/yield into another.
Which they do, but at an increasingly unfavorable rate as time passes, it seems.


edit: and as it was pointed out in another thread, don't use Advanced start to test corporations. I did this before, and thought they were quite effective. However, the inflation when you get corps using advanced start will be much less than you would otherwise, and it will make this arguement look silly. But corporations should be balanced for games starting from the beginning as well as renaissance era!

I don't know what to think or who to believe; will have to see for myself. But one thing seems clear: some players are saying that they have achieved good results using Corporations, not theory, but have gotten good results in actual games they have played. That means that the Corps. cannot be 'broken' or nobody would ever get good results. But, I know little about computers. Is it possible for there to be a bug that only works in some games but not others, off the same disk on the same computer?

Nah, it's not so much a bug as either an oversight or a design decision. We're all playing the same game you'll get. But before making final judgement, make sure to play out to the time when inflation gets high. That's the main complaint, that after 20-30 years, your "investment" will become a major drawback.

 

[Random Oracle]

But one thing seems clear: some players are saying that they have achieved good results using Corporations, not theory, but have gotten good results in actual games they have played. That means that the Corps. cannot be 'broken' or nobody would ever get good results. But, I know little about computers. Is it possible for there to be a bug that only works in some games but not others, off the same disk on the same computer?

Just because Corporations can work splendidly in one situation, doesn't mean they can't be broken in another. Consider that inflation is dependant on the number of turns elapsed, i.e. the game year. In one game you could reach the corporations fast when the inflation is low and finish the game before the increasing maintenance becomes an issue. In another game the tech rate might be much slower and corporations are founded only when the inflation is already running rampant. The effects of the corporations are the same in both scenarios, but their maintenance costs hugely different.

 

[mrt144]

I have not played far enough into the game to get the chance to use corps. but I have noticed in the forums that this topic generates the most amazingly opposed opinions and experiences (and angry arguments, except maybe for the Hitler threads; strange, that the Dismal Science should generate so much heat).

We have seemingly good players saying diametrically opposite things and offering diametrically opposed experiences. I don't know what to think or who to believe; will have to see for myself. But one thing seems clear: some players are saying that they have achieved good results using Corporations, not theory, but have gotten good results in actual games they have played. That means that the Corps. cannot be 'broken' or nobody would ever get good results. But, I know little about computers. Is it possible for there to be a bug that only works in some games but not others, off the same disk on the same computer?

the problem is the gamble for getting good results vs the sure bet of alternatives is at best a disincentive to gamble, and at worst poor decision making based in the desire for corps to be something greater than they are at this point.

 

[mrt144]

Just because Corporations can work splendidly in one situation, doesn't mean they can't be broken in another. Consider that inflation is dependant on the number of turns elapsed, i.e. the game year. In one game you could reach the corporations fast when the inflation is low and finish the game before the increasing maintenance becomes an issue. In another game the tech rate might be much slower and corporations are founded only when the inflation is already running rampant. The effects of the corporations are the same in both scenarios, but their maintenance costs hugely different.

also consider that the maintenance costs for the alternatives of having corps in cities is so much lower, and the civic upkeep costs of those alternatives aren't going to even come close to having corps in your cities. the alternatives also provide their own benefits that can outperform corp's output/cost ratio.

 

[wayne07]

I just read solver's review on corporation.

I don't understand the benefits at all. Maybe its my problem. And how can state property be nerfed when i am forced to use state property in my games?

In most of my games [emperor above], i am playing catch up with the AI with massive warring. I find RESEARCH being the key to a successful war because you cannot afford to fall too far behind the AI while warring.

+X hammers? + X food? +X culture? at the price of significantly lower research? Is that possible if i want to win the game, especially the space race? What is the point of finding corporations when i know eventually i will go into state property? What is the point of finding/spreading corporation when i know eventually the UN will make me go into environmentalism?

Use merc as a civic? Doesn't the loss of foreign trade routes cost more or equivalent to the maintenance cost of foreign corp? I am amazed by people supporting the use of corporations or saying that it is currently balanced.

gheez, i really need to improve on my skill level. This game is getting more difficult. I CAN'T WIN late games without going into state property civic now.

 

[mrt144]

I just read solver's review on corporation.

I don't understand the benefits at all. Maybe its my problem. And how can state property be nerfed when i am forced to use state property in my games?

In most of my games [emperor above], i am playing catch up with the AI with massive warring. I find RESEARCH being the key to a successful war because you cannot afford to fall too far behind the AI while warring.

+X hammers? + X food? +X culture? at the price of significantly lower research? Is that possible if i want to win the game, especially the space race? What is the point of finding corporations when i know eventually i will go into state property? What is the point of finding/spreading corporation when i know eventually the UN will make me go into environmentalism?

Use merc as a civic? Doesn't the loss of foreign trade routes cost more or equivalent to the maintenance cost of foreign corp? I am amazed by people supporting the use of corporations or saying that it is currently balanced.

gheez, i really need to improve on my skill level. This game is getting more difficult. I CAN'T WIN late games without going into state property civic now.

using "the game is harder for me" arguement is a bad one. other than that these are good points.

 

[wayne07]

using "the game is harder for me" arguement is a bad one. other than that these are good points.

It is true. Despite the fact that people promoting the use of state property as the economy civic at warlord/vanilla level, i don't need to rely on it to win emperor and above level games. There are alternatives that i can use. I can afford to ignore communism. I can afford to ignore state property.

Now, i can't and i am reading people saying they CAN ignore state property and still win in good fashion. That shows that the game is harder for me.

Also note that firaxis intend this expansion to explore late game, i am now of the opinion that for me to ignore state property in my game, i have to:

1. Finish my games earlier with domination/conquest.
2. Get a significant majority before corporation cost kicks in (meaning no 1) with no rivals or late wars.
3. Monopolize the corporations.

Silly me isnt it?

 

[mrt144]

that isnt making the game harder, that is changing the playstyle to win, and actually in this case forcing a playstyle on you which is bad.

 

[Joe Harker]

Corpoartions are not broken, it's just how you use them, you have to say, do i really need it there? Is there a better city for it to go in?