Why am I too stupid to understand corporations?

[aelf]

did you switch to caste system?

No.

you created an artificial system where you were measuring greater hammer output.

How is that artificial?

you rigged the shots based on measuring hammer production for one city and ignored the entire benefit to your empire. and 3 extra turns for 3 gorges is something that doesnt hurt that much. it is an expensive project.

Now I'm rigging the shots? What benefit is that, anyway? Research was almost the same. I gained more gpt, but I also lose production in other cities that have corporations (another city had Mining Inc.; the other corp was Creative Constructions - not great but it gave some extra). And when aiming for domination while being more advanced than the AIs, hammers > beakers/gpt.

 

[mrt144]

What is that 656 gpt worth? One or at most two turns off each technology. After all the Representation specialists have been lost due to starvation, the beakers gained would be even fewer. And why did I even bother founding Mining Inc. in this game? Because I needed production. At this point in the game, I was way ahead and aiming for domination. Hammers > beakers.

thats such a dishonest arguement to create an artificual situation where the measure is hammers and you purposely monkey squares to cause starvation when the difference of 3 turns for 3 gorges isnt a big deal. In fact I would only have changed 1 square to a workshop and i would just move the slider to 60% science.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Aelf, do you think there is any reason why inflation should NOT be capped at some point? In other words, any reason why SP should get better than corps as time goes by? 1934 is not that late, imo. I've had the game undecided by then before, plenty of times.

 

[mrt144]

No.



How is that artificial?



Now I'm rigging the shots? What benefit is that, anyway? Research was almost the same. I gained more gpt, but I also lose production in other cities that have corporations (another city had Mining Inc.; the other corp was Creative Constructions - not great but it gave some extra). And when aiming for domination while being more advanced than the AIs, hammers > beakers/gpt.

you made decisions and proposals based on achieving an ouput that benefited your side of the arguement. im sure i could make more optimal choices. you could have run another specialist too under SP and not monkeying with the squares. provide a save game.

 

[aelf]

thats such a dishonest arguement to create an artificual situation where the measure is hammers and you purposely monkey squares to cause starvation when the difference of 3 turns for 3 gorges isnt a big deal. In fact I would only have changed 1 square to a workshop and i would just move the slider to 60% science.

It is not dishonest. What the heck? I say this again clearly: I used Mining Inc. because I wanted hammers. Under State Property, I would have to resort to such reconfiguration to gain the same level of production with no huge benefit to research. Moving the slider to 60% science only gains me 1 turn of research, yes?

Someone asked me to do a comparison, so I did, in different ways to satisfy observers. Monkey squares? I'm not going to bother talking to you anymore in this thread.

By the way, these screens are from a real game, not one played to demonstrate how corporations are good.

 

[mrt144]

It is not dishonest. What the heck? I say this again clearly: I used Mining Inc. because I wanted hammers. Under State Property, I would have to resort to such reconfiguration to gain the same level of production with no huge benefit to research. Moving the slider to 60% science only gains me 1 turn of research, yes?

Someone asked me to do a comparison, so I did, in different ways to satisfy observers. Monkey squares? I'm not going to bother talking to you anymore in this thread.

provide the save game i will show you how you manipulated the changes to not be of maximum benefit for SP/CS

 

[mrt144]

what was the cost to outright buy 3 georges via gold? at 3 turns left for production under the first screenshot for SP? cause if it is anythign less than 5248 gold i'd say they are exactly the same.

 

[andrewlt]

what was the cost to outright buy 3 georges via gold? at 3 turns left for production under the first screenshot for SP? cause if it is anythign less than 5248 gold i'd say they are exactly the same.

I'm thinking the same thing. It seems that whatever you need, whether hammers, culture, food, research, etc., there's always a more efficient way of transforming commerce to any of these things than using a corporation. Corps seem to just be a way of screwing up your opponents.

 

[homan1983]

It is not dishonest. What the heck? I say this again clearly: I used Mining Inc. because I wanted hammers. Under State Property, I would have to resort to such reconfiguration to gain the same level of production with no huge benefit to research. Moving the slider to 60% science only gains me 1 turn of research, yes?

Someone asked me to do a comparison, so I did, in different ways to satisfy observers. Monkey squares? I'm not going to bother talking to you anymore in this thread.

By the way, these screens are from a real game, not one played to demonstrate how corporations are good.

For mining inc. to get such a high bonus, you must have traded/captured many of its resources.

In such a scenario I would expect corporations to be better.


Very disappointed you didn't use CS, SP without CS is like corporation without a courthouse.

And you must remmeber that as time goes by, the corporation keeps getting worst and worst for some reason. So the same thing, by 2000AD would cost like 110 per city.
Finally don't forget that you placed your corporations selectively, but a SP/CS economy would be able to do this on all his/her cities.

 

[mrt144]

well if 3 gorges is ~1540 hammers and after 8 turns of 140 hammers you have 1120 hammers that leaves a cost of 420 hammers. using 656 gold per turn for 8 turns nets you 5248 gold. do hammers cost 4.68 gold? or is more like 3 gold?

if it is 3 gold you could have bought 3 gorges on turn 4 under the first state property screen shot.

 

[homan1983]

Its 3 per 1 but World Wonders cost more unfortunately.

 

[mrt144]

Its 3 per 1 but World Wonders cost more unfortunately.

how much more?

if it's 4 gold on turn 5 he could have bought it
if it's 5 gold on turn 6 he could have bought it
if it's 6 gold on turn 6 he coudl have bought it
7 gold:turn 7
8 gold:turn 7

 

[Nikis-Knight]

What's kind of funny is that, as people repeat frequently in these discussions, you must spread your corporations carefully! Do not spam them! etc.
But the executives come with an auto spread button! I wonder if they target foreign cities first? Or is it a total noob trap? (i.e., a feature that is sure to cause frustration in people who don't read forums/civlopedia before playing)

 

[azaris]

It's not true that in the end game your economy should always be on 100% science and producing hundreds or thousands of gold per turn. There are situations where this is almost useless.

Consider the space race where you have nearly obtained all the prerequisite techs. Space ship parts are projects so cannot be rushed - all your gpt is useless. In that case it is better to spread Mining Co into your SS production cities and crank all the lesser cities to produce Wealth to fund the corps. Then make some trades to get maximum number of consumable resources and watch the hammers flow in.

Similarly, it makes potentially much more sense to setup Standard Ethanol in your science city and fund it with Wealth than to convert all that gold into beakers without any of the bonuses afforded by universities, libraries, etc. I don't have numbers but I could test it in practice.

Corps can be used to funnel money straight into specialized cities into actual food/beakers/hammers/culture, rather than running everything through the treasury first. Who cares if you have to run the science slider at 30% if you make more beakers running the corp than without it? Gold by itself is not that useful in many situations.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Who cares if you have to run the science slider at 30% if you make more beakers running the corp than without it? Gold by itself is not that useful in many situations.

Well, do you? If so, it is less of a problem, though that is an assumption at the moment. And the only way to change your mind is to switch to State Property.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

3 turns for 3 georges extra but less research time or more commerce to spend on ESPIONAGE of corp using civs? how are these screenshots making a good example for corporations?

Because he plays differently than [insert player's name here] .!?

Where one player may like building every Wonder in the World, another may prefer simply to 'let their neighbor build it for them'. Likewise, where one player may wish to utilized their for Corporations, another may wish to use theirs for Espionage. Yet another may wish instead to happily tech at a slightly accelerated pace -- ignoring both Espionage and Corporations.

Not everybody plays the same way. And the beauty of Civ is that not everyone has to.

The problem of corporations to me is that you need to be very judicious in spreading corporations to your own cities but spreading your corporations to AI cities is mostly a no-brainer.

And that's a problem ... why?

If it's the 'no-brainer' part, then you must also believe Religion has a fundamental problem, because spreading a Religion is the epitome of a "no-brainer situation".

If it's the 'judiciously' part, then you must also believe the entire CivIV game has a fundamental problem, because virtually every game mechanic has at least some degree of judicious to it (such as not keeping every city in early conquest or not REXing in the Stone Age or not building so many standing military units you bankrupt yourself from maintenance ... etc)

IMHO, I think we're jumping to conclusions by bashing a system that's not the way we thought it was supposed to be (or worse) how we wanted it to be.

The Corporate Strategy is different than that of Religions and other game mechanics we've become used to.

Different does not equate to a problem.

What's kind of funny is that, as people repeat frequently in these discussions, you must spread your corporations carefully! Do not spam them! etc.
But the executives come with an auto spread button! I wonder if they target foreign cities first? Or is it a total noob trap? (i.e., a feature that is sure to cause frustration in people who don't read forums/civlopedia before playing)

There's also a button to automate Workers ... and to automate exploration ... and to automate city production ... but we all know where those buttons lead.

 

[mrt144]

Because he plays differently than [insert player's name here] .!?

Where one player may like building every Wonder in the World, another may prefer simply to 'let their neighbor build it for them'. Likewise, where one player may wish to utilized their for Corporations, another may wish to use theirs for Espionage. Yet another may wish instead to happily tech at a slightly accelerated pace -- ignoring both Espionage and Corporations.

Not everybody plays the same way. And the beauty of Civ is that not everyone has to.

but he is saying that it CAN do things better than other things and we're all saying "not quite yet, it needs to be tweaked." I want corps to kick the crap out of SP when used really well and at teh same time have AI understand how to make you suffer and hedge themselves against aggresive corporatizing by the human or other AIs

 

[Nikis-Knight]

There's also a button to automate Workers ... and to automate exploration ... and to automate city production ... but we all know where those buttons lead.

Really? I always automate workers after a certain point (with "keep improvements" turned on), and I know others do as well. I sometimes use automate explorations as well, once I have the area around my capital explored. Automate city production I don't use, but at worst the city does nothing. Automate spread missionary (the real purpose of adding this command) is a godsend, pardon the pun.

automate executive is the only one that may actually hurt you, and goes against conventional strategy, rather than just not be optimal.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Really? I always automate workers after a certain point ...

... automate executive is the only one that may actually hurt you, and goes against conventional strategy, rather than just not be optimal.

"After a certain point" ... we all know what happens when you start a worker automated.

Otherwise, yes ... that "noob button" on the Executive is going to be a thorn in many-a-player's side.

but he is saying that it CAN do things better than other things and we're all saying "not quite yet, it needs to be tweaked." I want corps to kick the crap out of SP when used really well and at teh same time have AI understand how to make you suffer and hedge themselves against aggresive corporatizing by the human or other AIs

It can do some things better. It can also do some things much worse. Such is the balance we've come to admire in CivIV.

IMHO, we're treading on thin ice when we begin supporting proposed changes with "I want ...".

At this point in the game, I think we just need to focus on how things are instead of how we thought they were going to be or think they should be.

Corporations don't necessarily have to be spread abroad to be 'profitable'. Using Aelf's example, he was gaining 23 raw for a base -66 Corporate fee.

His city had a Courthouse with 160% inflation, so the fees were actually -33 * 2.60 Inflation = 85.8 .

IIRC, rushbuying costs 6 per raw (Wonder), so 23 * 6 = 138 (equivalent).

That means he's netting +52.5 by using Mining Co. in that city as compared to rushbuying his Wonder (Three Gorges Damn).

Having the HQ and/or spreading Mining Co. abroad simply becomes icing on the cake at that point.

 

[mrt144]

"After a certain point" ... we all know what happens when you start a worker automated.

Otherwise, yes ... that "noob button" on the Executive is going to be a thorn in many-a-player's side.



It can do some things better. It can also do some things much worse. Such is the balance we've come to admire in CivIV.

IMHO, we're treading on thin ice when we begin supporting proposed changes with "I want ...".

At this point in the game, I think we just need to focus on how things are instead of how we thought they were going to be or think they should be.

it's too bad that after a switch to SP the entire civ was able to make the wonder come earlier by gold rushing it. note how he isnt making any gold per turn under merc?

you're right about wanting and wishing. it's just so frustrating to see caveats to a system you want to work really well and to see the AI not prepared to handle them.