Beyond the Sword Review by Solver

[=DrJambo=]

Such as Free Market being made even better for Corporations, or State Property being made worse overall?

[Solver]

I would have State Property with its Warlords effects, and make it disable corporation HQ income. You'd still get the resource effects of corporations, but you would no longer get the 4 gold per franchise at HQ.

[Blaupanzer]

Great Review! Who cares how you know so much as long as you do. Your biases are based on experience, not on surface understanding.

Note that State Property is equal to central plannig, which in RL does negate corporate advantages. Nerfing SP in the game by working against corps makes logical, historical, and economic sense. Also, the state will step in RL if corporations begin to ravage the economy by installing price controls, rationing, etc. which are all aspects of central planning, i.e., State Property. So there is a logic there that pleases us free trader libertarians to our core.

[kiky]

Great review !

[Zinegata]

Originally posted by onodera
The part I like most is the screenshot in the AI section.
The review: "The AI now builds huge scary stacks. Look at this one: so many frigates and galleons!"
The screenshot: Solver has Tanks and Destroyers waiting for them.

I really like this as well.

My favorite moment when playing any Civ game was way back when I played Civilization II. I had just conquered the biggest continent on the planet, wiping out the large Viking presence there. I had begun planning an invasion of the Viking homeland (on another, smaller continent) when I realized something amazing.

The Vikings at the time were allied with the Japanese. For a long time I ignored the Japanese, because they were far behind technologically, but when I began my invasion preparations I realized they had advanced VERY rapidly, and they had reached the modern era.

They had also built a battlefleet. A serious battlefleet. One that had over twenty battleships!

And here I was, the biggest Civilization in the world, with a mere three battleships.

Needless to say, I tried to correct that imbalance as quickly as I could, starting what could only be described as a naval arms race that would have made the Royal Navy proud.

I first bribed the Russians to "distract" the Japanese with their navy while I built my own forces up (resulting in a Tsushima-like massacre of the destroyer-based Russian Navy, something the Russians would never forgive me for ) and proceeded to build battleships like crazy. With the productive powers of my Empire and draining the gold in my treasury, I soon had my own twenty-battleship navy. I soon sent out my newly built fleet as part of the invasion force, eagerly anticipating a full-scale naval war on the scale of Jutland.

Only it didn't happen, thanks to the game's limited naval AI. In the end, I only faced three out of the twenty Japanese battleships, sinking all of them at the cost of a battleship. My troops landed in the Viking homeland with little further interruption from the Japanese navy, and the Vikings were soon wiped out.

To add insult to injury, the Japanese developed cruise missiles ahead of me, and proceeded to show how vulnerable my expensive battleship fleet was by sinking one of my battleships with a pair of missile strikes.

Given the new capabilities of the Civ AI (which, I believe, we can thank Blake for, yes?) I think I may finally have the grand naval battle that was denied to me so many years ago.

Firaxis just might get my money very soon now. If the game stability is as good as the reviews claim

[Blake]

Given the new capabilities of the Civ AI (which, I believe, we can thank Blake for, yes?) I think I may finally have the grand naval battle that was denied to me so many years ago.

Navy performance in BTS is one of the things I'm prouder of .

Unfortunately bribing AI's into war is still a bit of an easy way out, doesn't matter what the problem is, the solution is to bribe AI's into war.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by CyberShy
The warmonger (with a big empire) may get totally broken if he spreads a corporation, because of the overkill of resources for his corps.

Broken in the sense of "too strong", I presume. But the same warmonger becomes broken with massed workshops, watermills, State Property and golden ages. Perhaps I don’t fully understand the benefits of corps yet. They look quite appealing but not a lot and I have this idea that they are horribly expensive.

[Robert]

No Tech Brokering means that you can broker techs that you didn't got from other civs, effectively:
- you can broker techs you got from huts
- you can broker techs you got from research
- you can broker techs you stole through espionage
- you can broker techs you got through great people
- you can broker techs you got through liberalism

Regarding Corporation Maintenance, yes, if you have many corporations and much of the corp-resources, your maintenance is high. You have to actually pay for the bonusses you get. If it's too much, manage your economy by giving some of those resources away to lower your corporation maintenance.

Corporations aren't freebies, you have to manage the economic concequences. You have to pay for what you get, which only makes it more interesting, imho.

[couerdelion]

That’s something I don’t understand. If I am paying 1g for 0.5h and I find this too expensive, why will selling one of the resources help me? Surely I will want to get rid of all of the resources since I don’t much like the trade-off I’m getting between gold and . This then leads to the question why I want the corporation in the first place if it cost me a whole GP to generate.

[sneaky]

I have founded Sid's Sushi Co. (seems to be one of the best) and spread it to a few of my food poor cities. I don't seem to be making any money of them so far, but boosting a food poor city by something like +7 food, +14 culture is huge!
I agree that you shouldn't want to spread corporations to all your cities, but when you keep a good eye on your economy and only spread them to cities that benefit from the corporation it is manageable. I'm still running something like 70% Science, 10% Espionage, like I have been doing the whole game, so I haven't had to drop the slider so far and am certainly not complaining.

[patcon]

NOTE: I'm a very slow typist and didn't see Cybershy's answer before submitting this, so many questions are now answered, but some of the underlying issues still apply.
Based on that answer, the only techs you can't trade are those you got in trade (or as a gift) from another civ.

Originally posted by Solver
It's techs that you have researched. I think getting a tech from a hut when 1 tech away from it is exceedingly rare

I find getting a tech from a hut very rare in any case, but I believe I have had cases where I've popped a tech I was researching. Maybe not, maybe there's a check for "being researched?" before granting a tech. Obviously there's some check because I've never popped a tech I already have.

But that wasn't really my question, that was just a situation that would really torque me off if it happened. Maybe I wasn't clear.

With NTB selected you can't trade away a tech you haven't "researched" yourself. But does "researched" mean "done some research on, but then got by other means" or "discovered by researching"? In other words, if I was researching Artillery and was half-way there but finished the tech by trade or espionage, would I be able to trade it away myself? I suspect I couldn't.

I think there are some issues with NTB if the above is correct.
logical fallacy
If a tech is given to (or taken by) you when you've done no, or very limited, research on it, then maybe your ability to transfer that knowledge to someone else is compromised. So using that logic you couldn't trade it away, but then how can you use that limited knowledge to discover the next bit of technology which relies on that limited knowledge. But there's no indication that future development from that gifted tech is hindered in any way. Logically, either your knowledge of the gifted tech is sufficient to advance your research (in which case you should be able to trade it away) or it's not.
game play
Is the AI smart enough to weigh the trade-offs involved in accepting a tech in trade? It seems a very subjective decision. If I'm researching Artillery (75% done) and I'm offered it in trade the decision is very complex. How badly do I need it right now? Who still won't have it if I wait to discover it myself and will I want to trade it to them and what might I get in return? Am I smart enough to weigh the trade-offs?

What about this?
If you get a tech by anything other than your own discovery, you get the benefits of that tech but can't trade it or advance beyond it until you spend some research to understand it, i.e. reverse engineering. Think of it this way - you're given instructions on how to build a catapult, so you can build that catapult, but you don't understand the principles behind it enough to advance the technology until you've studied what makes a catapult work.
Maybe something like the following would work. If you get a tech via trade or espionage you get the immediate benefit of the tech (obviously) but can't trade it or advance it (use it as a prequisite for another tech) until you have completed your study of that tech, say 30% of the beakers you would have needed to discover that tech yourself. So if you had 800/1000 beakers needed for a tech and then stole it, you would need 60 beakers more before you could trade/advance it; but if you had 0/1000 when you stole it, you would need 300 beakers.

[Robert]

why will selling one of the resources help me?

The maintenance costs of a corporation in a city depend on the nr of resources, that are being consumed by that corporations, that are in the 'resource table' of that city.

If my city has 2 iron, 3 bronze and Mining Inc. then that city will pay more maintenance then when it only has 1 iron and 1 bronze.

[Traianvs]

This is what a real civver wants to read, instead of those run of the mill reviews you find everywhere else in which a list is given of the major new additions with a little joke inserted here and there!

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by CyberShy

why will selling one of the resources help me?

The maintenance costs of a corporation in a city depend on the nr of resources, that are being consumed by that corporations, that are in the 'resource table' of that city.

If my city has 2 iron, 3 bronze and Mining Inc. then that city will pay more maintenance then when it only has 1 iron and 1 bronze.

But aren't all of these costs/benefits marginal and the same for every resources mentioned. The question should have been

"Why would I sell ONLY one of the resources?"

Logically, selling one resource should imply selling all of them and the logical conclusion of this would be

Why would I found the corporation?

[Robert]

You can sell ONE of the resources to decrease your maintenance. You can sell TOW of the same resource to do the same. You can sell them all to make all maintenance costs go away. But then you won't have resources anymore as well.

But a corporation in a city with a courthouse and a HQ in a city with Bank/Grocery/Market/Wall Street is absolutely maintainable with only a few resources (2-6)

I'm not sure what the nr of resources is after which you're going to pay for it.

You can even fund those extra maintenances by founding new branches of your corporation in foreign cities. (which can give you 12 gpt per city!)