Beyond the Sword Review by Solver

[Shrapnel12]

I just founded my first corporation and I have to say that so far I don't see a problem. It was Sid's Sushi and I had to pay a maintenance cost of 6 gold to get 3 food and 12 culture. That's huge. Larger then any wonder that I can think of. Are the maintenace costs larger at higher levels? Perhaps it is too high at those levels? I think even at 10 gold, it would still be worth it though. It's not much different then using your production to generate wealth, science, or culture, except that is 1 to 1 I believe.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Shrapnel12
I just founded my first corporation and I have to say that so far I don't see a problem. It was Sid's Sushi and I had to pay a maintenance cost of 6 gold to get 3 food and 12 culture. That's huge. Larger then any wonder that I can think of. Are the maintenace costs larger at higher levels? Perhaps it is too high at those levels? I think even at 10 gold, it would still be worth it though. It's not much different then using your production to generate wealth, science, or culture, except that is 1 to 1 I believe.

Is that a "net" cost of 6 gold (ie including the allowance for gold generated at the HQ)?

It certainly looks quite cheap. 3 food supports 1.5 merchants which alone should generate 9 gold + 4.5 GPP (+ civic/wonder bonuses) so you can ultimately cover all the costs by the extra population.

I suspect that the food corps are the real money spinners though don’t know enough about the corporation costs to have a full overview of the variables.

For the most part, I imagine that the cultural bonus would be worth next to nothing.

[Solver]

3 food from Sid's Sushi isn't much, but that's also why the maintenance cost is low. If you act carefully, you should be able to retain an overall benefit.

[Shrapnel12]

This is the very first city I founded the corp in (i.e. it is the headquaters), so there is no generated gold. Yes, 3 food is not much, but with 12 culture, that's a bargain IMHO. Of course if your not interested in the culture, then I guess it's not such a deal, but I'm considering going for a culture victory as I've never won one before.

[Solver]

I think you do get the corp income even for the HQ city. It's visible in the city screen not under corporation icons, but in the building list on the left.

The culture bonus is useless unless you are indeed aiming for a culture victory.

[oholiab]

Is there going to ba a general BtS Q&A thread to answer questions like:
Will the existing Civ4 map generators work with BtS?

[ptzvetan]

The food bonus is great especially for cities situated in tundra or ice regions.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by ptzvetan
The food bonus is great especially for cities situated in tundra or ice regions.

I’d be careful with using this kind of logic. What is good for a city is not always good for the civilisation. You have to ask yourself what it will actually do with this extra food and I think the answer will be able to work more tundra tiles and these are never very good.

A better example would be a city surrounded lots of hills and plains which can use the extra food to generate a lot of production.

[player1]

But, it could at least help you to collect those water tiles more efficiently.

Some hammer corp would help too, to be abtle to build those commerce buildings.

[Freddz]

Congratulations of a good review, Solver. You made me buy it and I agree on almost everything you say. It is a damn great game now. The "almost" is there mostly because I haven't played it enough yet.

For me, civ 4 + Warlords expansion was too one-dimensional in the long run. Strange, because of all the brilliant ideas. Can't really make a civ-game without functional spying, I guess. Now, I have enjoyed it even more as I have learnt how to build up a great spying civilization by using Great spies to first build 1-2 Scotland yards, and use 1-2 as super specialists in the cities with SY, then infiltrate Rival civs with any more upcoming Great Spies. Spying on Emperor/Monarch late game for the purpose to get technologies works great this way, though you have to put a little work into it. In my last game I ran up from number 5 to number 2 in rankings because of spying, and when I was invaded as number two I got lucky in receiving another Great spy to infiltrate Washington to get his superior military techs before he could crush me.... Spying works great for me, but I am a casual gamer

Beyond the Sword will last me a long time. :P

[JustAnotherUser]

Originally posted by yin26
Instead of Corporations, we could just name them "Conversion Facilities" and associate the same costs and benefits as we have now. To me, this is a good example of where semantics really has power, as I suspect that if people saw that investing and maintaining their conversion facilities allows them to turn excess resources into other benefits, we would likely see less concern.

But Corporations MAKE MONEY in most people's minds. Also, the religion model is often spoken of as the analogue to corps in BtS...but even there a person is encouraged to spread his religion to as many cities as possible with no worry about lost revenue...quite the opposite, of course, with the right buildings, etc. Thus, I am suggesting that players would generally accept a cost for converting excess resources into something else, but the wording and the analogues in play have seriously clouded this mechanic.

While on a first approach it could sound counter intuitive I believe the way corporation seems to work in BTs make sense, remember that in Civilization you play the nation as a whole not the corporation and corps make money for themselves. Take Microsoft, just to pick one, how its presence make the country richer? only for the taxes it pay and this in Civilization would covered by the HQ's income but outside from it the true benefit to have it in your country would be probably an increased culture and/or research.

[JustAnotherUser]

Originally posted by =DrJambo=
Here's one - remove corporation maintenance from inflation, and find another way to increase late game costs and slow tech rate. One could even increase inflation further to compensate the removal of corporation maintenance!

You know, I never understood that, if they wanted to increase the cost in the later part of the game why they used a (IMHO) rather clumsy way like inflation rather than give a manteinance cost to buildings like in previous games? So an airport cost .i.e 5 gpt, some buildings like baracks could cost more in more modern eras , and so on. In this way you would also add to the game a number of strategic choices, like what do build and where and if build it at all. As the things are now there is no real reason outside of time to not to build all the buildings in all the cities.

[Solomwi]

Good review, Solver, and thanks. A note on peacetime blockades that you overlooked, though: submarines can both enter rival territory and blockade.

Apologies if someone else already pointed this out. I didn't bother reading the entire thread, since I would have certainly forgotten what I was going to post if I had.

[alva]

My favorite new game option is “No Tech Brokering”. It means that only technologies you have researched can be traded way. Technologies obtained from trade, goody huts or espionage can not be sold.

Solver, are you sure about that?

[Solver]

Never be 100% sure!