BTS: In defense of State Property

[Blake]

Solver is critical of SP in his Review, and I'd like to offer the contrary viewpoint.

Something Solver misses about corporation balance is this, Communism comes before Corporations.

The question is not whether to switch to SP and lose your corporation benefits, but whether to switch out of SP in order to start investing in corporations.

A switch out of SP involves lost food and higher expenses, and then spreading the corporation(s) involves significantly more expenses, at some point in the future you start reaping the benefits, maybe - but instead you can easily keep cruising along in State Property and just ignore corporations, continuing to spend all your gold on research and unit upgrades.

It's not clear where the turn advantage truly lies - in investing in corporations, or in staying in State Property. This probably means it's fairly well balanced. In some cases it's obviously better to stay in SP - if you're interested in warfare you probably want to have higher production and more gold available right now, so your wars are more rewarding. I'm not certain exactly when it's best to go with corporations. The HRE and Zulus are obvious cases because there UB's mean you pay less upkeep. If you have an established Wallstreet and plenty of courthouses that's more incentive, if your empire is simply good at cranking out masses of gold that makes it less painful. In contrast it's possible to use State Property to justify neglecting gold multipliers and/or upkeep reducers - you OBVIOUSLY don't want to spread corporations in a civ which employs such methodological impoverishment.

So basically profitable corporations involve a significant investment - in hammers for courthouses, banks, wallstreet and executives and in gold (really tech pace) for the direct spread costs and for subsidizing production of hammers/culture (gold, beakers and food corps typically boost tech rate, other corps lower it). By running State Property you can neglect much of that investment in favor of Other Things Which Are More Important At The Time, Probably Bonking Skulls.

[Zinegata]

Re: BTS: In defense of State Property

Originally posted by Blake
So basically profitable corporations involve a significant investment - in hammers for courthouses, banks, wallstreet and executives and in gold (really tech pace) for the direct spread costs and for subsidizing production of hammers/culture (gold, beakers and food corps typically boost tech rate, other corps lower it). By running State Property you can neglect much of that investment in favor of Other Things Which Are More Important At The Time, Probably Bonking Skulls.

Also want to chime in that a Corporation's power is also to a large extent dictated by the amount of special resources that an Empire has. A State-Propety Empire with few special resources is probably better off staying State Property. It's all about what is more efficient given the prevailing game situation.

[Jaybe]

Communism comes before Corporations?
If Mining Inc. comes with Railroad, then I would commonly get it before Communism. Likewise, perhaps, with Medicine (Sid's Sushi Co.).

Per the manual. Haven't been there yet, nor do I have the game open ATM.

Before MOST corporations, of course.

[Proteus_MST]

If I remember correctly from several postings in this forum you need 2 Techs to get a corporation,
"Corporations" as well as the second tech that differs per corporation (which is "Railroads" in case of Mining Inc )

[Blake]

Communism doesn't have to come before corporations - but it is far more beelinable. It's at about the same tech level as Steam Power (while to get Railroad, in addition to Steam Power you also need Steel which is a tech in the same cost ballpark - so corps are basically 2 techs later than communism).

Also unless you are the tech leader and have the right GP on hand, you can't rely on getting your desired corporation.
State Property is always there waiting patiently for you.

[Jaybe]

Proteus_MST, You'd better bleepin' believe it I'd have the corporation tech by then!
Wall Street would be well underway by railroads. Having another look at the tech chart, yes I might well go with communism before medicine.

[Sir Og]

I have played one game so far and although I founded Mining Co in my Wall Street city Free Market was much worse than SP. I was relatively big and had 9 of the corporation resources which gave me 9 shields in each city with corporation but the mainanace of 8 gold was simply too much I was hoping that the 5 gold in the headquaters would offset the maintanance but it dind't. Especialy considering that FM is medium upkeep and SP is low. Also I noticed that SP gives 10% production bonus to all cities (I think there was no such bonus before BtS)

[Blake]

The main reason to avoid Communism is when you want to avoid Scientific Method because you have the Great Library and/or many monasteries.
Then again in BTS SciMethod does bring Forest Preserves, and those can be quite useful.

There is also more incentive to blast through SciMeth to get to the health boosters asap, rather than getting the polluting techs first, health is MUCH tighter in BTS (another reason you may actually have forests around to use preserves).

In cases where you're #1 in tech and have the territory for many health bonuses, it's likely you've already won the game and should either domination, or head up to mass media and win by UN Vote. When the game is still... less decided, corporations are also a larger gamble.

[=DrJambo=]

Corporations might be good in the early modern period.

But it's since been shown that, as the game progresses into the post-2000 AD era and inflation is rising past 200%, running Corporations invariably means you're running at a great loss compared to SP.

The Corp maintenance fee is in essence being doubled. I worked out that as the HRE I'd be running out equal when comparing the money generated in the Creative Corporations HQ to the 200% inflation and Corp maintenance. This is remembering that the HRE courthouse is twice as good as the regular version.

[couerdelion]

This has been my suspicion too although I don’t have a working version of the game to test it. As such my knowledge of the cost side of corporations is rather woolly so I don’t even have a good idea of whether corporations are actually worth much particular when it is mentioned that corporation upkeep is not cheap and that you can cripple an economy by spreading your corporation to it.

My instinct for the war monger is to keep with the tried and tested approach. The GP is probably better used for a golden age, particular if you have the Great Tomb.

[fed1943]

Just a guess. And just looking for the questions, not yet the answers.

Game "begins" with food,hammers and commerce.

This corporations thing remind me the whip.

(If high food,low hammers and commerce, whip is very good;

conversely, if hammers and commerce is high but food poor,whip is

bad).

I believe the game creators made a good balancing. So, there will

be a breaking point in the food/hammers/commerce/relevant resource

ratios on my terrain that makes each corporation good or bad.

So, I ask to the few experts,please: is this the way?

Best regards,

[Solver]

*bump*

Hmm, I missed this thread. Like I said before, I very much hope that I am dead wrong in my assertion of State Property. This is definitely one case where I'd much rather be wrong than right.

For me, though, Communism rarely comes before corporations. I routinely delay Scientific Method because I often have many Monasteries and also the Great Library is one of my top-priority wonders. Particularly now that it's been pushed back through Aesthetics.

The question of whether to switch out of State Property to pursue corporations is a good one. But there is still not enough flexibility. If you do some corporation stuff (and get Communism later), switching to SP is just too much of a waste - or so it seems.

[jkp1187]

Re: BTS: In defense of State Property

Originally posted by Blake
Solver is critical of SP in his Review, and I'd like to offer the contrary viewpoint.

Something Solver misses about corporation balance is this, Communism comes before Corporations.

The question is not whether to switch to SP and lose your corporation benefits, but whether to switch out of SP in order to start investing in corporations.

A switch out of SP involves lost food and higher expenses, and then spreading the corporation(s) involves significantly more expenses, at some point in the future you start reaping the benefits, maybe - but instead you can easily keep cruising along in State Property and just ignore corporations, continuing to spend all your gold on research and unit upgrades.

Hi Blake,

I don't pretend to be the best player in the world (I was able to win at Monarch on 1.61, Prince on the last version of Better AI, and am struggling along at Noble on BtS with a 0-4 record so far,) but isn't this really dependent on the sort of improvements you've built throughout your empire? I mean, if I've done a cottage spam (as I will often do,) in the early years for the core cities (interspersed with farms, mines, and the occasional windmill,) where is the advantage for me to beeline to Communism at all? I would basically have to go back and rip up some mature towns and replace them with workshops/watermills. At that point, unless I'm going for domination or otherwise struggling under the weight of a huge empire, why bother trying to convert to SP, when I could just focus on money and science to carry the day? At that point, I'd think that going for a corporation instead of SP makes more sense, no? (All the more so with Solver's inflation/corporation fix and the upcoming official adjustment to inflation/corporation maintenance.)

Or is going SP early the secret to victory in the mid-to-endgame that's been keeping me down?


I agree with Solver -- especially if I'm in a religion that's connected to the AP, I tend to want to keep the monestaries active for as long as possible.

[=DrJambo=]

I usually find I'm better of using Free Market than SP and quite often I get a corp first. Communism doesn't tend to be top priority for me, so I'm not sure I'm in agreement with Blake here. Maybe he's taking it from the perspective of a serious warmonger that already has a rather expansive empire by this time, and therefore beelining Communism for SP is a more critical choice??

[monkspider]

I never much cared for state property, if i am running a large empire, i would rather use the old mercantilism-statue of liberty-representation combo.