Corporate maintenance hurting AI?

[Willem]

I just had a game where Ragnar founded Mining Inc. Rather than be selective about where he built offices, I noticed that he had spammed the corporation into nearly every city in his empire. Later he was taking over 100 turns to research Medicine and I can only surmise that it was because his maintenance costs were so high that he had to turn his research way down.

IMO, there are too many negatives involved with corporations to make them viable for the AI. I doubt very much if it even has the sense to build them in a Wall Street city to maximize the profits from the head offices. I can see the point in having a penalty for their use, but unless the AI really knows how to work around it, the whole concept is just going to end up being a human player exploit.

PS: This was with the unofficial patch BTW.

[Goatimus]

I noticed in my game that the one AI that did found a corporation never spread it, and when I spread my corporations to other empires they always switched to state property ...

[TimeTraveler]

So how does one find benefit in corporations, despite the maintenance? I couldn't find enough information on how to make them profitable. After experimenting with founding three and mildly spreading one, I wound up with no sensible choice but to switch to State Property.

So how does one actually use corporations as much more than a flavored money-drain plague?

[Chariot]

So how does one actually use corporations as much more than a flavored money-drain plague?

by founding them in a city with wallstreet+market+grocer+bank to maximize earnings from it

i perfer this to be a city with a shrine in it so i get the wallstreet benefit to both religion and corp

[Blaupanzer]

Think of corporations as conversion engines, converting money to food, hammers, etc. In such a case, the conversion engine is supposed to be expensive.

I have no idea how you would program the AI to make this tradeoff. The answer as to "how" has not been answered in BTS, in all honesty. Some AI civs spam corps to their own detriment; others go straight to state property as soon as corps show up. Not sure what is in the (must be) complex programming that causes either of these responses.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Not sure what is in the (must be) complex programming that causes either of these responses.

Whatever it is it needs to be fixed, or at least have Corporations be revenue neutral. If having a corp reduces a civ to taking over 100 turns to research a tech that I got in about 20, then it's become a serious impediment to the AI.