New to corporations

[Seedle]

Alright, I've just made the switch to corporations from State Property, and I have a couple questions. First, what all goes into calculating corporate maintenance? I have Sid's Sushi and Mining Inc. It says -5 and -6 gold respectively when I spread the corps, and when I mouse over the icons in the city screen, but if I mouse over my maintenance, it says -24.41! I'm reducing this with a courthouse, but even then, having the corporate headquarters in my Wall Street city can only cover so much expense! I think having the corps is worth it in spite of the cost, Mining is giving me 10 hammers and Sid's is giving me 5 food (and I actually have quite a few cities where the culture is relevant.) I just want to understand how to figure out what my real costs are, because I was using -6 gold as my number to judge costs/benefits, and that number seems to be wrong.

The second issue is spreading to rival civs. The only real competition in my current game is Mansa Musa. He as a grand total of 1! resource that Sid's can use. Would it be worth the expense and the hammers to spread Sid's to his cities? Would it really drain his economy, or would it be a minor annoyance for him? If Sid's is worth it, how about Mining? He has I think 9 or 10 resources for Mining inc.

[Jaybe]

The -5 or -6 that your Shift-F7 gives you is the net cost of the corp. after adjustments (i.e., courthouse), and it is also rounded. Varies with city size, not with distance from capital or HQ. A strong Mining Inc. or Sid's Sushi in a small city can be an enormous boost to its development. My understanding is that with v3.13, inflation does not affect corp. costs, even though the F2 implies otherwise. I believe they reduce the corp. cost dynamically to compensate for inflation (seems to me a VERY non-transparent way to do it).

Re spreading to rival civs, there CAN be risk involved as well as benefits. You are getting your 12g from your wall-streeted HQ, though once you spread to your rival, that rival may prefer to NOT be trading that corp.'s resources to YOU and try to acquire more for his/her self. The rival civ's cost with minimal resources will also be minimal and will grow with additional resources and city size. Once they have one city with the corp., they may (or might not) expand it to other cities. POSSIBLY to those of OTHER CIVS (I don't remember the circumstances of that ... a city may have changed hands).

If I spread a corp. to another (non-vassal) civ, I will generally spread it to small, low-hammer cities so that the civ will at least take a long time to spread it around to cities that can readily take advantage of it. If the civ IS a vassal of mine, I may be doing it for their actual benefit (and pray that I don't regret it later by their winning the game).

ADDENDUM: A large city with a powerful Sid's Sushi might easily give you a net loss in gold. Sometimes I will REDUCE the resources of a corporation if the benefit/cost equation does not please me by terminating some trades or disconnecting excess resources. There is also the option (with a great artist) of founding Civilized Jewelers, which gives a net profit per corp. branch and so doesn't even need to be founded at Wall Street ... which is good because it conflicts with Mining.

To see what the benefit/cost factors are, check the pedia: it gives particulars for each corp.

[Seedle]

Thanks Jaybe. If costs are tied to resources for corps, then I guess it wouldn't be worth it in this case to spread Sid's to Mansa. I don't need the gold that badly, and it wouldn't drain him any, so the hammers would probably be better spent on units/research.

[TriMiro]

Trade-offs for corps is are not always clear. So net gain/loss in gold could be net gain/loss in another area, it is hard to compute sometimes.

Corp Benefits:
- Culture - from Sushi, Creat Const, and Jewry. Depending on the situation that could be plus or minus. I had games where I was able to use those three in newly conquered cities and really mess the enemy. In some cases the benefits could be immeasurable, fight for that oil for example.

- Gold - Jewry. Unless you compete with another corp, spread it to every city you can. It does produce higher benefits without question.

- Food - how do you count the extra specialist in the city. More food more specialists and GP points and science and so on. It may look like the corp is running at loss, but it may actually be making profit if you count the beakers from a rep. scientist.

- Hammers - very useful for a small or newly conquered city, but probably less so for a large city. Still added to many cities it could add up significantly in space race.

- Beakers - consider the cost versus the +12 fro HQ plus al the beakers modified by libraries and universities. It could easily be net profit.

- Oil/Aluminum - if you don't have those you ar ein bug trouble. The most powerful modern unit require either or both of those. If you already have Oil/Aluminum, then you don't need more.

Also you should be careful when loosing the coal from the city screen. Those +25% hammers you are getting from the Coal Plant may not be worth the corp benefits depending on the situation.

In general corps give more bonuses then loss. Also chose corporations carefully and weight options. Beware of the competition, you don't want fore food if the city is at the happy cap.

You cannot bankrupt an opponent by spreading your corp like one could do that pre 3.13. When I use corporations I try to keep them to myself.

[smbakeresq]

The food bonus with Sids can be overpowering in some circumstances. With a large or huge map, spreading Sids can give you a food bonus +10 or more, or 4 free specialists per city, or you can just let the city grow very fast. The gold cost can be highly net negative but all the extra specialists can compensate for that easily.

Does anyone find this also? It seems like the benfit shuold be scaled down some

[Jaybe]

What's 10-12-16 extra food with Sid's on a huge map? If it (or the gold you pay) is too much, do as I suggested and reduce the resources.

Of course, there is also the potential for the AI to get Sid's (especially if you don't have the fortune of getting a great merchant). If the benefits of Sid's were scaled down, then there might be conditions where it was of NO benefit, particularly on smaller maps.

[TriMiro]

Sea resources are the easiest to pillage at war and for the 4 extra specialists, they work as long as they are not above the happy cap. I have not seen Sushi being overpowered, maybe on sea maps it would be, but I don't play those.

I think the bonuses from corps do scale with map size, but I am not absolutely positive.

[Vampgelus]

I tend to use Great Mills, Creative Constructions and Jewelers, as they don't interfere. Once they are all spread to all my citys, they really do a god job boosting my empire.

[Seedle]

Well, I didn't spread my corps to any enemy cities, but I did spread it to all of mine. And although I was losing gold on the deal, I had newly conquered size 3 cities building theaters in one turn, and factories in 4 turns. Viva la Mining Inc. and Sid's Sushi!
And even given the fact I was losing gold, I was gaining commerce in having those 18 extra hammers in my mature cities turned into built research.
And the Culture from Sid's turned out to be very important. Mansa, who I shared a lot, and I mean A LOT of border with, went for the culture victory. He was doomed not to win, but man those borders were pushing while he was trying.

[Hauptman]

I have said it before I'll say it again. Sid's sushi is KING!

In my "fun with tokugawa" thread, I posted the corp screenshot at the end. +14 food, +10 hammers, and over 300 . I had my sliders set to 100% $$ and was still getting nearly 3000 .

So even if you take a severe loss from the corporations on the cash front. They are phenominal once they mature and you have all the resources you can grab.

[smbakeresq]

Hauptman you are %100 correct IMO.

Sids being so good is also do the availability of resources. We all have seen one city with 2-4 clams or crabs or fish, but I have only seen one city with 3 grains or corn.

Of course Sids depends on the map style also, with low sea level giving even more resources.

[Theben]

Yeah, any net loss of gold by Sid's is easily counteracted by using that +food to get merchant specialists.

[joncnunn]

My own experence is that after they removed inflation from corporations, under Free Market, corporations tend to indirectly be a license to print money. Under Enviormentalism though the net benifit is only slight.

Sushi's does often run a cash deficit, but the specalists it supports more than makes up for it under FM.
The same would apply to the Cerial one, only under most maps, Sushi's is much better.

Ethanol Inc though amounts to usually being a pretty poor choice in comparision to the food ones unless you absolutely need oil.

The other choice is Mining Inc vs (Creative + Cilivilized + AL)
I find that playing a Philosphical civ, it's generally better to go for the Creative + Cilivized + AL combo. But when playing a non-Philosphical civ it may be considerly more difficult to aquire the right GPs at the right time, so I often then go for Mining.

On spreading to foreign ones:

I would not recomend spreading either food one or Ethanol because it will cause the AI to be less willing to trade you those resources for Sushis.

Mining Inc. is perhaps the safest one to spread to a capitulated vasal; they often need more hammer production. Sometimes it might be ok to spread it to a voluntery vasal as well (as long as they are behind in techs). But I wouldn't spread that to anyone else.

And I don't spread any of the ones that yield culture to anybody else.

[TriMiro]

Yes don't spread culture corps to other civs. I did that mistake once, William van Oranje was behind in techs and power and everything, so I figured I will spread sushi and creative const to his cities to get a boost on my economy. Sure enough he went for the culture victory and I had to declare war and quickly raise several cities.

[Hauptman]

I would not recomend spreading either food one or Ethanol because it will cause the AI to be less willing to trade you those resources for Sushis.

I must disagree with that, from experience.
Number 1, Before I spread it out of my own borders, I have already spread it to all of my own, and have already grabbed every extra resource possible. So they gain a 1 food gain and have not canceled the previous trades with the exception of thier usual "we want 1 more gold per turn" demends.

Number 2, after spreading to an ally (perm ally that is) he always starts spamming me with gifts of those very resources, as if he didn't want the extra cost of the corp. Usually i happily accept, but sometimes I want him to have the extra food/hammers and this annoys the heel out of me.