Forbidden City Placement

[Fistleaf]

Is it worth it to keep so many Great People around to found so many corporations? I only found 1 or 2 at most, and use the Great people for other purposes. If I can afford to found so many corporations, the game is probably already won, no point to prolong it longer.

[Solomwi]

Originally posted by Fistleaf
Is it worth it to keep so many Great People around to found so many corporations? I only found 1 or 2 at most, and use the Great people for other purposes. If I can afford to found so many corporations, the game is probably already won, no point to prolong it longer.

Absolutely, at least on huge maps, which I prefer. The non-corporation GP options are so much less useful by the time corporations become available, or are close enough to make me consider saving a GP for one, that foregoing those options generally doesn't hurt much.

My approach requires an engineer around the time of combustion, a merchant around the time of medicine and an artist around the time of mass media, and maybe a scientist down the road at rocketry. By the point in the game where I'm considering saving GP for the corporations, the boost I get from settling any of them pales in comparison to the boost I get from the relevant corporation (+3 base hammers and +3 beakers in one city v. +20 base hammers and 120 cpt in several cities, for example). Only the engineer presents a dilemma between using his special ability and founding the corporation, but again, I have to compare shortening the time to build a single wonder (since that's really the only thing possibly worth foregoing CreateCon) against a significant production boost in all my potential wonder cities, and more importantly my military cities. Foregoing a lump sum of cash, even a large one, at that point pales in comparison to bulking up my cities' potential on all fronts by being able to support a dozen or so new citizens wherever I choose and get any new cities I might find up to speed quickly enough to contribute. Likewise, a great work is nothing compared to a corporation that can deliver over 100 base cpt in every city while turning a profit to boot. There's a potential golden age given up if I haven't used my 3-GP age yet, but even then the GA is probably only delayed a little bit, since the GP will keep coming, especially with the population boom thanks to Sid's Sushi. Of course, as I've said before, I aggressively seek out resources for my corporations, and have typically conquered a lot of land by that point, so I do them in a big way when I do them. Hollywood, Rock and Roll and Broadway are great for this approach, since they let you trade away new happiness resources on which you have a monopoly for corporation resources. If you're content feeding the corporations only a handful of resources and getting back +5 hammers, +4 food and +50 culture per turn, it may not be worth it to save those GP, but if you're going to pursue it full-bore, the GP spent are a drop in the bucket.

Bottom line: the ability to add 10-20 citizens, 20+ base hammers and boatloads of culture to any city I like at the cost of 3 GP and the hammers and gold spent on executives, spreading fees and maintenance is (read: has been for me ) a really good tradeoff that can turn a close game into a late rout or set the stage for a come-from-behind victory. And that's without considering AlumCo, which can add a good bit of research as well as more hammers through CC. The game doesn't have to be in the bag for you to get the opportunity to found those three, and by no means does it have to be in the bag for taking advantage of that trifecta to be the optimal choice.