corporations?

[yimboli]

wow, my first post in a long time.

i've checked the newbie guide and FAQ, and have searched the forums, but I cannot find anywhere what the deal is with corporations. I liked the idea of setting up franchises to pay for my units and add to public works. So I built like 5 corporations and send them to the major islands, and have now built franchises in roughly 80% of the cities that don't belong to me. But is there some way to see the benefits? i.e. my unit upkeep is still listing a non-zero percentage of my production, but I was sure that with all my franchises, I wouldn't have to pay a bit! also, what is the chance that a franchise will work? I've had a few fail. Also, is that blue rectangle with what looks to be gears inside it the symbol for a corporation? I think it is but i want to be sure.

Any additional information on corporations would be most helpful.

-Tim

[child of Thor]

the blue symbol with the gears next to it(it appears next to the city name), just means that currently the player of the colour in the symbol(in this case blue probably means you) has a franchise running in that city.

And yes there is some confusion over what benefit you get. In the manual it says its production - but i'm sure someone here discovered that it might have been gold instead?
And if it was production it calculated it in a weird way?

I just liked the fact that i had 'tagged' the city

[yimboli]

I read somewhere that franchises would help upkeep your units. since units cost production to upkeep, the franchises take production from the enfranchised city and that goes towards unit upkeep. again, I forget the source of this information, but it also said that any production from franchises that went over your unit upkeep production cost would go to public works.

according to the great library, franchises extract 10% of production. is this accurate? I don't know! there's no nifty display that tells me how much production I'm pulling in from franchises, or how much unit upkeep is mitigated! I dont like when stuff happens in a game behind the scenes and I can't see an indicator or some kind of direct affect. this is driving me nuts.

[Solver]

There was a display for benefits from special attacks in CtP1, but not now. The effect of franchises can be extracted from the source, though...

[Ekmek]

yes it would be nice to have a tab or somethig that should benefits from special attacks (including revolts, reform, etc)

[Solver]

This is a part of the code that counts production in a city, where the franchise effect is taken into account.

sint32 net_production = gross_production - crime_loss;
	if( m_franchise_owner >= 0 ) {
		franchise_loss = ceil(double(net_production) * g_theConstDB->GetFranchiseEffect());
	}
	else
		franchise_loss = 0;

	return gross_production;
}

Gross production is what you get from laborers, city economic radius, with workday modifiers, etc. Net production is gross production minus crime.

To calculate the franchise effect, the net production of a city is multiplied by franchise effect constant from the text file const.txt (0.1 in default game or SAP2, 0.4 in GoodMod). Then, the ceiling of that result is the franchise loss. A ceiling means the smallest integer that is greater than the number that the ceiling's taken from.

To take an example:

Gross production (normal prod, laborers, mines, workday, whatever) = 100.
Crime Loss = 15 (not using the formula for it now, just imagine)
Franchise Coefficient = 0.4 (GoodMod)

Franchise Loss = Ceiling((100-15)*0.4)=Ceiling(34). The smallest integer greater than 34 is 35. So, such a city would lose 35 production to a franchise.

[yimboli]

wow, i like that paste from the source code. i really should check that out. i've done quite a bit of design/programming in C++ and matlab (which has ceil, floor, and fix functions )

I still have a question, though. When I put a franchise in one of france's city, it extracts 10% of their net production... and where does that go? in other words, how does it benefit me?

thanks! this is good stuff.

-Tim

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by yimboli
I still have a question, though. When I put a franchise in one of france's city, it extracts 10% of their net production... and where does that go? in other words, how does it benefit me?

Probably it goes to you, at least I know it has some effect, therefore I increased the coefficeint in GoodMod, so that you might detect the effect. In CTP1 I think it was in the diplomanager that showed the gains from each civ. I think the production from each civ should be displayed in the Diplomanager and the total production gained by your civ should be displayed in the natiional manager.

-Martin

[Solver]

Ahh good to know that you know C++, then my explanations are clearly too detailed, could've just pasted the relevant code . If you're curious, then the file is CityData.cpp, that's the one concerning itself with numbers relating to cities and 'side effects' such as franchises, bioinfections, etc.

Yes, the effect of franchise SUPPOSEDLY goes to you. Did so in CtP1. Not sure about now, though.

[Solver]

OK, more code

	if( m_franchise_owner >= 0 ) {
		if(!projectedOnly)
			g_player[m_franchise_owner]->AddProductionFromFranchise(m_productionLostToFranchise);
	}

So yes, that goes to you...

The AddProductionFromFranchise function has nothing interesting. It just increments the class-level private variable that holds total production you get from franchises, and sends a network packet if in a MP game...

[yimboli]

martin: i like where you're going with those ideas. i'm all in favor of one single display box that shows ALL exploits (franchises, conversion, stolen technologies, any others?) - and also include them in appropriate already-existing displays. :]

solver: interesting, i'm not sure what the projectedOnly boolean is for. whats the convention with g_ and m_? also, I take it g_player is an array/vector of pointers to abstract data objects??
i'm gonna hafta download the source for this when I get back to the states and take a close look at it - i'm really interested to know how they implement all this stuff. the best I've done with object oriented design and programming games with neat displays is a mastermind game with EZ Windows (comes with Borland C++).

no one has yet answered my question though. I know that the stolen production goes to me, but *where* specifically in my empire is it allocated? I doubt this would be in CityData.cpp cuz I'd imagine the allocation would be empire-wide. Anyway, thanks for everyone's input.

-Tim

[Solver]

The projectedOnly bool was, I think, to give the real production of city not accounting for losses.

I don't have the source at hand now, but I think that m_franchise_owner was a local, class level variable, whereas g_player refers to an array holding data for each player (human and AI) in the game.

Can't really say where exactly the production goes. I think that it might go not to one of your cities, but to the production pool that goes to maintaining your troops. That's a wild guess though.

You really should download the source and join the coding team .