Corporate still good?

[Voca]

Despite owning the DLC for a long time, I have never taken interest in corp government. I feel like starting one now but looking at the civics it feels underwhelming.

It feels like corps are good at stacking trade but since trade is kinda pointless I cannot find a meaningful build for corps. Does anyone know how to go corp in 3.0?

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Corporate is still the same as always.
Making insane amount of energie.


From a pure effecentcy standpoint.
Anything not driven exterminator, Driven assimiltar or devour swarm is pointless.

You need to set your own goals.
Like starting as a empire slowly turning it into a democracy or vice versa.
Give yourself a goal to work towards and some flaws to overcome.
Way more fun the crushing the ai.
Again.

[wolkenwand]

Corporate is my favorite empire to play, they might be not the strongest empire type, but for me they still thematically superior. I have won several time with corporate and they are very flexible to play, you can be slaver type, or making lots of subsidiary, you can even go wide, make sure to not go beyond administration threshold for long time because the penalty is increased compared to normal empire.

[Sea Base]

Organic race, with Conservationist, Thrifty and Quarrelsome (Aim is to generate most Unity through trade value, Utopian is expensive so that -10% consumer goods is great).

Fanatic Xenophile and Egalitarian, Megacorp, Trading Posts and Free Traders (Boosting Trade Value through Free Traders and F Xenophile, the +2 Envoys through F Xenophile are key, Egalitarian for Utopian, I find Trading Posts very versatile throughout the game, very handy for setting up your early internal trade network while maintaining borders or/and can be used to boost Naval Cap) (aim for Public Relations Specialists for that extra +2 envoys, the +10% diplo weight is nice too)

Common Ground Origin (I know, the AI are frustrating as hell and it can be real dicey early game with their antics, but you will need the protection they will provide, plus they give you early Branch Office candidates which is fantastic free energy income, 1st building ideally will be the one that boosts trade value by 25%, second generally will be the +10 amenities as they tend to have a shortfall at that point and you want your allies to maintain what ever edge they can have, you get +10 energy from that building too, after that it's kinda free pick depending on what you need).

Early game you want Utopian living standard and Consumer Benefits trade policy to fund it. Pretty much all jobs and, more importantly, pop happiness now count towards Trade Value (don't fall for the trap of using clerks to boost trade value). You will want Robot Assembly Plants as soon as possible, the extra pops working base jobs really help early game.

Planetary aims is to have 1 Bureaucracy, 1 Civilian Industries, 1 Alloy and 2 base resource planets, with your capital going full science.
1st colony go for Bureaucracy, mixing base resource jobs in if you have too much Admin Cap. You can switch those out later for more Admin parks as needed (and you will need it as the idea is to spam Branch Offices in your allies empires)
2nd go for Civilian Industries planet. The aim here is to meet total demand so you can switch Consumer Benefits to Marketplace of Ideas (this is where you get your explosion of Unity from), so do be free keeping the specialisation on Urban World (extra trade value) until you can feasibly replace Consumer Goods from trade, that way you have some nice bonus Alloy production that you will need.
After that, it's up to situational demand if you go for an Alloy or base resource, but you will want to be quickish about getting this next planet so you can start shifting jobs on your capital towards tech as you will likely be behind.

Now the whole thing that makes all this viable is espionage. You will be an energy credit rich empire so you can fund it. Espionage and diplomacy are your weapons of choice.

Use your envoys to pull Ethic compatible empires into your Federation, wage wars of Ideology to make compatible empires, use espionage to isolate enemy empires (especially other megacorps, can't have them taking your Branch Office space), steal tech to keep in the tech game (even from your allies). Buy favours if needed to help you control the sway of the galactic community.
Basically, turn your federation into a super power where your allies are mostly all sharing tech (and you stealing on top), ideally completely dominating the entire galaxy way before the crisis so the AI has time to mostly just focus on their own development without wars. Get yourself a stonking big Fed Fleet ready for whatever the crisis is and go to town when it turns up. You should have maxed out Fed Level at this point so you'll have a bunch of bonuses to help with that.

As for Ascension perks, the core 4 are Universal Transactions (no brainer), Technological Ascendancy (out of habit I guess), Defender of the Galaxy (+50% crisis damage, stacks nicely with the other +50% you get from your Fed, +20 opinion helps with bringing empires into your Fed), Grasp the Void (+5 starbases, if you put them all to Anchorages you get more Naval Cap than Galactic Force Projection).

The other 4 are kinda up to you, with so much migration going on, you might not want to bother with editing your pops much, but I imagine you can get a lot out of it if you do.
I went bio path so tweaking all the various races in my empire wasn't too much of a hassle without forcing Assimilation which annoys the Egalitarians. Mastery of Nature for that +2 districts and Galactic Wonders (I used a ring world to soak up extra growth, I never intended on it filling any real role though, it was mostly just there since you should be rich AF, especially once the Dyson Sphere comes online)

I had machines, but being Egalitarian and giving rights ect ect meant they weren't an issue.

A corpo build I used on GA ^

[キールス]

You could always go to a multiplayer game with a criminal heritage corpo and troll people with your branch offices.

[pete3great]

This is one of those "once you figure out a playstyle, you'll love it" sort of things. Two builds are pretty powerful. Someone above mentioned a unity build. Those a strong for megacorps, especially if you go all in with spritualism (fanatic/traditional/gospel of the masses). A heavy trade/diplomacy focused build is powerful too. both really shine if you have them in charge of trade federations where they get all the benefits of the various trade agreements available to megacorps at once. Extra consumer goods and unity based on my trade production? Yes, thank you.

[Terijian]

trade isnt pointless, the clerk job sucks yes, but trade builds can be very powerful. Its insanely easy for corps to take control of federations and the community. Also if you start with ring or remnant you an easily be a tiny few systems empire in indirect control of huge portions of space. Corps can go wide and be strong this is true but they are the masters of tall. Bastions of soft power.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by 76561198041145303:

Common Ground Origin (I know, the AI are frustrating as hell and it can be real dicey early game with their antics, but you will need the protection they will provide, plus they give you early Branch Office candidates which is fantastic free energy income, 1st building ideally will be the one that boosts trade value by 25%, second generally will be the +10 amenities as they tend to have a shortfall at that point and you want your allies to maintain what ever edge they can have, you get +10 energy from that building too, after that it's kinda free pick depending on what you need).

What was the AI acceptance to change the federation type into Trade League?
-100?
Well if you can't have a Trade League, don't play a megacorp.



Besides that, this origin just has to be flat out the worst. I have tried this a couple of times, and it always had at least one or two federation members being completely locked in so they couldn't expand.

You don't get habitable planets, so you only have the one vanilla-quality homeworld.

And then your ally opens the Prikki-Ti and you have game over just because the AI attacks them with 6 individual fleets instead of merging them.

[pete3great]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Originally posted by 76561198041145303:

Common Ground Origin (I know, the AI are frustrating as hell and it can be real dicey early game with their antics, but you will need the protection they will provide, plus they give you early Branch Office candidates which is fantastic free energy income, 1st building ideally will be the one that boosts trade value by 25%, second generally will be the +10 amenities as they tend to have a shortfall at that point and you want your allies to maintain what ever edge they can have, you get +10 energy from that building too, after that it's kinda free pick depending on what you need).

What was the AI acceptance to change the federation type into Trade League?
-100?
Well if you can't have a Trade League, don't play a megacorp.



Besides that, this origin just has to be flat out the worst. I have tried this a couple of times, and it always had at least one or two federation members being completely locked in so they couldn't expand.

You don't get habitable planets, so you only have the one vanilla-quality homeworld.

And then your ally opens the Prikki-Ti and you have game over just because the AI attacks them with 6 individual fleets instead of merging them.

Yeah, definitely don't do common ground or the hegemony origin.

[Ape-tier Buffoonery]

Originally posted by pete3great:

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

What was the AI acceptance to change the federation type into Trade League?
-100?
Well if you can't have a Trade League, don't play a megacorp.



Besides that, this origin just has to be flat out the worst. I have tried this a couple of times, and it always had at least one or two federation members being completely locked in so they couldn't expand.

You don't get habitable planets, so you only have the one vanilla-quality homeworld.

And then your ally opens the Prikki-Ti and you have game over just because the AI attacks them with 6 individual fleets instead of merging them.

Yeah, definitely don't do common ground or the hegemony origin.

Hegemony /can/ work as you can kick one of the empires out and then attack them. With your own fleet + fed fleet you can conquer the empire you kicked out. Keep the third empire around just for Hegemony perks, a Federation Fleet, and you've essentially doubled your population very early with a fairly built up planet.

Is it the best strategy objectively? By no means it's not top meta, but I think simply playing Common ground/Hegemony the way it's supposed to be played would be gimping yourself, unless you truly enjoy the more passive play style.

[Voca]

Wow thanks guys. These are immensely detailed and helpful answers, and surely changed my view on corp government.

Criminal sounds really fun. I am thinking maybe to play a Void dweller corp, so I can play on trade and go very tall.

[VoiD]

I made a fatantic Xenophile/egalitarian megacorp once to play on GA focusing on diplomacy, it was probably my esiest game ever, you can befriend anybody besides the exterminators (and in this patch they are worthless chumps anyway) and you can control the AI in any way you want, form all the alliances you you want easily, control the senate easily, basically the galaxy is your playground, their economy is solid, they can get trade agreements with anybody, using that solid economy they can field the largest navy and the most scientists in the galaxy.

Even as other civs, in every game I play in a new galaxy allowing them to spawn they always, always turn out to be the MVP leaders of the galaxy unless they get really unlucky (like spawning right next to an adv start exterminator)

I'd say megacorps are still better versions of regular corps

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Voca:

Criminal sounds really fun. I am thinking maybe to play a Void dweller corp, so I can play on trade and go very tall.

The mention of criminal syndicates was *probably* a joke.
They don't really offer anything good for the syndicate player, and are only annoying for the victims.



You cannot form commercial pacts, so you don't benefit from the free ones you get in a Trade League federation. You only pay the 10% of your energy income as federation membership with nothing in return (besides the fed bonuses themselves).

You can set up branch offices anywhere, including your federation members. The criminal branch offices depend on the crime rate on their planets.

Problem: If the victim has crime on their planets, they can simply build some enforcers to reduce crime to 0. So the branch office doesn't work.

And the offices can be randomly shut down at any time - for that they are WAY too expensive. Afterwards you are also locked out from building new ones, in the meantime any other megacorp can take that spot.

For the host, it is absolutely annoying that when the offices get shut down, they get unemployed ruler-tier pops who can't find a job anywhere, and take ages to get demoted to specialists.
And of course there's the need to employ enforcers, which in the current patch are more of a waste than ever due to the total population reduction.