I was thinking about megacorporation builds, not a spiritual or criminal one.
Any good idea that does not include xenophile and 31241541232 species ?
Any good idea that does not include xenophile and 31241541232 species ?
Builds for regular megacorporation
- Thread starter Sayakus
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Use the Media Conglomerate and Franchising civics, grab either Authoritarian or Xenophobe to allow for xeno slavery, and take Nihilistic Acquisition as your first Ascension Perk (might want to also be Militaristic for the early combat bonus). Steal slaves from other empires to act as servants/livestock, force neighbors to be subsidiaries to act as buffer states.
I can't find any idea that really synergizes. Either you are Criminal, you are Xenophile, or you are a normal empire with a 50% sprawl penalty and crap civics in exchange for very little. Not being a xenophile megacorp basically means a massive dice roll hoping you next to empires that randomly decide to love you.
Thing is if you're going to go to war with people you're still way better off conquering even with the 50% sprawl penalty, so the concept of going to war to open markets or make subsidiaries doesn't really seem sound.
Thing is if you're going to go to war with people you're still way better off conquering even with the 50% sprawl penalty, so the concept of going to war to open markets or make subsidiaries doesn't really seem sound.
I sort of half-agree with you. (Since there isn't a "Meh, sort of agree" button, I'll have to post...)
The thing about being a non-criminal mega-corp is that it seems to be geared towards tall play (whatever we define as tall). But the catch is that even if you can get other empires to accept your branch offices, your growth ends up being limited by the growth of other empires. Putting branch offices everywhere isn't worth the effort (many planets have meager branch office income and no room for extra buildings) AND increases sprawl. You have to be selective. But that means that (unless you are running a co-op multiplayer game and you just want to help your friend by putting offices everywhere in their empire) it's easier to just steal their planets for yourself and develop them, sprawl be damned.
Criminal mega-corps are a different beast. It didn't occur to me until after I played one and then was victimized by an AI one in a subsequent game that the real benefit/consequence of a criminal mega-corp is that other empires are essentially "taxed" a building slot and 2-4 POPs on every planet thanks to the increased need for precinct houses OR the need to cut deals with the stability lords. The AI is pretty vigilant in putting up precinct houses to repel criminal mega-corps, and it leaves them in place. So, when I was a criminal mega-corp, I had only a few branch offices around the galaxy. But most empires were devoting considerable resources to "defeat" my branch offices. I didn't get a lot out of them, but the effect scaled well with the power of other empires. Even meager planets were getting precinct houses to preempt my criminal offices. So, while I wasn't getting a lot out of them in terms of direct income, the "tax" on the AI was somewhat punishing and scaled well throughout the game.
I confess, though, I'm not the expert on mega-corp play. Your statement about "crap civics" seems somewhat accurate. But I'm open to the possibility that I just don't understand what I should be doing. Should I be creating subsidiaries out of planets I own on a regular basis to keep sprawl manageable? Should I really run Franchising just for the sprawl reduction for branch offices and spam them? Is indentured assets really worth it? These are questions I can't answer.
Megacorps are only good for tall play. Xphiles are more or less required since you need to get commercial pacts to start building offices. You can play as Autocrat with Nihilistic Aquisition, and tributaries instead for vassals, but normal empires do it better.
Main idea for Megacorps are their offices. You can specialize them as needed, but having higher trade modifiers is desirable. Free Traders and Media Conglomerate are good for this. Franchising might be a solid pick later on, if you prefer to conquer xenos instead of trading with them. Almost all interactions with aliens will depend on your diplo standing with them, and Xenophile is the best pick, with added benefit of high trade bonus. You can pick ascension perk to nullify influence cost of commercial pacts, but frankly it'd be rather waste of perks.
Criminals sound interesting but in reality they are quite annoying, since AI in most cases prefer to build enforcers to deal with your activities, and for good branch value you need both trade AND crime.
Your best bet for a normal corp would be Thrifty, Free Traders/Private Prospectors to start with, later changed ot Free Traders/Media Conglomerate/whatever suits your playstyle, F. Xphiles and prolly Autocratic. Defensive Pacts are better being avoided if you wanna spread wide with your offices and best rivals are Hives, Machines and other corps, just to preserve your potential markets. Even Xenophobes will be swayed by you once in awhile. No need to build generators, clerks are your friends.
Main idea for Megacorps are their offices. You can specialize them as needed, but having higher trade modifiers is desirable. Free Traders and Media Conglomerate are good for this. Franchising might be a solid pick later on, if you prefer to conquer xenos instead of trading with them. Almost all interactions with aliens will depend on your diplo standing with them, and Xenophile is the best pick, with added benefit of high trade bonus. You can pick ascension perk to nullify influence cost of commercial pacts, but frankly it'd be rather waste of perks.
Criminals sound interesting but in reality they are quite annoying, since AI in most cases prefer to build enforcers to deal with your activities, and for good branch value you need both trade AND crime.
Your best bet for a normal corp would be Thrifty, Free Traders/Private Prospectors to start with, later changed ot Free Traders/Media Conglomerate/whatever suits your playstyle, F. Xphiles and prolly Autocratic. Defensive Pacts are better being avoided if you wanna spread wide with your offices and best rivals are Hives, Machines and other corps, just to preserve your potential markets. Even Xenophobes will be swayed by you once in awhile. No need to build generators, clerks are your friends.
Subsidiaries are a nice idea. A tributary that additionally follows you to war. The issue is that vassals don't get AI bonuses and most would agree the AI is awful. If you are new and playing on difficulties where AI don't normally get bonuses they might be viable, but I assume most people here need to give the current AI some kind of buff, at least +25%. A +0% AI that is also paying you taxes is just not going to be competently raising fleets (after being defeated in a war no less) to fight much bigger +25% AIs or players playing at the level of +25% AIs. So really all you get is a tributary that can't be integrated and you can't make vassals.
The intent behind Megacorps seemed to be that sprawl would make expansion through non-subsidiary methods undesirable. If that was the case, Paradox significantly undershot the level of penalty sprawl would need to give to do so. If they increased the sprawl penalty enough to do so (I dunno, +150% maybe), they'd also need to buff subsidiaries and branches enough to make purely relying on them viable compared to normal empires.
Indentured assets is just slaver guild renamed. A civic that isn't terribly great for normal empires and would seem worse for Megacorps, since Megecorps tend to get enough energy without needing to run tons of technicians. With 40% of your population forced into lower strata, what are they going to do? Mineral districts are limited and food districts don't need to be filled to produce an excess.
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Main problem with megacorps is that their branch offices suck. Well, you can prolly get nice naval capacity out of your mercenary liaison offices, and some energy thanks to Commercial Forum, but rest of bonuses are rather low.
Gospel of the Masses and Spiritualism add another nice branch building, slowly subverting others to your way of thinking. With Psionic ascendancy and Xeno-Compatibility, you more or less forget about trait optimization and that your empire pops is complete and irredeemable mess, and just focus on something else.
But beside some credits and probably naval capacity, you don't get much out of them. And after creation of galactic market energy is the cheapest basic resource. Plus most of it comes up later, when your trading partners grow enough to support at least couple of branch buildings.
If you got many hives/machines and other corps around, you're in trouble. In fact, having two-three corps around might be exploited by switching to regular empire and allowing them to spend their resources on you. After all, branch buildings go both ways. But it more or less defeats idea of playing a corp to start with.
Gospel of the Masses and Spiritualism add another nice branch building, slowly subverting others to your way of thinking. With Psionic ascendancy and Xeno-Compatibility, you more or less forget about trait optimization and that your empire pops is complete and irredeemable mess, and just focus on something else.
But beside some credits and probably naval capacity, you don't get much out of them. And after creation of galactic market energy is the cheapest basic resource. Plus most of it comes up later, when your trading partners grow enough to support at least couple of branch buildings.
If you got many hives/machines and other corps around, you're in trouble. In fact, having two-three corps around might be exploited by switching to regular empire and allowing them to spend their resources on you. After all, branch buildings go both ways. But it more or less defeats idea of playing a corp to start with.
i'm biased towards authoritarian one cuz it's my favorite ethics(even if you'll decide not to have any slaves in your empire). so i'll suggest authorutatian\any (for example authoritarian\militarist\materialist or authoritarian\f.xenophile etc.)
civics - +admincap (and colony ships) and +tradevalue
racial traits: I like wasteful\repugnant\rapid breeder\nomadic\adaptive. and then maybe add thrifty(in place of wasteful) with genemod
if you don't wanna have 100500 species in your empire - you can just breed and build robots. it's almost as fast. though I suggest to buy slaves from the market from time to time (especially to make them domestic)
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Clerks are slaves, too.
The bad news, though, is that slavery bonuses don't improve the amenities or trade output of clerks. So, you put them to the lash for reduced consumer goods (that's a good thing), but it's not like putting them to lash makes your CPAs any better at using Excel (not so good). It does make you wonder what the slave processing facility does with clerks, though. Are they implanted with obedience chips that force them to use bootleg versions of Excel?
The issue with mandatory 40% to lower strata is that it makes ecumenopolis less viable, since most of these kinds of planets don't have or need 40% of their population on non-specialist jobs.
as for the branch offices - don't forget that they have another strategic use. if you'll buy yourself a commercial pact (or you're criminal) you can establish office in the capitol (where AI often hold most of their fleet) to take a peek at their design, technology level and etc. i'd say it's a good option for some influence (and energy for megacorps are usually not an issue)
I haven't played a heavily conquering corp yet, but spamming offices in your subsidiaries might be a viable strategy. So, just conquer a sector or two, create subsidiary and build offices there. Liberation wars might be useful to avoid heavy influence drain.
Well, creating vassals yourself leads to creating another corp, so is useless. Pity.
Clerks are slaves, too.
The bad news, though, is that slavery bonuses don't improve the amenities or trade output of clerks. So, you put them to the lash for reduced consumer goods (that's a good thing), but it's not like putting them to lash makes your CPAs any better at using Excel (not so good). It does make you wonder what the slave processing facility does with clerks, though. Are they implanted with obedience chips that force them to use bootleg versions of Excel?
The issue with mandatory 40% to lower strata is that it makes ecumenopolis less viable, since most of these kinds of planets don't have or need 40% of their population on non-specialist jobs.
It could still work. Domestic servitude could soak up a lot of excess lower strata pops, and they're fairly efficient for producing amenities.
I don't xenophile is that mandatory, though it is good buff for pacts. You'll have to bribe people to accept your commercial pact, usually even as xenophile. As long as you aren't purger or something like that, not being xenophile just means you'll need a little bit bigger bribes.
This, of course, can be bypassed with large enough fleet. Fanatic militarist-type game works very well as long as you can get your first subsidiaries to get the snowball running, which means very aggressive early-game.
This, of course, can be bypassed with large enough fleet. Fanatic militarist-type game works very well as long as you can get your first subsidiaries to get the snowball running, which means very aggressive early-game.
