Corporation (concept) (Civ4)

A corporation is "a large business or organization that under the law has the rights and duties of an individual and follows a specific purpose." The corporations of Civilization IV, however, do not bear tremendous resemblance to real-life corporations. Instead, they are mechanisms that can add substantial production to a city, at the cost of higher maintenance costs. Thus, in essence they convert gold into other basic goods (food, hammers, science, and culture).

Corporations were introduced in Beyond the Sword. There are seven corporations:

• Aluminum Co.
• Cereal Mills
• Civilized Jewelers Inc.
• Creative Constructions
• Mining Inc.
• Sid's Sushi Co.
• Standard Ethanol

Founding a Corporation

A civilization must meet several conditions to found a corporation:

• It must have the Corporation technology.
• It must also have the particular technology that allows the particular corporation.
• It must have a Great Person specific to the corporation, in a city where the corporation is allowed to spread.
• It cannot be running the State Property or Mercantilism civics.
• The city must have access to at least one of the resources consumed by the corporation.

When all of these conditions are met, the Great Person can found the corporation in that city. The option to do this will be a button that the Great Person has when he is selected. Press the button to found the corp.

When a corporation is founded in a city, that city becomes the corporate headquarters of that corporation. The corporation is "in" that city, but in addition the following effects hold:

• No competing corp can be founded in, or spread into, that city.
• All gold from corporate income comes to that city (and may be amplified by its buildings).

Effect of a Corporation

When a city has a corporation present, there are three main effects:

• The city may build executives of that corporation.
• The city gets bonus production of various goods, as a function of the resources available to the city and the particular corporation.
• The city has its maintenance costs increase, as a function of the resources that are available to the city which are used by the corporation.

The production of a corporation happens simply based on its presence, and the resources available. The city's population is not involved. Each corp has one or more goods which it produces, and one or more resources which it takes as inputs. For each input resource, a certain amount of product is made; this conversion ratio varies with the size of the map (larger maps have many more resources, so corps get less production each). It is possible (and desirable) to have multiple resources of any type used by a corp.

Spreading a Corporation

Each city with a corporation present can build Corporate Executives. These units are similar to Missionaries, except that they require a lump sum of gold to spread their corporation into a city, and their attempt will always succeed if the money is paid. The city then receives all benefits (and demerits) of the corporation.

Competing corporations cannot coexist in the same city. If there is a competing corp in a city, and it is not the headquarter city for the competitor, then spreading the corp is possible, but it will require a much larger amount of gold. It is not possible to spread a corporation into the city where the corporate headquarters of a competing corp is.

Competing Corporations

This table shows which corporations compete with each other and which resources they both consume. Before founding a corporation you may want to check that it doesn't compete with another corporation you might be interested in.

	Aluminum Co.	Cereal Mills	Civilized Jewelers Inc	Creative Constructions	Mining Inc.	Sid's Sushi Co.	Standard Ethanol
Aluminum Co.	–	Ok	Ok	Ok		Ok	Ok
Cereal Mills	Ok	–	Ok	Ok	Ok		,
Civilized Jewelers Inc.	Ok	Ok	–	Ok	,	Ok	Ok
Creative Constructions	Ok	Ok	Ok	–	,	Ok	Ok
Mining Inc.		Ok	,	,	–	Ok	Ok
Sid's Sushi Co.	Ok		Ok	Ok	Ok	–
Standard Ethanol	Ok	,	Ok	Ok	Ok		–

See also

• Corporation Strategy
• Corporation (technology)