Which basic companies are the best?
I mean, are they easy to make, profitable, provide good bonuses, and have prestige goods?
I mean, are they easy to make, profitable, provide good bonuses, and have prestige goods?
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I think most are quite good. There's still the gold company, which is just a really solid first pick, if you have significant gold mines, as it just shoots your income up and makes you snowball better. United Construction Conglomerate is still really good, even if there's no prestige good from it, but it gives 20% construction throughput anyway. Oil company is also great, as oil just tends to be one of the highest traded goods on the global market. Groceries can also be consumed in high quantities now, so food company with its 5% birth rate is actually quite decent now.
Also don't sleep on plantation companies, as they move them from Landowners into Capitalists and can make a huge amount of money... but they also commonly can't be be built in an incorporated state, if you have no capacity for any of their default buildings.
As for ones I'd avoid now, it's probably Iron+Lead, as even basic steel one can have coal and iron added to it, but you actually get a prestige good. Or the textiles one, as it's kinda just worse fabric one, unless you really want prestige clothes over prestige meat (which also is consumed far far more in this patch).
And obviously, the telephones one still sucks.
Also don't sleep on plantation companies, as they move them from Landowners into Capitalists and can make a huge amount of money... but they also commonly can't be be built in an incorporated state, if you have no capacity for any of their default buildings.
As for ones I'd avoid now, it's probably Iron+Lead, as even basic steel one can have coal and iron added to it, but you actually get a prestige good. Or the textiles one, as it's kinda just worse fabric one, unless you really want prestige clothes over prestige meat (which also is consumed far far more in this patch).
And obviously, the telephones one still sucks.
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If you only have access to basic companies I think that there are a few obvious choices over some broad categories:
If you want a company to produce goods purely for consumption by pops, there's only 4 worth mentioning: Basic Fabrics, the two Basic Plantations companies, and Basic Home Goods. I think of these, Basic Home Goods is arguably the best because it comes coupled with glass and (if you can spare the charter slot) logging, which are both critical industrial sectors. Basic Fabrics also seems strong, meat seems to be a very highly demanded good now, it's an input for food industries so you get a little extra throughput there, the company also comes with cotton and textiles, and the extra textile mill throughput bonus is the best prosperity bonus of the lot. The plantation companies are just slightly less generally useful as they only let you produce various cash crops and nothing else, but might be better if you want to focus your entire economy on one thing.
The basic Food company is still noteworthy for its 5% birth rate prosperity modifier, and now it comes with a prestige good as well. If you absolutely insist on having a grain company, food company + wheat farms is definitely the way to go.
For industrial goods, the question is really do you want prestige steel or tools; it's fairly inefficient to get both. Assuming that you want to have companies capable of owning coal and iron mines and tooling workshops, you need one of the following company combinations:
Basic Metalwork (tools, steel) + Basic Metals / Minerals (coal + iron, plus either sulphur or lead). Gets prestige tools but only one extra sector on top of your tools / steel / coal / iron, and no particularly good prestige bonuses. Maybe I'm undervaluing the military industries and army offense from the basic metalworking company.
Basic Steel (steel, iron or coal) + Basic Forestry (tools, logging, rubber). Gets prestige steel instead of tools and picks up the lucrative logging and rubber sectors along with two useful productivity bonuses, in exchange for missing either iron or coal.
The United Construction company kind of messes up the calculus for this but given that basic home goods is even better than it was in 1.8 and that wages are a smaller part of construction costs I think the construction company is no longer as good as it was previously. It's good, but is it worth giving up one of your power bloc mandates for?
If you want a company to produce goods purely for consumption by pops, there's only 4 worth mentioning: Basic Fabrics, the two Basic Plantations companies, and Basic Home Goods. I think of these, Basic Home Goods is arguably the best because it comes coupled with glass and (if you can spare the charter slot) logging, which are both critical industrial sectors. Basic Fabrics also seems strong, meat seems to be a very highly demanded good now, it's an input for food industries so you get a little extra throughput there, the company also comes with cotton and textiles, and the extra textile mill throughput bonus is the best prosperity bonus of the lot. The plantation companies are just slightly less generally useful as they only let you produce various cash crops and nothing else, but might be better if you want to focus your entire economy on one thing.
The basic Food company is still noteworthy for its 5% birth rate prosperity modifier, and now it comes with a prestige good as well. If you absolutely insist on having a grain company, food company + wheat farms is definitely the way to go.
For industrial goods, the question is really do you want prestige steel or tools; it's fairly inefficient to get both. Assuming that you want to have companies capable of owning coal and iron mines and tooling workshops, you need one of the following company combinations:
Basic Metalwork (tools, steel) + Basic Metals / Minerals (coal + iron, plus either sulphur or lead). Gets prestige tools but only one extra sector on top of your tools / steel / coal / iron, and no particularly good prestige bonuses. Maybe I'm undervaluing the military industries and army offense from the basic metalworking company.
Basic Steel (steel, iron or coal) + Basic Forestry (tools, logging, rubber). Gets prestige steel instead of tools and picks up the lucrative logging and rubber sectors along with two useful productivity bonuses, in exchange for missing either iron or coal.
The United Construction company kind of messes up the calculus for this but given that basic home goods is even better than it was in 1.8 and that wages are a smaller part of construction costs I think the construction company is no longer as good as it was previously. It's good, but is it worth giving up one of your power bloc mandates for?
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I was conviced you could get both and had to check, never had a company with 2 options where I wanted both industry rights (no use doubbling), so I guess I learnt something.
Also tired playing Sweden and stacking prestige iron (LKAB flavoured comapny with iron and steel optrion), prestige steel and prestige tools, but that was a pretty ineffcient use of companies for bonuses that arent that large in the scheme of things. You only gain the 20% bonus if 100% of the inputs are prestige goods, ALL goods. So if your inputs are half coal and half iron you will max at a 10% throughput bonus.
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Wait, are you only able to benefit from one prestige good in the throughput bonus? I was under the impression that you would get stacking benefits from using both prestige steel and prestige tools, in which case the benefit from using both far outweighs the downside of wasting the expanded building option in the tooling company as far as I'm concerned. 40% construction throughput bonus? Sign me up.
The throughput bonus caps out at 20% if all inputs are prestige goods, you don't get 20% per good.
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I kinda wish they extended the United Fruit style of requirements to the generic companies so you can establish them merely by owning levels, no matter where. Maybe not the industrial ones, but definitely the extractive ones.
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And it is only 20% if ALL your inputs are prestige goods as I said. If the inputs are 100 steel 100 tools and 100 coal, even if you supply only prestige tools and prestige steel the bonus would only be 16.7%.
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Drat. In that case, prestige goods are a lot worse than I thought in general, except perhaps for edging out competition in exports.
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Yeah, prestige goods don't seem as important as I thought (but they are very nice and shiny and I want them...). I'm guessing it's more ideal to just try to cover as many bases as you can with regards to how many buildings the companies will benefit, with a focus on construction goods (because growth) and resource buildings (to get more out of finite potentials).
Prestige goods are probably more or less necessary if you're trying to dominate a good on the world market, though.
Prestige goods are probably more or less necessary if you're trying to dominate a good on the world market, though.
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If you have a good amount of spare arable land, basic fabrics is very good because the demand for meat is astronomical in the current patch. Cattle ranches themselves aren’t particularly awesome at default prices. but because demand is so high prices will usually be +50% and company ranches just start printing money.
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Given the demand for wood, we would like to change our tools to rubber ones, so acquiring precision tools to reduce rubber consumption seems attractive.
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I found the groceries company the biggest employer of two of my runs so far. It shift comsumption of food to groceries so badly, that pops don't want to eat anything else. So to feed each and every pop you need a factory and that is great. Also 5% birthrate on top of that. For example in my Japan run it was 257k groceries to only feed all my pops. And next on the list was 143k clothes for them to wear.
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My go-to companies are:
(1) Generic Metalworks (Iron, Lead + Coal) -> takes care of all critical mining goods. You need alot of it, it's expensive to build and it's super profitable.
(2) Generic Fabric (Ranches, Cotton + Clothing) -> Pops love Meat, so this company can take care of both Food and Clothing supply for early game SOL stabilization.
(3) Generic Steel (Steel) -> +5% CI is very good. You need a lot of steel later down the line, and it actually makes up enough of the input % in a lot of other buildings that the Prestige good is reasonably effective.
(4) Power Bloc Construction -> (Tools, Steel, Glass) -> Great alternative to Steel Company, perhaps even solid when stacked. Covers all critical goods for your CI, and also helps with pop buy packages.
(5) Generic Automotive (Engines, Automobiles) -> You need a lot of Engines and Automobile production is insanely profitable.
More situational options:
(I) Generic Plantation -> Opium is a fantastic money maker and Tea tends to be in high demand as well. The Coffee/Tobbaco/Sugar one does also work if you have the related deposits.
(II) Generic Lumber -> Solid options if you have lots of Lumber deposits or plan to build up an extensive Rubber production later down the line.
(III) Generic Gold -> Interesting option for countries that have a lot of gold deposits (Russia, South Africa, etc.).
(IV) Generic Paper -> I am actually warming up to this one with countries that need a lot of BUR & tax capacity(e.g. China). Being able to push down the paper price translates into direct goverment expense savings.
(V) Generic Food -> Might be an interesting option late game when base SOL is so high that everyone can buy Processed Food. But not sure about the opportunity cost in general.
(1) Generic Metalworks (Iron, Lead + Coal) -> takes care of all critical mining goods. You need alot of it, it's expensive to build and it's super profitable.
(2) Generic Fabric (Ranches, Cotton + Clothing) -> Pops love Meat, so this company can take care of both Food and Clothing supply for early game SOL stabilization.
(3) Generic Steel (Steel) -> +5% CI is very good. You need a lot of steel later down the line, and it actually makes up enough of the input % in a lot of other buildings that the Prestige good is reasonably effective.
(4) Power Bloc Construction -> (Tools, Steel, Glass) -> Great alternative to Steel Company, perhaps even solid when stacked. Covers all critical goods for your CI, and also helps with pop buy packages.
(5) Generic Automotive (Engines, Automobiles) -> You need a lot of Engines and Automobile production is insanely profitable.
More situational options:
(I) Generic Plantation -> Opium is a fantastic money maker and Tea tends to be in high demand as well. The Coffee/Tobbaco/Sugar one does also work if you have the related deposits.
(II) Generic Lumber -> Solid options if you have lots of Lumber deposits or plan to build up an extensive Rubber production later down the line.
(III) Generic Gold -> Interesting option for countries that have a lot of gold deposits (Russia, South Africa, etc.).
(IV) Generic Paper -> I am actually warming up to this one with countries that need a lot of BUR & tax capacity(e.g. China). Being able to push down the paper price translates into direct goverment expense savings.
(V) Generic Food -> Might be an interesting option late game when base SOL is so high that everyone can buy Processed Food. But not sure about the opportunity cost in general.
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Isn't it Belgium special one? Generic one is tools, guns and artillery. Not super good if not count special tools bonus to throughput.
The one you are showing is the generic Tool company. That one is indeed a bit "meh". The Prestige Tools don't have a lot of impact - since the bonus scales on the cost of the input fractions they make up it tends to only grant 2-4% throughput bonus on most buildings. The +5% Offence is pretty decent, though, considering that Artillery scales its attack value a lot at later tiers.
The one I mean is the Power Bloc unlocked one. Everyone in a PB with Construction III can access it, so depending on how you define "generic" it may or may not count for this thread.
The one I mean is the Power Bloc unlocked one. Everyone in a PB with Construction III can access it, so depending on how you define "generic" it may or may not count for this thread.
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I see... I didn't encounter power block company for a few hundred hours in new patch yet. AI didn't choose it and I didn't form my own power block.
I think the basic ones are household goods—basic, quality furniture—and clothing, meaning common fashionable clothes. In the United States, both are by far the most profitable, both internally and when you're granted investment rights. I believe the clothing one alone reaches a trillion in global goods. These two are so strong that I think they should be your foundation in any country.
Clothing takes a sudden big hit towards the end when the middle class reaches 40, because demand suddenly disappears at living standard 40. It was hard to reach in 1.8, but is easy to reach in 1.9.