Forums → Game Walkthroughs → Corporation Inc. Master Plans
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Been playing "Corporation Inc." for about a week now, and I've been getting considerably better at beating it faster and faster. It's not easy going it alone, so I thought I'd share my ideas and see what kind of feedback I can get as well.
Basic strategy for beating the game is quite simple really: just build an office building, hire some employees to earn money, and hire researchers to develop upgrades (the game ends when all research is complete).
My best strategies for getting through the game quickly involve about a 50/50 mix of workers and researchers at the start over five or six offices (depending on difficulty). First thing I do is pause the game, and I go into the menu to lower the graphics quality and disable the money labels and worker thought bubbles. The faster the game runs, the more button pushes I can get each day, which means more money to burn.
While the game is paused, I start going through the "achievements" labeled on the bottom of the screen. I keep my building complex on two stories and three offices wide so that the workers can enter and leave the site quickly (this makes for shorter restroom/food/gym breaks for my employees seeing as I can't build the facilities on site yet). Once I reach the achievement for earning $2,000 in a day, I'm ready to unpause the game and get started earning.
As soon as the researchers get the "Accountant" unlocked, I pause the game again and use some of my saved money to promote my researchers. I also open the research folder and select "Personnel" so my research focuses on the HR rep next. This way, the research moves faster and I add an HR guy to the top floor (I found it is better to use HR to keep morale up so there is no need for a janitor, just fire the janitor as soon as the "hire a janitor" achievement is unlocked -- if you unpause the game, the janitor will make a break for it and you'll have to wait for nightfall to fire him).
Once the researchers unlock the "Senior Worker," I pause the game again (I do a LOT of pausing) and open up the research tab again and select "Offices" so that the "Deluxe Office" is the next research target.
Hopefully I can unlock the deluxe office by 2pm on day 0 with at least $7,000 in my account so that I can afford to promote four workers in one office and upgrade that office to deluxe. On Easy, I should be able to get at least two deluxe offices on the bottom floor, if not three.
Day 1, I focus my attention on making money. I keep the researchers bouncing back and forth between designing better offices and inventing better worker promotions. I leave at least one office ready to upgrade by the end of the day, and when I earn at least $2,000, I can start working on more achievements over-night (the first of which is "upgrade an office".
When it wants me to promote a worker, I build an office and add and promote another researcher. By the morning, I should have an extra research office or two, another upgraded office, an accounting office (populated with accountants) if not two, and three elevator shafts - one in the middle and one on each end of my building. I should also have a bathroom set up on the fourth floor (usually) with space for a gym on one side.
From that point, it is fairly straight-forward. Two accounting offices, three worker offices, one supervisor office (bottom floor between the workers - pause the game every so often, select a supervisor that isn't on the bottom floor, and "move" him back to his own office with the "move" button). I keep all my offices upgraded and my workers/supervisors/accountants promoted, and I should be earning at least $10,000/"hour." I may break my research away from those two categories and work on the "transportation" category as well, there are a couple very important "achievements" coming up on day 2.
I'm using all my money to add and promote researchers from that point on, and I get the "fire pole" and "lift tube" achievements as soon as possible. I demolish the fire pole and my three elevators as soon as I'm ready to build the lift tube, and I put the tube right in the center of the building where the middle elevator was. If I'm making $10,000/hour and I have a gym on the 4th floor with a lift tube in the middle, I'm golden.
Just select "building height" as the research target, and build offices up the lift tube 2-3 offices wide and populate with researchers. Don't worry about promoting anybody yet, wait until you get all 300 employees (I almost always end up at 312). You get a $100,000 bonus to use on a second restroom and a cafeteria, and the rest of the money goes into promoting researchers. It's time-consuming, but more rewarding on research speed if you promote as many researchers as possible, so go one promotion level at a time with each researcher that's at their desk all the way back down the building. Don't forget to keep moving those managers or VPs back to the first floor so they can keep your workers productive. More money means a LOT more research at this point.
I haven't been fortunate enough yet to beat the game by quitting time on day 3, but it shouldn't be too late in the afternoon on day 4 when all the research gets completed. The end of the game can be fairly tedious. It goes: pause, move the VPs to the bottom floor, promote 12-20 researchers, unpause, repeat.
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Helpful tips:
Don't forget that you can move employees from one office to another. This is important if you need to promote employees and upgrade offices. Four employees to a dedicated office is always the best option, but that doesn't mean that you have to HIRE the employees with that specific office in mind for them. You can also move employees to their office using the move command if your transportation is tight.
Promoted employees do nothing for you unless you also upgrade the office that they work from. Wait for the funds and research to upgrade their office before you go ahead and promote them. Researchers are the exception; they are just as efficient in a janitor's closet as in a CEO's office. Researchers cannot be promoted, however, if they are in a specialized office.
Less is better. Massive amounts of employees are not more efficient than smaller amounts. Promotions double the amount that each employee can do in a day, but they take four times as much in salary, and they cost a lot more than the cost of building another office and hiring more people. The math says that it isn't worth the promotion, but trust me; it is. Better offices and promoted workers are much more efficient because they don't cause the game to "lag" as hard and they can put out 3-4 times as much work in a day as the alternative (hiring double employees).
Experiment with different levels of workers as your "maximum." Based on the idea that research wins the game, you spend the first half of the game getting your revenues up and the second half spending all your money on research. My best results are:
Three or Four Advanced Offices with Specialized Workers (2 Promotions)
One Supervisor's Office with Managers or VPs (1-2 Promotions)
Two Advanced Accounting Offices with Lead Accountants (1 Promotion)
One Tech Office (or Lair) with Senior Techs (1 Promotion) (The achievement says "hire 5" ... so hire 5 and fire 1)
Two HR reps (no promotions and no special office -- put a couple researchers in the same office with them)
Researchers galore! (2-3 promotions by the end of the game)
0 Janitors (Hire 1 and fire him straight-away)
When it comes around 4:30-5:00pm and the employees are just about to start rapping up for the day, DON'T hire or promote anybody. This is especially true at the end of the game and you're promoting researchers left and right. Keep an eye on the clock versus your research level. If you're not gonna make it by the end of the day, just stop hiring and promoting and let your money pile up nice and high. A late-in-the-day hiring or promotion will only add to the salary costs at the end of the work day and you won't get any work out of that person that you just paid an arm and a leg for. Night-time and early morning are the best times to get your hiring and promotions done.
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Accountant/Worker ratio: This is a really difficult question. It depends on how many people you hire that are accountants or workers. I created a revenue and cost function to assist in building-planning to maximize profits:
x = Number or WORKERS / (Number of WORKERS + ACCCOUNTANTS)
(For example, if you have 20 accountants and 20 workers, x = 0.5)
N = Number of WORKERS + ACCOUNTANTS
The amount that each worker earns in a day is determined by the AVERAGE amount shown per button-press * button-presses per day (which varies depending on the worker, but it's usually between 90 and 108)-- The amount earned per button-pres also depends on the worker and the office -- Still not completely sure if supervisor benefits come into play on this value) I'll be using the value $4000 as an example; this is using a "Chief of Workers" (maxed out on promotions) with an Advanced Office and a CEO (with a maxed-out supervisor's office) breathing down his neck. That worker would likely earn over $4,000 / day.
The amount that each accountant adds to each worker's earnings (by percentage) also varies depending on the accountant and the office. (0.05 for a basic accountant, 0.1 for a promoted accountant with no special office, 0.2 for a promoted accountant with an accounting office, 0.4 for a promoted accountant with an advanced accounting office, 0.45 for a 2x promoted accountant with an advanced office, and 0.5 for a maxed accountant with an advanced office.) I'll be using 0.5 for maxed accountants in the example below, but you can modify this value to fit your own personal needs. (I think that a promoted accountant with an advanced accounting office is the best option by far.)
The cost of each accountant and worker per day (salary) also varies depending on what promotion level they have. Because I'm using the maxed out versions of both in my example, I'll be using $200/day for workers and $250/day for accountants.
C(x) = Cost (Total salary of workers and accountants)
R(x) = Revenue (Total money earned daily)
P(x) = Profit (Revenue - Cost)
Cost equals $200 per worker plus $250 per accountant:
C(x) = $200*N*x + $250*(N - N*x)
or
C(x) = $250*N - $50*N*x
Revenue equals $4000 per worker plus an additional $2000 (for each accountant) per worker:
R(x) = $4000*N*x + 0.5*(N - N*x)*($4000*N*x)
or
R(x) = $4000*N*x + $2000*N^2*x - $2000*(N*x)^2
Profit equals total revenue minus total cost:
P(x) = [$4000*N*x + $2000*N^2*x - $2000*(N*x)^2] - [$250*N - $50*N*x]
or
P(x) = -$2000*(N*x)^2 + $2000*N^2*x + $4050*N*x - $250*N
In order to use this formula to find the optimal value of x, I need to add a value for N. Basically, I just put in how many accountants and workers I want in total, and use that value with the formula to determine my peak profit for x.
Letting N be 100:
P(x) = -$20,000,000*x^2 + $20,000,000*x + $405,000*x - $25,000
or
P(x) = -$20,000,000*x^2 + $20,405,000*x + $25,000
You should recognize that this is a quadratic function. So we can find the vertex of the parabola. The formula to find an x-intercept for the vertex in a quadratic (using ax^2+bx+c) is:
x = -b / 2*a
...So we take -$20,405,000 / 2 * -$20,000,000
...and get 0.510125, which means we want a 50/50 ratio, but perhaps just a few more workers than accountants.
The revenue function can also be used to determine how many employees you need in order to make x amount of dollars per day...as long as you input the ratio that you want for workers to accountants.
P(x) =
- 4 Replies
Very well done! Even though I can't understand some of it because i'm retarted in math, the word parts are understandable.
Nice job again!
Any thoughts on supervisor placement? I often see them beating non-workers (researcher, accountants, etc). I wonder if there is a building method that optimizes their effectiveness. It would be nice to corral the supervisors into worker areas. There are some days (game days) when certain workers don't get visited by the supervisors at all. One strategy is to hire lots of supervisors. But there must be a better way.
I've been looking at a few strategies for supervisor placement. It makes a massive difference. Try looking at some levels that I've made with it in mind:
http://armor.ag/1Tvoa
^^ This level is called "Budget Balance Challenge" ... you have a ton of researchers, and the budget comes out to about -$20,000 / day because there is only one office for workers, one accounting office, and two for supervisors. The objective is to balance the budget without having any money to spend at the start of the workday. The most obvious solution is to lay off some people, but it would require about 200 layoffs just to make up that $20,000.
[spoiler]The best solution is to lay off 4 researchers in the office just to the left of the HR office at the bottom of the building. Move the workers out of their fancy office (or wait until you can afford some new workers) and repopulate that vacant office. The supervisors will start at the bottom floor and work their way up the building, never reaching the workers office near the very top.
This solution works so well that the budget jumps from -$20,000 to over $10,000 / day ... even with the massive salary costs of all those researchers.[/spoiler]
http://armor.ag/1TwYK
^^ This level is called "erfection." It's the absolute best that I could do with an accountant/worker ratio and a supervisor placement decision. The supervisors are the first to arrive in the morning, so when you make their office the most inaccessible, they will have a fair delay while they find their desk and return to the bottom floor to start work. It takes these CEOs exactly as much time to return to the bottom floor (because they're "hunting" for people to hound on the vacant floors above their offices in the lift tube) as the workers take to arrive on the bottom floor and start punching buttons.
Also take the time to fast-forward through the day and watch how the CEOs behave. They will rush through the first 20 floors (because there are 40 CEOs for 304 workers) motivating the workers and then they break for lunch. When they return from their break, they're right back on the bottom floor with the first workers in the chain again. With the accountants and CEOs, the workers average well over $1,000 per button press each.
When I played through the day starting at $0, I earned a whopping total of $1.75 billion dollars in one day with only about 700 employees. That's over $2,000,000 per employee per day. But when I loaded the level from the community screen, I only made it to about $600 million because the game runs much slower while the clock ticks on at the same rate (the budget screen dropped from over $15 million to under $5 million ... this figure for the revenue doesn't take the accountants' multiplier into account).
I've also experimented a bit with the use of skyhooks and fire poles, because these are one-way transportation features, they may be used to "direct" the supervisors from their office to the worker offices and nowhere else. It's a thought, but I haven't found any successful plan to put that idea into motion yet. I did manage to get my supervisors to run around in circles throughout the day like some kind of gerbil in a cage with hilarious results.
My best advice is already listed in the OP. Just click a supervisor that's motivating the wrong type of employee and select "move..." Then that supervisor's office will be vacant, so move the supervisor to that office manually to get him to start from scratch. It's micro-managing, but in most levels it's the only truly effective solution.
I found some amazing breakthroughs this morning:
1) You will still get your bonus percentages from your accountants after you fire them.
I built a one-office tower to demonstrate this, but it turns out that a submitted tower doesn't save the accountant percentage if the accountants don't work in the tower anymore.
It's best to create a single advanced accounting office, hire accountants (but in an office that isn't their accounting office - explanation below), move them into the accounting office, and fire them straight away. Repeat as many times as you like, and you get 25% of the worker's basic revenue for each accountant hired (and fired).
2) There is absolutely no need to promote your workers. When you upgrade an office, the workers in that office don't benefit from the new value per button press (unless you promote them, in which case they do). If you select each worker in that office, hit the "move" option, and put them right back at their desk; they will start earning the extra dollar or two for each press the way they should.
I suppose this was just a glitch that prevented workers from earning the proper amount per button press when their office was upgraded. The same is true for accountants (and I'm assuming all employees).
3) The supervisor's office (and the next level up from that) is a complete waste of money. A promoted supervisor is just as useful working from any type of office in the game. You can have an advanced accounting office mixed in with the regular worker offices and you can keep a supervisor there. If you want to promote him/her, just move them to a plain office, promote them, and move them back. The available desks in the accounting office can be used for number 1 above.
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There is a move glitch to be wary of. If you pause the game, hire an employee, and move them to a different office without unpausing, they will just stand there vacantly staring at their desk. If you want to hire an accountant and then immediately move them to the accounting office, this doesn't matter. The accountants don't actually have to do any typing to earn the percentage of the worker's revenues. All other employees (such as supervisors) should be hired into their appropriate office and not moved until at least after the game is unpaused.
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