(March 31st, 2014, 10:54)TheHumanHydra Wrote: Aren't factories supposed to be the tipping point where you go from Slavery being most efficient to natural production being most efficient
Hmm, I can't really see how factories would have a major impact when it comes to overthrowing Slavery, because the hammer multiplier affects similarly both whipped hammers and natural production. If we simplify, one switches out of grow-whip-grow-whip-mode when "stagnating" at higher size and working tiles becomes more profitable: This situation is created a) through growing to higher sizes, which makes food-to-hammer ratio worse and b) getting better production tiles online such as Chemistry/Caste-boosted workshops in base BTS. I can't see how factories would really make slavery so much worse than natural production..
So, I don't really see factories as game changing builds at least in our position. That said, our approach will pretty much beeline Assembly Line anyways unless we get lured by Railroad, which would be a very useful tech as well. And of course, I don't want to sound too negative, factories are decent builds, the above calculation shows that in really good hammer cities they can be awesome builds and can have a very short payback time. If we are still alive and kicking in 40 turns something has gone wrong if we don't have at least couple of factory+coal plant combos working.