Railroad or factories?

[Yuufo]

Imagine you are in the beginning of the industrial era. You already have Steam Engine and Steel. Coal has been revealed and you have some; no immediate military threat.
Should you research first Assembly Line and start building factories & coal plants, or Railroad and put the workers at... work?

[Blake]

Good question. I think that given you have Steel you should pursue Railroad, the advantage of Assembly line first is that you can get it without needing Steel.

However there are some other considerations:
Worker Boredom? Railroad gives them something to do.
City Boredom? Building factories and coalplants give them something to do
Hammer source? If you have lots of lumber mills/mines then railroad will bring in good yield, otoh if you have to (or want to) rely on State Property workshops railroads do not much.
Health problems? If your cities are health starved then railroads provide a clean hammer boost. You might want to defer Assembly Line a bit later - until you are in a better position to make up the food shortage.


My personal preference is Railroad because I'm very fond of Steel and I also like that you can get Machine Gunners without Rifling (providing an infantry counter), on offense you can kill enemy infantry with cannon but watch out for Artillery, they maul machinegun+cannon stacks. Railroad also gives the huge mobility advantage.

When I get Assembly Line first is usually when I don't yet have Steel - that would probably be because I'm not in a war. Assembly line does give far more hammer yield even in the most ideal of cases (it's a +60% boost to hammers over forges alone, railroad is typically a +35%ish boost - from +50% on GLF Lumber Mills, to +25% on PHMine).

I think ultimately it really comes down to how much you want that 10 movement....

[CerberusIV]

As a general rule I go for Assembly Line before Railroad. If any AI's are close at that stage of the game they just don't industrialise quickly and I get factories and coal plants in all my worthwhile cities. That gives a massive hammer boost to my civ and allows either lots of science and gold buildings and then SS parts or a conquering army. Also infantry make pretty much all the previous units obsolete and enable you to defend successfully against larger AI armies (with some cannons to inflict collateral damage on stacks).

[wodan11]

Something else to consider is whether the 3 Rivers will be useful. If you have a largish continent, and a good production city on a river, then going for factories first will enable you to start that city making a factory (to get the hammers to crank out the 3 Rivers).

Wodan

[joncnunn]

As a general rule, I go for rail first.

[Quillan]

Originally posted by wodan11
Something else to consider is whether the 3 Rivers will be useful. If you have a largish continent, and a good production city on a river, then going for factories first will enable you to start that city making a factory (to get the hammers to crank out the 3 Rivers).

Wodan

Plastics takes so long to research you should still be able to build both a factory and a power plant in the time it takes, even if you go right from Assembly Line into Plastics. You won't be building Three Rivers in a low-hammer city, and a good production city should be able to crank out a factory in 5-8 turns.

[Brizey]

Railroads can help if you are under a lot of nuisance attacks by the AI. Keep a stack of cannon or two around and zip them to the site of the attack.

[joncnunn]

All around there should be enough turns to fully rail the tiles that benifit from then around the planned 3 Georges Dam and build a Factory before Plastics is reserached

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Ummm... Well, you've already lost so does it really matter?

There's NO military threat? What in the world is that that you've been doing?

Do you not understand that the point of the entire game is to control the world?

If.... by chance.. you've actually almost destroyed everybody to the point where you only left them alive so that you can "play" with them (I've done that), then go for factories and increase your production so you can push forward more quickly on whatever victory condition you want. (It'll be tough to build the SS without factories)

Sure... Railroads do give bonuses but there's really no point in building them unless you are mobilizing for an invasion and you need to be able to move your troops from one point to another in a hurry. And remember.. that while it will save you turns moving your troops, it will cost you turns while your workers are actually building the roads.

Either way.. at this point, there really shouldn't be a decision.

Either you need to get on a peaceful footing with your neighbors so you can build factories and then out produce your opponents, or you don't have any military objectives that are close at hand, in which case.. Railroads won't help you and you need to build factories in order to get your production up so you can take the war across XXXXX (whatever).

To summarize:

Railroads are most important if your enemy can be reached by rail. If they can't physically be reach by rail, then all you are doing is "massing" your troops at a launch location.

[Addled Platypus]

survey says:

Rail

[couerdelion]

Well I've not really played many games past this point so have little experience in a "post-industrial" age.

What experience I do have would tend to favour the Assembly Line route. Factories and Coal Plants give such a HUGE production boost that you want these sooner if you can get them. Your troops might get to the front a little slower but you will builds them faster.

[eris]

Overall, I would start with Railroad first. To me, it is a question of extra hammers created vs extra hammer multipliers. Depending on your percentage of tiles with mines and trees and such, you may have a goodly number of tiles that will need rails, thereby making the creation of extra hammers a slow and gradual process. The multiplier effect hapeens as soon as you create the factory, and again with a power plant. I would rather have the gradual process happening with the rails while I was building the factory that would then multiply those hammers. This is just a subjective opinion, but the factors of having extra hammers going into the factory builds and the overall mobility growing all the while makes me go Rails first in these situations.

The only other counter logic that comes into my decision process is that just after Assembly Line is Facism with the free Great General. I am learning to like Great Generals a lot and getting Facism is one of the strategy elements that complicates my tech tree travel decisions.

[couerdelion]

I’m sure that there is a problem in your logic here – at least the one desiring incremental hammers rather than multipliers. Let’s suppose we have a city with base production of 16 hammers – not all that much at this stage in the game. A factory and coal plan will add 12 hammers would probably take less time than building 12 railroads even if you had 12 mines/lumbermills to improve.

A more developed production site, with for example 4 watermills (3/2/1), 4 windmills (2/2/1) and 4 workshops (2/3/0), gives a base production of 28 hammers so the gain from a factory/coal plant would be 21 hammers. From this point on you can pretty much spam any military unit you want.

[Blake]

Indeed. The simple fact is a Factory+Coalplant provides +60% hammers over a forge - which is a huge boost. At most a railroad on a grassland lumber mill provides a +50% boost (from 2 to 3).

It's not quite that simple though, if you got a fast Ironworks (and it actually applies equally for Heroic Epic) then that city is by far the most important one for building wonders/projects (which is arguably the most important use of hammers by that point in the game), the IW city has a 225% multiplier, a coal plant only brings that up by 33% - and the city may lack health in a bad way, Railroads can boost the IW city production at least as much as a Factory+Coalplant and possibly more when you account for health.

Ironworks of course comes along with Steel, which further supports "If you have Steel, get Railroad first".

However the quality of available IW cities varies greatly, in some games I have a massive production lichpin in my IW city - pretty much a specialized production city (the combination of a powerful HE city and a powerful IW city can produce as much hammer as the rest of the empire). On the other hand in some cases there's no centralized production and any IW city is pretty weak (often in such cases the only way to build the IW in a remotely timely fashion is to plop it with a GE). If you have centralized production then railroad can help more, if you have decentralized then coalplants tend to help more.

[wodan11]

Regardless of the bottom line numbers, what usually does it for me is the answer to two (well three) questions:
1) are my workers sitting idle? That just bugs me, and oftentimes at this stage of the game they've got nothing to do.
2) do my cities have other buildings to make or are they sitting idle? Though, intellectually I realize that (since the change so that building Research uses 100% of hammers) this isn't a real issue. But, I'm still coming to the grips with the idea that building Research is a really a Good Idea (tm), rather than a marginal/dubious Grocer or something
3) lastly and most importantly, is this game in a good position to beeline the 3 Gorges Dam? If so, screw the railroads. I need to pick my river city and get a factory in there asap, and I need to plan to have plastics at or just before the time I get the factory done.

Wodan