Ye 'ole Iron Works

[Shogun Gunner]

Many a posts have been made decrying the reduction of resources and luxuries with the latest C3C patch. The difficulities imposed on us, the player, are numerous. Much has been made about the increase number of restarts, aborted games, and the frustration of not being able to build a certain unit and/or apply a learned science advance (i.e. railroads) due to resource limitations.

It occured to me that not much has been made about the Iron Works! Yes, yes, the small wonder that requires coal AND iron in the city radius!

Well, just how often is that happening? For me, zero opportunity to build this small wonder on the latest patch (1.22) over numerous games. I thought the Iron Works was a nice bit of texture in Civ3, but unfortunately, another item lost due to the "fixing" of the game.

[punkbass2000]

1 all.

[Antrine]

I 'renamed' it 'Ancient Works', and when the dust settled and I monitored what the AI were doing, I changed it a city improvement that first requires a tech called Forge Working and no other requirements. It also produces a 'worker' every seven turns. High maintenance and fairly expensive to build early game. Resource requirements most often burn the AI's unless you serve the resource to the AI's on a silver plater. (and I do)

So we all 'enjoy' the moment every game.

Vanilla is flat, mod.

[Solomwi]

I play huge maps, so the one or two times in the past that I have been able to build IW, it was in a city already pretty well crippled by corruption. I haven't noticed a difference in C3C.

[Dis]

very rarely can I build this.

sometimes I wonder if it is worth it. It takes so long to build. I'm into the modern age by the time I finish building this and the factory. And if I build offshore platform, I really only have the opportunity to build a couple of spaceship parts. The city never manages to build much else. But it can be valuable in tight games at the end.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Dissident
sometimes I wonder if it is worth it. It takes so long to build. I'm into the modern age by the time I finish building this and the factory.

Buy the Factory, buy a Coal Plant, build Iron Works. You can often get down to 2 turns for Battleships or 1 turn for anything else. And very fast wonder building, if you need it. The smaller the map, the greater the impact.

And no, I haven't built one yet in C3C, but a couple times the AI was lucky. So my banana works are doing juuust fine.

[Theseus]

I'm with Solomonwi... yeah, sure, I've gotten the opportunity to build it, but in some crap town that I've got at 2- or 3-tile spacing on a coast in the hills, corrupt as can be.

[MyOlde]

I'm playing a Standard map now and coal is so far away (and belongs to others) that I haven't a hope of ever getting it. And the AI won't run roads to it so that I could even trade for it!

[Dis]

Originally posted by Theseus
I'm with Solomonwi... yeah, sure, I've gotten the opportunity to build it, but in some crap town that I've got at 2- or 3-tile spacing on a coast in the hills, corrupt as can be.

that's what I meant before. In those cities it takes forever to build the factory and iron works.

I remember in regular civ3 when you could get them in your core cities. Sweet.

[StainlessSteel]

Hurm

Looks like I'm going to be able to build it for the first time this game. Of course it's pretty far from my capitol, and used to be another Civ's town till I culture popped it. We shall see....


SSR

[Sabre2th]

I've only come across it once since switching to C3C and it happened to be in my capital, which was already a massive producer. I guess I'm just lucky like that

[eris]

I have had a couple opportunituies to build it myself, only one of which was non-corrupt enough to bother with.

I have had a couple of AI cities captured with the right resources. I didn't build the Iron Works in those because of the corruption. To my amazement, I once captured it along with an enemy city! They had built it for me! How nice. Unfortunately, it was a fairly corrupt city in not the best terrain and it did not become a monster producer of anything, but it did produce some shields and sure was a pleasant surprise.

One time I had a city become able to build the Iron Works because a new Iron deposit showed up in its radius. However, we were well into the Modern Age and I was already halfway to the Space Shhip, so I never bothered building the thing. "Our people want to build the Iron Works!" "Yeah? Well, forget about it."

I don't know if it has anthing to do with anything, but I saw it mentioned in this thread as a possible factor, so I will mention that I tend to play on huge maps.

[gunkulator]

Never had a chance to build it in C3C 1.22, corrupt city or otherwise. I'm a standard map player because I don't have the patience for anything larger.

[Krill]

Your games actually last until the IA? Hell, I don't have the patience to play anything larger than Standard, and even then I hate playing after I have slaughtered the civs on my continent with Swords...

[joncnunn]

Optimum build order for Iron Works assuming no MGL is to be used:

1. Court House (rush) and set a beeline to Communism.

2. Enough happiness structures to ensure a WLTPD (rush)

3. Store shields for a Police Station, rush when Communism discovered. Beeline to Sanitation

4. Candidate if there's a spare MGL for relocating the Palace. If no MGL adviable, and FP hasn't been built yet, strong candidate for the FP site. Also if you want to be Communist for rest of the game, this is probably the best SPHQ site.

5. Factory, rush when Sanitation researched, or if don't want to wait for a Hospital rush right away.

6. Hospital (rush). Or skip if IW would be over half done if you start now by the time you research Sanitation.

7. Iron Works

The AI isn't much better, I've often seen an AI miss an opturnity to build the Iron Works due to it's city placement.