Are Factories nerfed too much.

[strollen]

Pre BTS, I immediately prioritized getting Industrialism for both Infantry and building factories, and as soon I got it I immediately prioritized building in Factories in all of my cities.

Now with BTS the health penalties are so huge that I find I don't build many factories and those that do build I often regret building.
I find that the +2 unhealth for coal and oil mean I end up spending so much time constructing building to compensate that my cities are unproductive for a long stretch of time.

Lets take as an example a large established hammer rich city with a base production of 32 hammers. Assuming forge+ organized religion 32+50%=48 hammers
Building the factory 5 turns (-3 health hammers 56)
Build Aqueduct 2 turns (-1 health)
Build a coal plant 3 turns (-3 health hammers 72)
Gain access to oil (-5 health)
Build Public Transport 2-3 turns (-3 health)
Build Hospital 3 turns (0 health)

So it has taken 15 turns of building to increase the production of the city from 48 to 72. Now you can cut the time in 1/2 if you don't build coal plants and rely on getting the 3 Gorges Dam.

Does anybody else find that pay off of factories is now marginal?

 

[axident]

build recyc center that is better than hospital+pub transit

 

[Psyringe]

Does anybody else find that pay off of factories is now marginal?

No - I think you overestimate the importnce of having a "clean" city. All that unhealthiness does is to reduce the growth potential of a city. But a production city is the city type where growth is least important. In my industrialization phase, I often let cities run with high unhealthiness for extended periods of time. As long as they don't starve, and as long as the city doesn't have to give up production tiles, the drawback from the unhealthiness remains marginal.

What BtS has changed however is that building factories now isn't a no-brainer anymore. I tend to limit my factories to the production cities now.

 

[18lama]

@ Strollen: Are you seriously suggesting that without factories you can produce a large army to tackle Agg Civs?

How are you quickly going to produce stacks of Tanks/Arty/Infantry without using Factories??

 

[Stylesrj]

Sickness does not affect my cities much. All cities that can build a factory in 20 or less turns will get a factory.

I think Coal and Oil have finally became unhealthy which I wanted. Those resources are bad for our environment and the cities are suffering for it.
However, what I do want is proper global warming. Too many factories and pollution in the air causes global warming. It is not excessive nuking that does it

 

[azzaman333]

The lack of food is offset now by having either Sid's Sushi or General Mills.

 

[mystikx21]

The global warming model from civ3 where we played whack-a-mole because of city pollution was pretty ridiculous too though. I'll stick to cleaning up after my nukes.

I suffer through that extended industrial period until usually hospitals or a food corp, but it's worth it to me for cranking up the war machine. I like the balance though. They were a no-brainer before. Now there are consequences and repercussions, which is the objective of a strategy game.. interesting decisions.

 

[BYC]

As annoying as unhealthiness is, without that production, a player will probably quickly fall behind in production.

 

[Stylesrj]

I'm not saying we should add Pollution back into the game, but I think there should be some kind of effect too many factories and coal plants can do on the environment.
Perhaps there should also be an oil plant which does the same benefits of the coal plant, except that it requires oil instead and would be a nice alternative to those without coal or a river or uranium.

I know there's a Shale Plant, but that's not an Oil Plant, that's just a Coal Plant that has a different name and provides 10% more production. I think the Shale Plant should provide oil if it can get oil from Shale.

Summary:
Don't add Pollution squares
Have Global Warming affected by how many factories you have and how many pollutive power plants and also Fallout squares and how many nukes were launched. Sickness is just a joke

 

[Jaybe]

I think the increased pollution is a great balance. Full industrialization used to be a no-brainer; now there are choices to make.

 

[Ball Lightning]

Sickness does not affect my cities much. All cities that can build a factory in 20 or less turns will get a factory.

I think Coal and Oil have finally became unhealthy which I wanted. Those resources are bad for our environment and the cities are suffering for it.
However, what I do want is proper global warming. Too many factories and pollution in the air causes global warming. It is not excessive nuking that does it

I agree with everything you have said here. Factories where under polluted before and now coal and oil both give you unhealthyness. And yes we do need global warming, which is why i'm involved in the unofficial expansion to civ 4 Bts World Of Legends which we are trying to add in global warming, but GW is still in the drawing board.

 

[DigitalBoy]

The almost invariable +5 unhealthiness from factories makes unhealthiness a chronic problem in the industrial age. Honestly, I bust my ass to crank out health buildings, and it's still not enough. It wouldn't be so obnoxious if having access to oil/coal had any positive effect for factories. There are many, many times when I'm forced into adopting Enviromentalism, just for the health bonus because my cities would be starving horribly without it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

They didn't nerf Factories, they buffed Health (Hospitals, Expansive Trait, etc.)

I do agree about Global Warming.. (my sig has my proposal)

 

[Yzman]

The almost invariable +5 unhealthiness from factories makes unhealthiness a chronic problem in the industrial age. Honestly, I bust my ass to crank out health buildings, and it's still not enough. It wouldn't be so obnoxious if having access to oil/coal had any positive effect for factories. There are many, many times when I'm forced into adopting Enviromentalism, just for the health bonus because my cities would be starving horribly without it.

That was the point really...now people sometimes may have to consider environmentalism and maybe not fully industrialize.

 

[Ball Lightning]

Which over all is a good thing for the game, of course you may have no problems with your health if you have lots of recources, but it means there are more options, not just fully industrialize.

 

[Stylesrj]

Maybe you should also trade for more healthy resources, get a Supermarket in the works as well and research Genetics and Future Tech... that'll work...

I NEVER adopt Environmentalism, no matter how bad the health is.
Increase food production or get more health resources. Factories are meant to be pollutive and you can't change that.

A recycling centre shouldn't remove all from buildings. How does a building that turns old cans into new cans reduce air pollution. It may reduce SOME of the ground pollution (what kind of factory recycles anyway!?) but not the airborne pollution. Same with the lab.

The should be reduced in half by a recycling centre. Also, I don't build coal plants. I wait for the 3 gorges dam. If I were to play on a high difficulty though, I might consider Coal Plants, or if I was Japan, I'd build the Shale Plants, for the added production

Why does an industrial park increase ? The civopedia tells me that they move urban areas away from factories, so that it does not harm the people. How does that increase the ?

 

[King of Town]

A lot of people say the game isn't real enough historically, and now that it is...

 

[magicalsushi]

The almost invariable +5 unhealthiness from factories makes unhealthiness a chronic problem in the industrial age.

Um, don't you think this is somewhat realistic?

It wouldn't be so obnoxious if having access to oil/coal had any positive effect for factories.

Yep, that makes me a little unfcomfortable too. Looking to the real world, use of those resources really does cause big health problems, but it also provides benefits. We don't just burn them for the sake of it. Maybe the factory should cause them to provide +1 , +1 ? Or perhaps +1 , +1 ?

A recycling centre shouldn't remove all from buildings. How does a building that turns old cans into new cans reduce air pollution. It may reduce SOME of the ground pollution (what kind of factory recycles anyway!?) but not the airborne pollution. Same with the lab.

But it doesn't, does it? Don't you keep the from coal and oil? I genuinely don't know; all my BtS games so far have ended prior to industrialisation, either due to cultural victory or due to me starting new games and getting distracted! Anyway, if I'm right, it sounds quite reasonable to me - the recycling centre removes the caused directly by the factory, but not the it indirectly causes when you have access to polluting resources. In fact, that's pretty close to your ideal of halving the . If I'm wrong about how it works, then I agree, it's unrealistically extreme.

Why does an industrial park increase ? The civopedia tells me that they move urban areas away from factories, so that it does not harm the people. How does that increase the ?

I know, it feels wrong to me too, in light of the Civilopedia. Oh well. I guess it's done like that for game balance reasons.

 

[Stylesrj]

Well my brother tells me the Industrial Park creates because you move the residential away from the industry. With that extra space, you put more industry in, thus creating more because there's no annoying houses.

But it still does not make sense, because wouldn't it make people healthier because they're away from the dirty dirty factories?

Do you think a Levee should increase per river tile as you've got more land to work with, so there's more industry to put in, so more sickness.
Make the industrial Revolution a dangerous and pollutive time and then perhaps in the Modern Era have those environmental laws put in (not Envirnomentalism, but regulations to reduce pollution, buildings or technologies and make options, like reduces from a city by 2 points, but reduces city production by 10%) to regulate factories.

And if you leave the factories pollution, it makes Global Warming worse. We don't get Global Warming from dropping a nuclear bomb

 

[Indiansmoke]

Expansive trait has become stronger with these changes....maybe that is why the reduced the worker bonus.