Balance issue? : Industrialization beeline

[Calouste]

We all know about the issue there was in Vanilla with Education giving too mnay benefits and being too easy too reach.

IMO in G&K Industrialization is going to be the must have tech. It is easy to reach, you only need three Renaissance techs (Banking, Printing Press and Economics) and then you can pop Industrialization itself with Oxford University. And you get a lot of benefits:
- Opens up Industrial era
- Opens up the last three policy trees
- Gives you an extra spy
- Reveals Coal
- Factory
- Big Ben
- And you get the (relatively for that time) extremely strong Gatling Gun. 36 ranged attack, 36 defense, range 1, which makes you pretty much invulnerable to invasion for a long time. You can just put a few on a road, move it up to 5 tiles next to an enemy and then do them 30-40 damage without a reply.

Industrialization needs another prerequisite, or the Gatling Gun has to move later, because at the moment getting the Gatling takes 3 techs less then getting Rifles.

 

[Tubbilicious]

I have the current misfortune of being English. But your point does indeed seem quite valid if true. Any tech which opens up that much should surely have significant costs associated with it. If it's truly broken, I would expect a hot fix.

 

[Veneke]

I'm still waiting for the game to come out here as well but there was talk on the forums when the tree came out about switching Industrialisation and Steam Power, which would seem to solve all of those problems pretty handily. It would also make a good deal more sense, I'm not quite sure how you can industrialize without steam power.

 

[RealHuhn]

That does look very strong indeed.

You can pick Order, build factories at half cost and get +25% science. Gatling gun for defense and an extra spy. :/

I don't have the game yet though.

 

[Draskar]

Seem true

Btw, is coal -> Oil gap now big enough? In Civ5 you can "jump" the industrial revolution!

 

[blackcatatonic]

Doesn't the extra spy come when anyone enters the Industrial Era, rather than just the player?

Nevertheless, it still looks like an important tech to target.