Hoover Dam, before or after factories??

[God]

If i build a hoover dam before i have factories in most of my cities, i won't get any bonuses, right?
But will my factory become a hydro plant immediately after i build it (the factory)?

I have a leader set up for the hoover dam. Yay!!

 

[Rain]

No bonus for hoover without factory. Hoover provides hydro plants which replace coal plants (if they exist otherwise you get the hydro anyway) and increase factory output 50%

 

[God]

Ok thanks. So the free hydro plant deal will come into effect once i build a factory.

 

[damunzy]

Right. You will get the bonus of the Factory and the bonus of the Hoover.

 

[Alc0p0pz]

But will my factory become a hydro plant immediately after i build it

No, Factories don't become anything.

It's a little odd how Factories and Plants work in Civ3 but it almost makes sense, if you think of it in a slightly contrived way ...

Factories make stuff.
Additional Plants provide extra power to the Factory so it can make stuff faster.
(And we conveniently ignore the fact that cities can make stuff even without Factories )

No Plant can be built unless a city first has a Factory ... but as you've obviously experienced, the HD confuses this as it automagically puts a Hydro Plant in all cities.

So anyway, here's a little "league table" of Plants, but in ascending order ...

• Factory only. +50% shields. +2 pollution
• Factory and Coal Plant. +100% shields. +4 pollution. To build Coal Plant requires (get this) Coal.
• Factory and Hydro Plant. +100% shields. +2 pollution. Building Hydro Plant requires a river in the city's radius.
• Factory and Solar Plant. +100% shields. +2 pollution. Building Solar Plant requires nothing, but comes later than the Hydro and costs more shields.
• Factory and Nuclear Plant. +200% shields. +2 pollution. Building Nuke Plant requires both fresh water (lake or a river) in city radius and Uranium.

Note that only one Plant can exist; building a new plant replaces the old one.

 

[Alc0p0pz]

Oh yeah, and if you're really lucky, you can theoretically build the Iron Works, a Factory and a Nuke Plant in the same city, which would give a massive (50 + 150 + 100 = 300) three times the city's base shield yield.

Never managed that one myself.

 

[Tassadar]

i know it look strange but i built factory after hover dam and even after or just before recycling center because i am too lazy to handle a hord of worker for polution control.

 

[Alc0p0pz]

Just a few tips/observations about Industrialisation and the Hoover Dam...

@God, after thinking about this over a cigarette I'm a little suprised you got all the way to Electronics without first building Factories and Coal Plants in your Wonder-producing cities. After completing the middle ages, my priority is almost always Steam Power -> Industrialisation. Railroads plus Factories and Coal Plants almost always signals me being able to massively out-produce the AI, and from this time onwards, I rarely lose any Wonder races. It typically takes 10-15 turns to build the Universal Sufferage in my Capital/Forbidden City with these improvements in place. If the AI is building Universal Sufferage, and I have the spare cash, I'll even cash buy a Factory and Coal Plant before building the Wonder.

Now, if you are building Coal Plants before the Hoover Dam, it is worth remembering or writing down which the cities in which you've built Coal Plants. The reason is because once the Hoover is complete, it doesn't remove any existing Power Plants. Now, you get the same shield bonus with Hydro as with Coal, but the old Coal Plant is costing you 3 gold/turn, and is producing +2 pollution. So, once the Hoover is complete, look at your list of cities which have Coal Plants, and sell the dirty f*ckers.

Also (somewhat suprisingly) the Hoover is actually quite bug free as far as I can tell; if you build better plants after building the Hoover (and by 'better' I mean Nuke Plants) then the game will take the best producing plant. So you will have a free Hydro from the Hoover (doing nothing) but the game is giving you the +150% from the Nuke Plant.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Alc0p0pz: good hints!

you really build Coal Plants? I never get around - I switch everything to Factory ASAP, then techbeeline for Hoover. In the few turns (max: 20) before I get Hoover (and I have a city in palace prod ready for it!) it just throwing production out the window to build Coal Plants. They`d only be in effect for like 10 turns after all. Often Hoover is completed before more than 5 or 6 cities even finish their Factories! What are you doiung differently?

 

[BridgeBoy]

I'm with Killer....I bypass coal plants...waste of production and time (workers cleaning up pollution) and then Hoover/Hydro is available by the time the cities have just started using them. Even land-locked cities on different continent from Hoover...I wait for solar plants. I guess specific game situations might provoke me to build a coal plant someday...just depends on how your game is going. That's pretty much why alot of advice differs from one person to the next...depends on what's going on in their games/difficulty levels.

 

[No.Dice]

Originally posted by Alc0p0pz
@God, after thinking about this over a cigarette I'm a little suprised you got all the way to Electronics without first building Factories and Coal Plants in your Wonder-producing cities. After completing the middle ages, my priority is almost always Steam Power -> Industrialisation. Railroads plus Factories and Coal Plants almost always signals me being able to massively out-produce the AI, and from this time onwards, I rarely lose any Wonder races.

I do something very similiar. Once industrialization is discovered i set my science and luxury slider to 0 and cash rush all of my factories and coal plants in my core cities. The huge boost in production outweighs the slowdown in science. In the industrial age, emperor difficulty, i can almost always outresearch the AI anyway. As for pollution, i always have hordes of workers around, and pollution is usually cleared on the same turn, or the turn after. A lot of the time, i don't even replace my coal plants with hydro/solar plants. The pollution doesn't phase me.

 

[chiefpaco]

I can see that if you want to beeline to Hoover, you can bypass coals, with careful planning, maybe except for the city that will build the hoover. Upping the pollution 2-4 isn't that bad, IMHO.

Killer is right, you might be throwing shields "out the window". You will have to do careful planning for this scenario, not that it's really difficult, but the hoover is an 800 shield wonder, whereas coal plants are 160 shields (I'd add to Alc0p0pz's summary that coal plants are the cheapest, at 160 shields).

He's also assuming that he wins the Hoover race. I guess that's fair against this generation of AI, though I would not assume that in communist governments or multiplayer, but we can save that argument for another thread.

Originally posted by BridgeBoy
Even land-locked cities on different continent from Hoover...I wait for solar plants.

Solar plants arrive a full age after coal is found and they cost twice as many shields to produce. I'd suggest, even if you will build solars to reduce pollution, go for the coal first to make up for the lost time and to make building the solar plants faster:

If you had a 20-shield city & took 8 turns to build a coal plant, you'd have a 30-shield city (50% increase?). You could build a worker in 1 turn (if you don't have enough already to clean up pollution). How many turns would you be away from solar power? Well, depends on your tech rate, difficulty, what you already have, but I think you will probably be at least 10-12 techs away mimimum.

Let's say that represents 40 turns, for example. I have no idea how good an estimate that is, but you get 10 bonus shields per turn for 400 shields.

Your coal plant city will take 11 turns to build the solar plant (320 shields) while without, you will take 16 turns. The 8 turns it took you to build the coal are almost paid for here. Furthermore, you're gaining no extra production, just a reduction by 2 in pollution.

I think coal before solar makes good sense. The argument against a 240-shield hydro for cities with rivers would not be as convincing, I think, but might work out.

 

[BridgeBoy]

Solar plants arrive a full age after coal is found and they cost twice as many shields to produce. I'd suggest, even if you will build solars to reduce pollution, go for the coal first to make up for the lost time and to make building the solar plants faster:

This is a valid consideration. However, in my current situation, I have Hoover Dam on my home continent, and have over thirty cities with high production. I think my newer cities on a different continent are better off just pumping out other improvements, and I they afford to wait for solar. Unit support will come from the home continent. My cities can work on other improvements until I get Solar Power. However, you bring up a good point, I'm not sure if they could do even better with the coal plant first or not. You have me thinking now. It just comes down to if I want to delay working other necessary improvements long enough to pump out a coal plant. In any case, in this particular game, my home continent can supply anything I need, but in hindsight, I guess I was too rash in saying that I wait for solar in a general statement like that. Like anything else, it's situationally specific, dependent on many other variables.

A lot depends on when you acquired/found the city compared to where you are on the Tech tree and what improvements the city has and needs.

 

[God]

Well as soon as the industrial age began i was at war with the Aztecs which took some time and i had all my cities producing non stop cavalry and then later i had to deal with zulu and i produced artillery non-stop.

Almost all my games i end up having to fight early industrial age then get a break and then tanks coem along and more war.
Now I'm going to invade England. With hydro plants i can produce cavalry or tanks every two turns, before that i still had a really powerful empire and could handle the AI without factory advantage.


BTW i'm playing regent and trying to get a HOF score. Currently have a score in the 2000's but at my rate i can look at around 4500+ since i plan to invade England then America, wait for Modern Armor and finish India by 1950. Will give me the whole continent and i'll get some wonders i didn't build. Then probably go for diplo victory but have to stop the AI from building spaceship. If they build they have a possibility to win the space race i'll nuke them and go for space race to.

Currently date is 1816 and are have a bit of the modern age techs.

 

[Grey Knight]

Do I really need to produce wealth faster???



Cheers,
Shawn

 

[tgs81]

Originally posted by Alc0p0pz
Oh yeah, and if you're really lucky, you can theoretically build the Iron Works, a Factory and a Nuke Plant in the same city, which would give a massive (50 + 150 + 100 = 300) three times the city's base shield yield.

Never managed that one myself.

try playing in north america on marlas world map. build a city where cleveland, ohio would be. i had a iron works, hydro, and factory there and had 110+ shields per turn. looking forward to a nuke plant and manufacturing plant in the future