[GS] How do you use Industrial Zones after the changes?

[Sostratus]

but I did good in my latest game.

Getting 2 dams involved is always a blessing. I yearn for a map setting to turn up the floodplains so I can have production utopia.
Edit: @local_hero I just posted a new guide for regular IZs, check it out for inspiration! Link in sig.

 

[Sostratus]

Rolled a khmer game because I wanted to play some river goddess amenity madness. (I got that alright.)

But! My starting zone (seven seas) was perfect for a pair of powerhouse Aqueduct triangles!
Here's some proof so even regular civs can have hope:

Capital area:

Spoiler :

Before the IZs went up this river flooded 4 times, 3 of which where 1000 year floods granting +10, +10, and +9 fertility. With the Khmer farm bonus this was like a bunch of 10-12 yield tiles. It was out of control. There's niter under the holy site off screen to the right, combined with the Machu mountain for +10 on that IZ (would be +8 normally.)

Expansion zone:

Spoiler :

This one is interesting. I wanted to put the dam int he middle just like before, but I could not figure out why it wouldn't let me place there!! Turns out that hex has one edge fromt he Tonle San river and two edges fromt he totally unrelated Tonle Sap river. Bit of a mess up at the planning department. But it did mean I could place two dams, So I helped all 3 IZs achieve 3 green districts anyways. (If I could have put the dam where i wanted, then I could have had 2 x3's and one x4 green district.)

A big winding floodplain can be a bountiful cornucopia, indeed.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Dams are just too expensive just to boost an IZ for a little. Aqueducts are cheap, and Roman baths even more so.

These baths aren't very appealing though....

Also I captured Manchu Pichu and decided theater squares would be better than IZs anyways....

 

[Sostratus]

These baths aren't very appealing though....

By moving rome where it's own bath is, you could have built an Aqueduct triangle around the tile the Colosseum is on. I can't really tell where the floodplains are in there, though. (Ideally you can also place a dam in the center, but a Gplaza will do.)
That river bend out by mediolanum would support one as well.

Dams are just too expensive just to boost an IZ for a little

You're gonna build a dam anyways, the hydro plant + flood control +housing are just too valuable. Might as well line it up anyways

 

[Archon_Wing]

Oh I meant that all my baths are very bad appeal (literally disgusting) because they're near IZs and mines.

Also this start was pretty awful and didn't even had a luxury nearby; had to move the settler a few times and looked for a plains hill; had trouble with growth. I'll probably try again with a better map.

 

[Sostratus]

Oh I meant that all my baths are very bad appeal (literally disgusting) because they're near IZs and mines.

The roman proletariat will be clean and healthy because of your actions, comrade caesar. Only the bourgeois hippies who care about the environment will even notice.

 

[Lord Lakely]

I've played a test game as the Inca and I spammed AQ/IZ's liberally. It's really easy to get 3+ adjacency for them, especially now that lumber mills have been buffed to provide production equivalent to that of a mine/quarry, AND that you now get adjacency from horses. It wasn't a serious game (I played on prince), but it was so much fun I finished it anyway.

So yes, I think IZs are better now. I can't speak for civs without an incentive to build aqueducts, but if you can build an AQ or a Dam (or Machu Picchu), it's usually worth building an IZ in that city, regardless of what your civ is.

 

[Bibor]

Did some more testing.

Provided you have a friendly neighborhood floodplain nearby at start, up to 3 cities (usually 2) can dip into the the +2 dam adjacency, and at least one IZ should gain +4 from 2 Aqueducts. I build the dam, because yes it's expensive, but it provides housing and a military engineer can make a quick work of it.

Also, Double Dam - Double Aqueduct craziness is not uncommon. Throw in a government plaza for good measure.

I also noticed I like lakesides more now, as they provide more flexibility with Aqueduct placement, as long as they are close to a river.

As turns pass, it's often easier to find strategic resources that can be coralled into providing at least +5 for the IZ (+2 from aqueduct, +1 from being adjacent to 2 districts (including city center), 2 from strategic resources), which is usually good enough for me (10 production is solid for whatever you need done in the next 100 turns).

 

[Sostratus]

Provided you have a friendly neighborhood floodplain nearby at start, up to 3 cities (usually 2) can dip into the the +2 dam adjacency, and at least one IZ should gain +4 from 2 Aqueducts. I build the dam, because yes it's expensive, but it provides housing and a military engineer can make a quick work of it.

The aqueduct triangle formations I show in post #62, if centered on a dam, allow a +7 minimum to the 3 IZs around it. Or much more.
I find I'm always trying to get at least +5.

Also, Double Dam - Double Aqueduct craziness is not uncommon. Throw in a government plaza for good measure.

What surprises me is how lucrative floodplains are for industry. I rarely leave them farmed anymore once I'm capable of industrializing. Which i suppose is realistic - the most fertile areas grew the biggest cities, which now sprawl over that once fertile farm land. I feel like IZs + green districts come too early now, I hardly have time to be agrarian

 

[Bibor]

I feel dams should be buildable on any river after discovering electricity. This would alleviate the floodplain craze to some extent

 

[acluewithout]

The aqueduct triangle formations I show in post #62, if centered on a dam, allow a +7 minimum to the 3 IZs around it. Or much more.
I find I'm always trying to get at least +5.


What surprises me is how lucrative floodplains are for industry. I rarely leave them farmed anymore once I'm capable of industrializing. Which i suppose is realistic - the most fertile areas grew the biggest cities, which now sprawl over that once fertile farm land. I feel like IZs + green districts come too early now, I hardly have time to be agrarian

You can definitely squeeze out a +5 IZ fairly reliably - City Centre + Aqueduct gets you to 3, and then you just need two stone or a resource and some mines. Or maybe throw in a government plaza.

But is that actually worth the effort? Well... the Workshop is still pretty rotten at 3 production. I guess 2 more if you slot the specialist. Yeah. Slot Craftsman, and now I’m at 10 plus Workshop.

Thing is. I can probably get 5 hammers from my Harbour and Shipyard, and add in gold as well. And the hammers and gold can both be doubled. No Workshop and I may not have as strong tiles. But still, IZ still feels a bit underwhelming to me at least early.

Different story mid game when you can stack coal and craftsman.

Hmm. Maybe IZs are in the right spot overall. Seems like they only really kick in either late game or if you’re building cluster green and red Cities, which is maybe about right.

On a different note. I’ve tried building IZs in Coastal Cities but it’s pretty hard to make it work without Canals. If you can find a cheeky mountain you can get your City Centre Aqueduct IZ going, but then you run into the too many water tiles not enough land tiles issue and can’t get beyond +3. Maybe that’s okay in the scheme of things. Anyway. Maritime Industry is still all about the Shipyard not the Industrial Zone.

 

[Bibor]

But is that actually worth the effort? Well... the Workshop is still pretty rotten at 3 production.

Workshop scales with city states, and if you time them right, you can get them for half price via world congress. I'll take these 3 production if they are on the path to coal plants, but I won't go out of my way to get them early.

Is 5 production worth the effort? Hell yes. Because we all know it's actually 10
I know mines/lumbermills can get to similar amounts, but aqueducts bolster growth anyway, so we're getting both. I think these changes simply offer a really good alternative to chopping, the build times just seem more reasonable now.

 

[Sostratus]

Different story mid game when you can stack coal and craftsman.

It's easy to argue about +5, hard to argue with +10, and impossible to debate +20. If you just make an aqueduct diamond with 2 cities, you're sacrificing 1-2 extra tiles (the AQs) to get to that 20x2 output from the pair of IZs. Hard to find a pair of 20 yield tiles, I'll tell ya that. (Maybe some kind of crazy haboob swept nazca line petra with oil on the tile?)

And then if you make an aqueduct triangle around a dam, like in my khmer game, then you've got +8 IZs, so now it's a set of +32's.

Hmm. Maybe IZs are in the right spot overall. Seems like they only really kick in either late game or if you’re building cluster green and red Cities, which is maybe about right.

I do think the huge power surge at industrialization is good. The only thing that feels off to me is it seems like they are almost too useful vs other districts in the middle ages (you want to build them because you've already doen the AQs and you're gonna have guilds civic soon...) If the eras were stretched out about 1.5x, then i think i'd push the IZ back to early Ren. Or maybe if the early/mid game was stretched out, apprenticeship wouldn't feel like it basically comes right after ironworking half the time.

 

[Setis]

Having played most of the IZ heavy hitters since the patch change, I think they're enormously useful now. Mid-late game production of things no longer feels like a total slog. And if you can get the Holy Dam Triangle with Netherlands....holy crap. I think Amsterdam was over 300 production a turn (with Magnus and the get all IZ ranged bonuses promotion).

 

[Troy Bruckner]

I do think the huge power surge at industrialization is good.

What the game gives us with Industrialization is far short of what happened in real life.

BTW I really appreciate this thread since I didn't notice that aqueducts gave a nice boost with the latest patch. I rarely built more than one per game in the past. Now they go in almost every city.

 

[Sostratus]

What the game gives us with Industrialization is far short of what happened in real life.

BTW I really appreciate this thread since I didn't notice that aqueducts gave a nice boost with the latest patch. I rarely built more than one per game in the past. Now they go in almost every city.

I don't think you could have a balanced game if you reflected what actually happened in the industrial era accurately. But industrialization tech used to just unlock factories that gave... +3. That's it. So the changes to give us +6 factories and coal plants to mesh with the newly increased adjacency, well, that's a serious spike. The better the IZs are the more you feel it.
Now other civs can kind of feel what the old Hansa was like. (Usually getting 6-7 most of the time, with about 30% 8-10, only much less restrictive placement.) I love the impact of the coal plant on your civ.

 

[Sostratus]

Having played most of the IZ heavy hitters since the patch change, I think they're enormously useful now. Mid-late game production of things no longer feels like a total slog. And if you can get the Holy Dam Triangle with Netherlands....holy crap. I think Amsterdam was over 300 production a turn (with Magnus and the get all IZ ranged bonuses promotion).

I'm curious how you think the heavy hitters stack up against each other. IMO Germany>Japan>Niederlande>>>everyone else.

 

[Troy Bruckner]

I'm curious how you think the heavy hitters stack up against each other. IMO Germany>Japan>Niederlande>>>everyone else.

Mali with 40+ trade routes to allies + democracy certainly deserves some mention.

 

[Setis]

I'm curious how you think the heavy hitters stack up against each other. IMO Germany>Japan>Niederlande>>>everyone else.

I mean, it honestly depends on the map. If you can find a twisty area of flood plain rivers, Netherlands is ridiculous. Germany and Japan don't rely on the terrain as much, so they're likely to pull of high production regardless. Germany's actually the only one I haven't fully played through since the changes (though I played them a bit, just up to bringing Hansas online).

Although, I wish there was an easier way to be sure where you could build a dam. Current game as Victoria, had a beautiful confluence of rivers, planned it out with a dam in the center where the rivers all met....and it wasn't a valid tile. WTH Civ?

 

[Sostratus]

Mali with 40+ trade routes to allies + democracy certainly deserves some mention.

Well, anyone can spam out TRs. Mali can make a lot of money, but with even the best conversion rates, (35% discount on purchases) you're still facing a 2.6:1 goldrod ratio on buying. And Mali does have a production penalty on units, making even those delicious democracy wisselbanken routes that much less effective.

Although, I wish there was an easier way to be sure where you could build a dam. Current game as Victoria, had a beautiful confluence of rivers, planned it out with a dam in the center where the rivers all met....and it wasn't a valid tile. WTH Civ?

It says two tile edges on a river, but it has to be two adjacent tile edges on the same river. This gets really messy when rivers intersect. I think that beyond that, if you have two valid adjacent edges, the point in between them cannot be a junction with another river. If you look at the graphics of the dam, water comes in at the beginning of edge one and leaves at the end of edge 2. So you can't really have a river junction because then the "road" on the top on the dam would lead right into a river and it wouldn't look right. If you look at post #62, the "expansion zone" screen shot, you can see an example of this. The middle IZ is where I had planned a dam. The bottom and middle river edge of that tile are Tonle Sap, the top edge is Tonle San river (i about threw my keyboard with the naming.) But the bottom and middle edges should be valid by the description - except there's that junction.

Netherlands is ridiculous. Germany and Japan don't rely on the terrain as much, so they're likely to pull of high production regardless. Germany's actually the only one I haven't fully played through since the changes (though I played them a bit, just up to bringing Hansas online).

The aqueduct diamond/aqueduct triangle are outstanding innovations of civil engineering. And then sometimes you have a nice 3-4 tile polder lake you can shunt a canal to for extra IZ bonuses... now that's the good stuff!

From my experience, you are correct that japan and Germany can get away with bad terrain, but japan can't get away with too much if they want to be top tier: they only way for them to get the big (double digit) numbers is to stack up AQ/dam/canals around an IZ, so in that sense they do need terrain to cooperate with them. They can always guarantee +6 if you surround with districts, but that requires a size 13-16 city and a lot of time. Germany's ability to use the CH mean they don't actually need to have AQs placed close together, which frees up the river geometry massively, and allows for very flexible combinations in places like the mountains. Plus they can use any resource as a pad instead of a full district like japan. And they can get a Hansa+CH+green districts placed in a 1 pop city, so they are very fast to the big numbers. As an example, I just had a Germany game where I had 20 cities and 20 hansas, average Hansa base adjacency was 10.65. (median 11, mode 10.) It wasn't particularly impressive of a map, either.