[R&F] The Industrial Revolution should not just mean "more hammers"

I decided to play a quick game as japan to really try and attune myself to the industrial+ side of the game.
The Hammers side of the coin:
The major changes were in Apprenticeship and Guilds. It was nice to pick up the electronics factory, and later power plant, but comparatively getting IZs up and craftsmen slotted were much, much bigger boosts - both worth about 5-7 hammers/city (I played a very efficient and dense game!) at a time when things cost much less, vs electronics factories and power plants giving +4/city each when things cost a lot more. But with everything else piling on - buffed communism, late game amenities surge from stadiums, Amundsen Scott - actually producing things wasn't too bad.

The gameplay side:
Japan has a very heightened emphasis on district placement over other civs thanks to their civ ability; but I found myself really obsessing over planning my IZs in the early/mid game. That was serious impact. Then I found myself beelining to guilds to pick up Craftsmen, and kept it slotted through the game. The rest just kind of trickled in.

Japan's unique factory gives regional +4 production instead of +3; but it also grants a local bonus of +4 culture at electricity. Boy, did I notice that kicking in! That's an extra broadcast tower in every city! Since I already had IZs and workshops, it was very easy to pick those up. Here's a snip of the greater Kyoto-Tokyo megalopolis, I felt proud:

Spoiler :

The IZs are giving (L to R) +14,+14,+14, and +12 (thanks to Big Ben spoiling the party.) It's no Hansa cluster, but a nice example of how japan can be played. Shout out to the Dreaming Spires, suck it cambridge

I've been pondering some of what has been written here in the past couple days, and the original civ6 blueprint of how the industrial era was supposed to go, and I think the big missing piece to make it feel substantive beyond yields lies in the dearth of policy cards tying these things together. For empire productivity, the only choice is Craftsmen. There are no other IZ cards until Five Year Plan replaces craftsmen. Some cards get industrial extensions, like Levee en Masse, skyscrapers, and public works; these just continue what was going. The late game "powerhouse" cards all come with the ideologies in the modern era. This means that once you hit the industrial age, you can continue business as usual, just queue some factories in a few cities.
I think that's where the hole is: in Civ5 BNW, ideologies were effectively the result of your society becoming industrialized. Suddenly, those prior social policy trees were all competing with the very strong tenets of your chosen ideology. You want to keep filling out rationalism? It'll cost you progress in your ideology tree - the deep tiers of which were often game winners.
But in Civ6, you can keep running your science card, you can keep running your gold card, etc. If they add some more substance to the late game - like building out a railroad network, for example- they should tie it into the game via forcing you to consider your policy cards. You'll have to unslot republican legacy to take advantage of that new card letting you place rails twice as fast. Is it worth sacrificing a diplomatic slot to get bonus production towards that contested World Congress project? Beyond the yields changing, you will feel the effects of the revolution on your civ because you have to make very hard choices about embracing the "new ways" to get the most out of the revolution. I'm not saying these new tools won't be attractive to use: just that you can't do everything at once. I think the Industrial age is a great time to add in a lot of new policy cards that aren't tied to the long running lines that span the ages. Like giving factories interplay with local bonus resources (aka raw materials) or extending how many cities a luxury resource can reach for some gold cost. A large district construction bonus card at civil engineering, to help get new cities up.

Anyways, let's remember our history: in the release of civ6, things were roughly structured like this -
Ancient-Medieval: you grow and develop in your corner of the world. As long as you claim a few luxes nearby, you'll be okay.
Medieval-Renaissance : Cities can't grow much beyond 10-13 pop in most cases; there just isn't the housing or amenities to support it in more than the occasional capital. Often, your biggest cities didn't grow at all - not that you wanted them to: you were straining yourself at 0 surplus amenities in most cities!
Industrial: neighborhoods suddenly gave you the ability to get unlimited housing. Better mines and factories gave an explosion of production. Stock exchanges (under the old free market card) meant +14 gold in every CH. Zoos could finally get your amenities under control- they stacked too.
Modern: almost straddling the industrial era is replaceable parts, boosting farms from +2 to potentially +6. Your cities begin to explode with population. The research lab, broadcast tower, and tier 3 governments all come into play.
Atomic+ :nothing happens

While this was bad for game play diversity (since tall was neutered by this soft cap) it did lead to a very obvious change at the industrial era in being able to have neighborhoods. Now, with some of the governors and legacy cards and other perks of R&F, there isn't near as much of a hard cliff as there was before. You can pretty much keep growing a city the entire game without much trouble.

We allow industrial civs to generate massive amounts of food, production, and gold - it's okay to have "more hammers" be a consequence of the revolution - but to make it feel more engaging and balanced, we need to add policy/government & and possible new mechanic reasons to get those big yields in the first place. In engineering terms, we need to have (active, engaging) sinks for those new sources. We have dedications and the era system too- perhaps, as some have mentioned, there should be an 'industrialization' event or emergency that really highlights what's going on. A world's fair that ties into industrial advances. There's a whole bunch of ways to make your nation's booming business, everyone else's business.

 

One of several things I'd like to see done with Resources, and one that is appropriate to discuss here in relation to Industrialization and Factories, is that Resources are Not Static: the uses for them change, some can be completely replaced by manufactured alternatives, and many change their 'class' from Amenity/Luxury to Bonus or Strategic to something else. AND this doesn't all happen at once, so this kind of 'Morphing' of Resources can be worked into the game as another product of the Industrial Revolution.

Some (historical) Examples:
Cotton, Sheep (Wool) natural Resources, when combined with a Factory at Industrialization Tech, each produce the Cheap Cloth Manufactured Amenity Resource - effectively turning your 'Bonus' Sheep into an Amenity Resource.
Dyes - the natural Resource - were almost completely replaced by chemical 'aniline' or coal-tar dyes starting in the 1850s, or mid-Industrial Era.
Game: With the Tech Sanitation (which is not strictly correct, but Chemistry is egregiously misplaced in the Tech Tree, and this comes at about the right time) a Factory with access to Coal can produce Chemical Dyes, a Manufactured Amenity Resource.
When Chemical Dyes and Cheap Cloth are both being produced, they Double the Amenity Value of Silk and Cheap Cloth Amenities (from 1 to 2 per city) - because now you are producing brightly colored wallpaper, upholstered furniture, clothing, linens, and other Consumer Goods.

An even earlier Manufactured Amenity could be provided by a Distillery Improvement (or Monastery Improvement, which is already in the game!) which, when built next to a Rice, Wheat, or Sugar Resource, produces the Spirits Manufactured Amenity Resource. This is actually a late Medieval, early Renaissance 'Technology', so perhaps Distillery would be available with Tech Education, Mass Production or even Banking - they all fall in the right time-frame.

I've already mentioned the 'late game' Amenities of Automobiles and Personal Electronics, Manufactured Amenities from the Modern and Atomic Eras.

The point of the Manufactured Amenities is that they are not limited like the Natural Resource Amenities: you can always build more of them to match the demand from the population. So, as long as cities are linked to the Factory producing the Amenity by Railroad or Harbor or Aerodrome, ANY NUMBER of cities can get the benefit of the Amenity.

This concept assumes that a Factory building actually represents the Industrialization of a city, so it would be redundant and an over-complication to require separate Factories for each Resource: one 'Factory' in a City can potentially represent a number of different factories producing Cloth and Artificial Dyes and/or General Manufacturing/Production. The exception I would consider for this is Automobile Factories, which represent such a massive concentration of specialized production that I think they deserve their own Building: the Ford River Rouge Plant, the Soviet Kharkov and Stalngrad Tractor Works, the Volkswagen Plant in Wolfsburg, each represented one of the largest single manufacturing complexes ever built in their time. Personal Electronics, at least as represented by the massive Foxconn complexes in China, is another candidate for a specialized Factory Structure.

 

I'd love to see a system like this cleverly implemented. It would be yet another way that each game could differ based on the map.

Evan more importantly, it could give a reason to consider not chopping! I'd like that Wheat, Rice, Sheep, etc. to represent something other than a "food now versus food later" decision.

 

@Sostratus I’d agree with all of that. I don’t think there are any shortage of ways to make the IR matter. My preference would be something that organically builds on what’s there rather than completely new mechanics. Policy cards, better tier 3 buildings, making strategic resources more important, and something around housing and amenities would be great.

And then something which “marks” that there has been a change to Industrialisation - either via an Emergency or Era score or (like landing on the Moon) a boost to culture or science. Just something so you go “Oh, I think we just had the Industrial Revolution”.

I think part of that might be the Industrial Revolution having an impact beyond your Civ too. Something like, once you industrialise, other Civs which haven’t industrialised gain extra science by trading with you. And maybe the other side of that is that industrialised nations exert more loyalty pressure.

 

A way to industrialize an un-industrialized country are Joint Ventures. Build a factory there so that poor people get work, earn money and can buy your products. Subsistence farmers usually cannot participate in our modern industrialized world since they do not have the money / foreign currency to buy valuable things.
It is important to give population a sufficient income to be able to purchase industrialized goods.

Mass production of goods means that you need a big (global) market to sell your surplus goods, otherwise your factory might not work efficiently if you produce too many goods for stockpile or try to reduce factory output by reducing working time per day.