I made a post on another forum just moments ago when I suddenly realized perhaps it was merely an error in judgment on my part.
I often play watery maps, and I play with Domination turned off, meaning I often have to envelop every last little empire on the map. As such, I am often short on hammers, and find the games go until quite late in the tree, and I almost always get to Assembly Line, at which point I whip factories (with the intention of "making my investment back" in the pop saved on future whips with my Factory-and-Coal bonuses). But factories are really expensive, and take a lot of pop. But after they are built they save 1 pop for every 6 pop you were going to whip (though in practice, they often just allow you to 1-or-2 pop whip a little earlier, but technically they do turn a 6 pop whip into a 5 pop whip, which is where the previous statement comes from.) I am a hardcore whipper, and I think I do often whip enough to make it back most of the time (but it takes like 30 pop worth of whipping for each city!), and the main thing is that it takes quite a few turns to whip out 30 pop (if only because of mounting unhappy issues). So is this just a hole in my game (one of those investments that takes way too long to pay off)?
Moreover, does then being able to whip a coal plant for even more production power just make said investment even worse, or improve it because it adds 50% compared to factory/forge 25%? I just can't figure it out. Also, it gets even muddier when I get access to Drydocks before factories and my number one concern is naval supremacy on such maps. If I whip out ships, the factory is doing even less than I think if I also have a drydock in the city already.
I often play watery maps, and I play with Domination turned off, meaning I often have to envelop every last little empire on the map. As such, I am often short on hammers, and find the games go until quite late in the tree, and I almost always get to Assembly Line, at which point I whip factories (with the intention of "making my investment back" in the pop saved on future whips with my Factory-and-Coal bonuses). But factories are really expensive, and take a lot of pop. But after they are built they save 1 pop for every 6 pop you were going to whip (though in practice, they often just allow you to 1-or-2 pop whip a little earlier, but technically they do turn a 6 pop whip into a 5 pop whip, which is where the previous statement comes from.) I am a hardcore whipper, and I think I do often whip enough to make it back most of the time (but it takes like 30 pop worth of whipping for each city!), and the main thing is that it takes quite a few turns to whip out 30 pop (if only because of mounting unhappy issues). So is this just a hole in my game (one of those investments that takes way too long to pay off)?
Moreover, does then being able to whip a coal plant for even more production power just make said investment even worse, or improve it because it adds 50% compared to factory/forge 25%? I just can't figure it out. Also, it gets even muddier when I get access to Drydocks before factories and my number one concern is naval supremacy on such maps. If I whip out ships, the factory is doing even less than I think if I also have a drydock in the city already.