Factory
“The age of muscle is over. The age of the machine has begun.”
The Factory is a sprawling industrial complex where mechanised production replaces manual labour, dramatically increasing a city’s manufacturing output. Steam-driven machinery, assembly processes, and organised labour combine to produce goods at a pace that would have been unimaginable to earlier generations. A city with a Factory becomes an industrial titan, churning out units, buildings, and wonders at formidable speed.
Stats
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| Cost | 70 Production |
| Maintenance | 2 gold/turn |
| Required Tech | Industrialisation |
| Prerequisites | Workshop |
| Special Requirements | None |
Effects
- +4 production per turn in the city.
Strategy
The Factory is the pinnacle of production infrastructure, providing +4 production on top of the Workshop’s +2 for a combined +6 production from the industrial chain alone. This makes Factory cities your primary centres for military mobilisation, wonder construction, and rapid infrastructure development. The 2 gold maintenance is significant but easily justified by the sheer volume of output. Prioritise Factories in cities with strong base production – those surrounded by hills and mines – to maximise the absolute benefit. In wartime, the player with more Factories can simply outproduce their opponent, replacing losses faster and maintaining relentless pressure.
Historical Background
The Industrial Revolution, beginning in Britain in the late eighteenth century, fundamentally reshaped human civilisation. The earliest factories, such as Richard Arkwright’s cotton mill at Cromford in 1771, concentrated workers and water-powered machinery under one roof to achieve efficiencies impossible in cottage industries. The subsequent adoption of steam power liberated factories from river locations, and by the mid-nineteenth century, industrial cities like Manchester, Birmingham, and Pittsburgh were producing textiles, iron, and manufactured goods on a scale that dwarfed all previous human output. The social consequences were equally revolutionary – mass urbanisation, the rise of a wage-earning working class, and the political movements that followed transformed the political landscape of the modern world.