What defines an "all factories" strategy?

In many posts in these forums, you read about the "all factories" game.  That could mean more than one thing, so my question is, exatly what do you mean when you use that term?  

You have three ways, at least, of going all out for factories:  By using all of your social production to build and rush-buy factories (no labs or research centers?);  by keeping the slide bar set for something like 100% social production or 50% military and 50% social to build more factories;  and by always clicking the focus on social production.   Can someone explain how you manage these things in an all-factory game?

Thanks for your replies.

 

17,566 views 14 replies
Reply #1 Top
All Factory refers to the idea that you can have no research buildings and always keep the research spending set to zero but still get research by using focus on research. In this case it doesn't matter if your production is set for 100% military production or 100% social production or anywhere in between.

This is a more efficient utilization of your planet tiles since with any split between research and production (social, military or mixed doesn't matter) you are effectively not using all of your factory capacity and you're not using all of your reseach capacity.

It's only when your research slider is set to 100% research that your research building are used completely but then your factories are totally unused or when your research slider is set to 0% in which case your factories are used completely but your research building are unused. In this case the ratio between social production and military production really doesn't matter, whatever they're set for between the two forms of production you get full benefit out of your factories.

Rush buying social production or military production has nothing to do with anything. All Factory is simply having the research slider always set to zero and never building or buying any research buildings whatsoever.
Reply #2 Top
Is this strategy effective?
Reply #3 Top
It can be very effective. It's a bit tougher to run because it places a higher demand on your economy....A natural side affect of fully using all your buildings.
Reply #4 Top
I think I will give it a try the next time I have a planet with the 700% bonus. Maybe designate one world as my manufacturing center for the fleet. See how it works with the artifical slave center.

Vuk-
Reply #6 Top
the biggest drawback of the All Factory is the slower research at the start. Tech Trading becomes pretty useful in this strat, and with tech trading puts increased importance on Diplomacy.

just things to think about
Reply #7 Top
Thanks to all for a good discussion.
Reply #8 Top
Oh yeah, because the slider system makes no sense, either from a logical standpoint or - in combination with "focusing" - from a not-requiring-you-to-micromanage-things-to-hell standpoint.

Maybe I should just say the hell with it and go play Sins. Wait, that's what they want me to do, isn't it? :(
Reply #9 Top
I had a go at all factories.... and I found that if I had 100% on manufacturing slider, 0% on research slider, and put focus on research - I got hardly any research! FAR fewer research icons than shield icons.

Did I miss something?

(Mind you, I could crank out ships really fast!)

Cheers
Reply #10 Top
Hi!
Did I miss something?

Check you race's abilities (stats). There you'll see it has significantly higher bonuses in mil and soc production than in research. The bonuses obtained from researched techs give 40% to production and only 10% to research. That's why it is important to get proper staring "abilities" when you design the race. If you intend to go with all-factory, you pick a good bonus to research. If you'd like to play all-labs, you pick production bonuses.

For more info you can check wiki: production and research.

BR, Iztok


Reply #11 Top
I think I will give it a try the next time I have a planet with the 700% bonus. Maybe designate one world as my manufacturing center for the fleet. See how it works with the artifical slave center.

Vuk-


You should understand that you cannot pursue this strategy on a planet by planet basis. If you are going to try to do all-factory or all-lab or the lab-to-factory-flip version, you are committiing to doing it for your entire civilization. This is because you need to set the civ's across-the-board econ siders to 100% manufacturing or 100% research to make it work well. Then control what each planet is doing (somewhat) by setting planet focus.

drrider
Reply #14 Top

Actually, I play a hybrid All Factories strategy when I play DA on Suicidal and, in the process, make use of the research bonus tiles.

I start with a 300% or better research tile, rush a lab there, and concentrate on research for the first ten or so turns.  The intent is to acquire all the early bonus research things and cherry pick a couple others, depending on what later strategy I wish for thaty game.

Then, I switch to All Factories, inclulding building over the research building.  This helps mitigate the early pauci9ty of research under All Factories.  W/O that initial turbo-boost to research, the Suicidal AIs developed an insurmountable advantage for me to overcome.