WA/Russian Factory Strategy...

[Kwik E Mart]

...anyone have any suggestions on how many new facotories (if any at all) should be produced by WA and/or Russians in the full campaign?

[dapamdg]

I do not bother with any at all. It is tempting to build some in the US because the lower multiplier can be frustrating. However, once that multiplier goes up you will regret having wasted the production on factories that cannot produce because of lack of resources. England and India/Australia are also tempting (especially in Asia where the extra productive capacity would be very helpful) but all those factories are vital for producing troops and supplies; productive capacity cannot be wasted on building more factories lest you lose the ones you already have for lack of troops and supply.

As for Russia, I have found that factory loss and resource loss are so closely tied that there is little need for more factories that lack resources. You can best preserve productive capacity by moving guaranteed-to-fall factories, such as Kharkov and Belorussia, back to "safe" areas, such as the Urals.

Sorry about the very verbose way of saying, in effect, do not bother building any more factories.

[Graymane]

Agree. WA factories are generally useless as you are bound by resources once the mults kick in.

[Paul Vebber]

I've found that having an extra factory in Engalnd can help with ship repir/construction in teh mid game and an extra US facotory can help "burn through' the resource glut getting you more troops and supplies when you need them most.

You need to engage in a VERY aggressive naval strategy for tehm to pay off, but I have found at the HARD level agaisn teh AI where you have high naval attrition if you are aggressive, it helps keep your WA fleet going.

If you prusue an "air heavy" strategy or lots of ground losses it can be a liability - because England in particular can't rebuild gound losses with its population constraint, You can typically get teh less manpower intensive and production intensive naval units back into the fray, and still get a few ground units out with an extra factory in England. You need to have secured sea control though... Its also useful if teh germans play air heavy in the West and keep knocking factories off line with bombers.

Even without an extra factory, that tends to play into WA hands because of the drain on german Air power. I've done it as the Germans agaisnt the AI succesfully. Not sure it works against a Human...

[aletoledo]

I like to build an extra factory in the northwest USA, since it only has one factory anyway and doesn't contribute much with only that.

as far as india, I've rarely had a japanese player push towards india, so I've taken to building a southern india factory, which really helps churn out infantry with supplies that the japanese can't really match so far away. The only thing is that building it takes so long initially that it would seem to really only pay off in a game thats going to go into 1945, because otherwise the 2-3 infantry/artillery that could be produced might be more useful earlier on in a faster game.