Factory is a type of industrial building in Napoleon: Total War.
Description[]
Hives of industry, factories make the recruitment of artillery units significantly cheaper and add to the industrial wealth of a region.
Machines are the wonder of the modern age, allowing tasks previously limited to skilled craftsmen to be handled by the average working man. Productivity and profits are increased ten-fold, adding to the industrial wealth of a region. This does little to please the lower classes, who have awful working conditions foisted upon them.
One of the first factories in Britain, in the modern sense of the word, was Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mill in Derbyshire in northern England. Unlike mills of the past, it was purpose-built to house machinery designed by Arkswright himself. The factory's design was so successful that similar mills were established all along the Derwent Valley in Derbyshire. Towns quickly sprang up around these mills and the houses were purposely arranged to make the mill the centre of the town. The need to find overseas markets for factory-made goods was one of the driving forces of British expansionism and aggressive trading.
General Information[]
Assuming standard tax rate, the building generates between 150 to 225 gold per turn depending on the level of the administration building in the region, if any exists. Since it's upgraded from an existing manufactory, which generates half this amount by itself, upgrading a manufactory to a factory is essentially paying 3,600 gold to generate an extra 250 gold worth of region wealth, or an extra 75-112 gold per turn. This means that the building only pays for itself (therefore justifying its building costs) after 40-55 turns, including build time--if a game is anticipated to end before this amount of turns, building a factory is generally not worth the cost. However, building at least one factory is beneficial, as it opens up the industrial tech tree and leads to the Steam-Powered Factory, which in turn unlocks even more advanced industrial technologies.
The Peninsular Campaign[]
In The Peninsular Campaign, factories require 1,500 gold and 6 turns to build.