AI War:Manufactories
What To Do With Too Much Of One Resource, But Not Enough Of The Other?
A: If you find yourself in a situation where you have a lot of unneeded crystal or metal, but you have too little of the opposite resource, then it's time to start building Manufactories. Unlike in many other RTS games, there is no "market" for selling off your existing excess crystal/metal, but by adjusting your inflows with Manufactories you can re-balance your economy.
A Metal Manufactory will produce 4 Metal per second for you, at an expense of 6 Crystal per second of income. Crystal Manufactories work the same only in reverse. You'll never want to have both metal and crystal manufactories running at once in your economy, since that would be a huge waste. But expert players often do have both metal and crystal harvesters in play at once, with just one group or the other paused. A paused manufactory neither produces nor costs income.
Often if you need a resource fast, you can build a lot of manufactories and get what you need, then pause a bunch of them once you have what you need. You can exert a large amount of influence over your economic situation with techniques like these, but it depends on what your specific needs and goals are, and how much economic micromanagement you are interested in doing. With good planning and good defenses, you really shouldn't need to be micromanaging your manufactories -- after all, the most purely efficient economy won't use any manufactories at all. But in practice, manufactories are great for making short-term adjustments (at some efficiency cost).
