When to build civilian factories as China?

[Sledjer]

When playing China, I obviously want to build military factories at the start in order to have enough guns to fight the Japanese, but I imagine that at some point it becomes worth it to switch to civilians instead because of construction ability thanks to consumer goods production. Does anyone know when that point is, if it exists?

 

[Crixus]

It all depends in the situation, I know not a very satisfying answer, but there is a bunch of focuses that gives factories:

Taiyuan Arsenal - Add 3 Military Factory
Develop the Hanyan Arsenal - Add 3 Military Factory
Invite Foreign Investors – Add 2 offmap Civilian Factory
Burma Road - Add 2 offmap Military Factory
Ledo Road - Add 1 offmap Military Factory
The Hump - Add 1 offmap Military Factory

 

[Cavalry]

As China build CIV only when you need to maintain minimum number of CIV, for repairing and building new CIV for import. This minimum number depend on nation and situation, about 5-15.

 

[CantGetNoSleep]

Does anyone know when that point is, if it exists?

1) As others have noted, you want to build one civ for every 3 or 4 mils you're building so you don't end up with all your civs used up for consumer goods

2) You want to increase that ratio when you're starting to win... i.e. if you're holding back Japan with the troops you have, and have enough troops to garrison the ports and the areas around the ports, you should start to build up your economy with CIVs. That'll eventually give you the momentum to throw them back into the sea, and eventually possibly build dockyards to build a navy. You'll need a lot of CIVs to do that as you'll need the CIVs to import iron (yes, it's silly you can't get iron any other way, I know).

Datewise that's usually sometimes in mid 1939 for me.

 

[Seyfardt]

I am a bid hesitant to build either civ or mil with the initial building penalties. This can be levitated by either spending pp on war economy or the minister that gives a 10% discount on buildings. But you might prefer to use your first pp on other things...

China has so much to do and so few recourses..But recently Nat China did get buffed a bit by receiving 3 extra factories recently in last patch.

I always use my Civs for either the initial secret service building, forts ( which not have a building penalty) or even infra ( to boost that steel income in that few provinces that atleast has some steel, although it’s not really adding up since you trade away that extra steel. Then that high infra province is my main factory build after I have improved my building modifiers.

In the end I like to buff my “ building capacity” as early in the game due to snowball effect. While ofcourse making sure you don’t get overrun by jpn or com China.