Whats the point of Iron?

[Gamer7956]

I finished unlocking the memories with my last playthrough, including unlocking iron. I have to ask... what's the point? While I admit I've only played on normal, I've never had a particular demand for metal. I find metal is one of those things where you desperately need very small quantities to construct a few key pieces of infrastructure/train a few key workers... and then you don't need it again. I had a playthrough where I didn't even bother to build a smeltery, and that's while running a water temple.

Metal is that weird bridge between basic industry and the Bourgeoisie that lasts for a very short time. I don't think I've needed 5 advanced tools total to beat the game before, so why is there a whole extra mine and toolshop combo that makes marginally more efficient tools?

Am I missing something? Maybe the bourgeoisie should use more metal tools? It does seem weird that most of them don't...

[Rithrin]

Well, I can't disagree with your point. It's pretty niche. However, it is possible to unlock Mini-Event techs like the one that gives your stonemason the ability to turn 1 Tool into 5 Stone or something like that, and for that the Advanced Tool building can be nice, since you'll eat up tools fast.

Plus at higher difficulties running mines can really drown you in Cataclysm points, and the advanced Tool buildings ensure you use less ore overall and therefore spend less time running the mines.

But yeah, I typically don't research and build these ones. They might need a little revisit.

[Manxome]

I go through a lot of basic tools in order to remove forests and mountains, and I need 20 advanced tools for the doomsday tower. Iron makes this a little more efficient, although it's not a huge boost. (And its benefit is basically negated if you can get a +1 bonus to other toolmakers from a boon.)

You also sometimes want fairly large amounts of metal ingots for producing nature from temples, but iron doesn't really help with that, since it gives you fewer ingots per smelting action than copper does. (This is more relevant on higher difficulties since you'll need to produce a lot more nature points.)

[Catman]

At the moment, Iron is quite useful for when you need to perform mass-terraforming. Apart from that, I agree it is not so useful, and I'd like to explore the usage of Iron more in the future