Hands-On Usage
Commonly used to determine whether a nation has sufficient idle civilian factories to trigger decisions, complete agreements, or unlock specific focus tree effects—for example, requiring the player to accumulate a certain production capacity before launching an industrial cooperation plan. Most frequently found in the available block of a focus or the available / visible block of a decision.
# Decision: can only be executed when the nation has enough idle civilian factories
available = {
num_of_available_civilian_factories > 5
}
Synergy
[building_count_trigger](/wiki/trigger/building_count_trigger): Commonly paired together—first check the total building count (civilian factory cap), then use this trigger to confirm actual idle capacity; both jointly describe industrial slack.
[add_cic](/wiki/effect/add_cic): When rewarding production capacity in an effect block, this trigger typically serves as a threshold check to prevent players from triggering industrial acceleration effects when they lack idle factories.
[has_completed_focus](/wiki/trigger/has_completed_focus): Usually after a focus unlocks industrial expansion, this trigger is combined to verify whether the player has converted the focus effect into actual usable capacity before opening subsequent decision chains.
[amount_research_slots](/wiki/trigger/amount_research_slots): As a fellow "quantity-type" resource trigger, it commonly appears in parallel within the available block, jointly restricting high-tier options that require the nation to reach a certain development stage.
Common Pitfalls
- Confusing "available" with "total": This trigger counts idle (unassigned to production lines) civilian factories, not the total number of civilian factories the nation owns. If all factories are in the construction queue, even with high total numbers, the condition may fail, causing the trigger logic to diverge from expectations.
- Overlooking trade occupation: Export trade consumes civilian factories. Newcomers often pass the condition in single-player testing, but in AI or multiplayer games, trade agreements can consume a large number of civilian factories, causing this trigger to fail—and the cause is difficult to diagnose.