Here's a link to the much anticipated article on how to get the most out of Forest Terrain squares and how to conduct Forestry Operations throughout the ages with your workers and settlers.

Forestry Operations for Civ3 (http://www.civfanatics.com/doc/civ3/cracker/civ3_starts/forestry.htm)

http://www.civfanatics.com/doc/civ3/cracker/civ3_starts/forestry_graphics/forestry_overview.gif

This is the followup article to Improving Your Opening Play Sequences (http://www.civfanatics.com/doc/civ3/cracker/civ3_starts/) and between these two articles there are enough tactics and skills to take any player and boost their abilities up the ladder by at least two difficulty levels.

If you are still automating your workers, Stop !! and take some time to read these two articles because they will improve your ability to play the game in every stage.

1) Thunderfall has the front page link going to the wrong thread :D

2) Resources first appear on whatever map tile the map generator placed them. Resources which appear during the game (having disappeared from somewhere else) show up based on the current state of the tile. If you don't own a lot of land, and remove all your forests and jungle, you may loose out uranium or coal movements (rubber doesn't disapper).

Cheers,
Shawn

Grey Knight,

Welcome. The thread pointer was mostly my fault because I got so discombobulated by the down time this bast weekend and I had some other things I had to get done this week that were time critical. The web pages interanlly point to that other thread as well. But hey, we're pretty darned hi-tech because most strategy articles don't even attempt to link to a discussion or support forum.

I thought about the disappearing resource issue as well and tested a few possible situations just to make sure we would not be doing something stupid by clearing forests and jungles. And the tests revealed:

Uranium and Coal might have there locations effected by clearing forests and jungles.

The question would be if this redistribution would cause you to risk losing the resource.

If no jungles existed, then the disappearing coal would reappear on mountains or hills.

If no forests existed, then the disappearing uranium would reappear on mountains.

The AI automated workers will clear their jungles and forests as well. Its just that the automated workers will not take advantage of the bonuses in about 50% of the cases. I also do not see AI workers replant large acreages of forest.

In the test cases played on Emporer level I never lost a disappearring resource because the territory holding ratio was always in my favor. I often had two or three extra copies of these resources that were not even hooked up. Uranium is one of those resources I never have connected. NEVER in the sense that if I need it I hook it up, set the build queues, and then pillage it back to disconnected all in the same turn. I have never seen a disconnected resource vanish on me.

I thought disconnected or not-connected resources did not reappear. Therefore my strategy - if I bothered - included "saving" of resources - meaning that I left one of each resource unconnected. However most of the time - there would be a city next to the resource icon - and I would hook it up & improve the tile.

Clearing of forests and jungles does not seem to have any effect on appearance of rubber, coal and uranium in my games. As Cracker stated - they reappear on mountains and such if no forest and/or jungle tiles are available.

Fascinating reading BTW. Perhaps a more careful use of workers are in order. I never was much in favor of automation anyway.
I never cared much for this timing part of "forestry operations" - will check the possible impact it could have on my game results from now on.

Great work - as always :)

Cracker you missed a fairly obvious use of forestry operations. On the discovery of sanitation there are, what, eight squares per city or so going unworked. That's a lot of forest that can be planted up to rush hospitals and quickly converted to irrigation to get up to 20 pop. I found your earlier articles far more useful than your recent few where you are "teaching granny to suck eggs". In rather extravagant detail.

I rarely use forestry late in the game, but in a recent game while engaged in a Space Race I did utilize it extensively in my corrupt cities. I noticed that after a couple of rounds I no longer got any shields from harvesting forests. It seemed to me that some tiles could be harvested more times than others (although I didn't do a systimatic study).

How many times can an individual tile be planted and harvested before you no longer get the shield benefit?

Originally posted by Gothmog
How many times can an individual tile be planted and harvested before you no longer get the shield benefit?

If I remember correctly, after patch 1.21f or something, we can no longer plant the trees for the purpose of harvesting them for shields.

Originally posted by Gothmog
I rarely use forestry late in the game, but in a recent game while engaged in a Space Race I did utilize it extensively in my corrupt cities. I noticed that after a couple of rounds I no longer got any shields from harvesting forests. It seemed to me that some tiles could be harvested more times than others (although I didn't do a systimatic study).

How many times can an individual tile be planted and harvested before you no longer get the shield benefit?

Only once, and if it started with a forest - none!

Re: CB

So the answer is: harvested once. Planted if needed

Re: bbaws

cracker said that you could plant and harvest in the late game all the tiles and within one turn (he even gave the no of slaves U need). It's your option when you do it and what for.

Man, I must have been fooling myself. I could have sworn that I got shields at least twice from a couple of tiles. I guess my mind was on other things (like worying about a sneek attack from the evil X-man).

Originally posted by Gothmog
Man, I must have been fooling myself. I could have sworn that I got shields at least twice from a couple of tiles.

Are you sure that you get the latest patch?

Yes I play with 1.29f, I think it was a major improvement (esp tech wize). I am sure cracker, and you, are right as he did an exhaustive study. I do science in my RL and his study could go to a peer reviewed journal!

The game in question was in the modern era and it was me and the X-man left. We were very equal in power and I was just trying to end it without aother major war. With all those cities (I had 50 or so) it is sometimes hard to see those quick messages about what happened between turns (e.g. 10 shields returned to ...). In fact this is also a problem for me with WLT*Ds in my corrupt cities. I often have to look over 20-30 corrupt cities to make sure they have fireworks because I know a couple WLT*Ds ended but I don't know which ones. The advisor screen doesn't work so well when you have 20+ citizens, trying to count the little heads, argh.

The advisor screen doesn't work so well when you have 20+ citizens, trying to count the little heads, argh

Sounds like you could really use the 'smiley badges' graphics. Makes it ALOT easier to know who is happy and who is not.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10197

I couldn't imagine trying to micromanage hundreds of cities (huge map) for maximum happiness without those smiley badges!

Cracker, GREAT article. I'll need to read once or twice again to properly absorb it all and integrate some of the more advanced concepts into my play.

Maybe I missed it, but there's another use for planting forests.

Prior to Hospitals, one will often have a number of 12 pop cities producing excess food. Certainly one can manually remove citizens and assign them as specialists, but this will forego shield and trade production.

Instead, forest all unshielded grassland, including those with wheat bonuses (to the point where there is no longer any excess food). In a game I just played, this increased shield production from 19 to 29 shields prior to RR.

Cutting down the forests later, as you are by nature post-Rep Parts, is a snap and of course provides the 10 shield bonuses.

HiYa cracker,

Interesting stuff on advanced forestry Ops.

Makes it a real irritant that there is no flag or map marker for "have already had forest harvested here" on a given tile. I usually can't be bothered (simply lazyness) to make and keep screenshots showing where forest have been AND where they've been harvested, so I sometimes find myself wastefully planting and then harvesting forest, to no avail- no 10 pt. bonus- I'd already done it.

In that vein, heres a question for you and the rest of the Sites' Gentle Readers.

So assume you DO keep a set of screeen shot logs for say your continent. What about the far off lands you don't get to until much later in the game? IF a foreign civ has themselves harvested the forest, then you occupy the tile and yourself plant and harvest a forest, do YOU get, or not, the 10 pt. bonus? In other words is the limitation by tile, forever and ever throughout the game, or by a player and tile? IF its simply by tile, and if the AI had already harvested forest, and now You CANNOT, then landing overseas may cause a difference in forest management strategy, overseas vs at home. Every tile planted/harvested overseas could be a potential waste of worker effort, as the AI may have already done so. Now, as I think you noted somewhere, it may well be that the AI does not do forest re-plant/harvest in a systematic fashion, in which case the the chance that any given one is wasted effort is of course reduced. Perhaps an intelligent look at the location relative to other terrain and cities might yeild a clue as to wheither or not its a good idea to plant and harvest.

Any observations available on this issue?

Royfurr,

I only use the screen shot forest locator maps when there are about 30% forests in the locations. So I only have one to three of the of them per game. For early conquest and domination victories these are rarely a concern.

For far off lands, you have to use a form of Gestalt to sort of fill in the blanks.

Industrious civs are far more likely to have cleared forest.
Towns that HAVE NOT popped boundaries out to greater than the 9 square minimum are less likely to have cleared any forest.

The AI rarely (I have never seen it) plants forest expressly for the purpose of clearing it.

Use your knowledge of the terrain layout for your current world map to guestimate if you would expect bands of forest and/or jungle. Areas that have been cleared from jungle will be unlikely to have been harvested for a forest bonus.

Resource locations can help to define early forest patterns. Wheat, Cows, Wine, Horses, and Coal never occur naturally in squares that originally had forests.

I also rarely see the AI harvest forest just to gain the bonus only. If you see a bare plains or grassland square with no improvements you can pretty much bet that the forestry bonus is still available there.

Getting early maps of your enemies and also saving the Embassy sneak peaks can really help to locate the early forests.

Yaa, cracker, thats pretty much what I was thinking- look at nearby terrain (on overseas lands) and the citys to guesstimate if a harvest of forest had been done. Hadn't thought of two of your points, so thanks for mentioning them- Industrious civs have a greater chance to have harvested, and that resource types like Wheat, Cows, Wine, Horses, and Coal never occur naturally in tiles that were originally forests. Good points.

One other question. I was at your "unofficial Tips" (Index for Cracker's Toolbox), and there is only the listing of the "tip", not a hyperlink to a discussion/example of it? Some I haven't seen in your early game skills pages, eg Pop Slamming for religions civs, Short rushing, barb faming, etc etc.

You plan on expounding on those tips or keep us in antipication?

I finally got a chance to finish reading this. It was very informative. One thing puzzles me though. I could have sworn that there are times when slaves are 1/3 the effectiveness of your standard worker. I did not see reference to this. I wasn't sure if:

1) I am mistaken about the 1/3.

2) Things have changed in PTW 1.21 since the article was written.

3) This is off the main topic so not included. I tried to look at the tables to see if I could figure out when it is 1/3, but the slave always seemed to be 1/2, so that didn't work.

4) The article does mention this, but I totally missed it.

So I guess my question is: At what times (if any) are foreign workers at 1/3?

Apologies in advance if this is the wrong place for this. Its just I can get a good number of foreign workers and would like to calculate some foreign-heavy crew compositions for when I try out the forest-and-cut crew concepts.

Me if the answer is 1 or 4 -> :blush:

Slaves don't get the Democracy bonus, so if your own workers were 2x as good as your slaves before you switched to Democracy, your own workers will then be 3x as good as slaves, in Democracy.

(I'm not sure if this is true if you are Industrious. Can anyone answer this: if you are Industrious and in Democracy, are your captured slaves 1/2 as good as your own workers, or 1/3 as good?)

Slaves under Democracy (whaat?) have a rounding error if non-Industrious, which is yet another reason to be Industrious.

I think Cracker's article doesn't address how to determine which city is going to get the bonus when the tile is in range of multiple cities. Here's how it works:

Edit: With info from EMan, this image isn't quite correct. Tile #2 is actually the first tile, and tile #1 comes between #8 and #9.

http://www.dos486.com/civ3/images/forest.jpg

When you chop a forest, the game checks all the surrounding tiles in the order indicated by the numbers for a city eligible to receive the 10 shields. It will bypass a city that is ineligible (because it is building a wonder or belongs to a different civ). By following this diagram, you can tell where the shields are going to go; if the bonus is going to go to the wrong city, you can temporarily swap that city to a Palace.

The order may look crazy, but it isn't. Just go around the first ring starting clockwise from the top, then go around the second ring clockwise from the top. :D

Cracker's article also doesn't address the fact that the base time to chop forests was reduced from 10 worker turns to 4 in Conquests, but that's a different issue entirely. :)

:goodjob: THANKS!!!

This is one question which I have always asked but has never got an answer!!

Does it matter if one city is actually working the Forest tile?

No, it doesn't I tested it many times.

This is great, T-hawk!

I got used to temporay wonder/palace build 'chop-control', but that doesn't work if you need the Palace for a pre-build elsewhere (and/or: have no wonder available, fairly tight build pattern, chop near capital and don't want the shields there).

We can also see that the shields would always go to an adjacent city center square, in case the shared forest tile is at distance 1 from one city center square and 2 from another city (no other overlap).

Playing C3C v1.22.

I had cities in positions 1 & 3.
1 was building a Library
3 was building a Worker

The shields went to position 3! :confused:

What am I missing here? :crazyeye:

EMan: do you have a save that I could check out for that?

Let me check in the morning.........off to bed now. (I probably have an Autosave at the start of the turn.......I'll see if I can get it to the point right before the "chop-down".)

Thanks for your interest and quick response, T-hawk. :goodjob:

ZZZzzzzzz.

Okay, its now morning.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Forest_Chop.jpg
As you can see, the white oval shows the Worker that caused the "final chop" on the forest.......and the shields were given to the city in "position 3" instead of the city in "position 1"!

Here's the game saved, immediately prior to that "Tiiiiiiiiimber Call":

Crumbs Eman, you give your cities exciting names.

I believe if you rotate the inner circle of numbers one square clockwise this will explain your observation (i.e. 2 becomes 1, 3 becomes 2, etc.), this fits with what I have seen when the computer decides which square to work in a newly founded city. I'm spouting off the top of my head, I have not tested anything.

I believe if you rotate the inner circle of numbers one square clockwise this will explain your observation (i.e. 2 becomes 1, 3 becomes 2, etc....Since I didn't know the "shield-allocation-sequence", I usually make the "undesirable" city produce a Wonder so that I KNOW where the shields are going to go!.......I'll try your theory out during the game (I'm not much of a "Tester").......a good time to test it is when you CAN'T change the Production to a Wonder because you have already "chopped" a prior forest tile into that city! (Viz. You can't use the shield bonus to build a Wonder) :)




Crumbs Eman, you give your cities exciting names.You noticed that, eh? :lol:
I used to let Civ assign the names......then I realized that I had NO idea where the cities were on the Map!
Then, I realized it didn't matter that much where they were!......AND, it didn't matter much what the name was! ;)
Since I'm a Lazy-Huge-Map-HOF-Milker at heart, I decided there were a couple of things I wasn't keeping track of with regard to cities, to wit:
1. Number of Cities on the Map
2. Tiles that have been "Deforested"

1. I usually do an Infinite City Sprawl (ICS) technique when playing a "Milker" and the one thing that bothered me was that annoying message "Too Many Cities" pops up and I can't build the city.........by this time the AI is usually down to ONE city! (Max cities on ANY Map is 512, including the AIs'.)
So, the 1st 3 characters of the city name is the city number in the order it was built/captured. :)

2. Have you ever tried to keep track of the tiles you've "Deforested"? It's not easy, unless you make a notation or your name is Mr Photographic Memory! ;)

So every time I call "Tiiiiiimber" I update the city name with the tile, 1-8, that was "Deforested" (Using the same numbers as T-hawk, coincidentally.) So, f1 means that tile "1" has been deforested. "fx" means all 8 tiles have been deforested. For tiles 9-20, I use a combination of n,e,s,w to designate the tile.....as I figured it would take too long to locate the tile otherwise!

Offa, are ya wishing you'd never brought up the subject of my cities' "exciting names"?! :lol:

Hmm. Bartleby might be right; the clockwise sequence might start NE of the city tile, not N. I'll investigate when I can, sometime this weekend.

EMan, you and your city names are insane. :crazyeye: Maybe I could drive you totally bonkers if I update that image to have 1-8 count from NE instead of N. You'll have to go rename all your cities ;)

:cooool: EMan - If anyone previously doubted your CivAddict status I think that should convince them! :lol:

EMan, you and your city names are insane. :crazyeye: Maybe I could drive you totally bonkers if I update that image to have 1-8 count from NE instead of N. You'll have to go rename all your cities ;)........Yes, you may be right T-hawk, on both counts!........BUT, NO name changes for me, THIS game! :lol:


:cooool: EMan - If anyone previously doubted your CivAddict status I think that should convince them! :lol:Guess who the ONE player/writer on this site MOST contributed to my CivAddiction? :mischief: ........... :lol: ......... :cool:

Offa, are ya wishing you'd never brought up the subject of my cities' "exciting names"?! :lol:

No. I am a little amazed though. Wow.

I used to let Civ assign the names......then I realized
2. Have you ever tried to keep track of the tiles you've "Deforested"? It's not easy, unless you make a notation or your name is Mr Photographic Memory! ;)

For tiles 9-20, I use a combination of n,e,s,w to designate the tile.....as I figured it would take too long to locate the tile otherwise!



I don't understand how you label tiles 9..20, could you give an example?

I have been advocating using the ### as the start of a cities name for some time, as it helps me play better. I like your concept of counting forest actions in city name. Other methods, ala punch out the gif map are too tedious.

The only other changes I make to names are I insert after the ### number the following:

FP - if FP city
IW - if IW city
SPH- if SPH city
P- if naval warfare is important in that game. It helps me keep the build order correct and not build non navy in naval shipyards. This is not as important with C3C, but was important with PTW. I often use F1 screen at end of a turn and need something in the first 9 letters to tell me both the importance of the city, ie, it's rank, and any special abilities I need to remember to utilize.

Several times I have gone into the editor and renamed the default cities for the civ, so all had 25 cities. It is fast, but each patch blows away all that work.


PF

I don't understand how you label tiles 9..20, could you give an example?9 would be nne; 10=ne; 11=nee; 12=ese; 13=es etc.
The codes are separated by a forward slash. :)

Ok, thanks. You must have quite long city names.

PF

Ok, thanks. You must have quite long city names.

PFThey can be pretty long.....BUT, I also use the letter "x" to indicate that ALL squares 1-8 have been deforested AND "xx" would indicate ALL squares 1-20 deforested.

AND, if a city's say #9 square falls in another city's 1-8 range, it would NOT require annotation for square 9 because it would be annotated in the other city's name.

In the early game of a "Milk Run", I do have the cities close together (viz. ICS), so the naming is pretty short.............in the late game the cities are spread apart in order to maximize score, and by that time the cities are probably "xx".

The net-net is that in the early game the cities names are only 3 characters long................the late game, 7!! :)
(Example "056/fxx")

EMan.
P.s. It's also easier to locate the cities on the map if you remember roughly what part of the world you settled early on (viz. low numbers) versus late (high numbers). :)

Wow!!!

All this talk about renaming cities has got me to thinking. Especially how you can use the names on the f1 screen to monitor your production in certain cities (ie, like the naval units being built in cities with harbors, to get vet units, etc).

I've renamed cities before, but never with any "system," that would enable easier monitoring of them from the f1 screen. I'll do stuff like rename a city "tank" or "bomber" or whatever, and have all my units of that kind, go there. Once you get rr and can move your units without any movement cost, I like to keep my stacks separate, when not in actual combat. It seems easier to move them around, and collect them when I need them this way.

But as far as the "system" of naming, for ease of use on the f1 screen, I think I'm going to have to try that.

Eman,

Next game I'm going to give your system a try. Actually I haven't used ###CityName but
##CityName, as after 99 the city is so low on the ranking and corruption is so high it seems pointless. But I have been neglecting forestry because it was too difficult to keep track of what was harvested and what had not. And as mentioned before, now before I start a game as a chosen civ, I do go into the editor and change the names for the 25 cities. I think now it makes more sense to have a list of 100 cities in the editor. The best way I have found to do this, is to create the list in a spreadsheet or doc file and paste into editor city name field. That way, my name list is not lost when civ gets patched and I don't have to rename each city, as they automatically get the name I want.

Thanks for the hints.

PF

I think now it makes more sense to have a list of 100 cities in the editor. The best way I have found to do this, is to create the list in a spreadsheet or doc file and paste into editor city name field. That way, my name list is not lost when civ gets patched and I don't have to rename each city, as they automatically get the name I want.PFVery Interesting idea! :goodjob:

I wonder how other CFCers are renaming their cities to help them PLAY the game?....for me, for Milk Runs, Forestry Operation Tracking is a MUST! :)

What's a "Milk Run?"

A "Milk Run" is where you play a Civ game, usually on a Huge random map to score the maximum points you can get.

"Milked" games could have been won earlier, BUT would not score as high as if they are "Milked" all the way to 2050AD.

The highest scores in the CFC Hall Of Fame (HOF) are ALL "Milked" games.

So a "Milk Run" is a game played until 2050AD, with the purpose of getting the highest score possible! :)

Example: The latest GOTM game results show that DaveMcW won the Gold Medal by "Milking" the game to 2050AD. :goodjob:

OK, I got a chance to test, and EMan is indeed right. When the game scans the first ring from the forest tile, it starts with the tile NE of the city (tile #2), not the tile N of the city. I edited the post with the image to include a clarifying note.

The second ring is correct - it does indeed start with tile #9 (not #10.)

Thanks for checking it out T-hawk. :goodjob:

AND, thanks to Bartleby for suggesting the correct sequence! :goodjob:

I edited the post with the image to include a clarifying note.



any chance of updating the image also?

Until image is updated by T-hawk, here is a temp image.

Helps if you upload the image.

I'm inbetween games now so I thought it might be good to review my city naming ideas and then put the new names in the editor for all civs. Here is what sounds good to me now, are there any ideas for improvment?

See image for summary. Here is the key to the citying naming convention.

Breakout
### - num of city when founded
Optional components
FP=FP
SPH=SPH
IW=IW
P=port
F=fort
S=science wonder
Name
1..8, tile number is lumbered, or na
x== all ring one tiles worked
a..l, tile letter is numbers, or na
X== all ring two tiles worked

Examples
Conventional names
001Moscow_1234567abcdefghijk == 29 characters
001Moscow_xX==12 char
040_SPH_Leningrad_1234567abcdefghijk == 36 char
040_SPH_Leningrad_xX== 26 char

No names
Longest names
040_SPH_1234567abcdefghijk ==40 char
001_1234567abcdefghijk== 23 char
Shortest names
040_SPH_xX==10 char
001_xX==6 char

Since I don't like to type too much, I am thinking of following Eman's practice and drop the city name. The parts inside the braces are optional, and the lumbering numbers inside the square brackets and acceptable names.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

PF

Nice work planetfall! :goodjob: (AND thanks for the image, too!)

The only thing I do differently is sometimes put "x8" instead of "1234567".....that way I know I only have one forest square to chop on the inner ring and, it shortens the city name.

It would be interesting to hear what other people are doing!?...........PERHAPS we're the only 2 people at CFC using "functional" city names! :lol:

P.s. Suggest you open a thread entitled "City Naming Conventions" in the Tips thread! :)

Nice work planetfall! :goodjob: (AND thanks for the image, too!)


Thanks. I tried my first game using your system. It works like a charm, although I have gotten away from serious forestry work as it takes just too darn long.

I put the first 100 names in all civs and it is so easy to ID the key cities. What is funny is to see how the city ownership changes but name remains. In current game England's capital is 04_Kore. [I limited the civ name to 4 chars]. I really like the ease in counting other civs cities and the ease of finding their key production centers.

The only problem with the naming convention is I miss some of the old city names, like London, Moscow, Paris, etc. The names are all in a spreadsheet and it doesn't take too long to paste them into the civ's list of city names. Since we don't expect more patches for C3C, this should be a one time event.

PF

Ainwood's CivAssist II (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=118540) utility offers another option for keeping track of forested tiles. On the World Map page right-click on the map and switch on the "Shield Forest" option. It does show which tiles the AI has harvested, though, if you consider this an exploit (albeit a minor one).