To cut down trees or not to?

Im a semi newbie player, been playing for about 3 weeks and just registered on the boards. Dont know if this has been brought up before but, is it wise to cut down a few trees if part of your land is all jungle to get some irigation in? Or would destroying the trees which could make you lose some resourses not be worth it?

As always in these questions, the answer to this is, "It depends". However, without trying to get into too much detail if you've got the manpower I'd cut down jungle, irrigate that space, and mine the forests. But if you've got LOTS of forests, then yes you may need to cut those down also somewhat.

You don't lose resources by cutting down jungle or forests. Only potential shields. For example, if you've got a lot of jungle and you're keeping it because you know that rubber only appears in jungle, then don't worry about cutting it down. If there was ever jungle on that square, the computer will potentially put rubber on that square, regardless of whether the jungle still exists or not.

good luck!

You can't lose any resources by chopping down trees.

Chopping down Jungle is generally advisable, since it gives very poor production. However, doing so takes very long time/very many Workers, so irrigate/mine any open (non-desert) terrain first. Forest is often worth keeping, esp if the city is short of shields, at least until railroads come around (with RR, you get the same # of shields and more food from mine Grassland than from Forest).

See Cracker's article in the War collge about lumber-jacking for all you ever wanted to know about cutting down trees, and when to do so, and how to manage the clearing and reforesting to take maximum advantage of the extra ten shields you get from cutting down trees the first time it is done in a tile.

I don't think most people can manage that intensively, but still, the information is interesting and potentailly useful if you can use even part of it.

Originally posted by algonacy
You don't lose resources by cutting down jungle or forests. Only potential shields. For example, if you've got a lot of jungle and you're keeping it because you know that rubber only appears in jungle, then don't worry about cutting it down. If there was ever jungle on that square, the computer will potentially put rubber on that square, regardless of whether the jungle still exists or not.

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Actually algonacy, this is very untrue.

When a game map is created, all the resource locations are pre-assigned. If you clear jungle on a square that will evenetually have coal on it, the coal will still appear wher it was preassigned but this has nothing to do with the fact that the game may know the square once had jungle.

Strategic resources never "appear" of squares that do not match their assigned terrain type once those resources start to appear and disappear.

So there are two things that operate here. The preassigned map coordinates for resources that have not yet been discovered and then the allowed terrain types were resources may reappear when they start flopping around.

Resources do not go away because your cleared or altered the base terrain (which is sort of goofy) but this is one reason you can end up with deer on an irrigated railroad as wells as wheat or wine in the middle of a forest. However, the number of terrain tiles of a given terrain type that you have within your borders may effect the probability that you will have a vanishing/reappearing strategic resource pop up withing your borders. Uranium is a great example. If you only have one source of this resource and do not have lots of muonatins and forests, then definately you should not hook up the resource to a road until you are absolutely ready to use it.

I guess I always assumed that if you cut down forest/jungle for instance you wouldnt get the resources or your luck would be decreased, just seems that way for me but maybe im just unlucky . I like to play maps with lots of islands and my island seems to very rarely have strategic resourses besides horses, I always thought the problem was I cut down all the trees/jungle and irigated/mined all the land, and I hate trading for resourses, which usually ment I had to go searching for probable locations and make a few cities there or take out a civilization that had the resourse I wanted, which while satisfy for a while gets kinda repetitive

Sorry to be dense Cracker, but I'm not sure I follow 100%. I read your reply twice, but it sounds to me like we're saying almost the same thing, although you probably describe it much better than I do. Please correct me, but the way I understand it is that you should never be afraid to alter a terrain for fear of not getting a certain resource because as you said, all those items are pre-assigned when the game begins.

The only difference is that the resource "re-allocation" as they begin to disappear/re-appear on the map will then certainly be affected by any terrain changes you have made on your map. (Example: So if you had plenty of jungle at the beginning of the game and were lucky enough to have 1 or 2 squares with jungle on them 3 or 4,000 years later when you finally discover it, then it won't matter if you've cleared all the jungle from your lands. But, if you then loose your rubber resource from those squares in the future and you have cleared all your jungle, there is no way that you can get rubber from your squres that have been already cleared.) I believe that is what you are trying to explain to my thick head.

Thanks for the clarification. I'm not sure if I knew that about the re-allocation aspect or not.

I, too, am unsure but interested in your reply Cracker.
Are you saying that resources will not appear in terrain that they aren't meant for, even if that square USED to have the right terrain?
Eg, if the computer at the beginning of the game designates square A1 to have rubber, and then before rubber is visible you clear the jungle, does this mean rubber will NOT appear there?

Rubber will be on that tile (regardless of what you do to it), until it 'depletes' on you, then if it is no longer jungle or forest, it can't jump back there.

So, if at the beginning, only 1 tile in your territory was designated to get rubber, you can chop every jungle/forest tile down (including the rubber tile), you will still get that rubber resource when you learn Replacable parts. However, once it depeletes on you, then it will only jump to other jungle/forest tiles. And if you have no jungle/forests, you will be left with no rubber.

Rubber is a very bad example in this discussion. Rubber can't disappear (according to the editor). Rubber and Horses are the only two strategic resources (in the normal unmodded game) that can't disappear. For every other strategic resource everything that is said here is true. Although...

I didn't know that there was a connection between the hooking up of a resource and the chance that it might dissapear. I read in other threads that a resource can even disappear if it isn't hooked up. But Cracker is a very reliable source...

Still, could someone please confirm a relation between the hooking up of resources and the disappearence of resources.

Roland,

Here is a simple scenario test that will let you enlighten yourself about the relationships between resources and connections.

The folder contains two PTW xxx.bix files that you can download and then load into your game from your scenarios folder.

When you first load the maps, fortify any units that you find and make contact with Greece or Rome and trade maps so you can see the whole world.

The first version is a uranium farm that has 400 uranium resources in your nice little cozy territory and all of them are connected to raods but none of these roads are connected to any cities so that there are no resources that can be viewed as beibg harvested and used. You are given a cute little stack of workers that can quickly build you a road connection to the grid that will let you hook up all 400 uranium piles in the first turn if you want to. Just play with and and see what you can learn. There are three important principles of resource management that this map will demonstrate.

The second map is the exact mirror image of the first map where you are just placed on the other grid of uranium where you have the joy of having a farm of 400 unconnected uranium resources nestled in among cities.

Just fortify your units, trade maps and play a few turns and see how enlightened you become. (Play the tests on Deity so you can get an extra view into the mind of the AI).

Fixed original grid on 7/24 after 4 downloads

Wow, thanks Cracker. I didn't know that you really tested this feature of the game using the editor. This makes your statement even more credible.

I'll use the editor to change the game into debug mode. Then I can see what the AI does. Why does the difficulty level matter? Does the AI hook up the resources faster at Deity or are you hinting at the fact (AFAIK), that the AI knows the placement of all resources before it has the technology. Just curious.

Probably, the persons in the other thread were wrong and you're right (or my memory of the other thread isn't very good). I'm going to have a look at your files and see if I can learn something. Thank you.

Cracker, I learned two things using your custom made maps.
1) Resources can only disappear when a road is present on the square of the resource. It doesn't matter if the road is connected to a city. Interesting.
2) Resources can't disappear in two consecutive turns. There have to be 4 turns inbetween two disappearances (so 5 turns after the first disappearance another disappearance can take place). There was only uranium on this map, so maybe resources of different nature can disappear on consecutive turns. But this is not that interesting at all.

(In debug mode, I also noticed that the AI is stupid. But I already knew that. )

Thank you again for the maps. I learned something.

The AI would have more units (workers), so you can more rapidly see what they are doing.

Roading all the resources up (so they will all eventually deplete on them), and chopping every forest, so they can never get any of those resources back. So eventually, you would own every single uranium source! (if you don't hook any up)

I'm sure your memory of that other thread is right. I have seen people claiming (falsely) that they had resources deplete on them with no roads on them.

It isn't smart of the AI to hook up every resource and cut every forest/jungle. Especially the ones not within a city radius. One can argue about the ones in a city radius because those squares will give you extra trade with a road and are more productive if the forest/jungle is cut.

I always leave a forest in the very few squares of my land that I don't use, so I can get the resource back in those squares (and it looks nice). But there's only one resource in the game that is only present in jungles and forests: rubber. And rubber can't move in the game. So this is not a big issue for AI improvement, IMHO.

I'm sure your memory of that other thread is right. I have seen people claiming (falsely) that they had resources deplete on them with no roads on them.

Click to expand...

Thank you. Now I have a little faith in my memory again.

I always get rid of jungles. They tend to make my nearest city have a disease all the time. However, on occasion I find forests useful for shields...

Roland,

Another semi interesting thing to do is to take the first map and abandon all your cities and just hold onto the free settler.

This will give you no cities and no territory but will leave all the resources hooked up to roads so you can see if they vanish in neutral territory when a road is present.

A variant on this is to keep the capital city and connect it to the road grid, but then abandon all the other cities so that most of the resources are in neutral territory bot hooked up to the roads.

I also tested this by giving the map 400 workers so that you could abandon all the cities and build a colony on every resource just to test the colony connection effect.

The first version is a uranium farm that has 400 uranium resources in your nice little cozy territory and all of them are connected to raods but none of these roads are connected to any cities so that there are no resources that can be viewed as beibg harvested and used.

Click to expand...

Did you notice that Cumae is connected to the uranium?

Abandon Cumae and the uranium doesn't dissappear. So the resource must be connected to at least 1 city for it to dissappear.

Originally posted by Bamspeedy


Did you notice that Cumae is connected to the uranium?

Abandon Cumae and the uranium doesn't dissappear. So the resource must be connected to at least 1 city for it to dissappear.

Click to expand...

Oops, one of those doofy editor bugs where the map definition does not show the road to be connected but then it hooks iself up after the fact.

When I originally ran the test I only used a 10x10 instead of a 20x20 grid and it was a little less exciting.

I fixed the grid with the offending road connection removed and fixed the upload package.

Originally posted by cracker
Roland,

I also tested this by giving the map 400 workers so that you could abandon all the cities and build a colony on every resource just to test the colony connection effect.

Click to expand...

How much free time do you people have anyways?