AnthonyIII said:
The golden rule is to only cut the road when a lux is involved, right?
You can use a luxury, yes...
coming from the AI, not from you. You import, they export. You can also use a resource (horses, iron, saltpeter, coal, even potentially rubber, aluminum, oil, and uranium).
If you cut the road to your capital on an archipelago map it will work the same way, given that your capital isn't on a coast and does not have a harbor. My capital in my Iroquois game lay on a coast actually. Had I put a harbor there, after a while, cutting the roads there wouldn't have worked. So, on an archipelago map with your capital on a coast you can still cut the roads to your capital, so long as you don't put a harbor in your capital, since the trade route runs through the cities with harbors. I DO have harbors in this Mayan game... just not in my capital (which isn't on a coast).
Theoretically it comes as possible to use this in 20k games with your capital. You'd either want to have enough workers to rebuild every single turn around your capital every single turn (which come to think of it might come in around the number of workers you want to clean pollution every single turn near your capital once you have Shake's), or just deal with the decreased commerce. That said, if you play a 20k game on Sid, I highly recommend using your 2nd city (almost all of my 20k games on Sid have done this, and they've worked out much better this way in my opinion, because I can pre-build wonders... and with the high tech cost on Sid this becomes almost necessary at some point). So, you'd probably want to co-ordinate your second cities tiles such that it doesn't use any tiles directly around your capital.
That all said, I'm not sure if the potential benefits of this trick will work out all that well in many 20k games. If you need to pick up techs via this trick, instead of trading, then you'll probably have difficulties getting the high culture wonders. It might net you more gold earlier sure for cash-rushing buildings, but then you'll have fewer workers out to develop your lands... or have to pay more in unit support. This makes you doing research in a 20k game more difficult, and in basically any 20k game one of the best things you can do comes as to get techs yourself as fast as possible, get a lead over the AIs in techs, and then *push* your lead over the AIs in techs as much as you can for various reasons.
This isn't to say that it won't have any use in research-oriented games. For example,
ignas's game basically used it pillaging at the borders in a spaceship game. That said, from what he said elsewhere, it seems fair to say that it disappointed him a bit towards the end, as the AIs started a nuclear war with each other, and he basically started to have to do his own research and forget about it (really, not too much of a problem by that point in the game... just a little nuisance from his plan, I'd think)... as I understand from what he told me elsewhere. I've also used the basic idea in a
spaceship game at my borders. However, in a 20k game at any level, I wouldn't recommend it... or at least I have reservations about in a 20k game until proven otherwise,
for any level.
One thing to keep in mind for a 20k game at a high level though, supposing that you play archipelago, comes as that if an AI lands units on your shores, they will declare on you next turn. So, if you can ask them to "leave or declare" (even with least aggressive AI), you can send them gpt for their techs/lump sums. Then you ask them to "leave or declare" and they'll declare on you, and you get to keep the techs/lump sums, without any reputation hit. In one or two Sid 20k games, I have also bought techs with gpt, and then declared war and just taken the reputation hit.
The disconnect-reconnect trick has use if 1. you don't want to do research for some reason 2. the AI has enough gold/gpt/techs to make it worth it 3. you can significantly benefit from war happiness 4. you need the AI to declare on you instead of you just declaring on them, 5. you want the AI to do faster research by funneling gpt to them, and you can't funnel gpt to a target AI another way. There may exist a few other conditions which make it worthwhile, but by and large it doesn't have much use if you can out-research the AI, since you can make a large portion of the gold you can get from it by selling techs for gpt and lump sums. For a HoF-type game, I can see it having some, though limited utility in some Deity games... and maybe some Demigod game... but even at both those levels, not all that much... and I don't think you'll find a single number 1 Deity or Demigod game that has intentionally used anything like it... only Sid games.
In general, I wouldn't recommend it for any 20k game... and I only recommend it for Sid non-20k games.
I don't recall when I did my forest choppings for which buildings. I know that I'll often change a city near the one I want the chop to go to, to the Palace, so that I can direct the shields towards the other city. I do know that in this Mayan game, I
planted a lot of forests post-engineering to get my shield totals up once they hit or got near size 12. I did this before my golden age even, as I put in banks, and even though 17 shields isn't a great benefit over 15 shields when building horse-knights, or horse-calvary there exist some advantages... but first I'll digress to explain these terms, and how they work as I've used them enough in this game, and my other Sid military games, as well as my Deity histographic game...
By a horse-knight build, or horse-calvary build... I let the horse build finish, then I zoom to the city, and upgrade to a knight or calvary. I do this by first disconnecting any iron or saltpeter sources, either by pillaging the source in my territory with enough workers standing on the tile ready to reconnect (so industrious workers work best), or if I acquire iron or saltpeter from the AIs (both of which cost a significant amount, though they do come as worth it) I cut the trade route with the AIs, then make sure I have horses connected... I might also purchase horses for gpt, at least initially... I know I did in this Mayan game. Then I change all my relevant builds to horseman (if a city builds a bank or marketplace, I won't change that, of course).
I also make sure to acquire any techs, if not doing any research, before doing the next step (if I will learn a tech the next turn via research of my own, it would change the horse build to a knight/calvary build). Then I reconnect the iron or saltpeter, or both one way or another. Then on the inter-turn, I zoom to the city and upgrade the horse to a knight, knight-type unit, calvary, or calvary-type unit (though I haven't played with Russia or the Ottomans doing this, it should work in principle). The knight/calvary then sits ready to go on the next turn... without having lost any time in the upgrade process. Of course, horse-knights and horse-calvary won't work for India, and I doubt for Japan (though I haven't tested them).
Ideally, of course, you'd want to combine horse-knights or horse-calvary builds with an early capture of Leo's in your first war... as I did in the China Large Sid game which should appear in the update, and I've written a little about in posts 189 and 190 of
my general HoF thread. If you can acquire Invention, and time the Sun Tzu's cascade just right, this can work out very well... though this seems to depend a large amount on other things in the game that you can't really control. Or perhaps (and I have not tried it) it might even come as worth it to carefully pre-build and build Leo's yourself... though it might come as far too tricky to execute that.
In this Mayan game I put in horse-knights and horse-calvaries in cities that had at least 10 shields and barracks up (which I short-rushed mostly) until the turn before the Greek war. The Greeks had two large stacks of units roaming around during the wars I had allied them into (and they actually started coming towards me before I started any wars, and I had planned them as my first opponent... but then I realized they just wanted to fight the Hittites, not me), and I knew I wanted a huge surge of units to deal with them after I finished off Portugal (who really came as easy). So, the turn before I started the Greek war, *every* city that had barracks (many left over from the Hittites) either short-rushed or cash-rushed a worker-horse-calvary if necessary except my city of armies (MGLed in a rather corrupt area), which cash-rushed a worker-army. I may have also done this a little more on the second turn of the war. After that I think I've only cashed rushed armies and upgraded other units, as well as bought some settlers and a few temples and granaries. My war weariness did jump a lot during the Greek war, and I even did put up the luxury slider to 90% for happiness purposes at one point.
In more detail (and this will get back to forestry and I think it relates enough... stay with me), before the Greek war, in 10-14 (uncorrupted) shield cities the first turn I would just let the city start on the horse... at least once I felt I had enough trebuchets... and I actually ended up cash-rushing some of these in the south for the Hittite war. On the second turn, I would short-rush the horse by changing the build to either a spear or
explorer, buying up to twenty shields. Then I would change the build back to the horse, and finally upgrade to a knight/calvary. 15-19 shield cities would just complete a horse-knight or horse-calvary every two turns without cash-rushing. 20 shield cities would either train spear-muskets (I might have had a few spear-pikes before this, though not many) or horse-knights/calvary whichever seemed better. I did something a little different with my 15-19 shield cities in my China and I think Iroquois game buying a worker, then a spear/explorer, letting the horse complete via shields, and then upgrading to the knight/calvary.
So, how does this all relate to forests, since most cities won't get 5 extra shields without losing a population eventually via starvation? Well,
1. I built banks, so forests helped to get these in a bit faster.
2. At size 12 (which most of my cities grew to quickly enough, as I cash-rushed granaries in basically every city of my core), a city will have say three extra food playing as agricultural if you mine green/irrigate brown. So, if it makes 15 shields per turn, you can increase it 18 shields per turn (without losing any population), which on the surface might look totally insignificant of an increase when training horse-knights or horse-calvary, but it's not for three reasons:
A. My first war triggered my Golden Age. A 15 shield, size 12 city, at the very best, becomes a 28 shield city during your GA. You could perhaps cash-rush a worker, then switch to the horse every turn... but if you have enough forests in place on regular grassland spots, you might just hit 30 shield production in that city. This means you can train a horse-knight or horse-calvary
every single turn without cash-rushing at all. I believe I had 4 or 5 cities which did this every turn of my golden age, and a 5th or 6th which took one or two turns to get to 30 shields.
B. When I learned Steam Power and had coal, I could more quickly get my cities to 20 or in some cases 27 shields for 3/4 turn calvary without paying anything for them (other than unit support, of course), since a planted forest on a grassland gives the same amount of shields as a railroaded mined square on grassland.
C. The forests could, and did get chopped for some shield boosts (though I wasn't careful to track which squares had gotten chopped).
Natural forests basically got chopped for infrastructure, when it seemed like I wouldn't waste shields by chopping. Planted forests have basically gotten chopped for calvary. I know I haven't maximized my shield output in this respect, but I already have so much to do in this game, I don't mind missing a few things here and there.
If my first opponent had built Leo's for me (or had I pre-built and then built it myself... which I haven't tried yet.. and perhaps would have done better to do so), this game, no doubt, could have gone significantly better.