Keep two forest tiles?

[aaronflavor]

Out of habit post 1.09, I usually keep two forest tiles within each city's fat cross, if it makes sense. They get chopped sooner or later, sooner if possible. They provide a little bit of production for a city thats a little poor here, particularly if they're on plains tiles. (I'm not big fan of plains tiles.) I also figure the +1 health may come in handy midgame.

Question: Should I be doing this? Is it better, in general, to completely deforest if some other good production source is availible? If so, perhaps I should be trying to keep even more forest? What is the magic number of forest tiles to keep?

[AngryPants]

Its worth keeping a couple around for several reasons:
1. Forests are good for chopping, and forests give birth to more forests.
2. The obvious health benefits.
3. Lumbermills with railroads provide quality hammer production, of which every city needs at least some.

[ToV]

I personally keep forest copping to a minimum, and only chop if I want to place an improvement on that tile. I try to save forests until lumbermills. However, forests on a hill could very well be chopped for a mine. That would give more production that with a lumbermill (I think)

[aaronflavor]

With regards to attempting to keep them "just because," it really doesn't seem to be worth it. The production advantage you can get from a well-forested area in earily game is huge. It means you can get any combination of buildings or units you want without waiting at all. It can put a pretty handful of turns ahead of your opponents.

Later in the game, forests have significant less value for chopping because everything costs a lot more, and a chop makes less and less difference in build time. New forests are great in the earily game, but I think a forest create midgame won't really make that big of a difference.

Regarding lumbermills, replacable parts come so late in the game. Certainly they'll make a difference, but exactly how much of a difference? For cities that do not have significant production, no minor increases in production will make that much of a difference, as they aren't going to be producing much anyway. A commerce city doesn't really need a whole lot of production to keep doing what it does best: research.

Nonetheless with so many people saying, "Keep some forest," I am not sure what to think.

[Armorydave]

The only reason I don't chop a forest is if I am planning to chop it for a specific purpose in the near future. The value of chopping decreases substantially as the game progresses so the incentive to chop early and often is overwhelming from a gameplay perspective.

[Jorunkun]

Originally Posted by aaronflavor

.Question: Is it better, in general, to completely deforest if some other good production source is availible? If so, perhaps I should be trying to keep even more forest? What is the magic number of forest tiles to keep?

The main reason to keep forests should be the health bonus. Thus it makes sense to keep them only in pairs of two (ideally in an area of city overlap, if you have any). Beyond that, I don´t think there is any general "magic" number as to how many of them to keep around.

How many forests you should (or rather: can afford to) keep IMHO depends on:

a) your difficulty level and need for quick expansion / early rushing
b) your total health bonus potential (ressources available & expansive trait)
c) the production (shields) potential of your first few cities

... in roughly that order.

In most games, I find that the benefits from early chopping far outweigh the health bonus dereived from keeping them. As a general rule, the higher your difficulty level, the more like it is that you need to chop out workers and settlers just to keep pace with AI expansion. I play on Emperor and and usually mostly chop my first three settlers and workers. I also have no qualms about chopping to expediate an early wonder, or to quickly raise an army for an early rush on a neighbor. If there are any forests left after that and my cities need the health or production bonus, I will consider keeping them.

When it comes to selecting the tiles on which to chop, my preference is for hills (more shield-yield if mined), river-tiles (+1 gold and can be irrigated) and tiles around the city (to deny attackers cover), again in that order. Thus, the first forests to go are hills on a river, followed by river-banks bordering on the city-tile.

The forests I go out of my way to protect are the ones next to cities low on shields (often coastal), health (often landlocked) and in areas of overlap, so they can be used by two cities.

All things considered though, I rarely have cities with more than two forests in their vicinity by the middle ages.

Hope this helps, comments welcome.

J.

[GinandTonic]

A further aspect to keep in mind is that river tiles loose their +1 trade if forested, so any forests to be kept should be away from the river.

[Aldor]

Originally Posted by GinandTonic

A further aspect to keep in mind is that river tiles loose their +1 trade if forested, so any forests to be kept should be away from the river.

OTOH, lumbermills gain +1 commerce if next to a river. So I usually try to keep my forests next to a river, to make the otherwise "unattractive" lumbermill tile a little bit better.

[GinandTonic]

Humm, I didnt know that. Is that just the return of the +1 trade that the forest was removing (eg total +1) or allowing the origional and adding a new +1 (eg total of +2). If it is only a total of +1 then it is still not worth keeping them, unless for a city that will remain small, as this still represents loosing the +1 trade until replaceable parts...

[Boppo]

Personally I do a little of both. I like to play huge maps, so my games tend to last a little longer than many others apparently do.

In the early game, I will chop just about every forest in sight. The added production is just too valuable in my opinion to leave them. As the game progresses I will start leaving them though. In one recent game, my best production city was one that was in the middle of a huge forest. I cleared the trees next to the city and put lumbermills on all of the other tiles.

[Bezhukov]

First I chop all forests on hills, as mines are flat better until RP. Then cut forests on rivers to free up the commerce (usually go with farms there to keep tile free for later watermill). I do like to keep two forests per city, for flexibility/health reasons, and sometimes four at the capital for various uses (and health, as the capital likes to grow big).

[Andorim]

How close to the city do the forests have to be to give a health benefit? Do they have to be within the fat cross? Or is it enough for them to be withing the cultural radius?

[Beamup]

Originally Posted by GinandTonic

Is that just the return of the +1 trade that the forest was removing (eg total +1) or allowing the origional and adding a new +1 (eg total of +2).

Yes, it's just what the river would normally grant (total +1).

Originally Posted by Andorim

How close to the city do the forests have to be to give a health benefit? Do they have to be within the fat cross? Or is it enough for them to be withing the cultural radius?

They must be within the fat cross.

[mucco]

How close to the city do the forests have to be to give a health benefit? Do they have to be within the fat cross? Or is it enough for them to be withing the cultural radius?

They need to be in the fat cross.
I don't keep forests, because they can help wonders in the capital/core city, or creating (alone) an early army for rushing, or speeding up the first vital improvements of a new city. In my opinion the ability to create granary, library, university/temple within a dozen turns in a border city really outweights the (minimal) health loss. Plus, when i have granary and grocer in a city my pop-limiting factor is happiness. It becomes health when i build factories, but hospitals, supermarkets and genetics are definitely not far away. Plus, the lost forest can mean a new town. I'm trading (2 tiles) 6p for 14g+2p (mostly). So the net exchange is 4p-14g. I'd choose the gold in any case.

[mutax2003]

Typically I would chop all forests immediately adjacent to the city, that way there is no 50% defense bonus for enemies to siege your city from, the best they can have is maybe a hill (25% defense bonus). This approach is especially important for multiplayer, I have seen too many noobies leaving nice forests next to their cities for my armies to station in, this meant a quicker death for their civ since they can't counterattack as effectively. I usually try leave a couple of forests 2 tiles away from my cities, the +1 health is nice, and also provides some production for production poor cities. The only exception is when I am racing for wonder, then I would chop all the forests in the vicinity of that city.

[KillerCardinal]

Personally, my capital normally seems to end up having its trees chopped(be it for workers, settlers, or wonders). However, I always seem to have a hard time finding a REALLY good production city that doesn't rely on forests. Thus, I generally find a mediocre production city and eventually build the heroic epic there. I almost alway manage to find a WELL forested area and settle there, using it as a secondary production center until replacable parts. At that point, the city's production skyrockets and almost always gets the Ironworks(especially since the uber health bonuses from the forests negate the penalties from the Ironworks). It also means that I have a good chance at actually USING some of the extra engineers that the Ironworks lets me assign.

Mind you, if I do find a kick ass production center that doesn't use forests, I prefer that, since I can use it before RP, but I rarely seem to find it. Maybe I just haven't figured out how to identify a good one yet. The non forested ones always seem to be too much of a trade off between farms and mines, unless they come with uber production or food resources.

Anyway, just my two cents.

[AngryPants]

I like big cities, well up into the 20s, so for me the Forests help with health issues. If you are a cottage spammer, then this is probably less of an issue. I see lots of people posting something along the lines of "I never get a city over size 20". Then I think "Wow, cause I had 8 of those in my last game, and 1 got up to 43".

[Willem]

Originally Posted by aaronflavor

Question: Should I be doing this? Is it better, in general, to completely deforest if some other good production source is availible? If so, perhaps I should be trying to keep even more forest? What is the magic number of forest tiles to keep?

It's not a bad idea to save some Forest for later, the health benefits can come in handy. Myself, I don't chop any forested Hills or Plains tiles unless they're by a river. The extra gold you get for being near a river makes it worth chopping them IMO. As for forested Hills, once a Lumbermill is on it you get the exact same yield that you would get if you mined it, so why not save it? And there's no magic number, though there should be no less than 2. 1 Forest tile gives a .5 boost to health so a single tile isn't going to do you any good for that reason.

[johnny_rico]

Originally Posted by AngryPants

Its worth keeping a couple around for several reasons:
1. Forests are good for chopping, and forests give birth to more forests.
2. The obvious health benefits.
3. Lumbermills with railroads provide quality hammer production, of which every city needs at least some.

With respect to #1 here, forests will give birth to more forests but only in adjacent undeveloped tiles. If you hack a forest next to another forest tile and then develop on the chopped tile, a new forest will never sprout in the developed tile.

Forests don't grow too fast, seems you'll see it more early on than later (logical since more years pass between turns in the early game). Because of this, it seems chopping early is favored. I still don't over chop and try to chop in a pattern that will promote the greatest regrowth of forest tiles.

[Chinese American]

the health benefit is overrated because +1F makes up for it. 2 forests = 1 health. but this has no effect until your unhealth matches it. so whether its 5 health or 10 health doesn't matter if your unhealth is less than 5 (for example.)

OTOH, if you turn both forests into farms, you get +2F. this is a lot better than +1 health because (1) this adds to your city's growth rate and (2) after unhealth matches health, it's even with 4 forests (.5 * 4 = +2 health = +2F) and this costs only 2 farm tiles vs 4 forest tiles.

so you don't need to stop growing just because your unhealth matches or surpasses your health as long as your food surplus can support the -1F.