Money Does Grow on Trees: How to Convert Forests into Lots and Lots of Gold

[Um the Muse]

Originally Posted by Keilah

BTW i'd like to point out that forests aren't special compared to whip overflow or regular slowbuilding. There's no reason you can't use any one, two, or all three methods - a hammer is a hammer is a hammer, when it comes to building wonders.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that one of the strengths of this strat was that you could fail just in time--you could do your normal activities up until you know someone is going to build a wonder, then you time x number of chops and put only a single turn of regular production in. Voila! Your expansion doesn't slow down much and you get some money out of it. After all, a hammer now is worth more than a hammer later unless you're counting on failgold.

And, of course, MGR had suggested building a city or two that has the sole purpose of providing you with timber.

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by krikav

I don't see the extra point with the trees.

Say you have marble, a couple of trees and have two desires.

You want to build the oracle (just for failgold), and build a settler.

You can either put your chops into the oracle, and slow-build a settler.
Or you can chop the settler and slowbuild the oracle.

If you chop for failgold, your settler comes in slower...

So obviosly, it's just a matter of what your priorities are. And it seems as your only prio right now, is to get filthy rich.

With trees you get more fail-gold.

A lot of times you come to the Wonder tech late (like for example Philosophy and the Angkor Wat). If you slow-build it, you'll maybe get to quarter completion prior to the Wonder being built. With chops, you can get it to 80% completion.

The other big thing is that when you slow-build YOU CAN ONLY BUILD THE WONDER IN ONE CITY. Thanks to chops and building queue management, you can chop a Wonder for one turn, TURN IF OFF THE BUILDING QUEUE MANAGEMENT FOR THAT CITY which returns back to normal production and then chop another forest in another city on the next turn and get more fail-gold FROM THE SAME WONDER.

This is very effective way of generating cash.

Being filthy rich is good. There's a lot you can do with a large pile of cash. One of which is run 100% research WHILE preparing drafting and whipping like mad for war.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by MyOtherName

Is it sad because you dislike change, or because you genuinely and objectively think that fail gold as is makes for a better game?

What I dislike is blanket and nonsensical removals of some things on the sole basis that experts use it to do well in unexpected ways (without testing it or considering costs whatsoever), while leaving things that are stronger in the game and completely ignoring the basics. Yes, I dislike that a lot. Rather than that being sad, it is a sad state that the gaming community accepts these things without even giving them thought. Remember; failaxis is telling us that fixing something like this is more important than a victory condition being balanced, and more important than the game controls. Remember that and don't forget it, and then tell me what's sad and what isn't.

But since we're on the topic, I wish you luck in asserting that fail gold should *not* be in the game with some supporting logic. I'd like to see what you think should be done to compensate IND as a trait when it doesn't exist. After all, wouldn't it be SAD if a trait became extremely weak on the sole basis that others are using it or that someone else got a resource randomly? I think that would be pretty SAD for balance .

IMO, if there's a complaint to be made it is that some wonders are worth less than the fail gold they can make, not that fail gold exists. And yes, overflow existed for a reason and introducing a bug in 3.19 to fix something that despite me not being on the firaxis team I PROMISE they didn't do a detailed analysis to show it was overpowering was sour.

"Good players do this and it seems strange" is *not* a valid justification for drastic gameplay balance changes, no matter how many times failaxis does it.

Hold on one second. When ever anyone on the forum starts to validate some strategy by comparing it to an HOF game, any logical arguement from that point ends up out the window...

BTW, every HoF map I've seen has had Gems on every second tile, so I'm not sure why they'd even need more commerce.

HoF is 100% valid as a competition in civ IV, it just isn't standard civ. It's a competition of who can roast the AI alive on easy starts faster, but in some sense it's actually a lot harder because your real opponents (humans) are actually competent and do consistently try to win.

It's true that strategies that apply to HoF attempts do not mesh well with standard play and attempting to make sure you win a singular game though. Some things DO translate across though. That's why some of S&T best players have done well in HoF/XOTM when putting the time in.

Part of the fun in HoF (especially gauntlets/challenger) is to figure out how to approach a given set of required settings.

[civvver]

TMIT, I think people just don't understand the criticism of Firaxis when we basically all love civ4. I mean every game has design flaws and most have bugs. The way you talk about "failaxis" makes it sound like you think civ4 in general sucks, which is far from the truth, right?

I love fail gold, it's a good, sound game mechanic. I thought overflow gold was fine too.

[ecuwins]

I just think its a general discontent with the whole "rush to market" mentality that's used in the video game industry today. Don't get me started on Creative Assembly.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by civvver

TMIT, I think people just don't understand the criticism of Firaxis when we basically all love civ4. I mean every game has design flaws and most have bugs. The way you talk about "failaxis" makes it sound like you think civ4 in general sucks, which is far from the truth, right?

I love fail gold, it's a good, sound game mechanic. I thought overflow gold was fine too.

I don't like the downward spiral from civ IV vanilla ----> civ V beta sold as release .

But seriously, patch 3.17, 3.19, and the vast majority of civ V patches show some absolutely terrible judgment/priority/etc. What holds both titles back from being a great game are basics that any good game generally has. Civ IV keeps me coming back due to its strategic depth, but it is SERIOUSLY hindered by its control flaws, nonsensical patch/balance priority, and straight-up programming incompetency (IE using fixed #s instead of variable calls, the fact that units react more slowly than 3d rendered rts, etc.)

Right now, on a machine most people couldn't be expected to have on civ IV release, I could go back to a windows partition and run the game with animations off, and still get unit selection to lag so badly that the game only selects 3 units by the time I select 10+. What the hell is it doing? I can run sc2 on linux and not have unit selection lag. What is it calculating each time a unit is simply selected? It's nonsense. Same thing with no-animations civ V; the game FORCES you to wait. It's terrible, but people who play at any clip are in a minority. Everyone loses 1 hr+ per game on a civ V game from between-turns alone; but again only a few care (or at least notice they care, instead of simply calling it "bad pacing" when the timings actually aren't unusual compared to previous games).

4x barb galley was a bigger priority than AP victory working at all. Wall whip overflow on the weakest trait was a greater priority than the ability to accidentally declare war w/o prompt. Introducing a BUG in the spread culture espionage mission was more important than preventing people from receiving infinite techs from oracle/liberalism. "fixing" spread culture by using the precisely old code was more important than preventing a city from doubling up on hammers by abusing a governor bug.

All this, and shift click will still = control click = alt click very often...despite that in theory they always do different things. The sad thing? I could actually go on...

Give me an F! Give me an A! Give me an I! Give me an L!

What does it spell?!

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by civvver

TMIT, I think people just don't understand the criticism of Firaxis when we basically all love civ4. I mean every game has design flaws and most have bugs. The way you talk about "failaxis" makes it sound like you think civ4 in general sucks, which is far from the truth, right?

I love fail gold, it's a good, sound game mechanic. I thought overflow gold was fine too.

It doesn't suck. If it did (like civ 5 lawl, ok I jest... somewhat) we wouldn't be playing it. The problem is that they failed basic gameplay and balance aspects, which is unsuitable for a game of this quality, thus leading to disappointment and frustration, meaning one always gets the feeling that it could be better.

For example, I used the route to function to road to a city. At the start of my turn, the worker ran into a bear AND I WAS UNABLE TO CANCEL; he died instantly. When I reloaded this one turn, I learned that if I manually did the moving of the worker, I could use the worker's 2nd move to run away. What?

If I automate my workboat, and there's 2 fish tiles-- One 1s and one 2s, guess which one it will randomly pick to imrpove. The one further away, wasting a turn Ok, so don't automate stuff, but really, how can they screw up something so basic?

And why is it that the unit finder can tell me where units are and can't zoom in on them?

Why is it so hard to select units as an entire group when air units are involved?

Why do aircraft on intercept missions stop intercepting if I select them? I select all my planes and deselect 2 because I only want to use 2 planes to reduce that city's defense to 0. But no, after I'm done I need to select the rest of the planes that weren't even doing anything to intercept. And sometimes it randomly selects all the planes when I only select one. What? I absolutely despise modern warfare with these controls.

Why do peace treaties last the same regardless of speed?

Why does the governor elect to run those damn spies when the city is starving?

Why does the governor work garbage tiles when you tell it to build wealth? Tell me how that 2 food grassland generates more "wealth" instead of working the high yield tiles.

This game has one of the worst interfaces I've played with in modern times. Starcraft, a game 8 years before this had a better interface! And that's an RTS that requires precise clicks. I make way more misclicks in this game despite it being a TBS that shoudn't require reflexes and accuracy. What? And this is just single player I'm talking about...

Well, okay. It's not the worst. Civ 5 is the worst, considering even the very act of moving units turned out to be a chore and the sadistic governor that likes to starve its cities for no good reason.

So yea, it's really hard to ignore these things when some of the difficulty of the game is fighting the terrible interface and also hidden and arbitrary rules that they keep coming up with (Vassal averaging, hidden modifiers, and other random inconsistent crap) Can anyone justify a interface that flat out lies to you? I hope not.

And the worst part about all of this is that I'm using the BUG mod. So it's already better. The game is almost unplayable without it due to that really lame city list screen :/

[MarigoldRan]

If Blizzard could make the AIs smart enough to beat most humans at Starcraft II, Firaxis should be able to make smarter AIs too.

Granted, Blizzard has A LOT more money to spend on development.

All other things is secondary to that.

Back to topic: To summarize, fail-gold from forests is really GOOD. Any objections?

[Htadus]

Originally Posted by NapoleonThePig

Also, Rhino did an excellent series maybe two months back about running a failgold economy. It's great that you realized its power, but Rhino beat you to it. See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=438558 .

I think this use of hammers to convert to gold from failed wonders been around for a while, like since the begining the game.

Spoiler:

There is also the whip a warrior into a unit, excess hammers and few gold in a pinch very early in the game.

I think it is great that new players rediscover these ideas. So it is no reason to try to burn them. However, when to use it properly is what each player should learn to do inorder to become better. After all those hammers could be used for other uses. For axe/sword/phant economy. Also preparing to avoid getting into economical hole is a better route.

[MarigoldRan]

Originally Posted by Htadus

I think this use of hammers to convert to gold from failed wonders been around for a while, like since the begining the game.

Spoiler:

There is also the whip a warrior into a unit, excess hammers and few gold in a pinch very early in the game.

I think it is great that new players rediscover these ideas. So it is no reason to try to burn them. However, when to use it properly is what each player should learn to do inorder to become better. After all those hammers could be used for other uses. For axe/sword/phant economy. Also preparing to avoid getting into economical hole is a better route.

No, see, Rhino didn't do it in the way I did it. He built fail-gold. I chopped fail-gold. The difference is in scale.

The basic idea has been around for a while, which I know about, but no one has yet used it to the extent that it should be used.

I'm aware that others are aware that hammers can convert into gold using fail-money. But my mostly new idea is that TREES can be converted into gold with fail-money.

After all, MONEY DOES GROW ON TREES.

[ecuwins]

Blizzard is a diamond in the rough. Their stuff is on point. There's a reason why they are one of/the richest(?) game developers.

[vranasm]

@Htadus

if you would play plain 3.19 game without any mods, you won't get any gold from OF whipping warriors.

i would really wish for some new patch which would be patching bugs from "firaxis" which would be broadly accepted by community. I doubt we would see it from firaxis directly and any human driven activity is usually just that... not enough official.

[ecuwins]

Doesn't BULL, BUFFY, or one of those mods fix the whip OF?

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by MarigoldRan

If Blizzard could make the AIs smart enough to beat most humans at Starcraft II, Firaxis should be able to make smarter AIs too.

Granted, Blizzard has A LOT more money to spend on development.

All other things is secondary to that.

Back to topic: To summarize, fail-gold from forests is really GOOD. Any objections?

This isn't really a fair shake to firaxis IN THIS CASE. RTS AI can use apm many times beyond what a human could achieve, giving it a core physical advantage over a human player that won't exist in TBS.

Nevertheless, it is fairly grating that civ AI doesn't play its own game...not only does it not know how, but it literally doesn't try even in the ways that it does.

There is also the whip a warrior into a unit, excess hammers and few gold in a pinch very early in the game.

Doesn't work with overflow being bugged in 3.19. Used to work.

Doesn't BULL, BUFFY, or one of those mods fix the whip OF?

Maybe BULL, BUFFY/BUG won't alter core gameplay rules, it's strictly interface.

i would really wish for some new patch which would be patching bugs from "firaxis" which would be broadly accepted by community. I doubt we would see it from firaxis directly and any human driven activity is usually just that... not enough official.

With 3.17 and 3.19 they largely did damage rather than improving things. Now their efforts are on civ V and frankly, it needs all the help it can get...not that I will play it unless they do something about between-turn times...even on strategic view it's too long.

[obsolete]

Not to mention Tribal Villages, aka "HoF slot machines".

ROFLMAO.... so true.

[vranasm]

Originally Posted by TheMeInTeam

not that I will play it unless they do something about between-turn times...even on strategic view it's too long.

ok this one is really confusing me... you say you want good AI and otoh you don't want to give the game time? please...

ok I know their AI is so weak that it looks, like the PC is more throwing dices then calculating, but honestly, would you give enough time to PC if the turns made by AI would be strong enough?

imagine chess being forced to do calculations in fragments of seconds only...even best chess engines can take few minutes or even thenths of minutes in some parts of game.

[ecuwins]

Originally Posted by vranasm

ok this one is really confusing me... you say you want good AI and otoh you don't want to give the game time? please...

ok I know their AI is so weak that it looks, like the PC is more throwing dices then calculating, but honestly, would you give enough time to PC if the turns made by AI would be strong enough?

imagine chess being forced to do calculations in fragments of seconds only...even best chess engines can take few minutes or even thenths of minutes in some parts of game.

In E:TW, mid game, the IBT would lag something fierce on the Ottoman turn. This is because they'd have an obscene amount of cheap/junk armies going back and forth across a tiny land bridge. If you played any of the mods on the most difficult setting(max AI unit spam), and don't have an overclocked Core i7, then you better go find something to do on the IBT.

If it's nonsense like this that makes the IBT so slow, then they can pack it up and take a hike, IMO.

[Keilah]

Originally Posted by ecuwins

Blizzard is a diamond in the rough. Their stuff is on point. There's a reason why they are one of/the richest(?) game developers.

Some of the in sc2 is really, REALLY stupid and frustrating.

1)10s countdown before the loading screen (why?) followed by a loading screen with a progress bar that bears no similarity to real-life ETA, followed by a pause of ????????? seconds, followed by instantly jumping into the game. How about skipping the pointless, non-cancellable pre-loading countdown (oooh i better get ready for the load screen!) and adding a 3-5s timer AFTER loading to get ready for when the game starts?

2)different world regions are banned from playing with each other. L O L. Why the f should I be denied the right to play against someone from Europe or Korea? If it's a little laggier, that's my choice. SC1 was worldwide and latency across the planet wasn't bad.

3)can't switch regions even if you move. I bought SC2 while in North America, and have been living in Thailand ever since. I emailed blizzard to ask if I could be put onto the Southeast Asia server and they said no, I'll just have to play every game with 600ms lag against people from NA instead of being allowed to play with people across the street. No LAN or other means of connecting either, so there's no way I can play with anyone I meet in person... unless I shell out $$$ for another copy of the exact same game.

4)no way to choose the matchup you play unless you have a practice buddy online. Want to practice your Protoss v Terran? You'll just have to keep joining custom games until you hit a terran opponent, and every time you hit a zerg or protoss, you have to either disconnect from bnet before the game starts or leave after the annoying loading screen, both of which waste your time and your opponent's. Want to practice a specific matchup against someone of comparable skill? Join ladder games until you get the matchup you want, leaving as before, only now you lsoe ladder points every time you do.

I could go on.

[ecuwins]

Admittedly, I have no experience with SC2. From what you're saying, it sounds to me like Blizzard might be feeling the taint of Activision. Or maybe strategy oriented games just aren't their thing. I guess we will see when D3 comes out.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally Posted by vranasm

ok this one is really confusing me... you say you want good AI and otoh you don't want to give the game time? please...

ok I know their AI is so weak that it looks, like the PC is more throwing dices then calculating, but honestly, would you give enough time to PC if the turns made by AI would be strong enough?

imagine chess being forced to do calculations in fragments of seconds only...even best chess engines can take few minutes or even thenths of minutes in some parts of game.

Don't fool yourself even a second into believing that that time is required for a "good" AI. Here are some things that are currently eating crap tons of time:

1. Civ IV trade routes re-calc every turn. No caching, no exceptions for when there's no change.
2. (both games) unit movements, one by one, off screen. With animations off. *Not* the decision making process involved in moving the unit, but rather the actual physical motion.................................
3. General memory problems (game gets slower over time but speeds up if you quit/restart)

Off hand. Late game high level unit movement gets really bad, especially on huge. In my LP I could play my turns faster than the AI between turns, on average! You could literally SEE the game moving individual units ultra slowly.

Keep in mind, the AI bears the same movement lag we do (and could someone explain in plain terms why it is SO SLOW to simply select a unit and move it and click on another? Please? I haven't seen anyone manage a competent excuse yet), so when it shuffles 100's to 1000's (if you consider all of them) of units around every turn and they experience unit movement lag, moving them ONE BY ONE, I think you can imagine where over half if this idiot turn time is being spent, and it ISN'T on any semblance of quality on the AI's part! Want proof? Compare some turn times between strategic and normal views in civ V. Even then, however, you can literally outplay the interface...derp.

Civ IV AI doesn't make any complex thought patterns for MOST things. I am not a code wizard, but just read the things it does in the DoW logic thread; in some cases DanF actually posts the original code. You're getting RNG calls. Mass dice rolls that are then applied, for the vast majority of actions. Computers can do 100's to 1000's of dice rolls inside times we are capable of perceiving...but that doesn't mean it can move units if the graphical engine lags like the disgrace it is.

2)different world regions are banned from playing with each other. L O L. Why the f should I be denied the right to play against someone from Europe or Korea? If it's a little laggier, that's my choice. SC1 was worldwide and latency across the planet wasn't bad.

I actually consider this a good decision. Not everyone wants to play ladder with latency. Blizzard goofed slightly with the custom games though; hosts can't kick people from a public lobby (even repeat offenders) and restrict language; in this case might as well allow everyone in custom games, but never ladder. However, perhaps they had good reasons to split servers...like demand.

I was under the impression that blizzard typically did allow for some server swaps, I have an Australian friend who did it anyway.

As for practice: find a partner. You will not get what you are looking from by randoms no matter what you do. Ladder isn't so serious; it's an actual indication of your skill, and it will adjust you as you play it so rating isn't something so sacred.

The forced bnet thing and region lock are some of the biggest blemishes.

Notice, however, that you are not mentioning game controls or how the game actually runs in a game. There are no truly broken features that ruin balance like elephants or the apostolic palace. When you give a unit an order, it always happens (not so in civ, as I've shown in video evidence). Instead you're complaining about essentially the forced use of a blizzard server to play MP games, and that you can't play them the way you like. That is very reasonable as a complaint and has merit because of what the complaints are...but note that you are actually able to play the game without being mired in bugs, horrid UI, etc. Balance changes come with good reason and heavy testing by the community and probably a good dosage of statistical evidence. That's a far cry from "oh look what Unconquered_Sun did in this game! He had a big advantage that we didn't forsee! Nerf".

Civ V was so bad that HoF started making up garbage rules about banning "exploits" that weren't even known yet, a futile effort as the tables became way too far-affected by the next beta version (er..."patch").