Paul Saunders
Warlord
I've recently been reading with great interest about the forest chopping strategies that so many of you seem to swear by. Being an avid tree hugger, who only chops to improve resources or build mines on hills, I was surprised at how powerful this strategy seems to be. So I decided to try a practical test. Theories tend to sound great on paper, but don't always work exactly as expected when you try them for real, usually due to additional unforseen factors coming into play. I was glad to see that not everyone agrees that clear cutting is the best way to go, and that the situation can be more important.
So I've decided to try a practical test. I'll start the same game twice, first using a chop strategy, then a tree hugging strategy, and I'll compare how long it takes to reach the same level of development. I'll use GOTM1 for this, since many of you will be familiar with it, although I haven't played it before. Before I get to that though, I'll start with a few general comments.
BACKGROUND
I've had no problems with tree hugging on noble, but all my recent games on prince have met with failure, with me always falling behind in the tech race, sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly, but there's always been that gradual decline that spells ultimate doom.
Of course, I realise that other aspects of my strategy may partly be to blame for this, in particular my tendency to try to start my own religion early. I've done well out of this on noble, but on prince it tends to waste time that would be better spent researching other techs, and causes other civs with different religions to dislike you, leading to early wars, which I can really do without (I like to start by keeping the peace and building my empire before going to war).
On noble this doesn't seem to be a problem since the other civs aren't very aggressive and even if they do attack me, I'm usually well enough defended by then. But on prince they seem to attack sooner, before I have a chance to build my military, so going for an early religion actually seems to be a bad thing.
Anyway, looking for ideas I came back to these forums and discovered that most players like to make a beeline for alphabet and then trade for missed techs. I tend to research many earlier techs first, and thus haven't reached alphabet until much later, so that's probably a weak point in my strategy. But many early techs are pretty vital and doing without them can cause problems while you wait for alphabet.
TREE CHOPPING vs. CAPITAL GROWTH
Manic chopping and the alphabet beeline seem to be compatible strategies, but both are at odds with early capital growth. These strategies tend to keep your capital at pop 1 and deny you useful early techs whilst you churn out settlers to rapidly establish a number of core cities. Only when your core cities are established do you stop the chopping, start tech trading and finally start growing your cities. So you trade off early capital growth for early cities, and then catch up and overtake the AI later.
This seems to be quite a good plan in the early stages when barbs and other empires aren't much of a threat, but I'm still not 100% convinced. My priority has always been to grow my capital as quickly as possible, to at least size 3 or 4, before building a worker to help growth even more, and only then to start churning out settlers. With a well developed food city, settlers can be produced pretty quickly, without need for chopping, and can also produce a reasonable amount of commerce for research whilst the settlers are being built.
More to the point, during the vital first turns while I'm growing my capital, I'm using my production to spit out warriors and/or scouts for rapid exporation of the map. With scouts this usually nets me 4 or 5 goody huts at least, sometimes giving me a tech or an extra unit, but usually giving me cash. In one game I collected over 350 gold from goody huts, which came in useful for rapid warrior upgrades and for keeping my research percentage high whilst running at a deficit.
If I don't have the creative trait, I usually go for Mysticism first to get obelisks in my first cities (this ties in with my desire to grab an early religion). If I can settle my second city next to stone I go for Stonehenge to ensure that all my cities get an immediate obelisk benefit (but that requires that I research Masonry quickly too).
I use my workers to improve key food resources in new cities, and I try to place them all on rivers or on coast so that they are instantly connected to the trade network without having to build any roads. So although I don't start churning out settlers so early, once my "settler factory" is established, I can produce them quite quickly and the new cities grow faster due to the obelisks and the worker help. In all new cities I concentrate purely on food until they reach at least size 3.
Now I thought that was a pretty reasonable strategy, but others claim that tree chopping will get you the same results faster. So can it? And can I live without the health and shield benefits later on?
THE PRACTICAL TEST - GAME OF THE MONTH 1
Theory and numbers are all very well, but I wanted to see how this actually plays out, so I chose GOTM1 for my test game. I haven't visited this site for a while so I missed the first GOTM, but I wanted to play it anyway so this seemed the ideal game to test the chopping strategy and the alphabet beeline, since many of you will already be familiar with it.
In keeping with the rules of the game (even though it's passed it's sell-by date) I decided not to cheat. No reloading. So I'd be testing the chop strategy under "real-world" conditions, as it were.
I've played the game up to a key point in my civ's development, where I decided it would be appropriate to stop. I'm now going to replay the game using my tree hugging strategy (no chopping except for resource and mine improvements) in order to see how long it takes to reach the same stage of development.
The key goals that I must reach are as follows;
1. To settle four cities (in the same locations).
2. To research up to Alphabet and Iron Working.
3. To explore the entire continent.
In my chopping game, I acheived these goals by the year 850 BC.
Next I'll play the tree hugging game. Unfortunately I now have an unfair advantage in knowing the map, and if I took advantage of that knowledge I'd do things differently, which would skew the results. Obviously I can't be certain of not skewing them, but for the purpose of the experiment, I shall try my best to play the game as if I didn't know what to expect. This means that I will try to explore the map in much the same way, settle my cities on the same tiles and research the same techs, although not in quite the same order. I will even try to duplicate my mistakes, where appropriate.
However, since I'll be using my capital growth strategy rather than the tree chopping strategy, there are some things that I have to do differently. I'll no doubt build more warriors for faster map exploration, and research the techs in a different order for faster capital growth, but these are vital to the strategy and it wouldn't be a fair comparison if I didn't do them. So no doubt some aspects of the game will develop differently, but that's the whole point, to see how the different strategies compare, and to see if I can reach the same goals by the same date, but without chopping.
Before I start my tree hugging game, I'll report on my tree chopping game.
If anyone who's reading this hasn't played GOTM1 yet, but intends to, STOP READING NOW, SPOILERS TO COME!
Paul
So I've decided to try a practical test. I'll start the same game twice, first using a chop strategy, then a tree hugging strategy, and I'll compare how long it takes to reach the same level of development. I'll use GOTM1 for this, since many of you will be familiar with it, although I haven't played it before. Before I get to that though, I'll start with a few general comments.
BACKGROUND
I've had no problems with tree hugging on noble, but all my recent games on prince have met with failure, with me always falling behind in the tech race, sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly, but there's always been that gradual decline that spells ultimate doom.
Of course, I realise that other aspects of my strategy may partly be to blame for this, in particular my tendency to try to start my own religion early. I've done well out of this on noble, but on prince it tends to waste time that would be better spent researching other techs, and causes other civs with different religions to dislike you, leading to early wars, which I can really do without (I like to start by keeping the peace and building my empire before going to war).
On noble this doesn't seem to be a problem since the other civs aren't very aggressive and even if they do attack me, I'm usually well enough defended by then. But on prince they seem to attack sooner, before I have a chance to build my military, so going for an early religion actually seems to be a bad thing.
Anyway, looking for ideas I came back to these forums and discovered that most players like to make a beeline for alphabet and then trade for missed techs. I tend to research many earlier techs first, and thus haven't reached alphabet until much later, so that's probably a weak point in my strategy. But many early techs are pretty vital and doing without them can cause problems while you wait for alphabet.
TREE CHOPPING vs. CAPITAL GROWTH
Manic chopping and the alphabet beeline seem to be compatible strategies, but both are at odds with early capital growth. These strategies tend to keep your capital at pop 1 and deny you useful early techs whilst you churn out settlers to rapidly establish a number of core cities. Only when your core cities are established do you stop the chopping, start tech trading and finally start growing your cities. So you trade off early capital growth for early cities, and then catch up and overtake the AI later.
This seems to be quite a good plan in the early stages when barbs and other empires aren't much of a threat, but I'm still not 100% convinced. My priority has always been to grow my capital as quickly as possible, to at least size 3 or 4, before building a worker to help growth even more, and only then to start churning out settlers. With a well developed food city, settlers can be produced pretty quickly, without need for chopping, and can also produce a reasonable amount of commerce for research whilst the settlers are being built.
More to the point, during the vital first turns while I'm growing my capital, I'm using my production to spit out warriors and/or scouts for rapid exporation of the map. With scouts this usually nets me 4 or 5 goody huts at least, sometimes giving me a tech or an extra unit, but usually giving me cash. In one game I collected over 350 gold from goody huts, which came in useful for rapid warrior upgrades and for keeping my research percentage high whilst running at a deficit.
If I don't have the creative trait, I usually go for Mysticism first to get obelisks in my first cities (this ties in with my desire to grab an early religion). If I can settle my second city next to stone I go for Stonehenge to ensure that all my cities get an immediate obelisk benefit (but that requires that I research Masonry quickly too).
I use my workers to improve key food resources in new cities, and I try to place them all on rivers or on coast so that they are instantly connected to the trade network without having to build any roads. So although I don't start churning out settlers so early, once my "settler factory" is established, I can produce them quite quickly and the new cities grow faster due to the obelisks and the worker help. In all new cities I concentrate purely on food until they reach at least size 3.
Now I thought that was a pretty reasonable strategy, but others claim that tree chopping will get you the same results faster. So can it? And can I live without the health and shield benefits later on?
THE PRACTICAL TEST - GAME OF THE MONTH 1
Theory and numbers are all very well, but I wanted to see how this actually plays out, so I chose GOTM1 for my test game. I haven't visited this site for a while so I missed the first GOTM, but I wanted to play it anyway so this seemed the ideal game to test the chopping strategy and the alphabet beeline, since many of you will already be familiar with it.
In keeping with the rules of the game (even though it's passed it's sell-by date) I decided not to cheat. No reloading. So I'd be testing the chop strategy under "real-world" conditions, as it were.
I've played the game up to a key point in my civ's development, where I decided it would be appropriate to stop. I'm now going to replay the game using my tree hugging strategy (no chopping except for resource and mine improvements) in order to see how long it takes to reach the same stage of development.
The key goals that I must reach are as follows;
1. To settle four cities (in the same locations).
2. To research up to Alphabet and Iron Working.
3. To explore the entire continent.
In my chopping game, I acheived these goals by the year 850 BC.
Next I'll play the tree hugging game. Unfortunately I now have an unfair advantage in knowing the map, and if I took advantage of that knowledge I'd do things differently, which would skew the results. Obviously I can't be certain of not skewing them, but for the purpose of the experiment, I shall try my best to play the game as if I didn't know what to expect. This means that I will try to explore the map in much the same way, settle my cities on the same tiles and research the same techs, although not in quite the same order. I will even try to duplicate my mistakes, where appropriate.
However, since I'll be using my capital growth strategy rather than the tree chopping strategy, there are some things that I have to do differently. I'll no doubt build more warriors for faster map exploration, and research the techs in a different order for faster capital growth, but these are vital to the strategy and it wouldn't be a fair comparison if I didn't do them. So no doubt some aspects of the game will develop differently, but that's the whole point, to see how the different strategies compare, and to see if I can reach the same goals by the same date, but without chopping.
Before I start my tree hugging game, I'll report on my tree chopping game.
If anyone who's reading this hasn't played GOTM1 yet, but intends to, STOP READING NOW, SPOILERS TO COME!
Paul
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