Lessons learned beating Emperor

[Skallagrimson]

Hyperbole no? You're talking 8 forests here which if they've been cut at all likely have been cut and replaced by cottages or mines or something extremely productive.

Which you can't work because you chopped away all your health. So you have pretty little cottages waiting to be worked, no worky. Pretty little mines waiting to be worked. No worky. Meanwhile the tiles I *do* chop can be worked due to the tiles I reserve for mid-game health.

 

[feralminded]

Why is it you people always assume I'll be WORKING my forests? At size 14 with 6 forests I don't necessarily have to work any of them. Maybe one on a plains hill, but preferably none of them until RP opens up lumbermills. And then lumbermills with RRs, those forests become basically like a workshop that adds health.

Yes, "chop everything" gets you a better axe rush. Yippee skippee. Pray to the civ gods you're on Pangea for the built-in insta-win, otherwise you shot your wad by the time you can sail anywhere.

Well 6 forests are a lot more reasonable than 8 (you only have 20 tiles, some of which are deserts, ice, water, and mountains ... leaving you less which can contain useful things like resources, food, or grassland for cottages/farms). It really depends on when you found the city.

That said I think you are overstating health issues here. Truth is you won't have an inflated happy cap in every new city from HR and health and happy cap are usually hand in hand from resources. I believe a landlocked city can have a health cap of about 12-15 with a modest amount of resources and a granary + grocer + aquaduct and can hit 20 with all of the health resources. This is all before medicine. I think 9 is an artificially low number and I'd expect most cities with 0 trees to be health capped around 12-15 even without an aquaduct. I know I rarely leave more than 2 trees around most of my early cities and they all end up in the 15-20 area before I hit medicine depending mostly on Harbor or not. Its not impossible to have a good +5 to +7 in healthy resources alone without any buildings. That right there gets you into double digits without any buildings and everyone is going to have at least a granary to get them a few more. It's really not impossible to see a size 12-15 early city with 0 forests, no ocean, and no aquaduct.

I just can't agree with your logic wholesale. What I will say is that if you are chopping a tile that you will not improve soon and are NOT building a piece of critical infrastructure (monument/granary/forge/courthouse), or an early worker/settler, or a critical wonder ... you very well might be making a strategic mistake. I mean chopping out an axe rush is certainly valid if it can work but doing it on general principle is silly.

 

[JammerUno]

Why is it you people always assume I'll be WORKING my forests? At size 14 with 6 forests I don't necessarily have to work any of them. Maybe one on a plains hill, but preferably none of them until RP opens up lumbermills. And then lumbermills with RRs, those forests become basically like a workshop that adds health.

Yes, "chop everything" gets you a better axe rush. Yippee skippee. Pray to the civ gods you're on Pangea for the built-in insta-win, otherwise you shot your wad by the time you can sail anywhere.

I'm not assuming you work your forests, you say you can grow your cities larger because you use the health benefit provided by forests. I don't agree.

e.g.
say happiness plays no role because of HR

You have a city with 8 health, at a stable 11 pop. you keep 6 forests, giving you 11 health total, so now you can heva a stable city at size 11, no unhealthiness and 22 food producted.

I have a city with 8 health, I chop the 6 forests, so my health is now still at 8 but I have gained hammers. But my citysize isn't stable anymore, so I will need to produce 3 more food than I did before I chopped my forests. That's one less mined plains hill I get to work, 4 hammer/turn.
So I took alot of production now, for a unknown period of lower production.

Now if I don't use that production, I will indeed be worse off in the long term. But, if you repeat that for the 8 cities people say you should have at 0 AD, you're talking about a substantial army available far earlier than if you worked all those mined plains hills.
Then I take that army, and use it to conquer land, resulting in more health, more happiness, more overall bpt, more overall production and more population, including the population in the original cities where I chopped the forests.

 

[Alexfrog]

Chopping several early forests = an extra early settler = more land claimed for me.

In that additional land there is one more food resource that I didnt have before, say Rice. Without that extra settler an AI would have it.

The Rice is worth +1 Health, and +1 more health from Granary = +2 health.

Thats like 4 more forests in EACH CITY.


So chopping 4 forests early turned into 4 more forests worth of health PER CITY and ANOTHER CITY.

Late in the game, it really doesnt matter if one of your cities is size 17 instead of 15. Who cares? But expanding faster = more land and resources and production and research (some initial penalty to research as it has upkeep, but after it grows it pays for itself and then provides a surplus).

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Which you can't work because you chopped away all your health. So you have pretty little cottages waiting to be worked, no worky. Pretty little mines waiting to be worked. No worky. Meanwhile the tiles I *do* chop can be worked due to the tiles I reserve for mid-game health.

2 tiles with trees=1 health. -1 health is -1 food. I can farm 1 tile, and that eliminates the food I lost from the 2 trees I chopped. I can now make the other tile useful, whether it be a cottage, a mine, whatever. Meanwhile, you have 2 tiles with trees that are useless, giving you the same +1 food that my farm on ONE of the tiles gave me. Because it takes 2 tiles of trees to save you only 1 food, and you can (except tundra) always farm a tile after civil service, it's mathematically impossible for you take grow your cities any bigger than me, even by saving your trees.

I'm not saying I chop all of my trees. But when I save them, health isn't the reason.

 

[Artichoker]

2 tiles with trees=1 health. -1 health is -1 food. I can farm 1 tile, and that eliminates the food I lost from the 2 trees I chopped. I can now make the other tile useful, whether it be a cottage, a mine, whatever. Meanwhile, you have 2 tiles with trees that are useless, giving you the same +1 food that my farm on ONE of the tiles gave me. Because it takes 2 tiles of trees to save you only 1 food, and you can (except tundra) always farm a tile after civil service, it's mathematically impossible for you take grow your cities any bigger than me, even by saving your trees.

I'm not saying I chop all of my trees. But when I save them, health isn't the reason.

Here is the problem of your argument that you have failed to realize...simply farming a tile doesn't give you extra food unless you work that tile by specifically assigning a population to it.

Skallagrimson's argument is that he can also work the Farm, and still keep the forests, but he will have more health because of the greater number of forests in the BFC.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Good point, I guess I was only looking at it as if the tiles had to be worked. I do see above where Skalla said he wasn't necessarily working the tiles.

Still though, I think his claim that his cities are bigger because he keeps trees is overblown in most cases. Let's say we have a city with 6 forests in the BFC. We both get to size 9, I chopped all of my trees for some axes or something. He's +3 food on me right now. That's only ONE citizen. Now I realize one extra cottage being worked is huge....but that discounting whatever snowballed effect I got from chopping earlier.

I just didn't like the outlandish "my cities are size 13 while yours are size 9" crap. If that's the case, you've got at least 16 trees in your BFC, and I've got none. Like anything in civ, there is no right or wrong answer. Lots of different methods are effective for any given situation.

Oh and one more thing! Skalla I just saw Tropic Thunder last night so I finally get the sig! So funny man!

 

[CivCorpse]

Where in the world did he come up with a health cap of 9? OK, you have your basic 2 health on emp. 2 from fresh water for a base of 4 before resources and bonuses. Add 2 for an aquaduct and we are at 6. Plus the 3 grains which are pretty common and that is 9. Granary makes those three grains 3 more which is 12. Let's assume a land locked city so no harbor but you can easily get 2 of the three seafood from trade or from a city you do have on a coast. Now we are at 14. Lets say 3 of the 4 meats. pretty common but maybe you're not near tundra for deer and noone will trade. That brings you to 17 before a grocer or calender resources are available. Subtract 1 for a forge and the total is 16. Once calender and grocers are available. you can get your health cap as high as 23 without a harbor. That can be tough to do. But even a modest 2 grains, 2 meats and one seafood is a health cap of 13.
To be stuck at 9 means you have just 1 grain, 1 meat and no seafood. If that is all you have before you get to Guilds and calender then either you are on the worst map ever or your Civ4 problems go way behind tree chopping.

 

[feralminded]

Well that was my real point ... the majority of health issues are imaginary or at worse, only ever in one city. This is why I say build those coal mines and never look back and part of why environmentalism is a bit ridiculous ... because no one has any real health issues at that point in the game. While I do think once you can build a lumbermill by all means mill instead of mine ... and if you can manage a couple of forest tiles in your production cities ... by all means do it ... but don't pretend its changing the world.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Well 6 forests are a lot more reasonable than 8 (you only have 20 tiles, some of which are deserts, ice, water, and mountains ... leaving you less which can contain useful things like resources, food, or grassland for cottages/farms). It really depends on when you found the city.

That said I think you are overstating health issues here. Truth is you won't have an inflated happy cap in every new city from HR and health and happy cap are usually hand in hand from resources. I believe a landlocked city can have a health cap of about 12-15 with a modest amount of resources and a granary + grocer + aquaduct and can hit 20 with all of the health resources. This is all before medicine. I think 9 is an artificially low number and I'd expect most cities with 0 trees to be health capped around 12-15 even without an aquaduct. I know I rarely leave more than 2 trees around most of my early cities and they all end up in the 15-20 area before I hit medicine depending mostly on Harbor or not. Its not impossible to have a good +5 to +7 in healthy resources alone without any buildings. That right there gets you into double digits without any buildings and everyone is going to have at least a granary to get them a few more. It's really not impossible to see a size 12-15 early city with 0 forests, no ocean, and no aquaduct.

I just can't agree with your logic wholesale. What I will say is that if you are chopping a tile that you will not improve soon and are NOT building a piece of critical infrastructure (monument/granary/forge/courthouse), or an early worker/settler, or a critical wonder ... you very well might be making a strategic mistake. I mean chopping out an axe rush is certainly valid if it can work but doing it on general principle is silly.

ALL the health resources? What kind of map-rerolls are you doing?

I do have some exceptions in my own policy as well. If I hit the herbalism whip event I know that gives me greater luxury to reduce the number of trees in the BFCs and chop more. If the map is PARTICULARLY kind with health resources, the same applies. If I need to early war in order to break out of a boxed-in situation, it's do or die and there's no getting around the chop.

Also *outside* of the BFCs I chop pretty thoroughly, as those trees aren't giving me any health.

And of course on frontier/coastal cities I won't want trees to provide a protected approach to an enemy stack. Hills are bad enough but I often can't do anything about that due to resource placement.

I did a test game of "chop everything" on Monarch last night and pretty much ground into stalemate. I was producing a few more axes/swords/cats than normal, and didn't have health issues due to the herbalism whip and a good variety of health resources, but one thing I noticed is that the worker turn requirement is at least double this way, so for the first 4 cities if I'm going to be in chop-everything mode I'll need at least 2 and possibly 3 workers per city. Otherwise there's just not that much chopping going on or not enough tile improvement or both. And building more workers slowed down my expansion to where I got boxed in to 3 cities (one of those lovely "jam the human onto a peninsula" rolls!) Chops helped unit production but only marginally. Huayna brought gigantic stacks of the full mix of units, making counter-unit emphasis difficult, so it was really mostly an axe-slog on neutral land. I held my own in combat but the Huayna war wasn't helpful at all in my plans to DoW my two neighbors, Asoka and Saladin. Defense, defense, defense, and no end in sight. I just pulled the plug. I neither blame chops nor credit them by much in that go-around, the map was just horrible.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Where in the world did he come up with a health cap of 9? OK, you have your basic 2 health on emp. 2 from fresh water for a base of 4 before resources and bonuses. Add 2 for an aquaduct and we are at 6. Plus the 3 grains which are pretty common and that is 9. Granary makes those three grains 3 more which is 12. Let's assume a land locked city so no harbor but you can easily get 2 of the three seafood from trade or from a city you do have on a coast. Now we are at 14. Lets say 3 of the 4 meats. pretty common but maybe you're not near tundra for deer and noone will trade. That brings you to 17 before a grocer or calender resources are available. Subtract 1 for a forge and the total is 16. Once calender and grocers are available. you can get your health cap as high as 23 without a harbor. That can be tough to do. But even a modest 2 grains, 2 meats and one seafood is a health cap of 13.
To be stuck at 9 means you have just 1 grain, 1 meat and no seafood. If that is all you have before you get to Guilds and calender then either you are on the worst map ever or your Civ4 problems go way behind tree chopping.

You people are beginning to sound like Attacko. "Trees don't add health" and floodplains don't detract from it, naturally. And obviously every map has every resource imaginable if you only REX into it. Where are my hip waders?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Plan ahead.

I often find grassland tiles so good for cottages or farms that it necessitates chopping them (and if they're going to be chopped anyway, early offers the best return). Unforested tundra, particularly if not riverside, is junk, so I tend not to chop it.

Do you guys really clearcut the PLAINS forests religiously? That remains a grey area in my eyes. Plains tiles are not that strong to work for a long time. Essentially by leaving the forests there you get more utility from those tiles than you could by working them for most of the game. At replaceable parts lumber mills on plains = mines...certainly not bad. Maybe in early cities to speed critical expansion or tight wonder races i'd chop, but STILL. Other than that, what's the point of getting a plains tile?

 

[Soirana]

plain forest is always a pain to cut.

Giving away extra hammers is a pain too. So i need to choose which is less painfull.

Decesive thing is lumbermills came at point than most thhings are decided. Chops... Chops came early.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Plan ahead.

I often find grassland tiles so good for cottages or farms that it necessitates chopping them (and if they're going to be chopped anyway, early offers the best return). Unforested tundra, particularly if not riverside, is junk, so I tend not to chop it.

Do you guys really clearcut the PLAINS forests religiously? That remains a grey area in my eyes. Plains tiles are not that strong to work for a long time. Essentially by leaving the forests there you get more utility from those tiles than you could by working them for most of the game. At replaceable parts lumber mills on plains = mines...certainly not bad. Maybe in early cities to speed critical expansion or tight wonder races i'd chop, but STILL. Other than that, what's the point of getting a plains tile?

Now *this* is a point worth considering. The value of a grass tile versus plains or tundra, etc. Fractal hasn't been giving me a whole lot of green lately though, so I typically get mixes of floodplains and plains-hills and smatterings of forests on plains. But I can see the value of using a grass tile for other than a late lumbermill, obviously.

And maybe there's something to say for "fooding past the health cap" when you get those health-nukers like factories, coal plants, etc.

I can't agree with the logic of saying you have to totally disregard the industrial era, especially when not on the Pangea cheat map. At the very least you're waiting for Astro and that's just a hop and a skip from RP, AL, and the health-nuke techs (coal, oil, et al.) This is where I get "9 health cap" from--when you factor in the unhealth from industry, power, etc. That might not be exact but it's in the ball park, going just by memory.

 

[TwoShedsJackson]

Any city that gets a factory should get an immediate coal plant or hydro plant if you have plastics and a river. I know the TGD is appealing but its MANY MANY turns after you could have had that coal plant operational and not worth the wait. Never, ever, consider Nuclear power.

What is the actual chance of a meltdown? I ask because I build Nuclear Plants a lot to avoid the -2 health of the Coal Plant and I have never had a meltdown.

 

[feralminded]

For the record I rarely if ever chop my plains unless I really need the tile to bring water somewhere post Civil Service. Plains hills I will sometimes chop/mine because its just a great productive tile early. I think Skallagrimson is taking this too far though and in fact has now produced a strawman. I have never seen a game where ANYONE just focuses on chopping all of their first cities. It just doesn't work that way. In my current game I had a capital surrounded mostly by grassland forests. Pretty much ideal cottage mecca. I didn't just chop them all down before 2000AD. I chopped them one at a time as I built cottages. I mean I chopped a couple for early growth but it wasn't until I started to cottage spam that I really tore into that forest and even then I didn't build many more cottages than pop so even now its 1200AD and I still have a couple forests left on plains and a grass hill because its only a size 14 city (happy capped).

Basically I have no natural aversion to cutting trees if its organic growth. I don't know anyone who forces it though because indeed it isn't productive. In fact if at all possible I like waiting to cut until after OR, Forge, and Math because then you get a crazy amount of hammers per cut. Its nice if I can get those all in place when I chop out the Great Library (not always possible but sometimes) because it takes half as many chops.

As for health caps, you're estimates are dramatically low. The following chart is the breakdown.

2 for emperor
2 for fresh water
1 for rice/wheat/corn
1 for pigs/sheep/cows/deer
1 for fish/crabs/clams
1 for bananas
______________________
15 max right there.

1 from granary for Corn/Wheat/Rice
1 from harbor for Fish/Clams/Crab
1 from grocer for Wine/Spices/Sugar/Banana
2 from Aquaduct
_______________________
12 more max right there.

Now I agree its dreaming to think you will have 27 by this point but its not unreasonable to have 15. Most people can get/trade 2/3 grains, 2/4 meats, 2/3 seafood and 2/4 spices/bananas/wine/sugar. Even landlocked with only a granary that's 12-13 without an aquaduct or grocer. And its 16-17 with them. 16-17 health goes a long ways pre-biology or pre-sids. By the time you are looking to spam factories and/or coal mines you will usually have conquered a few more resources which can at this point add 2 per resource due to the buildings.

 

[UWHabs]

Health resources depend on the map. My game I have 2 grains, all 3 seafood, but I think only 1 of the other health resources. Don't have grocers yet. I think I'm at about a 12 health cap for my cities. All my cities are a couple over their health caps now (thank you floodplains). Until I conquer a bit more land (hehe), I won't be able to build factories in most of my towns. Although, most of my least healthy cities are built on desert/floodplains, so didn't have any forests to begin with (or the couple they had were very useful to chop to be able to get a granary/library up).

I won't usually chop plains, but any hill or grassland are fine to chop. It all depends on the cities, though. If I have good enough production, and enough other useful squares, nothing wrong with keeping 6-8 forests in the radius, since I know I won't be able to get my happy and health caps up higher than that often until pretty late. But if I have a city that has 20 grassland forest squares, my best bet on that town is to usually dedicate 2-3 workers for it to chop them and set up 20 grassland cottages.

 

[CivCorpse]

ALL the health resources? What kind of map-rerolls are you doing?

My question is "what sort of rerolls are you doing to only have 2-3 health resources"

Also *outside* of the BFCs I chop pretty thoroughly, as those trees aren't giving me any health.

The trees outside the BFC are tress that will eventually be in the BFC of another city. If not then you're placing your cities too far apart and wasting a lot of usuable land.

I did a test game of "chop everything" on Monarch last night and pretty much ground into stalemate. I was producing a few more axes/swords/cats than normal, and didn't have health issues due to the herbalism whip and a good variety of health resources, but one thing I noticed is that the worker turn requirement is at least double this way, so for the first 4 cities if I'm going to be in chop-everything mode I'll need at least 2 and possibly 3 workers per city.

No one is saying you have to chop everything right away. What is being said is that;
A. Your claim that health issues will cap your cities @9 is just way off the mark.
B. Almost any improvement is better than an unchopped forest.

 

[Artichoker]

To answer your point B), there are some improvements that require an unchopped forest, such as lumbermills and forest preserves.

In defense of forest preservation, I would like to point out that a city's BFC contains 20 tiles, apart from the center tile. It will take a very long time before keeping a forest prevents you from building a certain improvement on a different tile, that doesn't require chopping.

For example, let's suppose you have 4 forests. At sizes 16 and below, you have 16 unforested tiles on which to build tile improvements. As long as those unforested tiles have good productivity, it will be no problem to keep those 4 forests until the city grows beyond size 16.

 

[feralminded]

To answer your point B), there are some improvements that require an unchopped forest, such as lumbermills and forest preserves.

In defense of forest preservation, I would like to point out that a city's BFC contains 20 tiles, apart from the center tile. It will take a very long time before keeping a forest prevents you from building a certain improvement on a different tile, that doesn't require chopping.

For example, let's suppose you have 4 forests. At sizes 16 and below, you have 16 unforested tiles on which to build tile improvements. As long as those unforested tiles have good productivity, it will be no problem to keep those 4 forests until the city grows beyond size 16.

Correct ... which is why unless you need to chop out a quick piece of infrastructure or build up a big old pile of axes for a rush or develop the tile for some reason its usually not ideal to just chop for the heck of it.