A Concept to prevent Forests disappearance

[Killtech]

i've read many complains form players about forests/jungles disappearing very early in the game. so i figured it is time to start a discussion about possible countermeasures.

some historical background first:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation#Historical_causes

as you can read massive deforestation is nearly as old as human kind and the new feature of burning forests down (no production bonus) from start on is historically confirmed. likewise the complete deforestation of large map areas in the early game. BUT: what the game does not feature is the natural regrowth of forests which is very strong indeed (after all in europe woods in the middle ages were widely cut down but after the plague and nearly 100 years forests claimed most of the land back.).

my first suggestion is:

• forest/jungle (depends on latitude) can grow naturally everywhere and do not require neighboring woods.
• all non forest specific improvements require clearing forest first (mines, cottages, farms, windmills, pastures, orchards, ...)
• forest can overgrow improvements that have not been worked for a time. such improvements are represented by forest+improvement and get a significant penalty if they are worked again (instead of +1 hammer bonus). thus they encourage to clear the forest again.
• chance for forests to randomly appear on a not worked tile without an improvement is about 5% per turn at game start and decreases proportionally with the time interval between two turns.
• the chance for forest spread with neighboring forest is at 10% per turn at the start.
• chance for woods to overgrow a not worked tile is 2.5% and only possible if there are neighboring woods plus the tile was not worked for a minimum amount of turns.
• bonus from cutting down forests is reduced.
• optimized worker AI which checks how many tiles a city can work before improving a tile and searching for cities that need improvements most.
• forest should be unable to spread to tiles after forest have been removed for a fixed amount of turns

note that in this scenario forest can only regrow in areas with low population (with few worked tiles).

my concept is a way to include this natural forest growth with respect to reality and gameplay. my intention is to put early civilizations into a struggle with nature and make a realistic landscapes: highly developed areas with a high population density will have every tile improved and no forests left.

one word on global warming:

• only pollution from cities with access to energy/coal/oil should be considered for this. preindustrial global warming doesn't make much sense.

EDIT: added the last point into the list.

 

[Zarstorm]

Awesome idea Also it maybe good to enable reforestation earlier?

 

[Afforess]

my first suggestion is:

• forest/jungle (depends on latitude) can grow naturally everywhere and do not require neighboring woods.

• 
  
  Yes, considering that forests and trees can be spread by other sources (birds, animal & human travel) and the time frames here are huge.
  
  

  [*]all non forest specific improvements require clearing forest first (mines, cottages, farms, windmills, pastures, orchards, ...)

  Cottages and Farms already clear forests, I could buy mines doing so too, but the rest... eh.
  
  

  [*]forest can overgrow improvements that have not been worked for a time. such improvements are represented by forest+improvement and get a significant penalty if they are worked again (instead of +1 hammer bonus). thus they encourage to clear the forest again.

  
  Yes. They could become an "Overgrown X" (Where X is the improvement name), and perhaps the improvement should have no effects (so the tile gives base nature yields) until the overgrowth is cleared.
  
  Just with these few changes, I bet Forests would grow much faster.

 

[climat]

+1 in favor of this.

 

[Killtech]

Cottages and Farms already clear forests, I could buy mines doing so too, but the rest... eh.

so we talk here about pastures and orchards.

never understood why the improvements became all compatible with forests except that player wanted to prevent total deforestation.

but except for that is there any reason for this? honestly i find it very unintuitive that pastures can be build in woods. i mean brazil is burning down large areas of the amazon jungle for pastures for cattle.

but from games perspective: why should all these improvements have a chance of producing this one hammer when the owner is lucky and can put them on a forest? if forest start growing stronger it will make even much more sense to wait for the forest until building such improvements to get this bonus (of course AI doesn't understand this exploit) and this is very weird game mechanics and disturbs the games relation with reality. since orchards consist of trees themselves i see no reason to add the forest +50% tile defense bonus to them and maybe even the one bonus hammer. alternatively orchards could spawn a forest on their tile when they are build (which can only be removed with the orchard). but please remove this foolish waiting for forest to spread before building an improvement strategy from the game - or give me a good reasoning why it should stay.

 

[Afforess]

You've convinced me on Pastures, and Wikipedia convinced me with Orchards:

"An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs..."

So I guess I need to get to work on adding this.

 

[Arakhor]

So windmills can still coexist with forests? What about mines?

 

[climat]

Does lumbermill deplete forest/jungle currently? I'm just curious.

 

[Hyronymus]

Does lumbermill deplete forest/jungle currently? I'm just curious.

You never build one in the game I suppose.

Lumbermills require a forest and do not deplete them. In essence lumbermills were sustainable, much like the new flavour of today. It only went wrong because of massive industrialism.

I like the concept you posted killtech but I do wonder with how few forests a game ends up.

 

[climat]

Yes, I had never used it.
I just thought that certain level of deforestation may be caused by lumbermill.

 

[Hogar313]

Yes, considering that forests and trees can be spread by other sources (birds, animal & human travel) and the time frames here are huge.


Cottages and Farms already clear forests, I could buy mines doing so too, but the rest... eh.



Yes. They could become an "Overgrown X" (Where X is the improvement name), and perhaps the improvement should have no effects (so the tile gives base nature yields) until the overgrowth is cleared.

Just with these few changes, I bet Forests would grow much faster.

In my game cottages never clear forests

 

[Hyronymus]

Yes, I had never used it.
I just thought that certain level of deforestation may be caused by lumbermill.

It's something to be considered perhaps.

@Hogar313: same here, using 1.73 patch J. Maybe it was an option in the installer, kind for forgot as there is so many to choose from.

 

[Grathocke]

I don't think that pre-modern windmills would wipe out a forest. Generally I think they were small buildings and associated pretty much with farms. However, a modern windmill would represent a vast energy farm and definitely wipe out any forest on the land.

 

[Killtech]

I don't think that pre-modern windmills would wipe out a forest. Generally I think they were small buildings and associated pretty much with farms. However, a modern windmill would represent a vast energy farm and definitely wipe out any forest on the land.

form the games perspective it is not as much relevant if a improvement is compatible with a forest or not but the strategy of waiting for forest spread before building the improvement is. if the forest would not grant you any additional bonus for the improvement it won't matter and i wouldn't care. but it does while AI doesn't understand this and the strategy itself is very unrealistic. that annoys me.

besides i never saw windmills in a forest area. the trees would just reduce the wind power since medieval windmills weren't high. the other thing is that they were usually build in a farms area to reduce transport ways so one would naturally expect crops being the direct surrounding of a windmill but certainly no forest. and that is why i assume that on a medieval windmill tile there are windmills + farmland.

 

[DRJ]

I think it should be thought of having a map not too full of forests - as much as I like the idea of more forest growth I'd like to see sprouting/fading rivers and steppes that evolve, too. So a changing environment would be simulated, a deforestation-formula could as well be added as some climate-related events, changing cloud/moisture patterns and thus rivers, their deltas and/or even coastlines... there's such a lot of interesting stuff, even making flourishing cities disappear after some time... for example if like seen in Mesopotamia, intensive agriculture leads to salted earth and lost cities under the desert dust. To see a rivaling city in vain because of a drought or because of unsustained growth/ use of the land would be wonderful...

 

[Sonereal]

my first suggestion is:

• forest/jungle (depends on latitude) can grow naturally everywhere and do not require neighboring woods.

I certainly like the idea. It could lead to interesting late game scenarios if say, barbarians were to sweep in on a country following a massive war and then coming back to see improvements overgrown with forests. Using Afforess's idea of "Overgrown X" improvements sounds like a pretty good idea and working them should probably actually be detrimental to using even the basic yield on the tile.

 

[Grathocke]

form the games perspective it is not as much relevant if a improvement is compatible with a forest or not but the strategy of waiting for forest spread before building the improvement is. if the forest would not grant you any additional bonus for the improvement it won't matter and i wouldn't care. but it does while AI doesn't understand this and the strategy itself is very unrealistic. that annoys me.

besides i never saw windmills in a forest area. the trees would just reduce the wind power since medieval windmills weren't high. the other thing is that they were usually build in a farms area to reduce transport ways so one would naturally expect crops being the direct surrounding of a windmill but certainly no forest. and that is why i assume that on a medieval windmill tile there are windmills + farmland.

I see what you mean. I've never waited for a forest to grow, but I have liked exploiting tiles that have forest and can use improvements that don't destroy the forest. However, if we're going to go about destroying forests I hope that someone can upgrade the improvement art. I find the maps downright ugly without forests. There is always a difference between my nation and the AI nations because they chop down all their forests.

Good point about the windmills not being in the middle of a forest. I don't suppose it is possible to make medieval windmills dependent on an adjacent farm, is it? Of course, modern wind farms would probably be only on hills, though I don't have much knowledge of where they are really built.

 

[civ_king]

I see what you mean. I've never waited for a forest to grow, but I have liked exploiting tiles that have forest and can use improvements that don't destroy the forest. However, if we're going to go about destroying forests I hope that someone can upgrade the improvement art. I find the maps downright ugly without forests. There is always a difference between my nation and the AI nations because they chop down all their forests.

Good point about the windmills not being in the middle of a forest. I don't suppose it is possible to make medieval windmills dependent on an adjacent farm, is it? Of course, modern wind farms would probably be only on hills, though I don't have much knowledge of where they are really built.

Windmills were historically used to grind grain and pump water for farms

 

[Grathocke]

Windmills were historically used to grind grain and pump water for farms

Yes, in times of olde, but today they fill wind farms grinding out electricity... except for the few people who can afford one for their home. Then it's not a wind farm, but just a windmill.

 

[Narcio]

I like the idea of forests being able to grow back faster like this. I think also that jungles should potentially be able to grow back faster and be much more troublesome if you want to build over them. To me its always seemed too easy to chop down the rainforests / jungles at an early age in human development in game. In modern times, we're able to plow them over fairly easily, but for earlier times I really like the idea of the jungle fighting back against human encroachment. Its an interesting dynamic that it would make, when the jungles want to keep growing back over your improvements and you have to spend more upkeep chopping them down and maintaining your city's infrastructure.

I'm all for this sort of mod.