Am I the only person who doesn't chop?

[ClamBoy]

Well, in answer to tezster and others like him, I would say that high end civ players do play the game sheerly for the fun of it, but they derive that fun from stratiegic thought. In order to think stratiegicly you have to have a goal, and for me that goal is to win. If you have some other goal you are going for, fine, but you are posting on the wrong forum. This particular area is for discussing how to win games. If you have a different goal that's fine, but you should probably stay out of the "Strategy & Tips" section of Civfanatics.

I for one hope that posters like tezster and the like do not listen to your suggestion.

There is more to strategy than pure numbers analysis. I enjoy reading about broader principals and strategies to reach a variety of goals. At the same time, it's also interesting to see the analysis supporting those strategies.

As long as the posts relate to something achieving a particular end in the game, I'm interested in reading about it. Civ IV is very much a sandbox as it is a game, the more alternatives the better.

 

[Charles 22]

This has been an interesting thread to follow.

I know a lot of people here are very good CIV players. And in the final analysis, for most people, the object is to win the game and maximize your score while playing at the highest difficulty possible.

To these players, the challenge of finding that optimal strategy, and playing as efficiently as possible: breaking down the game into a number-crunching, min-max excercise as of it were a game of chess is the way to go.

Personally, I don't find this "fun"... granted, I'm only an average CIV player, and I don't have a need (nor desire) to play in the highest difficulty levels.

I guess what I'm wondering is how many people play the game just for the sheer fun of it (like me), without necessarily thinking ahead to the endgame from turn 1. I do like to experiment and try different things, but what I do isn't necessarily dictated by winning the game, but simply enjoying the journey from start to finish.

Just as an example, on a lot of the games that I play, as a matter of principle - except for the need to harvest a resource - I don't forest chop at all.

I'd like to think that I'm not the only one that plays this way.

I play it pretty much the same way, but then I'm no mathematical geek either.
The one thign that keeps me having a number of forests around every city is the hopes that it will help me combat disease to the proper degree. I also wonder whether forest expansion is much more likely with what's out there pretty much left alone.

If your city has 10 trees for example, and you end up chopping them all, early on, you could be faced with the possiblity that they will not grow in that area at all anymore, but then I can only guess on things of this nature, as I'm sure so much of this sort of thing isn't in the manual. In any event, if it is true that leaving a great deal of them around, makes for a more rapid expansion, and of course there is such a thing as too much, then imagine the boom if you do dedicate time to go chopping some 90% of them in the mid to late game! And to think the later game gives you more hammers for the same chop too.

All that aside, whether they know for sure or not, somebody earlier claimed that the same hex can and will regrow. True or not I still have to wonder whether the presence of a large forest increases that chance. From what I've seen, though it has been limited, I've not once seen a forest grow that wasn't adajacent to another forest hex, thereby supporting the theory that a larger forest is more likely to create more forest.

 

[Quantum7]

The game already does this. You might have noticed, but the # of hammers is affected by production bonuses such as Forge and Factory.

That is probably not what you're thinking of per se, but the net effect is the same.

Wodan

In 1.29 this wasn't true btw. The amount of hammers isn't influenced by the Forge at least. That was a very costly thing for me to discover in that game as well (I was chopping the Apollo Program ).

Note: This means that it doesn't give you extra hammers to wait to chop till later in the game.

 

[Quantum7]

All that aside, whether they know for sure or not, somebody earlier claimed that the same hex can and will regrow. True or not I still have to wonder whether the presence of a large forest increases that chance. From what I've seen, though it has been limited, I've not once seen a forest grow that wasn't adajacent to another forest hex, thereby supporting the theory that a larger forest is more likely to create more forest.

As far as I understand it, every single square of forest has a chance every turn to grow to every adjacent square (max of 8) in which it can grow. A forest can grow in any square that doesn't have an improvement / is a jungle / is a forest already / is a flood plain? / ....... Note: Forests CAN grow on squares with just roads.

The above probably means that an efficient way to go for 'regrowth' would probably be to leave as many squares as possible next to each forest non-forested. Each forest would then have 8 possible tiles to expand in. With some of those tiles bordering multiple forests.

The chance of regrowth (particularly later in the game) seems to be so utterly low though that going for forest regrowth doesn't seem to be an effective strategy.

 

[MrCynical]

I have played games where forest regrowth gave me a significant edge, mainly because I had a large band of tundra forest just out of my capital's radius which wasn't worth colonizing for ages. I had at least a dozen forest regrowths before the middle ages which gave me a lot of the earlier wonders easily. This was a marathon speed game though, and I suspect they didn't scale the forest regrowth accordingly. Regrowing forests seem to happen very often in a marathon game.

 

[Quantum7]

I have played games where forest regrowth gave me a significant edge, mainly because I had a large band of tundra forest just out of my capital's radius which wasn't worth colonizing for ages. I had at least a dozen forest regrowths before the middle ages which gave me a lot of the earlier wonders easily. This was a marathon speed game though, and I suspect they didn't scale the forest regrowth accordingly. Regrowing forests seem to happen very often in a marathon game.

Intriguing. Might be interesting to try a checkerboard like chopping game on Marathon setting then . With smaller cities not all tiles are used anyway, so it wouldn't influence the usable tiles much.

 

[InFlux5]

The same tile most certainly can regrow a forest more than once. I thought that poster was suggesting that if a tile has grown a forest, and you chop it down, that tile is MORE likely to re-grow in the future. But I don't think that's the case; as an above poster suggested, I believe each forest tile has a chance each turn to spawn a new forest in any un-improved tile adjacent to it.

Just for the record - as some above posts may cause confusion - any production bonuses that apply to the city where the hammers are going WILL be applied to the forest chop. This includes wonders for an Industrial civ, theatres for a Creative civ, etc. I'm fairly sure having a forge also increases hammer yield from forest but I'm not positive.

Even if you want health bonuses and Environmentalism in the late game, you should still chop if the city has more than 2 forests. Leave un-improved tiles around the remaining forests and you will have more by the time you need them. Two or four forests per city (for health bonuses of +1 or +2) is what I usually shoot for, and I'm an avid chopper. Production bonuses shouldn't be a factor in deciding whether to chop, as improvements can, well, improve on what a forest gives you. Health is the deciding factor.

 

[Hans Lemurson]

What matters more that how much production chopping a forest gives you, is how many turns it buys you. Doing better in Civ4 is when you get to a certain level of development X number of turns before your opponent does. If you choose not to chop a settler, and that makes it take 5 turns longer to build, those are 5 turns that you can never get back. 5 turns that your city could have spent building the next item, 5 turns that the new city could have been building and growing. In the beginning, 30 production is worth about 4-5 turns, but later in the game it is only worth 1-2 turns. Also, chopping for your first city speeds up your entire empire, chopping for later cities only speeds up a part of it.

The comparative advantage of chopping is far greater in the very beginning of the game, and lessens the farther you go, and the larger your empire. Chop as much as you can, as soon as possible, for as long as you have something useful to build. After your first few cities are built, you can slow down your frenetic deforestation.

I always chop tiles that I wouldn't find particularly useful anyways, like forested hills (you can mine them) or forested plains (too little food for too little production). Also tiles that would serve a far better purpose deforested, like grassland next to rivers. Basicly, I'll chop almost everything except forested grasslands not next to fresh-water, and I'll mainly just chop for my capitol city, when the # of turns/chop you get is at its best.

If you can do something sooner, why wait?

 

[Charles 22]

Think about it though. Supposing you leave just 1 or 2 forests. That's at most 16 chances to grow further. If you leave 4-6, which is what I'm shooting for, you have as much as 32-48 chances. It's plain to see that beyond health considerations, your optimum chopping is better off by not getting down to only one or two. Of course if they will spawn randomly without any adajacent forest needing being present, then that would leave only the health consideration and lumber mills.

 

[Wodan]

Last game I was going for cultural all the way, and left a LOT of room around my 3 culture cities. It was a mountains map, and at the time I was more concerned with getting good city sites for my production cities.

Anyway, what this allowed me to do was copy for those 3 cities ALL GAME, like MrCynical sayd. You selectively chop (every other forest) and they regrow fairly quickly.

(Since I was doing cultural, this was HUGE. I wanted as many wonders in those 3 cities as possible. Plus, it let those 3 cities be all Towns, even Towns on hills.)

Wodan