Chop rush?

[Chazcon]

I see this everywhere on these forums, does this mean to build a worker first, chop down a forest to get the 30 hammers, in order to jump-start unit production in the early game? If so, interesting idea.

I have been building a warrior first to protect my capital while I explore with my given warrior, try to take as many villages as possible to get gold & goodies. Also to find good spots for my first cities.

Then I build settlers/workers/warriors and get 4 or 5 cities going, preferably in a sort of ring - but the city location is more important than the shape of my nation.

Next I concentrate on putting an archer in each town, building walls, and preparing for the barbarians. I build 6-10 workers here. I build chariots if I can, and then mounted archers, as a quick-reaction force to fend off barbarians. I will let the barbs attack my cities rather than attack them, but use the mounted units to protect my improvements.

Biggest problem I have is maintaining gold levels without sacrificing research. I try to build cities to include a good mix of gold/hammers/food and always on fresh water. I'm still very new to this game though and many things are happening in the background that become apparent only later.

Great game.

 

[Crimso]

Well, everyone has a different way of chop rushing. A good idea is to chop out some settlers quickly to claim copper, iron, or horses. After that, you can decide whether to start chopping out a small army to rush an opponent, or to chop out settlers and escorts, depending on how much land there is to go around.

If you're having trouble maintaining your cash flow, reasearch pottery earlier and dedicate some of your cities to cottage spamming. And I would consider skipping the walls too, and taking a more agressive approach to barbarians.

 

[Dizzy75]

Chop rushing is exactly what you said. You need Bronze Working in order to do it.

Most people seem to agree that chop-rushing for early expansion is essential at the higher difficulty levels. Settlers and workers are expensive and your cities don't grow while building them, so you want to build them as fast as possible. The AI has major advantages at higher levels and will crush you if you lag behind in the early game.

 

[Chazcon]

So it is essential to research Bronze Working ASAP, then go back and fill in your other technologies?

Also, I see the word 'chop' being used as a replacement for the word 'build', perhaps I am missing some subtlety here - is that just a slang thang?

 

[Gumbolt]

Not vital but if you like chopping to speed up production then its vital to that strategy. On civs without mining you are delayed 8 or so turns on this strategy. Some might go for a religion if you start with mystism. Can you resist such a rush though? Pun intended!!!!

 

[JoeBlade]

Biggest problem I have is maintaining gold levels without sacrificing research. I try to build cities to include a good mix of gold/hammers/food and always on fresh water. I'm still very new to this game though and many things are happening in the background that become apparent only later.

A piece of advice on this particular point: don't go mental over the science slider.
I used to panic whenever I had to drop it below 50% for more than one turn, but you should remember that the slider only indicates the percentage of your commerce being converted to beakers.

If you have twice the number of cities of the other civs with a good average commerce generation and appropriate science buildings, chances are you're outteching your competitors even when at, say, 40% science. As long as you can keep up in the tech race and manage to attain key techs (for your current strategy) before other civs do you're in the green, regardless of the slider setting.
Just be careful with trade-happy leaders like M&M (he'll gladly trade his parents, spouse and offspring into slavery for the secrets of Agriculture, that one) around; they can still get ahead in techs even when well behind research-wise. Don't be afraid to tech-trade yourself either, as long as you get the long end of the straw in the end.

Oh, and the "mix of gold/hammers/food" may be good early-game but you'll want to specialise your cities as the game progresses, to best take advantage of building bonuses and esp. national wonder ones.

 

[Chazcon]

I'm reading further and see that chop-rush to artificially advance production may be a bad habit, a quick fix that hurts your civ down the road - comments?

 

[Gumbolt]

It only need hurt first few cities

 

[Sparta]

Clear-cutting forests can be somewhat detrimental in the long run since you'll have none to rely on for quick production later, and more importantly will lose any forest-based health in your cities (# of forests/2 bonus). That can be argued though, since the gains you made from those ancient forestry operations will be parlayed into huge incremental advantage by the time it becomes a big issue (e.g. if those two forests hurried a couple axemen that snagged you an extra health resource from an enemy, then the point largely becomes moot and the chops were most likely beneficial). Furthermore, you can 'save' a couple forests inside the city radius for the health if you want, and chop stuff outside the workable tiles to help with production as well.

When people say they're going to 'chop' something, like a unit, I believe they typically just mean that they're augmenting production speed with a forest chop. If a unit takes 7 turns to produce normally, but with a forest chop it only takes 2, you can basically say you for the most part 'chopped' that unit out.

Welcome to CFC!

 

[Dizzy75]

"So it is essential to research Bronze Working ASAP, then go back and fill in your other technologies?"

Not necessarily "essential" for all starts/civs as Gumbolt said, but it's definitely a popular and effective tactic especially at higher difficulties. It's a "tactic" and not a "strategy," i.e. need to use it as a means to achieve a strategic goal, not an end in itself.

"I'm reading further and see that chop-rush to artificially advance production may be a bad habit, a quick fix that hurts your civ down the road - comments?"

Considering there is no other way to accelerate worker/settler production at the beginning of the game, I'm not sure it's necessarily a "bad habit" at least in your first city. Over-chopping without a clear goal is probably bad, but so is doing anything without a clear goal.

I generally devise a plan for every forest in each of my first few cities. Either I plan to chop them for settlers/workers for expansion (and resource acquisition), save them to chop an early wonder (the AI will almost always beat me to them if I don't chop), or save them for health. It all depends on my civ, my map, and what I want my medium- and long-term strategy to be. I'm not an uber-expert by any means, though.

 

[MrCynical]

I'm reading further and see that chop-rush to artificially advance production may be a bad habit, a quick fix that hurts your civ down the road - comments?

Not really. Yes you lose the health bonus from the forest in the long term, but this is quite small at only half a point a tile, and it's far better to rely on health resources. There's also the snag that you can't build lumbermills, and so improve the forest while retaining it, until the invention of Replaceable parts, so every single forest tile is producing suboptimal production for half the game, to say nothing of not getting the chop bonus. A hammer at the start of the game is of sourse worth far more than a hammer at the end.

Unless a city is really desperate for production I would advise chopping all forests fairly early on. The only exception is if they are on a flatland tundra tile with no access to freshwater, in which case you won't ever be able to improve it if you remove the forest.

 

[Dusty Monkey]

Chop rushing is exactly what you said. You need Bronze Working in order to do it.

Most people seem to agree that chop-rushing for early expansion is essential at the higher difficulty levels. Settlers and workers are expensive and your cities don't grow while building them, so you want to build them as fast as possible. The AI has major advantages at higher levels and will crush you if you lag behind in the early game.

One thing however about the higher levels.. at least on deity

The lack of city growth is often a non-issue before monarchy because the happyness caps are extremely low.

Its the rapid expansion (or rapid military buildup) that is key.. the AI gets two settlers on turn 1 at the high levels..

 

[luckynick]

the AI gets two settlers on turn 1 at the high levels..

only at deity, wich is why i think the difference from immortal to deity is as large as the one between prince and emperor.


Btw : on emperor++ there some importants thing you almost always want to chop. First settler beyond the starting one and stonhenge if you re not creative and lack religion on the beginning (which is often the case).

The first city should be placed near ressources you can work early, callandar ressource or jungles sites are almost useless at start.

Priority rate of placement is from first to last :
- bronze (unless you do take the archery path instead of BW path)
- gold/silver/gem with growing tiles too (fodd bonusses, floodplains, oasis, grassland, ...)
- gold/silver/gem but without growing tiles
- wonder ressources (stone and marble)
- hunting luxuries (beaver or mamoth)
- fast growing food bonusses (mainly fish and corn)

If you play near agressive AI or with barbs on high levels, you will need appropriate defense. No way chariot can outfit that, unless in the rare case where almost your whole territory is flat. Otherwise ennemy archers/axes can take profit of terrain defense plus chariot can not defnd city themselves efficiently (no city defense bonus).

So there is 2 early defense options : axes and archers
Axes are the best choice because you can use them for offense too but you will need bronze (iron based axe is not an option because IW will come too late most of the time, remember i ve said you re threatened by barbs or any aggressive moct-alex)

so most of the time, when i can't see any bronze reachable when i hit BW, i tend to beeline archery now*.
2 exception :
- non epic or marthon speed. If you ve got mucha gold early on you may be able to get IW quickly enough to hook iron if you managed to prepare settler/worker ready to go in time.
- I play incas, queshua pumped out of a barrack can manage archers and warriors easily so you can get iron working withtout too much problems (ennemy axemens tend to arrive later)

Once you have a good defensive option available, you can think about what you are going to do next and wich techs you mostly need to do so :

- expension, by war or not : pottery, writting then get CoL. Currency is great too. Of course for early war you need at least bronze or iron. The prupose here is to be able to support the cost of your expantion, using tech and improvment that increase commerce and/or research/income.

- getting culture to expend your cities borders : if you re not creative, you either need stonehenge so mysticism+BW to chop or religions but those ones aren't consistent.

- growing/improve your cities : search directly those tile improveing techs (AH, hunting, fishing massonry, farming, wheel, pottery)

- going for diplomatic warfare : alphabet then currency are mandatory, getting religion are great too, either by founding or by getting them (have to pray ^^)

- getting pyramid : on high diff level do not count on it without stone or being industrial, plus you need BW, wheel and massonry. And at least 6 easy to get trees to chop and 2 lumberjack

- getting oracle : not as hard to build as pyramids but you need priesthood, and unless you haven't got writting yet you can't slingshot for CoL with it.


*Note : if the main for you early on threat is barb (ie you re near no AI or passives one), you have the option to pump out enough warrior to unfog your land by placing them on hills around your territory.