As mentioned in another thread here by DaveMcW, chopping appears the dominant strategy for initial expansion.
In CIVIII the dominant strategy for first 80 turns (to around 1000bc) was to maximize food production and create a city (or cities) that could produce a settler in 4 turns (or a worker in 2 turns). This requires +5 food and a granary, along with 30 shields produced in 4 turns (4 turn settler factory). Produce one or two of these and you could establish a dozen or more cites before 1000bc.
In CivIV, you no longer have to grow your city in order to produce a settler or worker. Instead, you just dont grow at all while they are being produced. Both food AND hammers are used to calculate the production going toward a worker or settler.
This has the perverse effect of not encouraging you to grow you cities at all, but just to produce workers and settlers from the moment you found the city. However, you cant produce enough food and hammers with only one population, unless .. You chop.
And chop and chop and chop. At 30 shields (or so, as you get further from your border the number goes down) and a 3-turn chop, your worker can produce 7.5 hammers per turn when you allow for a move and a 3 turn chop. This is a significant amount of return. In fact, it is such a good return that you are better off chopping every single forest around your cities before using your worker on any other improvements. This is a slight exaggeration but it is the rare tile, like the grassland gems, that have a large enough pay off to make that a priority over chopping another forest at the beginning of the game.
Here is a quick compare between building a pasture on pigs (+3 food assuming you have the tech) and chopping a forest (30 hammers). In the 20 turns after starting each action, the pasture gives you an additional +48 food. (4 turns to complete, 16 turns at +3 = 48). This would likely grow you city a couple of population, so add in an additional 24 hammers (3rd tile mined hill on turn 12) and 8 commerce (if on river). The forest gives you 30 hammers in only 4 turns. You have 16 additional turns to do other actions. If you just chop one more forest, you are at +60. At the start of the game, on your first worker, it is entirely possible to chop 5 forests in 20 turns, for a total of +150 hammers.
What makes this strategy really powerful is when you realize that your first settler does not return much for the cost in the first few turns, so instead of building a settler after the initial worker, you should build two or three additional workers and scouts or warriors to protect them, until you need the settler to expand your chopping into a new area with more forests
Im sure that there are exceptions when you have minimal forests or that this strategy is mitigated when you are playing a tight map or a higher difficulty. But given a normal number of forests and Noble level, this is a dominant strategy.
The suggestion I made in the thread above was to switch the worker abilities granted by Bronze Working and Iron Working. In the current game version (1.09) you gain the ability to chop forests (~30 hammers) at Bronze Working and the ability to clear jungle (no hammers) at Iron Working. If these two abilities were switched then the starting strategy of worker - bronze working - Chop Every Tree (CET) strategy would not be as dominant.
This is minimal change in that it only impacts the game up to the point where you get Iron Working. From that point on, chopping would work exactly like it does today.
StanNP
In CIVIII the dominant strategy for first 80 turns (to around 1000bc) was to maximize food production and create a city (or cities) that could produce a settler in 4 turns (or a worker in 2 turns). This requires +5 food and a granary, along with 30 shields produced in 4 turns (4 turn settler factory). Produce one or two of these and you could establish a dozen or more cites before 1000bc.
In CivIV, you no longer have to grow your city in order to produce a settler or worker. Instead, you just dont grow at all while they are being produced. Both food AND hammers are used to calculate the production going toward a worker or settler.
This has the perverse effect of not encouraging you to grow you cities at all, but just to produce workers and settlers from the moment you found the city. However, you cant produce enough food and hammers with only one population, unless .. You chop.
And chop and chop and chop. At 30 shields (or so, as you get further from your border the number goes down) and a 3-turn chop, your worker can produce 7.5 hammers per turn when you allow for a move and a 3 turn chop. This is a significant amount of return. In fact, it is such a good return that you are better off chopping every single forest around your cities before using your worker on any other improvements. This is a slight exaggeration but it is the rare tile, like the grassland gems, that have a large enough pay off to make that a priority over chopping another forest at the beginning of the game.
Here is a quick compare between building a pasture on pigs (+3 food assuming you have the tech) and chopping a forest (30 hammers). In the 20 turns after starting each action, the pasture gives you an additional +48 food. (4 turns to complete, 16 turns at +3 = 48). This would likely grow you city a couple of population, so add in an additional 24 hammers (3rd tile mined hill on turn 12) and 8 commerce (if on river). The forest gives you 30 hammers in only 4 turns. You have 16 additional turns to do other actions. If you just chop one more forest, you are at +60. At the start of the game, on your first worker, it is entirely possible to chop 5 forests in 20 turns, for a total of +150 hammers.
What makes this strategy really powerful is when you realize that your first settler does not return much for the cost in the first few turns, so instead of building a settler after the initial worker, you should build two or three additional workers and scouts or warriors to protect them, until you need the settler to expand your chopping into a new area with more forests
Im sure that there are exceptions when you have minimal forests or that this strategy is mitigated when you are playing a tight map or a higher difficulty. But given a normal number of forests and Noble level, this is a dominant strategy.
The suggestion I made in the thread above was to switch the worker abilities granted by Bronze Working and Iron Working. In the current game version (1.09) you gain the ability to chop forests (~30 hammers) at Bronze Working and the ability to clear jungle (no hammers) at Iron Working. If these two abilities were switched then the starting strategy of worker - bronze working - Chop Every Tree (CET) strategy would not be as dominant.
This is minimal change in that it only impacts the game up to the point where you get Iron Working. From that point on, chopping would work exactly like it does today.
StanNP
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