Forests with new patch -- To cut or keep?

[Draetor24]

I have heard that civic upkeeps and fast expanding can ruin you financially now. That, along with the added bonus of +0.5 to forests (giving +3-4 instead of +2) for health bonuses to your capital, and the new automated worker feature of keeping forests.

Does this mean that keeping forests instead of settler chopping could be more beneficial now?

 

[BlackMage]

Probably not. Keeping one or two forests around once the "Chop Age" is over means that the forests will spread by themselves over the turns and you will get the health bonus when you need it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

well they only spread into undeveloped territory

 

[MusicLaunch]

Cut cut cut! (for me, at least) I always need to expand/rush armies to keep the AIs behind me in score and tech. What's the point of keeping health and getting more in the industrial ages with environmentalism when you're already dead in the ancient age?

 

[Gondopharnes]

haha, great point mate

 

[Suspiria]

Keep the forests. Their great for production, especially in the later stage when you can get Lumbermills.

 

[Thalassicus]

It depends on if you're playing singleplayer or multiplayer, a small map or a normal/large one. On quick ancient-warmonger games with small maps or multiplayer, you obviously would chop everything since the game doesn't last more than an era or two.

In normal games on singleplayer, if a city has less than 5 hills or so, I chop most of the forests, avoid the last few to bring it up to around 5, and move my worker just outside the radius to continue chopping with a unit to guard. You recieve the same or slightly fewer hammers as inside the radius, but you end up with much more productive cities.

So I never "stop chopping", I just move the chopping to areas where you're not penalized for doing so. Cutting down everything within the city radius usually results in about -30% production per turn for my cities, up to -50% or more for those with no hills. You can sometimes make up some of the lost production with Organized Religion or an Engineer, but I like bumping a prophet for Theology, using Theocracy, and working all my tiles. Also, when you hit the end of the Medieval age and pick up Replaceable Parts, all your core cities become production powerhouses.

 

[Tall German Joe]

Keep the forests. Their great for production, especially in the later stage when you can get Lumbermills.

Yeah, but they still aren't better than workshops.

 

[Thalassicus]

Keep the forests. Their great for production, especially in the later stage when you can get Lumbermills.

Yeah, but they still aren't better than workshops.

In the early game, where workshops are -1/1/0 -0.4 health and forests are 0/1/0 +0.5 health...
or when workshops make it to -1/3/0 -0.4 vs 0/3/0 +0.5?

Even with state property it's 0/3/0 -0.4 vs 0/3/0 +0.5

I don't really know when workshops would be useful except as a last resort; I havn't used them for production since they're -1 food apiece all the way to communism. Three or four of them and you've got -3 food -1 health, which hampers city growth quite a bit unless it has access to two or three food resources, in which case I could see where they'd be valuable. Usually in that situation I have several hills or forests around, though, so they're not necessary.

The one case where they'd be useful is if you start out in a floodplains/jungle area with little to no hills around, workshop-floodplains are amazing! (especially since forests can't grow in deserts). Rivers are pretty situational from map to map though, I find myself by lots of floodplains in about one in ten games on Temperate maps.

 

[Nestorius]

Well, if I was blessed with a lot of trees, and my city looked like it was a grower, I used to keep five trees to have the +2 bonus. But if I had a lot of seafood and animals, and I needed to build wonders, I'd chop enough trees for only +1 health. My last game though I cut down the third tree late in the game so my city would grow at size 20, and I forgot about the health bonus and it didn't even matter. So, definately the increased health bonus of trees means more chopping for me.

 

[Master Lexx]

Simply replant forests in the middle game (Possible with GreenMod). Forests only grow into titles where no improvement was built, and they grow only half as fast if they have a road.

 

[xGBox]

I say chop, although you could go either way. I personally don't need trees because my cities are never angry by the time I get environmentalism. And hospitals, aqueducts, and recyling centers eliminate almost all unhealthiness.

 

[Charles 22]

well they only spread into undeveloped territory

Not entirely true, or at least I suspect not. Now, while it strictly wasn't woods that sprang up, I did see today, that a jungle sprung up on a developed hex. But that depends on what you call 'developed'. To me, before I saw this, I considered developed anything that had a trace of a worker or settler on it, such as a road. The jungle sprang up on a road. I've no doubt whatsoever. I also think it's true that if something were mines it wouldn't have sprung up, but time may find that false too.

 

[Glinka]

Strategic cutting. I cut forests for granaries and forges. The rest I try to leave alone for lumbermills, unless I need something for a quick boost, like an early wonder.

 

[RED DIAMOND]

Chop and replant via the forest replant mod

 

[DangerousMonkey]

Chopping (at least for a minimum of workers/settlers) isn't really optional if you want to win games against skilled players. Though upping the health bonus from forests slightly does give you a slight bit of incentive to keep some trees if you happen to have a lot of them, I can't see it preventing anyone from chopping what they really need.

The early production bonus from chopping is massive. They do provide you with some nice health bonuses (now +1 for every two trees) and though forests are really nice to have in the late game, they won't do you much good if you don't live that long because somebody else chop-rushed a massive army and killed you while you sat around enjoying your parklands.

 

[Thalassicus]

The problem with replanting is that it removes a strategic element from the game, giving no incentive to leave forests up at all... I originally played with it but am debating whether to use it any more. I still use it to fill in spaces between cities just for aesthetic purposes

 

[vDrag0n]

lumbermills also get +1 shield from railroads also...

hill + forest + lumbermill + railroad > hill + mine

 

[RED DIAMOND]

The problem with replanting is that it removes a strategic element from the game, giving no incentive to leave forests up at all... I originally played with it but am debating whether to use it any more. I still use it to fill in spaces between cities just for aesthetic purposes

It takes 25 turns and the tile to be worked(like the cottage). Using it to your advantage does require a fair bit of strategy.

 

[Tall German Joe]

In the early game, where workshops are -1/1/0 -0.4 health and forests are 0/1/0 +0.5 health...
or when workshops make it to -1/3/0 -0.4 vs 0/3/0 +0.5?

Even with state property it's 0/3/0 -0.4 vs 0/3/0 +0.5

The one case where they'd be useful is if you start out in a floodplains/jungle area with little to no hills around, workshop-floodplains are amazing! (especially since forests can't grow in deserts). Rivers are pretty situational from map to map though, I find myself by lots of floodplains in about one in ten games on Temperate maps.

Lumbermills are only 0/1/0. On a plains square, that translates to a 1/3/0, and on a grassland square its a 2/2/0. With a workshop, a plains square is 0/4/0 and a grassland square is 1/3/0. Workshops do not have a health modifier as far as I know. So, a workshop is the same as a pre-railroad mine.

I just checked that a railroad does in fact give the +1 production bonus to lumbermills, so that would give them a +1 production bonus over workshops without state property. But you have to leave the square the forest there the WHOLE GAME to get that bonus. Is the health bonus really worth it?

I dunno, use them if you want, but lumbermills are just too non-specialized for me. I just don't see a point in saving forests when the advantage of early chopping is so high. Even with the new patch, I don't see the point in saving any more than 2 in a poor-health city.