Goods Simplification Proposal

[OzzyKP]

Those of us who enjoy the We the People mod enjoy the complexity of the large number of goods (otherwise we'd play other mods). But I think you can have too much of a good thing. I like goods that have multiple uses (like Down which can be used for furniture and coats), and I dislike intermediate goods which just serve to lengthen supply chains and add complexity without adding fun.

Here is a modest proposal to trim the goods and simplify supply chains a bit, nothing radical:

Remove:
Peat - The only use of this is to make pottery. I'm unclear if peat is actually used to make pottery in the real world anyhow, so it seems an unnecessary complication.
Geese - I don't see a need to have both chickens and geese. They provide the same resource, down, so why have both? I understand they are bred on different terrain, but... why? It seems unnecessary to have both. Cut geese, or replace both with "Poultry".
Milk - Milk is useless on its own. Not a valuable trade good (and honestly, how are you going to ship it across the ocean without it spoiling?). Eliminate either the milkmaid or the cheesemaker and have the remaining one just produce cheese directly without needing an intermediate step.
Colored Cloth/Colored Wool Cloth - I think this also creates an unnecessary step in the process. I propose Cloth + Dye = Clothes. It is unnecessary to include the intermediate step of dying the cloth.
Cacao - Another intermediate good that should be cut. Also from my quick read on the subject, most of the use of cacao is for chocolate anyhow, so why not cut out the middle man? Go straight to chocolate. Maybe make some space in the market for some confection that uses bakery products, sugar & vanilla.

Now, I don't want to mess up the grid of goods or throw in extra spaces or weirdness in the actual screen, so I propose replacing these goods, primarily with goods that can't be produced but need to be purchased. I think this would enhance the triangle trade mechanism of the game.

Add:

Tea - Cannot be produced, can just be purchased in Europe (or Asia).
Porcelain - Cannot be produced, can just be purchased in Europe (or Asia).
Silk - Cannot be produced, can just be purchased in Europe (or Asia).
Jewelry - Either a Europe only good, or something that can be made with silver, gold & gems.
Books/Paper - Another Europe only good. Though maybe paper could be an interesting manufactured good to create using hemp or lumber. I dunno.
Saltpeter - Combined with charcoal to make gunpowder. Significant sources in Chile.

Adding a port in Asia is probably beyond the scope of the mod (though it'd be cool), so those goods could just be available for purchase in Europe as expensive luxury items.

 

[bogwart]

Agree on Peat. For Pottery production, it could maybe replaced with Charcoal?

Agree on Geese. Exchange it with general Poultry and let it grow on Marshland, Wetland, Shrubland, Tundra.

Don't agree on Milk/Milkmaid/Cheese. The maids boost reproduction rate of Cows, Goats, Sheep. Which could be crucial e.g. in some hilly environment where food is short and you don't have food for an extra goat herder. Milk and cheese are also products which make the colonists happy. (Yes, it's unrealistic to send fresh milk over the ocean and sell it there but AFAIK the game concept doesn't allow products to be sold in the colonies only, isn't it?)

Don't agree on Colored Cloth. Weavers make Wool or (Cotton) Cloth, and Dyers make Colored Wool or Cloth. Wool and Cloth are in the 8+ gold range, their colored equivalents in the 17+ range. I like that you can produce/sell the simple/cheap as well as the refined/expensive product.

Don't agree on Cocoa pods and Cocoa, which can be sold on domestic markets as is or (refined) as Chocolate. In my current game you can sell Cocoa pods for (E/A/P) 4/3/3 gold, Cocoa for 8/8/10 gold, and Chocolate for 19/17/21 gold. So if you're in a jungly region you can make tons of money after building a Roastery and Confectionery.

As for the grid problem - yeah maybe two additional buy-only goods would be the easiest solution. But as we already have Luxury Goods, IMHO it doesn't make much sense.

 

[raystuttgart]

Well, modding and gaming is personal taste.

Personally none of these ideas are appealing to me ... but also I am taking a break now anyways.
I like the goods / yields the way they are ... otherwise I would not have modded it that way.

Also, so much effort has been put into the Buildings, Professions, Experts, Balancing ... that it is unlikely to be changed again in WTP base mod.
From what I have heard, the team also really likes it the way it is. Nobody said that he is interested to change Production Chains anymore.

The great thing in modding: If you want something, simply create it yourself to your liking.
So if somebody wants to create a modmod like that (and maybe publish it), go ahead.

Spoiler :

Otherwise the topic of Yields has been discussed so many times after WTP 4.0, that I do not feel like discussing it again.
Some people love the new Yields in WTP 4.1 ... some people hate them ... that is just the way it is in life ... you can never make everybody happy.

Also it is unlikely that there will be any real feature release of WTP core mod in the near future anyways.
(The only things that are currently happening is stuff like improvements, bugfixes, graphics and maybe small events.)

If you really want something like that, most likely you have to create a mod(mod) yourself ... or become a team member to have a say in WTP development.
Otherwise the chance that somebody else will invest 50 to 100 hours of effort for your own personal taste is extremely low.

 

[OzzyKP]

Agree on Peat. For Pottery production, it could maybe replaced with Charcoal?

Agree on Geese. Exchange it with general Poultry and let it grow on Marshland, Wetland, Shrubland, Tundra.

Ah yea, charcoal would be a good idea. I like goods that have more than one use. And yea, I figured if we consolidated to just chickens or just poultry it would be raised in all the terrain chickens & geese currently can breed in.

Don't agree on Milk/Milkmaid/Cheese. The maids boost reproduction rate of Cows, Goats, Sheep. Which could be crucial e.g. in some hilly environment where food is short and you don't have food for an extra goat herder. Milk and cheese are also products which make the colonists happy. (Yes, it's unrealistic to send fresh milk over the ocean and sell it there but AFAIK the game concept doesn't allow products to be sold in the colonies only, isn't it?)

Yea, I figured that the newly combined profession would still have the reproduction boosting function of the milkmaid. Maybe just change the name to dairy maid and she produces cheese instead of milk. I guess I didn't realize that milk was consumed in the domestic market too, but still, if we're replacing milk with other consumable goods then that won't be disruptive.

Don't agree on Colored Cloth. Weavers make Wool or (Cotton) Cloth, and Dyers make Colored Wool or Cloth. Wool and Cloth are in the 8+ gold range, their colored equivalents in the 17+ range. I like that you can produce/sell the simple/cheap as well as the refined/expensive product.

Don't agree on Cocoa pods and Cocoa, which can be sold on domestic markets as is or (refined) as Chocolate. In my current game you can sell Cocoa pods for (E/A/P) 4/3/3 gold, Cocoa for 8/8/10 gold, and Chocolate for 19/17/21 gold. So if you're in a jungly region you can make tons of money after building a Roastery and Confectionery.

Yea, I'm saying we get rid of the Dyery and Dyers altogether. It would give us more space in the city for another building (like a workshop/laboratory). I know we can sell the intermediate goods, but it just seems like an unnecessary step nonetheless. I mean, in theory, you could have a profession that converts sugar into molasses, then the distillery converts molasses into rum. Molasses could be sold separately, but... why? Would that be more fun/interesting than just going sugar to rum? I think it is just clutter and overcomplicates things for little gain. And it gives us more space to add different, interesting goods (like tea, silk, etc).

As for the grid problem - yeah maybe two additional buy-only goods would be the easiest solution. But as we already have Luxury Goods, IMHO it doesn't make much sense.

Finding the right balance between granularity and abstraction is the key. A five step process to get clothes (sheep->wool->wool cloth->colored wool cloth->clothes) seems far too granular to me, and lumping together a dozen or more products into Luxury Goods seems too abstract to me.

I see it as a balance issue as well. As discussed in this thread, there is a problem with too much money in the mid to late game. You produce everything you need and don't have anything you really need to spend money on. If you had more goods that couldn't be produced, but needed to be purchased it'd give you something to do with all that money. Plus it would enhance the realism of the game. The colonies were never self sufficient. There was always quite a lot of goods they purchased from Europe. Simplifying production chains not only makes the production part of the game more streamlined and fun, it also provides space to better model the need to purchase goods overseas.

 

[Brosso B.]

and I dislike intermediate goods which just serve to lengthen supply chains and add complexity without adding fun.

Complexity =/= depth.

Milk - Milk is useless on its own. Not a valuable trade good (and honestly, how are you going to ship it across the ocean without it spoiling?). Eliminate either the milkmaid or the cheesemaker and have the remaining one just produce cheese directly without needing an intermediate step.
Colored Cloth/Colored Wool Cloth - I think this also creates an unnecessary step in the process. I propose Cloth + Dye = Clothes. It is unnecessary to include the intermediate step of dying the cloth.
Cacao - Another intermediate good that should be cut.

Personally, I think there should be more intermediate steps, for example when you pick cotton, it becomes cotton bolls, then you need to either separate the fibres from the seeds by hand or invent the Cotton Gin to make that process easier and quicker. This produces cotton lint. The next phase is to create cotton bales from the lint, which can now be traded (It's impossible to export or sell the earlier products, except perhaps to natives to troll them). From that you can produce threads, which then can become cloth. By combining thread, cloth and needles you can produce further products that are actually useful (if we're feeling generous). Note that if trade unions are implemented, then the "needle threader" profession should only be open to expert needler threaders, otherwise the rest of the factory goes on strike.
Needles should have their own production chain, with at least 10 steps. The more the better, though.

About Cacao, it was implemented a lot earlier than a lot of these other products; I think it was just chosen as a standard cash crop for tropics/jungles for mechanical and balance reasons. It's a bit like the green Coca plants you get from tropical hills. I wouldn't think too deeply about it.

Adding a port in Asia is probably beyond the scope of the mod (though it'd be cool), so those goods could just be available for purchase in Europe as expensive luxury items.

This Asia thing is a really cool idea, even if it might be a little unrealistic or whatever. It would be a good excuse to have some yields you can't get elsewhere, and give a benefit to settling both East and West coasts. Imagine you have to import Asian products via Europe early/mid-game, but by having ways of accessing Asia directly you could cut out the middleman. I think incentive structures like this would genuinely add depth to the game.

I like the goods / yields the way they are ... otherwise I would not have modded it that way.

As the saying goes, the reason they don't put erasers on the ends of pencils is because no one ever makes mistakes.
At least that's what I told my son when he asked why ours doesn't have an eraser.

 

[raystuttgart]

the reason they don't put erasers on the ends of pencils is because no one ever makes mistakes.

The word "mistakes" would suggest that there is right or wrong in matters of personal taste.
And all discussions in gaming and modding are basically nothing else.

I like what I like ... others like what they like ... opinions simply differ.
But every modder is free to work on whatever he likes and to ignore whatever he does not.

I can only tell you that the WTP team is currently happy with the Yields / Production Chains.
Most of our fans over at discord also told us that they really like the new Yields and would never want to go back.

I am not claiming that everyone loves everything we do ... that would be illusional.
But we also never tried to make everybody happy ... it would be unrealistic.

We mostly mod simply for ourselves ... the stuff we want to play ourselves.
Sharing the mod in public is more or less only a side effect though, not the ultimate goal.

So the good thing ... I have no boss in my spare time.
In modding I can do whatever I like ... which may also includes taking a break from modding as I do now anyways.

-----

Thus feel free to create a mod(mod) of your own in any way you like ... if you are willing to invest the required time and effort.
Because in the end only the people that invest the time and effort actually decide what will be implemented or not.

Still ... keep having fun discussing.

 

[Darnokthemage]

A simplification modmod would be great, And we can keep discussing it, even if nothing comes of it. As has been said earlier, one of the biggest problems is dividing goods into things that for gameplay or historical reason have no reason to be seperated.
Down and wild bird feathers have no reason to be seperate, wild birds were a really important source of down in colonial times.

Geese and chickens could be combined into "fowl", producing down and food (representing eggs and slaughtered older roosters).

Cowhides/Goatskin/Pigskins could be combined into "hides".

Milk should be removed, and the milkmaid too, Milking was made on the farm itself by women and animal tenders. Replace it with cows producing food, hide and cheese, if cheese would be kept.

All the dyes should just be reunited into a "dye" resource. etc

 

[Brosso B.]

If anything I would support different dyes over goods that are 'city based'. Things that are map dependent; varying by climate and are rarer are good for making it more interesting and important to interface with the way the map generated and to plan out your city placements and development, it can also incentivize expansion or wars to gain those resources.
At the end of the day, I think the root mechanic of the game is generating a map and then playing out those cards as they were dealt. In general I'd say things that minimise the map and terrain detract from that core (though obviously it doesn't have to be 100% slavishly all about the map). Stuff that you import and then produce regardless of the terrain also contributes to games feeling 'samey' because that option is never contingent. This is also part of the reason I like the smaller city radii (1-tile radius instead of 2). The larger the city radius, the less important the city placement becomes.

For similar reasons, I think* wood should become less renewable, but you should get a bigger 'lump-sum' when you chop them down entirely. And it should be more profitable to sell back to Europe. This would open up a legitimate strategy of expanding early for the purpose of logging and getting a headstart financially.

Edit: *I'm not certain about this, it's just a passing thought

 

[HiFiPanda]

Quick review of original post.

Peat - agree, this one is just weird, it was used pretty much only for heating, it's a poor alternative for coal and wood and nothing else. Unless someone wants to add Heating as mechanics. Peat can go and won't be missed.
Geese - I won't mind it even though it's a small bloat, but if we want to change it somehow, you could just merge it with chickens into Poultry
Milk - problematic part is indeed lack of ways to preserve it in game's timeline. If it was up to me I would make it a product that can't be moved outside of settlement
Colored Cloth/Colored Wool Cloth - dyeing was a huge industry through the ages and it's way more complex than it might seem to someone who never looked into that topic. No reason to change it imo.
Cacao - you are so incorrect here, so much incorrect here that I expect you next to claim that Cleopatra was black. Until XIX century people were drinking chocolate, nobody shipped to Europe chocolate as we know it nowadays, because it wasn't a thing. If anything it's the Chocolate that should be considered for removal. Or just like Milk turned into end product just for local market.

 

[OzzyKP]

For similar reasons, I think* wood should become less renewable, but you should get a bigger 'lump-sum' when you chop them down entirely. And it should be more profitable to sell back to Europe. This would open up a legitimate strategy of expanding early for the purpose of logging and getting a headstart financially.

Edit: *I'm not certain about this, it's just a passing thought

Ooh, I like that idea. Would certainly be more realistic and historical. I will suggest that to Ramstormp as an idea to implement for PTSD. Balancing will be tricky though, lumber is such a fundamental building block in the game. Changing access to it would affect quite a lot, but I think it'd be fun to tinker with.

For the price rebalancing I'm doing for PTSD I have increased the price of lumber to sell to Europe. Maybe not enough, needs more testing.

 

[OzzyKP]

Cacao - you are so incorrect here, so much incorrect here that I expect you next to claim that Cleopatra was black. Until XIX century people were drinking chocolate, nobody shipped to Europe chocolate as we know it nowadays, because it wasn't a thing. If anything it's the Chocolate that should be considered for removal. Or just like Milk turned into end product just for local market.

That's unnecessarily hostile. My point was that there wasn't an intermediate product that was used differently than the end product (call the end product chocolate or cacao, it doesn't matter). This is the description on Wikipedia about how the Maya used it:

To make chocolate, cacao beans were fermented, dried and roasted. The Maya then removed the husks and pounded the nibs with manos (stones) on a metate (stone surface) built over a fire, turning them into a paste.[25] This paste was hardened into solid chunks, which were broken up and mixed with water and other ingredients. When heated, a fat called cocoa butter rose to the surface and was skimmed off.[25] The basic process of fermenting, roasting, and milling with metates continued unchanged until the 19th century.[26]

Cacao paste was flavored with additives such as earflower and vanilla.[27] Before serving, chocolate was agitated in a small container with a whisk called molinillo, then poured from a height between vessels to create a highly sought-after brown foam.

I can't find anything that says cacao beans were consumed directly after roasting without all those other steps (as they are in WTP). The finished product is consumed in drinks and, eventually, in other food, but I don't think it is worth having a "chocolate drink" good and a "chocolate food" good. Like I said, if your two goods were Cacao Beans -> Cacao or Cacao Beans -> Chocolate I'm fine either way. I'm also fine with calling it Chocolate and changing the icon to look like a drink instead of a Hersey bar. I'm just saying we can represent this goods chain with two goods instead of three.

 

[Ramstormp]

Ooh, I like that idea. Would certainly be more realistic and historical. I will suggest that to Ramstormp as an idea to implement for PTSD. Balancing will be tricky though, lumber is such a fundamental building block in the game. Changing access to it would affect quite a lot, but I think it'd be fun to tinker with.

For the price rebalancing I'm doing for PTSD I have increased the price of lumber to sell to Europe. Maybe not enough, needs more testing.

A lot of tinkering has been done by others to try to keep the AI from chopping all the trees down, and I think they have settled with the best balance possible for now; but I'll experiment with some higher yields and see what actually happens.

As for the yield change suggestions... Though I have gotten used to the party of 99, I still feel much more at home when playing PTSD v2.4 with only 56 resources to look at (though I had to beef up the plot production to make it playable for the AI), and that is probably where I will be heading sometime this winter (if I can sort out the kinks with the font symbols); but yes, milk will not be coming along in the ship this time, but poultry shall. The books idea sounds like a lot of fun can be had with, perhaps at the cost of getting rid of all types of ink.

 

[OzzyKP]

A lot of tinkering has been done by others to try to keep the AI from chopping all the trees down, and I think they have settled with the best balance possible for now; but I'll experiment with some higher yields and see what actually happens.

As for the yield change suggestions... Though I have gotten used to the party of 99, I still feel much more at home when playing PTSD v2.4 with only 56 resources to look at (though I had to beef up the plot production to make it playable for the AI), and that is probably where I will be heading sometime this winter (if I can sort out the kinks with the font symbols); but yes, milk will not be coming along in the ship this time, but poultry shall. The books idea sounds like a lot of fun can be had with, perhaps at the cost of getting rid of all types of ink.

Ah cool, which 56 are you thinking of?

 

[Ramstormp]

Ah cool, which 56 are you thinking of?

I am still thinking and can't remember exactly what was in it, or how it adds up, but the originals from We The People III, minus colored wool cloth, plus poultry, wild and domestic feathers combined, maybe just the cheese, coal, charcoal, gunpowder, maybe no clay this time, festive clothes, literature? EDIT: & no Coca

 

[codiac]

I think the way fruit works is excellent. You get some variety on the map by having specific types of special places for fruit, cranberries etc, but you get a single yield from all of them and it has a single profession. It adds flavor to the game with out adding a bunch of different fruits or professions.

I wonder if this approach could applied to grains?

So rice/cassava/barley yields would be rolled in to grain, and then instead of grassland giving a lot of food it would give some food and some grain. Some other terrain would probably need tweaking.

Bakeries would then use grains as it's sigle input.

This would help balance food and fix an issue I have with the way bakeries work ATM.

Currently if you place a city in an area with a lot of grassland you get a lot of food but can't have a bakery working, even though this would be prime wheat land. This impacts your ability to expand in a terrain suitable for fast expansion.

You can make beer from barley, wheat, and rice, so beer could just take grain as it's input.

Rice and cassava professions would be merged in to farmer.

If you wanted to extend the chain to make up for the reduced resources then you could add flour, which you would get a small amount from the base, and more when you build a windmill on a hill, and the windmill in a city. Bakeries would then use flour instead of grain as their input.

If you wanted to add a professions then you could add miller and have a slot or two in the windmill for them.

mmmmmm wheat beer

 

[Brosso B.]

A lot of tinkering has been done by others to try to keep the AI from chopping all the trees down, and I think they have settled with the best balance possible for now; but I'll experiment with some higher yields and see what actually happens.

Hmm, okay, but what was the problem with them chopping all the trees? That it gimped them hard in the medium+ term?

If you can't stop the AI doing dumb stuff then maybe softening the impact would be a better approach, like what we suggested about making chopping way more powerful.

Another additional idea: make wood more profitable but a smaller difference between buy and sell price. That way if the AI/Player gets into a situation where getting lumber legitimately is almost impossible, they aren't locked out of hammers entirely, as I admit wood/hammers are a special case and not exactly comparable with all the other goods. If the AI has loads of plantations without much infrastructure or the lumber to build it, let them invest back into lumber.
If they settle a forested area and that city gets a lot of lumber, cool let them build a bunch of stuff there. If they settle the great plains without available lumber, oh well I guess it'll just be an agricultural city.

Cacao - you are so incorrect here, so much incorrect here that I expect you next to claim that Cleopatra was black. Until XIX century people were drinking chocolate, nobody shipped to Europe chocolate as we know it nowadays, because it wasn't a thing. If anything it's the Chocolate that should be considered for removal. Or just like Milk turned into end product just for local market.

I was nearly going to do an "Umm Axchtually", but I agree. I don't think it's that important though. It comes down to: Should cocoa exist -> if yes, should it have a value-added derived product -> if yes, how difficult is it to process, and how to balance that. Then call it cocoa powder or chocolate or whatever depending on how you want it processed.

 

[OzzyKP]

I think the way fruit works is excellent. You get some variety on the map by having specific types of special places for fruit, cranberries etc, but you get a single yield from all of them and it has a single profession. It adds flavor to the game with out adding a bunch of different fruits or professions.

I wonder if this approach could applied to grains?

So rice/cassava/barley yields would be rolled in to grain, and then instead of grassland giving a lot of food it would give some food and some grain. Some other terrain would probably need tweaking.

Bakeries would then use grains as it's sigle input.

This would help balance food and fix an issue I have with the way bakeries work ATM.

Currently if you place a city in an area with a lot of grassland you get a lot of food but can't have a bakery working, even though this would be prime wheat land. This impacts your ability to expand in a terrain suitable for fast expansion.

You can make beer from barley, wheat, and rice, so beer could just take grain as it's input.

Rice and cassava professions would be merged in to farmer.

If you wanted to extend the chain to make up for the reduced resources then you could add flour, which you would get a small amount from the base, and more when you build a windmill on a hill, and the windmill in a city. Bakeries would then use flour instead of grain as their input.

If you wanted to add a professions then you could add miller and have a slot or two in the windmill for them.

mmmmmm wheat beer

Yes, I love that. I'm generally opposed to extending chains, so if it were up to me I wouldn't add flour & millers, but that'd still be better than having rice/cassava/barley yields all separated. By the same token, as @Darnokthemage mentioned above, combine logwood, indigo and cocheal into "dye", but keep the different bonus resources on the map for variety sake.

 

[Ramstormp]

Hmm, okay, but what was the problem with them chopping all the trees? That it gimped them hard in the medium+ term?

If you can't stop the AI doing dumb stuff then maybe softening the impact would be a better approach, like what we suggested about making chopping way more powerful.

Another additional idea: make wood more profitable but a smaller difference between buy and sell price. That way if the AI/Player gets into a situation where getting lumber legitimately is almost impossible, they aren't locked out of hammers entirely, as I admit wood/hammers are a special case and not exactly comparable with all the other goods. If the AI has loads of plantations without much infrastructure or the lumber to build it, let them invest back into lumber.
If they settle a forested area and that city gets a lot of lumber, cool let them build a bunch of stuff there. If they settle the great plains without available lumber, oh well I guess it'll just be an agricultural city.

I didn't really think about the effect on them....I just don't like having to take over a barren wasteland; but I guess you are right... At least there will be some wood there to start out with after conquest.

I have been running at 10 times chopping yield and there is not much of a difference really. I thought maybe it would produce some kind of incentive for them to go out there and
waylay the entire continent, but there you go... Neither me or the AI actually think intelligently or go beyond the assigned limits. They still maintain a token lumberjack or two per 2-plot radius city. San something of the Portuguese had 2300 planks stacked in 1650; but most of the cities stayed around 250 wood.

I don't know about selling overseas at much of a profit though. Was it common to ship regular wood to Europe in those days?

 

[Brosso B.]

I have been running at 10 times chopping yield and there is not much of a difference really. I thought maybe it would produce some kind of incentive for them to go out there and
waylay the entire continent, but there you go...

How effective was the standard collection of lumber, though? If you can get plenty of lumber via the city-screen then why would you need so much more.

I don't know about selling overseas at much of a profit though. Was it common to ship regular wood to Europe in those days?

My low effort googling seems to imply that exporting lumber was a major reason for establishing James Town: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_lumber_industry_in_the_United_States

I'm not suggesting logging being a huge sustainable industry comparable with plantation cotton or processed cloth, but an early game decision point.
More generally though, I know that Lots of towns and settlements in my area (Australia, not America) were first founded for logging reasons, and that isn't supported by the current game design. It annoys me that gold rushes aren't really supported either. Or they weren't (I haven't played much of the recent versions of WtP).

And as I bang on about all the time, it incentivises expansion and interacting with the map. It's a good thing imo if you take note of the forests while exploring so you can factor that into later 'exploitation'.


Edit: regarding the AI, I assume it is easier to program the AI to apportion its lumber among cities after it gets a lot from chopping than to program it to decide in a long-term strategic manner whether it should chop them now, later or never, and for what reasons.
I have no idea whether the AI supports big chops currently.

 

[OzzyKP]

That's a great wikipedia article you found. I also found mentions of lumber being a colonial export in research I was doing earlier.

The wikipedia article also was interesting in that it mentioned that Barbados had cut down all their trees and was desperate to import lumber from New England. Further proof that they can't just set aside a tile of forest or jungle to sustainably harvest lumber from for generations.