Harvesting resources?

oPunchDrunko

Prince
Joined
Feb 23, 2010
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What’s the deal with people harvesting resources? The only resource I chop is rainforest because it’s pretty much useless for me. Besides, most improvements give you bonus yields when you advance through the tech tree. Quarry’s, lumber camps, etc. all give extra production with certain techs... so why would I want to chop those?
 
I think it's because you can rush production of things, and you also get food bonuses so you can grow your new cities quickly. And also, if you use governor Magnus, you get bonuses to harvesting resources and features, so you can grow even faster.

I don't do this either, I'm more like you where I prefer long-term bonuses, but I think it's really a popular thing for people who're trying to win as fast as possible.
 
Lets say you get 200 production from a chop in a city with Magnus.
Now with the wood or stone you would be able to work that tile for 2 production per turn on that tile extra.
Ergo, it would take 100 turns for working the tile being better than having it chopped.
However, the chop allows you to get cool stuff instantly like a wonder, extra population, units or city improvements which instantly give you benefits that additionally snowball you over the same 100 turns so you could easily argue that even if your game was lasting 200 turns, the chop still would be far more worth then having worked the tile all game long.
 
useful for quick wins where you want to accomplish things quickly. Some of those resources can take around 100 turns to turn out a net profit. I was like you, and I rarely harvest because I was in a Civ4 frame of mind. But I find myself doing it more and more lately. Of course that could change with GS, we'll see.

With the district system as it is, I can see why they made this change. Sometimes those resources are really in the way of placing districts. Especially if you want to fully utilize Japan's ability. Or Germany's ability (while Hansas benefit from resources, I find it more useful to surround it with say 4 or 5 commercial hubs :D)
 
Yeah, it relies on the fact that stuff now > stuff later. So while it will take 100 turns to "pay back", if it means I get my library giving me, say, 4 science per turn 20 turns sooner, there's also 80 science more than not chopping gives me. And if that extra science gets me a tech one turn sooner than it would have before, there's even more worth to that.

Maybe in Gathering Storm there will actually be drawbacks, because the current system there really aren't downsides. The immediate benefit of chopping just vastly outweighs the downsides to it, so it really does make sense to clearcut everything.
 
I find stone in spots I want to use, so I usually harvest those to use in the district that's going there.
 
The harvesting feature needs to be reworked, as certain items cannot be harvested. They need to make it, so that even a strategic or luxury resource can be harvested. Or better yet, allow for more advanced civs to be able to relocate a resource item such as horses to another tile. With the exception of trees, I tend to only remove a resource if it is on a tile where I wanted to place a district or city. Sometimes this means removing a resource like stone that might be useful, but if its in the way, I remove it.

I have a specific layout I like to use with my cities, and its always annoying when you start a game, only to find that there is a water tile or non removable resource located right where I wanted to place a district or city. I often have to restart the game several times, before I get an acceptable map. I am really hoping the new expansion fixes this, by allowing you to harvest all resources instead of only select resources.
 
Because getting stuff now is almost always better than getting stuff later. If you plan to play +200 turns, not harvesting might be the better option over the extreme long term; but, the chances are that getting stuff now is actually the better investment over the long term.

So, for starters, let's say you hard-build a monument, granary and a watermill (with two rice nearby) in that order. Let's say you're making 6 production a turn (you are building basic infrastructure anyways). That means you'll complete the monument on turn +10, the granary on turn +21, and the watermill on turn +35. Another way to think of that is that's: -20 culture, -2 housing, -40 food, -10 production for 10 turns; -20 culture, -2 housing, -84 food, -21 production for 21 turns; and finally total "loss" of -20 culture, -2 housing (for 21 turns), -126 food, and -35 production by the time all three buildings are completed.

This is what is known as an opportunity cost. It's the cost of NOT doing something. In this case, it's the cost of not putting Magnus in a city and not chopping a woods and a jungle. This is actually a bit of a lazy calculation because 126 food is probably enough to get another pop -- who can work whatever tile you want so you'd have to add those yields as well.

Lastly, there's the opportunity cost of time as well. If you chop those three buildings up on turn 0, +1, and +2, that leaves you 33 turns to make whatever else you feel like making WHILE STILL enjoying the benefits of those infrastructure yields. Also note that chopping can be done on the current turn (turn 0), so it gives you a one turn advantage (in chess this is called a tempo). The opportunity cost of time is the largest benefit of chopping. You don't win the game by building infrastructure. Infrastructure is an investment that balloons overtime so that you can produce things that will help you win the game like units or districts or buildings in districts. In other words, infrastructure is like the startup capital for a business. It's necessary to get things moving, but the business itself can't survive on startup capital. It needs to leverage that startup capital into profits (IE - winning the game).
 
Note that chopping yields increase as the game progresses, while improvements make less and less sense (who needs a new farm 1 turn before the game is won?).
In the endgame, you can chop even your best tiles if it takes you over the finish line quickly.
 
In multiplayer or with competitive AI, winning will come down to whoever can reach winning condition faster. Chopping does exactly that by snowball effect. It also allows you to take resources from your developed cities to instantly build your new cities (as in use gold to buy builder to chop districts, and builders can get very cost-efficient with pyramid and the +2 charge policy).

I think chopping needs a nerf, as now chopping is almost always the best option if you want to win faster. In GS chopping is "punished" by possible droughts (food loss for a few turns), which I don't think has enough impact, and it's not going to stop people from chopping. For example, chopping forests should leave a possibility for the tile to literally become desert to balance the risk-reward. Also, it really shouldn't scale over the eras. (Wooden/stone spaceships, really?)
 
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Chopping and harvesting is optimal, but boring. I usually don't do it much except in places I want to put districts/wonders
 
What about stone or forests that are on a hill? Would it make a difference if I chopped that tile and put a mine in its place? Haven’t really had a chance to test this and see if the production yield would be the same.
 
What about stone or forests that are on a hill? Would it make a difference if I chopped that tile and put a mine in its place? Haven’t really had a chance to test this and see if the production yield would be the same.

Mines yield +1/+2/+3 depending on tech.
Forest yields +1
Lumber mill yields +1/+2 depending on tech, with an extra +1 if riverside
quarry yield +1/+2 depending on tech (plus gold in the middle, but the 2nd production is a late bonus)

Forest/Lumber Mill vs mine: Basically, assuming you get apprenticeship before you can build lumber mills, and industrialization before Steel, then a forested hill with a lumber mill will never be better than a mined hill in terms of raw yields, unless if it is riverside. My rule is I don't chop riverside forests unless if I have to, but hill forests are the first thing to go because mines are always at least as good (assuming you don't care about appeal).

Stone quarries do yield more than hill mines until apprenticeship, but once you hit industrialization the hill mine is better (although quarries do gain the banking bonus). Generally I will harvest these when possible too, because the large production bonus early on is huge, especially if you time it with Magnus. Chopping a stone tile with Magnus will complete any district that you get at a discount in one turn, so given that there's never really any bonus to keeping the quarry around until Rocketry, definitely better to harvest.
 
What about stone or forests that are on a hill? Would it make a difference if I chopped that tile and put a mine in its place? Haven’t really had a chance to test this and see if the production yield would be the same.

Mines get better with techs, so a mine is almost always better than un-improved forest in that case. Also comparing chop+mine vs lumber mill, I still think chop+mine is more efficient (in terms of winning faster), for reasons specified by many comments above.
 
I have a specific layout I like to use with my cities, and its always annoying when you start a game, only to find that there is a water tile or non removable resource located right where I wanted to place a district or city. I often have to restart the game several times, before I get an acceptable map. I am really hoping the new expansion fixes this, by allowing you to harvest all resources instead of only select resources.

There is a mod that allows you to "harvest" all resources, including strategic. If not being able to lay districts down is that much a pain, you should look into it. I got the mod for the same reason, "Nice tile adjacent to 5 mountains, perfect for my campus!" goes off to research bronze working... it felt like 90% of the time iron will appear in that spot.

disclaimer: I used it a long time ago, I'm not sure if it is maintained, or the mod name.
 
We had a discussion on this about a month ago here. Especially the posts by @Sostratus provide a quite detailed analysis.

Specifically for those curious, see this post for a rough attack at the problem with a hopefully pretty easy to follow walkthrough.
Quarry’s, lumber camps, etc. all give extra production with certain techs... so why would I want to chop those?
There is virtually nothing that actually beats mechanized farms + mines. In past versions of civ, like civ5, bonus resources were sought after because they provided superior yields over regular tiles. But now, a mined hill can put out more hammers than a stone quarry; A farm surrounded by some other farms will beat out a banana plantation in food. So you can have more yield starting at about the medieval era and get the big burst of yield for harvesting in a lot of cases.
Mekewaps and outback stations and the maori really change up this model but for most civs, chop til you drop.

With gathering storm we would need to see under the hood to properly account for natural disasters and co2. I'm not an actuary so even then, it's gonna be real hard to accurately value that penalty.
 
Harvest should get nerfed but also I think quarries and plantations should gain strength through the tech tree matching up with mines/farms.

Plantations should be treated like a farm for adjacency, not like you don't irrigate the plantation.

Edit. Depends how GS changes the game.
 
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In a recent livestream I'm unable to find again, Anton said that chopping is being nerfed. Anybody know what the reference was? I'm trying to remember. I think it was some loophole they finally closed around playing a policy card for maritime 100% boost, building a galley, maybe adding Magnus, doing a chop, then getting such a production boost you can Wonder Monger to your hearts content. But that may not be it at all.
 
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