How would your game play without chopping?

[Arent11]

I'm okay with them giving production, but not nearly as much as they do. Additionally, I was playing V the other day and I'm not sure it's an improvement that builder actions happen instantly. It makes them feel too cheap and easy... but in practice it makes them WAY too important.

Well, I somehow miss caring for my builders. Especially building roads everywhere. It was an important part of literally "building" my empire.

 

[Kimiimaro]

Same as now, as I already very rarely chop.

 

[ferretbacon]

I guess mine would hardly change. Perhaps I'm not playing "correctly," but I strongly dislike chopping. The only thing I chop or harvest are forests that I plan to build a district or wonder on. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I could probably count the number of times I've removed a bonus resource on my two hands... and that's over the course of 800 hours of gameplay.

Chopping, to me, feels like sacrificing long term benefits for short term goals. I'd rather have the better yields for the rest of the game than a one-time boost.

 

[acluewithout]

I find it interesting some people are really opposed to “chopping”. Not just taking issue with chopping scaling too much and or overflow, but taking issue with the idea of chopping at all.

The more I play, the more I see chopping as being central not only to gameplay (the scaling of chopping is a big part of why the scaling of district costs is not such a big deal) but also central to some of the roleplaying of Civ.

What I mean is: historically, people / nations have harvested huge amounts of their natural resources - to drive and develop their economies, to build infrastructure. Civ represents this with chopping, which I think does an okay job of representing this.

Of course, Civ could have dispensed with chopping, and just had the “normal” use of resources deplete that resource. So, at some point, your quarries would run out of rock, or your oil wells would run out of oil. But I think that would have been very tedious - tracking the consumption of resources would be just so much micro, and the current system at least gives you a gameplay choice (“sustainable” consumption or sudden “non-sustainable” consumption and exhaustion).

To be clear. I’m not criticising anyone who dislikes chopping as a mechanic. To me it’s a bit like warmongering for capturing cities. I more or less like the mechanic in terms of both gameplay and roleplay, but others don’t, and I can understand that and respect it.

Perhaps part of the problem is that FXS does a poor job of explaining what some mechanics are “about”. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever even really seen FXS chop in any of their let’s plays. For a “core” mechanic, it really hasn’t been highlighted much beyond one pantheon and one governor ability (although rainforests’ negative appeal is clearly a hint you should chop them).

 

[Arent11]

What I mean is: historically, people / nations have harvested huge amounts of their natural resources - to drive and develop their economies, to build infrastructure. Civ represents this with chopping, which I think does an okay job of representing this.

(1) In the case of building ships in Spain/England this is true.
(2) In the case of building spaceships, legions or tanks it is not true
(3) You don't "harvest' silver or stones, either you mine them or you don't. & at one point your mines will be "depleted" no matter what.
(4) "Wheat" or "horses" in civ 1 where meant to indicate fertile land, not necessarily wheat itself. "Harvesting" wheat only makes sense insofar that you use up the grains needed for the next sowing cycle.

 

[TomKQT]

In most cases I chop only when I need that tile for some district or a wonder. It would feel like a waste for me if I didn't chop and just removed the feature and in fact this complicates the game for me So I wouldn't mind if they nerfed chopping, because I would maybe be OK with just placing the district right over a forest, without waiting for a builder (or even a builder + Magnus).

Sometimes I would also chop to speed up a wonder, especially if I know somebody else is also building it. And another situation - if a city has really a lot of forest tiles, I would chop some of them.

In general, I'm not a chopping player, I like to leave the features and improve them, it feels "right" for me
And I especially don't remove anything else than forests and jungles, unless I really have to place a district/wonder there.

 

[RealHuhn]

Take away chopping and Deity becomes a lot more boring because you cannot build important wonders anymore.
Keep chopping as it is and the game remains a chopping simulator with tedious Magnus micromanagment.

Some good ideas I've seen so far:
1. Rebalance production costs (for example buff bonus resources and IZs, make wonders a bit cheaper and district scaling a little less steep).
2. Don't let policy cards influence chopping anymore.
3. Make cities with big food surplus grow faster, adjust the population threshold for districts and buff amenities accordingly. This would also make tall cities more viable and increase natural production per turn.
4. Magnus. To be honest, I don't know what to do with him. I strongly dislike the amount of tedious planning he introduced to the game. Everytime I chop something without him, I feel bad about it. I can't use his other cool abilities like the buff to internal trade routes because chopping is so overpowered. Let's face it, Magnus' first ability broke the game for all players who like to play efficiently. It kinda needs to go entirely. The experiment failed.

 

[acluewithout]

(1) In the case of building ships in Spain/England this is true.
(2) In the case of building spaceships, legions or tanks it is not true...

Heh heh. Good call.

Civ's approach to chopping is very rough and ready from a rpg view point, and doesn't totally line up all the time. With mines for example, I think of it as the difference between mining slowly so the mine doesn't run out over the life of your empire versus ramping up extraction and so suddenly exhausting the mine. And sort of similar things for other resources.

But like I said, very rough and ready. Because even if you're working a resource, if you harvest it's worth more the longer you wait. That's where I think keeping the game rules simple / manageable trumps reality.

And no, you shouldn't be able to build spaceport with stone and lumber.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I find it interesting some people are really opposed to “chopping”. Not just taking issue with chopping scaling too much and or overflow, but taking issue with the idea of chopping at all.

The more I play, the more I see chopping as being central not only to gameplay (the scaling of chopping is a big part of why the scaling of district costs is not such a big deal) but also central to some of the roleplaying of Civ.

What I mean is: historically, people / nations have harvested huge amounts of their natural resources - to drive and develop their economies, to build infrastructure. Civ represents this with chopping, which I think does an okay job of representing this.

Of course, Civ could have dispensed with chopping, and just had the “normal” use of resources deplete that resource. So, at some point, your quarries would run out of rock, or your oil wells would run out of oil. But I think that would have been very tedious - tracking the consumption of resources would be just so much micro, and the current system at least gives you a gameplay choice (“sustainable” consumption or sudden “non-sustainable” consumption and exhaustion).

To be clear. I’m not criticising anyone who dislikes chopping as a mechanic. To me it’s a bit like warmongering for capturing cities. I more or less like the mechanic in terms of both gameplay and roleplay, but others don’t, and I can understand that and respect it.

Perhaps part of the problem is that FXS does a poor job of explaining what some mechanics are “about”. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever even really seen FXS chop in any of their let’s plays. For a “core” mechanic, it really hasn’t been highlighted much beyond one pantheon and one governor ability (although rainforests’ negative appeal is clearly a hint you should chop them).

I don't have a problem with chopping forests and jungles. I'm a little uneasy about chopping bonus resources but it could represent overgrazing, overhunting etc. Short-term benefit, long-term cost. Seems to be too much short-term benefit atm.
I have no problem with it happening instantly now. Civ turns represent a considerable period of time.

 

[tedhebert]

In my mind, the problem isn't with chopping... it's a game choice... personnally I rarely chop but it's MY call... the problem really is with overflow and policy matching and all... if that was fixed (because yes, no matter how you want to defend it, it IS a bug, not work as designed) no one would be talking about chopping being a problem, even with magnus's ability

 

[eleven11]

Let's face it, Magnus' first ability broke the game for all players who like to play efficiently. It kinda needs to go entirely. The experiment failed.

This is exactly my problem with it! Being that governor promotions are limited and with how extremely useful chopping is towards gaining an edge.. Magnus is basically a requirement for efficient play... even after the nerf.

He has probably 2 of the 3 most useful governor promotions for the early game because the no pop loss from settlers is very good to have when you want to crank up expansion.. and it goes hand in hand with chopping.

Maybe the answer is to make the rest of the governor's initial traits just as appealing in the early game.

Changes to governor initial abilities -
Reyna - Allow for a free tile selection every 10 turns (the 10 turn counter would include the 5 turn movement between cities) Or vastly increase passive tile expansion and grant +2 gold for trade routes originating in this city.
Victor - needs to be entirely reworked but his opening should be something useful in the first 50 turns like +5 City defense and all enemy units reduced to 1 tile movement while passing through this cities tiles.
Moksha - +5 faith per turn in that city, +1 Great Prophet points per turn if city has a holy district. Who the heck needs weak passive religious pressure this early in the game?
Liang - She's almost good enough. Maybe buff her slightly like grants a free worker when she is initially selected. Worker charges +1
Pingala - Again, his trait just stinks in the early game. Change it to give 20% bonus production to Theater and Campus districts.

Notice how each of their abilities focuses on key issues in the early game. Getting workable tiles quickly, protection, and PRODUCTION as an alternative to Magnus.

I have no issue with chopping. I just hate that Magnus is the only optimal option and it's not even close.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

One key way the game would change that I didn't see mentioned (my apologies if I missed it):

the human player would play more similarly to the AI

To the idea that chopping is intended to be a core part of the game and that production costs are balanced around chops, my question is "then why is the AI not programmed to reflect this?" Did someone forget to tell the developer in charge of AI?

I believe that the AI chopping less than human players is one of the two key reasons why the AI takes so much longer to achieve victory than an experienced human player (the other being that the AI runs projects less often). As a side effect, this also makes conquest much more efficient, as newly conquered AI cities typically have lots of intact resources for the human to chop.

 

[acluewithout]

One key way the game would change that I didn't see mentioned (my apologies if I missed it):

the human player would play more similarly to the AI

To the idea that chopping is intended to be a core part of the game and that production costs are balanced around chops, my question is "then why is the AI not programmed to reflect this?" Did someone forget to tell the developer in charge of AI?

I believe that the AI chopping less than human players is one of the two key reasons why the AI takes so much longer to achieve victory than an experienced human player (the other being that the AI runs projects less often). As a side effect, this also makes conquest much more efficient, as newly conquered AI cities typically have lots of intact resources for the human to chop.

Absolutely on point. I'd never thought of that.

Now you've said it, it's going to bother me in every game I play.

This is exactly my problem with it! Being that governor promotions are limited and with how extremely useful chopping is towards gaining an edge.. Magnus is basically a requirement for efficient play... even after the nerf.

He has probably 2 of the 3 most useful governor promotions for the early game because the no pop loss from settlers is very good to have when you want to crank up expansion.. and it goes hand in hand with chopping.

Maybe the answer is to make the rest of the governor's initial traits just as appealing in the early game.

Changes to governor initial abilities -
Reyna - Allow for a free tile selection every 10 turns (the 10 turn counter would include the 5 turn movement between cities) Or vastly increase passive tile expansion and grant +2 gold for trade routes originating in this city.
Victor - needs to be entirely reworked but his opening should be something useful in the first 50 turns like +5 City defense and all enemy units reduced to 1 tile movement while passing through this cities tiles.
Moksha - +5 faith per turn in that city, +1 Great Prophet points per turn if city has a holy district. Who the heck needs weak passive religious pressure this early in the game?
Liang - She's almost good enough. Maybe buff her slightly like grants a free worker when she is initially selected. Worker charges +1
Pingala - Again, his trait just stinks in the early game. Change it to give 20% bonus production to Theater and Campus districts.

Notice how each of their abilities focuses on key issues in the early game. Getting workable tiles quickly, protection, and PRODUCTION as an alternative to Magnus.

I have no issue with chopping. I just hate that Magnus is the only optimal option and it's not even close.

I'm not sure if this is a serious suggestion or not, but one option might be to get rid of magnus' super chop and give every governor a limited version of this ability (maybe based on promotion level).

I also think that goddess of harvest should go. It should be a policy card that obsoletes around the medieval era. And while we're at it, get rid of the pantheon that gives faith for appeal. Every civ should get faith from appeal - or again, it should be a policy card.

 

[eleven11]

I'm not sure if this is a serious suggestion or not. But one option might be to get rid of magnus' super chop and give every governor a limited version of this ability (maybe based on promotion level).

I also thing that goddess of harvest should go. It should be a policy card that obsoletes around the medieval era. And while we're at it, get rid of the pantheon that gives faith for appeal. Every civ should get faith from appeal - or again, it should be a policy card.

I could go with eliminating Magnus' chop bonus but I do like it as an option. I just think there needs to be other competitive options. I can easily see myself delaying Magnus's abilities to mid-game if there were other worthy options to more immediate goals. I also agree with you on Earth Mother and Harvest Goddess. Very unbalancing these are.

 

[UWHabs]

I could go with eliminating Magnus' chop bonus but I do like it as an option. I just think there needs to be other competitive options. I can easily see myself delaying Magnus's abilities to mid-game if there were other worthy options to more immediate goals. I also agree with you on Earth Mother and Harvest Goddess. Very unbalancing these are.

Magnus' chop bonus would make for a solid lvl3 promo, or even as an "alternate" last tier promotion to the vertical integration. You could just re-arrange his promo tree a little bit:
Base: settlers consume no population. (and add another part here)
Tier 1:
+Growth/+Trade route bonus
Strategic resources not required to build units
Tier 2:
+production on strategic resources/+industrial zone production
Harvest Bonus
Tier 3: Factory stacking

Some pieces I do think need a change. The strategic resource promo should be higher, since I find early is when I would likely most desperately need that change. Although even that bonus is pretty horrible - if you lack iron, then even if you build swordsmen they're not healing anyways, so it's only really useful to build units to go capture more resources. And the production on strategic resources is also such a minor bonus - the most I've seen a city have is like 3. That should likely be +1 production on all resources tiles, to at least give it some heft. And this way, putting the settler promo up front, that's a promotion that might actually matter for your early expansion.

 

[eleven11]

I don't think reordering his skills will solve the problem for me though it might help. With it being a T2 ability I'll still take him 1st and 2nd promotion because no other governor provides near as much value in the early game. I might even push 3 straight promos to him if it were a T3 ability. That's how core this bonus is to my gameplay. I may be a minority but , personally, I need more compelling reasons to go a different direction.

Buffing the other governor's initial abilities to make them more interesting to early game goals would go a long way.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

I think the game would be a lot harder without chopping since it essentially allows you to offset all the big AI bonuses. I would definitely build more encampments and industrial zones and maybe an extreme focus on military units and capturing AI cities that have built districts for me - that was the way I played emperor+ early on before Magnus entered the picture. Wonders would be very low priority and would only attempt them if I had a major lead. I wouldn't object at all if they got rid of chopping entirely or reduced the yields in a big way as it does allow players to almost completely neglect the production aspect of city planning. It would be nice if they added some stronger boosts for districts and wonders via policy cards too. Goddess of the Harvest seems completely broken - it's not good game design when one pantheon is clearly MUCH better than all of the others.

 

[UWHabs]

I think the game would be a lot harder without chopping since it essentially allows you to offset all the big AI bonuses. I would definitely build more encampments and industrial zones and maybe an extreme focus on military units and capturing AI cities that have built districts for me - that was the way I played emperor+ early on before Magnus entered the picture. Wonders would be very low priority and would only attempt them if I had a major lead. I wouldn't object at all if they got rid of chopping entirely or reduced the yields in a big way as it does allow players to almost completely neglect the production aspect of city planning. It would be nice if they added some stronger boosts for districts and wonders via policy cards too. Goddess of the Harvest seems completely broken - it's not good game design when one pantheon is clearly MUCH better than all of the others.

The other thing with Harvest is that due to some of the new ones they added, it's actually easier and easier to get. Often it doesn't go until the 3rd pantheon or so. I've had a few games recently where I get my pantheon choice and I basically try to find an excuse to not pick it even if it's available. It's so broken I find it almost makes the game not fun anymore.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

The other thing with Harvest is that due to some of the new ones they added, it's actually easier and easier to get. Often it doesn't go until the 3rd pantheon or so. I've had a few games recently where I get my pantheon choice and I basically try to find an excuse to not pick it even if it's available. It's so broken I find it almost makes the game not fun anymore.

Yeah I've noticed this too. I can sometimes get it solely by running God King. I usually pick alternates but running it in my current game and it's just ridiculous - why wouldn't you chop everything in sight if you get boatloads of faith on top of the production? I basically get enough to purchase a settler every few turns or buy all of my culture/science buildings instantly. Any other faith based approach is peanuts compared to it.

 

[eleven11]

Yeah I slot in God King from the start and I would say 75% of the time I can get Goddess of the Harvest. It's been this way since R&F.

Edit: I may actually go so far as to say Goddess of the Harvest is just bad design. It allows for way too much power from faith by playing a non-religious game. Just nix this pantheon entirely