Keeping Forests...

[Zombie69]

The health benifit is not worth it unless you play on a very high level difficulty.

The health effect is not worth it either when playing on a very high level difficulty, because the AIs get a huge head start and you need all the chop rushing you can get just to keep up.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

The health effect is not worth it either when playing on a very high level difficulty, because the AIs get a huge head start and you need all the chop rushing you can get just to keep up.

Would it be a tougher call if forests gave half a happy, instead of half a health?

 

[Zombie69]

Yes, it would be a tougher call for sure.

Personally though, i'll just mod my game so that forests only produce 10 hammers when chopped (instead of 30). This should make things more interesting.

 

[emills]

There was early speculation that the next patch (LOL) will modify chopping results and possibly make environmentalism more accessible to use. This will alter the vaule of forests, especially in the late game.

 

[Zombie69]

The last patch laready increased the health benefit of forests and decreased the civic upkeep of environmentalism, and we all saw how much of a no-effect that had!

I lost faith in Firaxis' willingness to correct this issue.

 

[North2]

I don't think many of you are thinking in terms of 1 health = 1 food. It will never be worth saving for the health bonus, because a city with a lot of food will need those forests chopped for more cottages sooner or later, and a city with very few few food will never suffer health restrictions. It's only useful when lumbermills are available, and even then it's not worth it for most cities.

 

[atreas]

I have modded the game to lessen the chopping effect, and the game becomes really a different one - you begin again to value hammers, and you forget the "chopping solves it all" way. But at higher levels AI seems to have too big an advantage after that, so I personally only use this mod when playing at Epic speed at least (to "balance" a bit).

 

[dalessi12]

At higher levels I think it definitely pays to try and keep at least 2 forests in your cities AT THE BEGINNING of the game. The point about how 2 forested grasslands can be turned into a farm (negating the -1F) and a cottage, plus the hammers for chopping, leaves out the HUGE point that you are then REQUIRED to work the farm (to break even). At higher difficulties, the trade off is more like this one:

You have a city with pop 3, not on fresh water. Your health is as follows: +1 from fish, +1 for difficulty, +1 for forests (assuming you have 2 left). The disease is -3 from pop, so you are maxed out heathwise.

Your fat cross contains a pastured horse tile giving you 1F 4H and 1G. You have plantationed silk giving you 2F 0H and 6G. You have a cottaged floodplain giving you 3F and 4G. These three tiles give you 6F, 4H, and 11G, at break even (no growth) with the two forests. If you chop, then farm grass for extra food, then you have to take citizen off of one of these tiles to break even. If you remove from silk and put on grass farm (next to river) you are left with 7F (same as 6F w/ forests), 4H, and 6G (i.e. -5G per turn). If you take horse citizen and put him on a plains river farm, for example, you get 7F (even), 1H, and 11G (i.e. -3H per turn).

I am just saying that keeping a couple forests (if possible, i.e. not chopping for serious war, or courthouse or aquaduct, and even in some cases if they are options) ALLOWS you to work a larger choice of tiles. When the number of tiles that can be worked is small (beginning of game, size 3-5 cities), and there are several resources in your fat cross, the trade off of unworking a "resourced" tile for a mere grass farm tile, can be a fairly substantial negative for sure (and far from an "even" deal + chop hammers)

That said, after aquaducts, or if I have plenty of health resources, I chop em all. But very very early I often keep a couple for the +1 health on high difficulties.