Should chopping be toned down?

[DrewBledsoe]

The only reasons forests have been cleared historically , were to allow more land to be cultivated, or for areas to be used for habitation..Only in much more recent times have we been able to obliterate huge chunks of forest piecemeal...

So yes I know it would make things harder..but make forest clearing an incredibly slow business until say "Steam Power" is researched,

Actually the more I think about this the more sense it makes..cos on virtually any lvl , I can have every single useful square of my land improved by around 1300 AD (realistic I think not)..with many of my cities well over 2 mill in population (again rather silly if you look at history) more forests would slow down pop growth..oh and I also think jungle clearance should be restricted in the same way (but made even slower)...remember even on a huge map , 1 square represents very approximately a 70 mile x 70 mile square..thats a huge chunk of land to clear even in modern times...

 

[Sidhe]

I takes 100 years to clear a 70x70 mile square at the start of the game and 1 year in 1940, I don't think that's too unrealistic do you? And jungle takes even longer.

I like the idea of being able to use forest slowly, maybe someone could mod that. However the chop times are entirely realistic for the time periods involved, if anything it takes too long to clear a 70x70 mile stretch of forest. I think that nerfing the chop in MP for workers/settlers and not in SP is the way to go. But it is entirely realistic that chopping could be used to speed building costs or wonder costs. Wood makes good fuel for forges charcoal is even better and wood is a good building material to boot, now how did they move those big stones to Stone Henge. What about getting those blocks up to the top of the pyramid? How many scaffold frames do they use on the colossus, where do you think they got all that wood from, Prayer?

 

[Sidhe]

I takes 100 years to clear a 70x70 mile square at the start of the game and 1 year in 1940, I don't think that's too unrealistic do you? And jungle takes even longer.

I like the idea of being able to use forest slowly, maybe someone could mod that. However the chop times are entirely realistic for the time periods involved, if anything it takes too long to clear a 70x70 mile stretch of forest. I think that nerfing the chop in MP for workers/settlers and not in SP is the way to go. But it is entirely realistic that chopping could be used to speed building costs or wonder costs. Wood makes good fuel for forges charcoal is even better and wood is a good building material to boot, now how did they move those big stones to Stone Henge. What about getting those blocks up to the top of the pyramid? How many scaffold frames do they use on the colossus, where do you think they got all that wood from, Prayer?

 

[Mulholland]

That just goes to show that it IS unbalanced. If it's the only viable strategy for succeeding, it's overpowered.

I agree to your point. But I LOVE chop rushing! don't let them take it away from me!

 

[Artanis]

The problem is, if the game designers further tone down chopping, the high difficulty level games will be even more difficult. Just the barbarian rush will be enough to smother your first two cities if you don't get the warriors/archers pumped out fast enough. Currently chopping is the way to compensate for the ridiculously large disadvantages of human players. Unless the game can do something on other aspects (e.g. increase the unit upgrade cost for the AIs), taking out or significantly toning chopping down will make the game even less fun.

In this case, what JWJ said applies to single player as well. If you cannot play at a given difficulty without chopping, then chopping is overpowered, plain and simple.

 

[ZippyRiver]

The problem is, if the game designers further tone down chopping, the high difficulty level games will be even more difficult. Just the barbarian rush will be enough to smother your first two cities if you don't get the warriors/archers pumped out fast enough. Currently chopping is the way to compensate for the ridiculously large disadvantages of human players. Unless the game can do something on other aspects (e.g. increase the unit upgrade cost for the AIs), taking out or significantly toning chopping down will make the game even less fun.

Rock garden poker tables never like an agressive player sitting down and raging their nice little safe game.

First, if your playing at a higher difficulty, you WANT the game to be hard. The harder the better, evidenced by the fact your choosing the higher level in the first place. And if a small change forces you to re-think your rock garden strategy then it might be a fantastic improvement. Players always end up wanting harder levels after playing the game for a while anyway, and it won't be long before threads start popping up like "diety is too easy".

Chopping is a way to overcome the disadvantages, but perhaps there are other ways. Congrats, you figured out ONE way to do it. Now the real challange, is finding another. (and another)

 

[Breunor]

I think chopping should be toned down because it appears that it is not really a strategic choice any more but a fact that has to be done for best play. Not chopping is almost a 'variant'.

So, there should be more strategic issues in chopping. I would probably nerf early chopping but make it more lucrative later (clearly advancing technology should make it easier to get better yields from the cut-down trees).

Maybe give only 10 hammers with bronze-working only, add 5 for iron working, maybe 10 for metal casting, etc.

Breunor

 

[Sidhe]

anyhoo in mp with -20% build costs the dagger will be back in vogue I suspect this will be done with the patch and the mods that do this are already out there and in use. As for single player well I guess I agree, I personally don't chop much my cities get huge and later on I rule. But that is a matter of preference I supose. Out teching the comp is another way. Cavalry against muskets is pretty cool. Also another way is to wonder the hell out of the comp, especially on lower than monarch levels. You can easily out wonder them with your tech advantage and all those little bonuses and gl's will get you a nice even larger tech advantage or however you want to play them, artists merchants etc etc etc.

 

[llib_rm]

Why not spread the benefits of chopping across time and spread out the time? A 40 hammer chop in 8 turns would give 5 hammers/turn. A partial chop could re-grow over time.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

EDIT
Another problem I just realised too would be whether you'd be allowed to just work the forest and not the improvement. Otherwise, once you've built the improvement you'd never be able to work the forest again without eventually clearing it. Hmmm. Unless you pillaged your own improvement. Hmmm. Also, pillaging and then rebuilding the improvement should not reset the number of turns the forest can be "cleared" for.

Actually that MM issue might make it simpler to say you build the 'clearing' improvement which is unpillageable, and which adds +1 hammer per turn to the nearest city WITHOUT citizens working it for 40 turns, and then clears the Forest.

Techs could increase the output and decrease the time that the 'clearing' improvement takes.


A Final option is just increasing the amount of time it takes to clear Forest (say 3-5x as long)... with Techs increasing worker speed
say Bronze Working x5 time to chop
Iron changes it to x4
Machinery to x3
Replaceable parts x2
RR x1

That would eliminate the MM problem and make chop rushing no longer a Rush strategy. (if you start chopping with a worker, it won't be able to contribute to the other worker you are building.)

 

[Artanis]

One of the biggest problems with chopping isn't the hammers themselves, but that chopping allows you to completely bypass an intended game mechanic.

In earlier versions of Civ, in order to rein in early growth, making a worker or settler cost that city population. If you read the manual, the only reason they switched to the current system was in order to get that same basic effect, only minus the confusion that can result.

However, if you chop a Worker or Settler, you get growing again that much faster. Cut down two forests, and suddenly the growth penalty - the intended growth penalty - for building a worker simply vanishes. Cut down three, and the growth penalty for building a settler will vanish as long as the city has ANY sort of hammer output. Long story short, chopping bypasses the single biggest check against player growth, which by definition breaks the game.


No matter what they do with chopping, I believe that workers and settlers should not be able to be rushed by chopping. How they go about doing this - and there have been some very good suggestions in this thread - doesn't matter to me. All I care about is Firaxis living up to their claim of wanting to be rid of the "one true path"...which to me, means not allowing one specific strategy to completely bypass a MAJOR impediment that all other strategies must deal with.

 

[DaviddesJ]

In earlier versions of Civ, making a worker or settler cost that city population. If you read the manual to Civ4, they explain that this is why cities don't grow when making workers/settlers, and put the food towards building the unit instead. The way previous versions slowed player growth was by making you sacrifice population, the way Civ4 slows player growth is by making you not grow.

This has been claimed by several people, but it's not really true. Allowing part of the cost of the worker/settler to be paid with population/food (in Civ3/Civ4) instead of shields/hammers doesn't necessarily slow growth. Sometimes it makes growth faster (if you have lots of food, and not many shields/hammers, you can build workers/settlers faster this way). From what I've heard, the intent of this mechanism is not specifically to slow growth, either in Civ3 or Civ4.

That said, I do think that the fact that the chop-intensive strategies need lots of workers, and that chopping is a good way to get lots of workers, is a balance issue. But this doesn't really have to do with growing-while-chopping, which in my opinion is only a minor issue.

 

[Artanis]

This has been claimed by several people, but it's not really true. Allowing part of the cost of the worker/settler to be paid with population/food (in Civ3/Civ4) instead of shields/hammers doesn't necessarily slow growth. Sometimes it makes growth faster (if you have lots of food, and not many shields/hammers, you can build workers/settlers faster this way). From what I've heard, the intent of this mechanism is not specifically to slow growth, either in Civ3 or Civ4.

That said, I do think that the fact that the chop-intensive strategies need lots of workers, and that chopping is a good way to get lots of workers, is a balance issue. But this doesn't really have to do with growing-while-chopping, which in my opinion is only a minor issue.

They claim in the manual that it is to slow growth, thus I can only assume that it is intended to slow growth, regardless of whether or not it actually works out that way.

If it is NOT intended to slow growth, then they should at least have the common courtesy to come out and TELL us that they lied to our faces in that part of the manual.

 

[DaviddesJ]

They claim in the manual that it is to slow growth, thus I can only assume that it is intended to slow growth, regardless of whether or not it actually works out that way.

What page says that? I have looked several times (now and in the past) and I can't find any such statement in the manual.

Page 59 says: "When a city is constructing workers and settlers, the city's excess food is consumed, as well as the city's production. Thus, cities building workers and settlers will not grow in population until the units are complete."

This does not say that the purpose of this rule is to slow growth. My belief is that the purpose of the rule is to allow the settler/worker to be built more quickly, especially when you have lots of food and few hammers.

 

[Artanis]

What page says that? I have looked several times (now and in the past) and I can't find any such statement in the manual.

Page 59 says: "When a city is constructing workers and settlers, the city's excess food is consumed, as well as the city's production. Thus, cities building workers and settlers will not grow in population until the units are complete."

This does not say that the purpose of this rule is to slow growth. My belief is that the purpose of the rule is to allow the settler/worker to be built more quickly, especially when you have lots of food and few hammers.

I don't have my manual in front of me since I'm on campus waiting for a class at the moment, but I recall that it's in the back, where they spend several pages just talking about the game and how they went about making it...including why they made certain decisions (such as taking out pollution, changing the settler/worker mechanic, etc.)




Edit: found an online pdf of the manual. Down on page 176, it says that the change is to "take out one more little gameplay trap for first-timers", so the change sure as heck wasn't to SPEED worker/settler building. Since in previous versions you lost citizens - and nobody could possibly miss the fact that a city grows more slowly when it has citizens simply die off every few turns - they wanted the slowed city growth to still be in.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Edit: found an online pdf of the manual. Down on page 176, it says that the change is to "take out one more little gameplay trap for first-timers", so the change sure as heck wasn't to SPEED worker/settler building. Since in previous versions you lost citizens - and nobody could possibly miss the fact that a city grows more slowly when it has citizens simply die off every few turns - they wanted the slowed city growth to still be in.

No, you are completely misunderstanding this statement. The statement is that, in Civ3, it was possible for people to start building a settler in a size-2 city with no food surplus, and the city would never, ever complete the settler, because it has to have 3 population in order to lose 2. So they took out this "trap" in Civ4.

It has nothing to do with slowing or accelerating city growth.

 

[ohioastronomy]

I hate to say it, but nothing about forests will change the basic nature of multiplayer Civ. Hyper-aggressive military play (rushing) will always be the most effective strategy unless the fundamental nature of the game is changed to make conquest difficult. An example of making conquest difficult would be to give cities, and improvements, intrinsic defense ability and increasing the bonuses for active defenders. I don't think that the single-player game would benefit from changes like this; it'd make the game a lot slower.

Changing the role of forests would require wholesale rebalancing of every aspect of the game. The costs of settlers, workers, and early buildings has the ability of players to use forests factored in.

Do people ***really*** want to have to wait 40 turns to get a settler and worker out on normal speed?

Do folks ***really*** want to have to hit the enter key 80 times at marathon?

Do they want to lose the ability to rush wonders and buildings with anything but slavery?

Personally, I'd like to see lumbermills made more valuable and have the positive effects from environmentalism kicked up so that folks have to make more of a short vs long term decision. But cutting trees is so basic to the current game structure that changing it would be the equivalent of complaining about the need to build farms and mines.

 

[Artanis]

No, you are completely misunderstanding this statement. The statement is that, in Civ3, it was possible for people to start building a settler in a size-2 city with no food surplus, and the city would never, ever complete the settler, because it has to have 3 population in order to lose 2. So they took out this "trap" in Civ4.

It has nothing to do with slowing or accelerating city growth.

Like I said, even if the original Civ3 mechanic wasn't intended to slow growth, it by definition had that effect. If your size-3 city built a settler, it ended up size-1. If your size-3 city built some warriors or something, it ended up size 3. So tell me, which is the bigger city? The one at size 1, or the one at size 3?

It is blatantly obvious that a city that built a settler would be smaller than if it didn't. Being smaller means less overall growth. There is no possible way they could fail to notice that a city would take longer to reach full size when building settlers/workers - you know, due to LOSING POPULATION along the way - and thus wanted the EFFECT of a city building workers/settlers taking longer to reach full size to still be a part of the game.

...either that, or Firaxis is a bunch of idiots who managed to miss a simple fact of basic arithmetic. I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt though

 

[Nestorius]

I think forests are perfect the way they are (although I don't play multi-player). It adds an extra layer of strategy. Anyways, sometimes you don't even get forests near your capital.

 

[gettingfat]

Rock garden poker tables never like an agressive player sitting down and raging their nice little safe game.

First, if your playing at a higher difficulty, you WANT the game to be hard. The harder the better, evidenced by the fact your choosing the higher level in the first place. And if a small change forces you to re-think your rock garden strategy then it might be a fantastic improvement. Players always end up wanting harder levels after playing the game for a while anyway, and it won't be long before threads start popping up like "diety is too easy".

Chopping is a way to overcome the disadvantages, but perhaps there are other ways. Congrats, you figured out ONE way to do it. Now the real challange, is finding another. (and another)

But how do you guys know that the game was not originally designed so chopping is an integral part to play at high difficulty level, and just now people overuse it? It means that if you take this part of the game out, the game will be more difficult than what they originally intend to be?

If you run a business, you realize your employees always take taxi regardless of situations, do you just order them not to use taxi from now on at all? or find a way to make them to use this expensive mean of transportation with discretion?

I find people like you guys always say something to imply other people being kind of soft if they ask for anything in the game to tone down certain aspect.