The Treehugger's Lament (or: Where have all the forests gone?)

Skorpios

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 23, 2014
Messages
35
Location
South Australia
In all the playthroughs and Well of Souls info so far I haven't seen any buildings, improvements, techs or quests that interact with forests. As far as I can tell, forests are simply impediments to improvements/expeditions and unit travel and are effectively just packets of production waiting to be harvested around your cities. Even if you follow Harmony, the planet still ends up being clear-cut in all developed areas. I find this a bit sad actually and clearly goes against Harmony sensibilities.

Workers start off with the ability to build mines, farms and generators - why not lumber mills? The colonists eventually learn how to exploit totally alien resources such as Floatstone but can't explore the potential of the alien forests growing around their cities?

There are tech and quest (I think?) choices that boost output for mines, farms and generators, so why are forests ignored? It seems very strange in a game that offers so many choices on how to interact with the environment the classic 'forest' choice of fell now for a quick production boost, or preserve and gain long-term production potential seems to have been removed completely.

Technologies such as Pioneering, Ecology, Alien Sciences, Biology, Transgenics, Bio Engineering and their leaf techs all seem prime candidates to provide abilities, improvements or buildings that enhance the output of forest tiles.

An alternative to the Lumber Mill could be a Forestry Base - an improvement which manages controlled felling to initially provide additional production on forest tiles. Interaction with techs and buildings (such as the Pharmalab, Alien Preserve, Biofuel Plant, etc) could add science from studying the forest ecosystem, or gain culture and health by using them as recreational parks, or exploit alternative food and energy sources and so forth.

I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to eventually (after jumping through several tech/quest hoops) turn forest tiles into the equivalent of Terrascapes without the negative health effect and lower maintenance. They could only be planted on tiles that would naturally support forests but would be unaffected by (and maybe even boosted by) miasma.

Does anyone else find it strange that forests seem to have been ignored in Beyond Earth?
 
I do find it strange that Forests seem to have no tile improvements or future benefits.

I'm leaning toward making a mod to include one.

Forest Nursery: +1 Production

Requires: Ecology
Upgrades:
Biology grants Tree Nursery +1 Energy.
Alien Ecology grants Tree Nursery +1 Food.
Fabrication grants Tree Nursery +1 Production.
Bio Engineering grants Tree Nursery +1 Science.

I choose these neutral techs because I think forestry would be beneficial to all the affinities. However, I'd need to compare this improvement with others like Farms and Generators to make sure I'm not stepping on another improvement's toes.
 
Well what I would see it as is a Harmony based-alternative to terrascapes (since it uses the native forests)

+1 food +1 production +2 culture
4 maintenance
(Alien Hybridization)
requires forest and miasma, boosted by ecoscaping
 
Having a Harmony-based Forest improvement would be cool, too.

Well there's already a Purity based forest improvement (Terrascape -use Earth forests not alien ones).
Supremacy seems like the one best for cut it down an replace with generator/manufactury
 
I think it would have been cool if, in the end, all the alien forests you did not cut down to build upon, end up having a bonus effect - subject to an early quest decision about the choice of cutting or not. First you think you will get a small production boost if you cut them down, later find that if you let them survive, you get some other bonus related to a victory condition. How the surviving trees relate to each victory condition could be different and scripted into the game so each affinity and victory path gets a unique reward - or penalty if they did cut down all those forests.

That's just me musing about what I would have done to make alien forests unique and not to be taken for granted like Earth forests are, simply as production fodder.
 
I agree, and there are some good ideas here.

Another interesting one, strategy-wise I think might be to forbid Harmony players from clearing forest tiles (as it would be against their ethos). Forest tiles would instead provide Harmony players a bonus to Culture.
 
Maybe forests could provide bonus health at a certain Harmony level? I think strictly forbidding cutting forests (as a Harmony "bonus") might be too frustrating.
 
Here's a Harmony-based idea:

Parkland: +2 Culture, +2 Health

Requires: Alien Ecology
Maintenance: 2
Upgrades:
Photosystems grants Natural Parks +1 Energy.
 
A preserve-like improvement that gets some benefits from harmony techs would indeed be cool. Maybe it will be added later, who knows? If not: Modders HO!
 
I found a chitin resource in forest terrain I found redundant to improve, unless later techs are researched to upgrade paddocks.
 
Maybe forests could provide bonus health at a certain Harmony level? I think strictly forbidding cutting forests (as a Harmony "bonus") might be too frustrating.
I was going to suggest that since civ 4 had health from forests. After they make health worth having.

I don't think forests should be a big production source. It seemed odd in civ 4 when my best spaceship production city was surrounded by lumber mills. Similar to how gold is no longer a wealth resource forests should have other uses.
 
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