When to Chop/Harvest

[Jarhead60]

I am curious what drives peoples choices as to when to chop/harvest. Early to get a city up and running or late to maximize late game production. I seem to always struggle with when is the best time to do it.
Do you base the decision on victory condition?

 

[Victoria]

I do not base on victory initially, I will chop a bit before T100 because it helps enormously but I do save chops for feudalism.

 

[KoKid90]

In terms of harvesting, it depends what resource it is and when you get access to it. For example you should improve bananas early game but later you may want to harvest them. Stone is better to be harvested unless you go for stone circle pantheon, etc.

I will chop early if those forests or rainforests aren't providing +1 adjacency to a campus or holy site, as this is huge at the start of a game. I'll chop especially on a hill where a mine can then be built. I will leave forest on river to build lumber mill and depending how much food/production the city has access to.

As a rule of thumb resources are better improved during the first quarter of a game and later on they are better harvested. Chopping is good from the start as building more earlier is usually always a good idea.

 

[DrCron]

I chop ASAP, simply because the early game is harder and a good start usually implies you'll get an easy victory. I only save forests if I know I'll eventually want a wonder that the AI could build before me.

I pretty much never harvest so I can't help you there. It might be a good strategy to do it at some point, I don't know. I just tend to forget this is a game feature on CIV 6

EDIT: I forgot about lumber mills on river tiles, but yes this is good. You can leave your forests on river tiles to get them.

 

[Victoria]

I'll hold off to chop in districts because they are the main 3rd thing to do

 

[Chibisuke]

Chop to get districts/wonders. That's all I chop for on deity.

 

[Japper007]

I "chop" stones and forests on hills, since both a quarry and a lumber mill have a lower production yield than a standard mine. So why not take the production from a chop as a bonus?
I only remove forests/stone on flatlands if it blocks district zoning, since it's a waste to just plop the district on it and waste the chop.
In the end I chop everything left standing to finish Space Race projects.
And it of course goes without saying that every jungle gets torn down ASAP, unless you're playing as Brazil. At 2f1p it's not a tile you'd wanna work anyways, so might as well just get some food and production out of it, and it ruins any adjacent tiles appeal to boot.

 

[The Highwayman]

I chop hills to plant mines or to clear the tile for districts or wonders in the early game as needed. I hate planting things on top of choppable tiles. I've usually exhausted all of the chop spots in my Cap and initial expands by mid game.

In the mid game, I will typically save some forests/rain forests in my production cities (cities planted turns 80-120 usually) to speed up a useful wonder or to get a district online ASAP. I don't like having a wonder sitting in production for 20 plus turns, so saving the chops for this is ideal.

Late game, most choppable areas are gone. Victory conditions are not a factor.

 

[Victoria]

I chop mines to lay forest at the end of the game
Every ounce of tourism helps, I do not feel better for doing so as I hate pine trees

 

[kronisk]

Recently I've begun chopping districts almost solely using the overflow trick described in the micromanagement thread. If you have God of the forge and agoge active you get +75% on your chops toward early districts. I like getting production bonus towards something that does not usually get a bonus. Also, workers which usually only get 30%.

 

[Jarhead60]

A lot of times when I am going for science victory I find myself trying to wait as long as possible to chop/harvest so I can build my spaceports faster and get through the space race projects faster. Since reaching those are a matter of science advancement not sure early chopping would help as much. So I chop then plant woods for lumber mills.

 

[Turbofish]

I do not feel better for doing so as I hate pine trees

Hahaha what? What did pine trees ever do to you?

 

[Victoria]

Hahaha what? What did pine trees ever do to you?

I grew up amongst the mighty podocarps and then moved to pine. Pine forests are soulless places in comparison.

It is like working on an old oak desk then moving to an IKEA pine piece of sh...

 

[Photi]

I grew up amongst the mighty podocarps and then moved to pine. Pine forests are soulless places in comparison.

It is like working on an old oak desk then moving to an IKEA pine piece of sh...

Not sure if you are referring to the group of trees typically referred to as "Pine" trees, or the whole Pinaceae family of trees. Maybe you've never been to an old growth forest full of Cedars, Firs, Douglas Firs, Spruces and Pines? Or been in the high altitudes among the Larch in autumn? The old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest of the US are usually a mix of those, but you can find a stand of nothing but pine here and there, and granted while those stands do look different than areas with more variety, "soulless" doesn't come to mind. I'm sure your carps look good too though.

 

[Victoria]

A podocarp forest feels primeval... it just feels like it's alive. They are quite complex.
Yeah it was young pine, needles just kill everything else, sticky sap, overstrong smell.
Older pine sure but still not on the same level.

 

[historix69]

I am curious what drives peoples choices as to when to chop/harvest. Early to get a city up and running or late to maximize late game production. I seem to always struggle with when is the best time to do it.
Do you base the decision on victory condition?

As @Victoria mentioned in another thread, the chop yield scales with game progress in the same way as district costs scale. (3 chops = 1 district)
Base yield of a forest chop is 20 at the beginning of the game and becomes 200 when your progress in Tech/Civics hits 100%, while base costs of a normal district is 60 (=3 x 20) which increases to 600 (= 3 x 200).

Afaik Civ 6 features different types of Production Costs :
- Districts (1000%) and Traders (400%) scale with progress,
- Settlers (80 + n x 20) and Builders (50 + n x 4) scale with produced number of their type,
- buildings, military units, wonders have fix costs.

Except for districts and wonders, you can rush buy everything with Gold.

Right at the beginning of the game your first builder costs 50 production and an early chop yields 21 production at a cost of 50/3 = 17, this is a netto yield of 4 production.
So building a builder in the same city where you chop is only usefull if you have a significant netto yield, want to prebuild to rush production and do not need the forest tiles for normal production.
Builders can be quite usefull to transfer production from one city to another (if there are the forests tiles to spare).

Using builders for chopping means that you use more builders throughout the game and so increase the costs of builders. (50, 54, 58, 62, ...)
Imagine you have a short game where you need only 2 builders for improvements which cost you 50 + 54 = 104 production. Now you decide to use the first builder (50) for (optional) chopping. You still need 2 builders which cost you now 54 + 58 = 112 production instead of 104 without chopping. In the end the early chop costed you 58 production instead of 50 ...
(If you usually end the game with more money than you can spend, the increase in cost does not really matter.)

For economic chopping you should use builders with 4 or 5 charges ...

 

[Victoria]

The first builder charge gives 30%
The second builder card give 66%
The third 100%

Using the first builder to get a eureka gives it special value which is greater if you have no monuments or other culture sources

It all gets quite complex, I love this game for its lack of simplicity and good choices.

My choice is to use 1 for the eureka and if my capital is strong in production perhaps kick out another 1-3 before feudalism to just push your cities faster, especially with apprentice and feudalism eurekas to consider. - yes taking cities can also give these but not all of us take that route every game.

At feudalism I will chop in and build what AI need ASAP so I can use that slot for something else which is yet another factor to consider.

The 100% builders come in nicely when resorts are required or those extra mines/farms to push a science victory