Forests: Should you really keep them?

[Frank Johnson]

I've had forests grow on tiles that only had a road, but I've never seen them take over a worked or otherwise improved square.

I agree with the path of balance. Chopping trees in the early game is great to get some early units and cities, espically because if you do it right you can 1) chop in a place where they'll grow back, 2) chop in a pace where you can't really use yet due to lack of fresh water, 3) chop out in the boonies (with an escort).

I'll agree that I find grassland forests to be alot more useful than plains forests.

Lumber mills add +1 hammer, then rails can add another +1.

Basicly forests are just another part of a grand balancing act you have to play for each city. Cities that abound with one resource will fall behind because of the others. I had one town grow to a huge population due to its lakes, grassland, and food bonuses, but the only way I could ever build improvement there was with slavery.

I've also noticed if you let the AI manage your citizens it defaults to a VERY slow growth rate. I don't know why. It seems to prefer sitting at +1, or +2 food even when the health barrier is far away and food tiles are open. I'll go to a city thinking "this city should be 25 by now, not 15", and I'll find it flooded with specialists or working tiles that don't encourage growth. I guess to take my game to the next level I'm gonna have to micro my own towns...

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by TomVeil
Selective, controlled deforestation! .... just nip and trim a bit, but don't kill the whole thing, it will grow back and you can get 30 shields here and there, while keeping your resource sustainable.

Also, where possible, if you prune outside the city radius, the forest tiles inside the radius remain workable.

Forest on freshwater tiles are asking for the axe, though. Blatant provacation, that.

[Cort Haus]

And another thing, in case we want to consider the historical realism, is that chopping down the forests is exactly how many civilisations arose in the first place.

England was mostly forests, once, and the common Saxon placename suffix 'ley' means a clearing in a forest. Centuries later the country was largely deforested to make a Navy, and we know what that went and did...

The Easter Island statues (cant spel Mo-ai) were built by a civ that destroyed themselves because they'd used up all the trees making the damn statues.

The debate on this thread and the Vel thread suggests that the deforestation model in the game is well enough implemented to offer strategic depth to the question "what do I chop, and when?".

[DaveMcW]

I'll agree that I find grassland forests to be alot more useful than plains forests.

1 irrigated grassland and 1 plains forest is more flexible than 2 grassland forest.

Below the happiness limit, you want to emphasize growth. So work the irrigated grassland and stick the remaining citizens on other 2-food tiles.

Above the happiness limit, you want to avoid growth. So work the plains forest to eat up that extra food.

[Strategist83]

[SIZE=1] (not so much jungles since they can and obviously should be cleared as soon as reasonable).

No, not if there are so few jungle squares it is not hurting city health. Those jungles will come in handy with environmentalism (+1 happy/jungle)

[Diadem]

Well lumbermills are the second best improvement in the game. Only watermills are better. So if your forest is next to a river than I can understand cutting it down. But keep in mind that not all riversquares can have watermills. A river borders two squares, only one of those can be watermilled.

The second scenario where it can be justified to cut forests down is if you really need the food. If you have almost no farmable land in your city radius, cutting a few forests down is understandable.

The third scenario is when your forest is on a hill. A lumbermill is in fact better than a mine, but mines come a lot earlier. If you need early production cut those forests down. But don't be too trigger happy on it, cutting it down and then not using the mine is a waste. And remember that as soon as lumbermills are available they are better.

Other than those cases, keep those forests alive.

[Drachasor]

Near-total deforestation on Monarch and above so far seems like the best strategy by far. It let's you expand as fast as the AI and build many early wonders, while maintaining excellent to superior standing in the tech race. Nothing else lets you pump out workers, settlers, and wonders nearly so fast -- the occasional chopping for a military unit can also be useful, but usually not nearly as necessary.

-Drachasor

[Arrian]

IMO it depends on what you have around you for health bonuses. If you have health resource rich starting area, deforestation is an even more attractive option. If not... you might wanna leave a few around.

I'll also leave forest when it's the only good source of hammers for a given city.

Typically, I try to leave cities with 3 forests (+1 health) unless I'm confident that I simply will not run into health problems. If a city has 1-2 forests, and also has hills (for production w/mines), those forests are toast. If it's got more than 3, I'll likely bring it down to 3.

-Arrian

[BigWilly1974]

The question is this...

Chop early or fall behind and struggle perhaps the rest of the game catching up...

or...

Cut forests and potentially lose out on some hammers the rest of the game...

To me...the beginning of the game is the most critical, so I'm highly in favor of liberal chopping.

[Velociryx]

Same here. Every hammer generated in-game (regardless of when it was generated) resonates through the entire rest of the game. The older the hammer, the more it resonates, so the more hammers you can generate sooner (in the ancient age), the better your late-game position. This, coupled with the fact that there are a number of health alternatives out there (plus the fact that you can simply choose to preserve enough to keep some health bonus), makes chopping (and popping) exceedingly attractive.

-=Vel=-

[Cort Haus]

Universal Suffrage gives 1 hammer to towns, which can give production capacity to a cottage-heavy city at a stroke.

[Shaka II]

In general, I like to chop my forests for early growth and expansion, libraries. The health benefits are generally not required until later in the game when the size of my empire is such that the health benefits from resources more than makes up for the forest loss. In real life, I don't believe that, but in game play, that seems to be the case, barring the situation where one starts on a desert like Vel says.

Does anyone here like to chop his neighbor's forests down? Before cultural borders close in, and especially if an AI settles in an area that I had my sights on, I like to steal his forests before his cultural borders pop.

[inca911]

Originally posted by Shaka II
Does anyone here like to chop his neighbor's forests down? Before cultural borders close in, and especially if an AI settles in an area that I had my sights on, I like to steal his forests before his cultural borders pop.

Absolutely.

Does anyone else mine hills way outside the working tile boundaries to try and get resources to appear?

[Frank Johnson]

I'm still not sure if it needs to be worked or not to get the potental resources to appear.

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by inca911
Does anyone else mine hills way outside the working tile boundaries to try and get resources to appear?

Yes, recently, I've been doing that. IIRC, there's a small chance that resources will be discovered. I wonder what the probablities are?