Can someone explain the "chop-start" tactic?

[MrPhil]

I have seen it mentioned in various threads but being new to both Civ and this board, I am interested in an explanation if someone would be so kind as to explain it.

I know it has to do with chopping forests to jump start construction or something like that. I guess I am looking for more details.

Thanks in advance!

[Rancidlunchmeat]

The chop-rush tactic can be used to employ a varity of different strategies.

Essentially, it all comes down to the fact that the earliest rounds of the game are the most important.

Bronze working gives your workers the ability to chop down forests, which provide shields for the city to quickly produce whatever they are working on.

So you start immediately beelining towards bronze working (if you start with mining, it's the first tech you research) and build a worker.

Your worker will be finished right around the same time as you get bronze working. Now, whatever you decide to build next, you can build in a fraction of the time by using the worker to "chop-rush" by chopping down forests.

So if you want to found that second city as quickly as possible for rapid expansion, you can build a worker, research bronze working, and chop rush the settler. Now you have two cities far more rapidly than you would any other method.

Or... if you want to build that library as soon as possible in order to get the jump on research, you can chop rush the library.

You can chop rush whatever it is you are building. Because the earliest turns have the highest value in Civ IV, the advantage you get by chopping rushing in the beginning can be huge and the difference between winning or losing.

[MrPhil]

Thanks Rancid! Will have to try this out in my next game!

[MightyTiny]

Most powerful chop rushing strategy is to use chopping to build settlers early on, by switching production back and forth.

The basic idea is that you build something X (other than a settler), and order a worker to start chopping a forest. Then, on the turn before the chopping is finished, you switch production to a settler, and the settler will then get the hammers from the chop. Once that happens, you immediately switch back to building whatever you were building before, and order your worker to start chopping the next forest. Then again, switch back to the settler just before the chop comes in.

This has the advantage of letting you build settlers while your city is still growing all the time (except for the few turns you switch to settler to receive the chop-hammers). Also, you don't spend many turns towards building settlers, and can use them to build buildings or military instead.

[Lord Avalon]

At what level of difficulty does the chop rushing of settlers really begin to matter? Is founding of religion less important at higher levels? (If you start out researching Bronze Working, then it seems to me you're less likely to discover Buddhism or Hinduism, especially if you don't start with Mysticism.)

Explanation: I skipped Civ3, so in 4 I've started out at the lowest difficulties, just to get used to the game. (At the lowest two, it doesn't seem to be necessary to get a chop rush start.) I've discovered the joy of founding religion(s) and using Organized Religion to gain +25% build speed on buildings with state religion, and building missionaries to spread various religions and build various monasteries to increase culture (to push out my borders) and gain a little research.

Does the high civic cost of OR have more of a bad impact the more difficult the game?

[Aro]

Originally posted by MightyTiny
Most powerful chop rushing strategy is to use chopping to build settlers early on, by switching production back and forth.

The basic idea is that you build something X (other than a settler), and order a worker to start chopping a forest. Then, on the turn before the chopping is finished, you switch production to a settler, and the settler will then get the hammers from the chop. Once that happens, you immediately switch back to building whatever you were building before, and order your worker to start chopping the next forest. Then again, switch back to the settler just before the chop comes in.

This has the advantage of letting you build settlers while your city is still growing all the time (except for the few turns you switch to settler to receive the chop-hammers). Also, you don't spend many turns towards building settlers, and can use them to build buildings or military instead.

Seems to be an exploit.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Well.. I've never actually done the method of building something, chopping and then switching to a Settler right before the chop is complete and then switching back.

That DOES seem like a HUGE exploit to me, and I've never read of doing such a thing in any strategy guide on this board or elsewhere, so it's news to me.

I'm going to have to try it now (of course) to see how it works, but that's certainly not what is normally referred to as "chop rushing", and chop rushing itself is overpowered without switching back and forth.

As far as going for bronze working instead of a religion, you have to figure how large your cities can grow before unhappiness becomes a factor. Even with beelining towards bronze working, you can still get one of the early religions if you want to.

If not, and you do what I do, which is focus on confucionism as your first religion, by chop rushing you'll have 2 or 3 or 4 (depending on your strategy) by the time you get confucionism and none of them will have maxed their happiness limit so that a lack of religion is a problem.

Also.. as I mentioned, if you start with mining, then Bronze working is only 1 tech away... and you'll get that by the time you finish your first worker. Yes, you'll miss out on the first two religions but you can still grab judiasm (I think that's the third) if you beeline for it after you get bronze working.

Of course, there's tradeoffs in everything... doing that method makes it so you might miss out on agriculture, or pottery, or archery... but you'll have more cities to compensate for your lack of research, plus better military if you are lucky enough to have copper in your cultural boundaries...

Getting Bronze working first to not only be able to chop rush but also be able to build axeman as early as possible is a tremendous advantage.



The best case scenario is to start with mining, build a worker, research bronze working. When your worker is done, copper pops up in your capital city. Then you are home free. You can then chop rush a settler, and immediately start building axemen for defense which will last you a couple thousand years and you don't have to deal with hunting/archery or anything else to get your military straight.

The second best scenario is to start with mining, build a worker, research bronze working, pop your worker and then have copper revealed on the map within a reasonable distance from your capital. That means you can then "chop rush" a settler from your capital, build your second city near/on the bronze and then start pumping out axemen as soon as that city is established.

But.. even if you don't get copper near your capital city site, the benefits of chop rushing are still there because while you don't get the defensive/offensive value of the axemen, you'll still get the extra production increase from chopping... And we're not talking about a 1 or 2 turn difference here.. we're talking about a 5-15 turn difference in turning out an additional settler.. and remember that while building a settler (or worker if you want to go that route), the city doesn't expand while building them. So the quicker you can produce them, the quicker the city can go back to expanding... which is especially crucial if you are trying to do something like add specialists to your capital that require not only the food to support them but the population to support them!

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by Rancidlunchmeat
Getting Bronze working first to not only be able to chop rush but also be able to build axeman as early as possible is a tremendous advantage.

Well, there is that.

" 'Cause I'm the axeman. Yeahhh, I'm the axeman."
(Apologies to The Beatles.)

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Aro
Seems to be an exploit.

It's only an exploit if the computer players don't do the same thing

[LordShiva]

Yes, it does seem like an exploit.

[Rook]

My question is. If you chop-rush settlers. Do you then have settlers made out of wood? If so, this could be bad. Right?

[Urban Ranger]

No, that's good. That means they don't need to eat food.

Now stop threadjacking.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Rook
My question is. If you chop-rush settlers. Do you then have settlers made out of wood? If so, this could be bad. Right?

That would make them Ents, and Ents are good.

[Urban Ranger]

Ents? This makes a Settler unit having a strength of 100 or something.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Ents? This makes a Settler unit having a strength of 100 or something.

Well they'd be baby Ents. They're not as strong.