Can someone explain the "chop-start" tactic?

[lordrune]

They need to patch this, hammers shouldn't be able to make settlers IMO (I mean, I know they could in older Civ games, but I like the newer design better in balance terms).

[Alex]

It is an exploit, but then I wonder: wasn't Civ4 designed to supposedly put an end to the infamous ICS exploit? So, what's the benefit in rushing settlers to build more and more cities? Wasn't this supposed to be a bad thing in Civ4?

[alco75]

Originally posted by Alex
So, what's the benefit in rushing settlers to build more and more cities? Wasn't this supposed to be a bad thing in Civ4?

The benefit of this exploit lies in your cities being able to grow while building Settlers/Workers. In other words, the benefit is that of vertical rather than horizontal growth.

[gilfan]

There's nothing inherently better about switching off the settler unit except when the forest is about to be cut down. You're just delaying how quickly you get the settler by 3 or 4 turns in exchange for 3 or 4 turns worth of growth.

I do chop rush, but I've found it more effective to research polytheism first, and build warriors during this time, then switch to bronze working and build 2-3 workers, then a settler. This way you found a religion, have units available to thoroughly explore your starting continent, and can rapidly deforest the area around you.

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by gilfan
There's nothing inherently better about switching off the settler unit except when the forest is about to be cut down. You're just delaying how quickly you get the settler by 3 or 4 turns in exchange for 3 or 4 turns worth of growth.

Hmm... not quite so - on Marathon, you can get a ready made (baby ent ) settler with two chops. Two chops take 14 turns if I remember correctly (the counter on the worker when he's chopping shows 8 turns at the start of the chop, but it's actually finished in 7).

That means that you'll get a settler in 14 turns, only two of which you'll be actually building the settler, and thus stagnating your growth.

That's 12 turns extra city growth per settler - plus a settler out in just 14 turns. So you are not delaying settler production, you're speeding it up, AND you are not getting just 3 or 4 turns of extra growth, but 12. Turns which you can use to build other stuff too.

I'm working from memory here, so if I'm wrong in those caculations, I'm sure someone will point it out.

[edit: actually I didn't account for the time it takes for you to move your worker onto the next forest, so that would add one or two turns to the settler production time.]

And yes, it is just an itsy bitsy exploitative, I guess...

[Gaal Dornik]

I hope this will be fixed in the next patch.

Tried it on Prince and on the first attempt had 6 cities+1 settler, while the AI had only 2 cities. Managed to found a religion too, researched Buddhism right after bronze working. With a little luck in forrests and rivers(money) this is just plain ICS imho.

[MrPhil]

What is ICS? And I am still LMAO on the Ents thing......

[Tattila the Hun]

Infinite City Sprawl? Churning out cities at max pace. Supposedly, the rising cost of upkeep for new cities in Civ4 adresses that. Even the smallest tundra cities were worth something in previous games.

[Leifmk]

Indeed the rising cost of upkeep serves as a fairly hard limit on how fast you can expand. Chop-rushing helps you reach that limit sooner than you could otherwise. Your forests are a resource which you can choose to spend on either this or on other types of production (such as rapidly completing early wonders).

[johnmcd]

The AI does chop a lot of forest, so it may not be an exploit, the difference is that it doesn't chop in the same organised focussed way. Mind you, it spams windmills everywhere so maybe not building windmills is an exploit.

[fladiv]

IMO,
Settlers shouldn't benefit from chopping because chopping gives hammers, while settlers are built with food

So one could do the other way around - build settlers, and switch to something else when chopping finishes, and I believe that'd be fair enough..

I wonder if this bug is fixable now by customization? Or will it only be possible with SDK release? Because now AI probably does benefit from it too, even if not as much as exploiter player...

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by fladiv
IMO,
Settlers shouldn't benefit from chopping because chopping gives hammers, while settlers are built with food

I thought hammers produce settlers and excess food production contributes?

[fladiv]

My bad, you are correct.
Well then it's not an exploit at the moment.

Maybe then make settlers only producable with food, while building other stuff with hammers at the same time. And decrease the amount of food needed to produce them.

[ohioastronomy]

I've been over on civfanatics, and stopped by here to see what a different community looks like.

This sort of queue switching isn't really an exploit, largely because it is really a tradeoff. You can use your food+hammer production to accelerate settlers and workers, or you can choose to burn more (effectively nonrenewable) forests while permitting the first city to grow. Here is an example:

If you build a worker first and get bronzeworking, at normal speed, you have 4 excess production (food+hammer) in your starting city and you can chop a tree every 4 turns at normal speed. (You get more and it takes longer for slower games). Leaving the city to make a second worker and a settler, you'd get

Make a worker
chop 4 turns later
chop 8 turns later;
second worker appears (8x4 + 2x30)=92; 32 overflow
chop x2 12 turns later; settler appears
(32 overflow + 4x4 + 2x30) = 108; 8 overflow

Now if you swapped the production so that you were building warriors, etc. on 1,2,3,5,6,7,etc....

Worker 2 appears on turn 8, but you only have 8 overflow

On turn 12 you chop 2x, adding 64 production - but your new settler isn't ready yet.

On turn 16 you chop again, adding 34 production - settler finished.

You got 12 turns of growth out of 16, and the nonswitchers got 4 (turns 13-16).

You delayed your second city by 4 turns, and you burned an extra treee.

You had 4 less turns for your worker to do something else, or chop a tree towards some other thing in your capital.

The net balance is favorable, but it isn't all in one direction.

[byrath]

At what level of difficulty does the chop rushing of settlers really begin to matter?

It could help your game at any level.. but up through at least Prince level, chopping is not necessary to win via military or peaceful means.