Can someone explain the "chop-start" tactic?

[Alex]

wow, so chopping is *necessary* to win at Monarch and above? I thought Civ 4 was deeper than that...

[ohioastronomy]

The yield from trees is large relative to the production of a starting city. At lower difficulty levels you can ignore this and still do reasonably well. Not taking advantage of this basic game feature hurts you more at higher difficulty levels. The way that difficulty level impacts Civ4 is that

Your tech research slows down

The AIs start with more units (not a lot more until you get to the silly levels, such as Deity)

Random events are less forgiving; there are more hostile animals and barbarians

You can overcome the slower pace of research discovery with more rapid early growth, e.g. chopping trees. This is hardly the only thing that you do to win...

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by Alex
wow, so chopping is *necessary* to win at Monarch and above? I thought Civ 4 was deeper than that...

I heard that in chess, when you play against tougher opponents, a small portion of opening moves are better than others, and you HAVE to develop fast if you want to win. I thought chess was deeper than that.

The point in the comparison above being of course that exploiting the options available to you to maximum efficiency is necessary to do well at higher levels is pretty much common to all games, irrespective of their depth. In all games, doing certain things yields higher reward than doing other things, and so inevitably at higher levels, when inefficiency is penalized more harshly, certain successful tactics and strategies emerge above others.

[Gaal Dornik]

With chop-settler thing you will have much more cities than without. Grab all the best places and resources. Only thing remains, is to secure win.

It is needed to win on every difficulty level. Good players will probably win even without it, on lower difficulties, just like they will in a One-City-Challenge game.

The real thing with this is that this is an advanced tactic, supposed to give "the edge" to experienced players. No probs. But at the moment its not giving "the edge", but "the win". This is a little too much for a totally not obvious tactic.

This is only my opinion ofc.

MightyTiny
If compared with chess this is equivalent with a situation where i suddenly get 5 more queens, because its some hidden trick maybe. Sure, good player will win with one queen too.

[ohioastronomy]

If you don't like tree chopping, play a quick speed game.
They don't matter as much.

You can also play desert or archepelago maps, where there simply aren't as many trees, or where their hammers are important for other reasons. Even in a normal speed game there are a lot of ways that you can lose even if you're a champion lumberjack.

Since the game designers sprinkled the map with tiles that yield a one-time production bonus when worked for a few turns, it strikes me as no more an exploit than working a gold mine - which has a gamelong yield far higher than a large number of forests combined. The AI players get these bonuses too - they just don't explicitly use them for a fast game start. Good thing too, since they already start with the worker, etc. that you're using this tactic to get when you're running at higher difficulties.

[MightyTiny]

MightyTiny
If compared with chess this is equivalent with a situation where i suddenly get 5 more queens, because its some hidden trick maybe. Sure, good player will win with one queen too.

I wouldn't say that really - I think it is simply equivalent to the edge a player who has a solid knowledge of opening principles over a player who doesn't.

I mean in a chess game, if my opponent comes out with an early queen move in an attempt to get me in some sort of an early fools mate, then I know with virtual certainty that I'll win the game, simply by exploiting the weaknesses/wasted time in that attempt. No need for extra queens.

This gained time/position is, I think, equivalent to the advantage gained by a player that uses chopping well in Civ4; knowledge of a small number of "tricks" of sound play in the early moves results in a significant advantage later on.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

How is this NOT an obvious tactic?

The games been out how long? This 'not so obvious tactic' was discovered, disected and discussed within what? a week and a half of the game being released?

This isn't some sort of hidden trick or strategy that takes a brilliant mind to discover. It's simple. It's damn near flatly stated in the manual! Its the main benefit of one of the most expensive of the earliest techs.

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by Gaal Dornik
If compared with chess this is equivalent with a situation where i suddenly get 5 more queens, because its some hidden trick maybe. Sure, good player will win with one queen too.

I can't speak to the effectiveness of the chop rush, but I find it hard to believe it's anywhere close to the equivalent of 5 extra queens.

In chess you could take those extra queens and your regular pieces and sacrifice many them for your opponent's queen and 2 rooks, some minor pieces and even important pawns, and wind up with a MAJORLY HUGE advantage, especially if you managed to keep 2 queens.

I think that'd be like your Civ opponents only having warriors and archers, and not even enough to garrison all their cities.

[EternalSpark]

I'm going to use an analogy for my feelings on this.

I'm playing a game of Magic: The Gathering against my friend.

My first turn consists of a Forest , and I end my turn.

His first turn? Swamp,Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Lotus,Mox Ruby. Tap everything, sacrifice the Lotus for 3 black mana, cast Lava Spike , and then plays a Tendrils for 10.

At the end of his turn, I'm down half my life. The play was perfectly legal, but it sure feels cheap to play against, and prolly makes him feel kinda lame for doing it.

Same thing with this chopping strategy, especially the "don't really build the settler until the last minute" thing. It's legal, but it certainly has a taste of "I'm not doing what the game developers likely thought I would". Building a settler is supposed to make you choose between "do I want this base to grow" and "do I want my settler Right Now".

I'd like to see it nerfed a little, to put chopping into an early game idea rather than an initial game idea. . Have the Forest Mineral Amount be dependant on the techs you've researched. If its your first researched tech, the Mineral Output would be bad. If you're getting it after a couple more techs, the Mineral Amount would be a lot better. It'd encourage using the Mineral Amount for larger things (wonders) that happen before the "omg need a settler now" phase of the game.

And like those cards I mentioned, I'm seeing this rush-to-chop as a bit of a crutch. Anyone can win chopping, just as anyone can win with a God Hand. Can you win without it? If not, you are not 'good'. You're just crutching.

[fladiv]

Chopping forests cripples you at later game. Firstly, forest provides health which will be very important when you build certain facilities. Secondly, Lumbermills can be built in forests, which are potentially 4 hammers (maybe 5 with railroad) in one tile.

It's a tradeoff, not just some free hammers. Don't forget that forests are limited, so consider them as the special kind of resource which can be utilized either as the earlier accelerated growth, or later production and health boost.

If you are talking about MP games, then I don't see the problem - your opponents can do the same. Forests aren't exactly rare thing... AIs from the other hand also do chop, which helps their production, including settlers.

On the switching - maybe it looks like a questionable strategy, but it is not limited to settlers. Sometimes I switch to something that takes exactly 90 or 180 hammers to produce directly before a worker finishes chopping. It gains few turns of productions for the other thing, comparing with situation when the sped up thing only was built.

Whether AI can switch or not is irrelevant - AI is in many other ways dumber than the human player, and is compensated for this with severe bonuses human player doesn't have.

The new system differs from what we had in previous civs, but it doesn't automatically mean that any new options it provides are an exploits.

[player1]

Interesting, I won Monarch and Emperor games and haven't used chop rushing strategy. By that, I mean that I used early worker to improve food resources first and then after I get bronze to chop some forested hills and some of the forests I won't need.

Anyway I don't see the point of super quick gain of new cities if they give me huge maintaince penality so I need to drop tech rate below 50%.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Alex
wow, so chopping is *necessary* to win at Monarch and above? I thought Civ 4 was deeper than that...

You can fix that by lowering the chop yield in one of the XML files.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by EternalSpark
My first turn consists of a Forest , and I end my turn.

His first turn? Swamp,Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Lotus,Mox Ruby. Tap everything, sacrifice the Lotus for 3 black mana, cast Lava Spike , and then plays a Tendrils for 10.

At the end of his turn, I'm down half my life. The play was perfectly legal, but it sure feels cheap to play against, and prolly makes him feel kinda lame for doing it.

That depends on the rules This is only allowed in Type I tournament IIRC. If so, you probably have your own set of Moxes and Black Lotus somewhere in the deck as well

[CreepyD]

this tactic isnt all good.
I just put out so many cities so fast that I had to lower my research to 10%.
You need to make it to currency/code of laws before putting too many cities down.

without using this tactic this would naturally happen anyway in most games.

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by CreepyD
this tactic isnt all good.
I just put out so many cities so fast that I had to lower my research to 10%.
You need to make it to currency/code of laws before putting too many cities down.

without using this tactic this would naturally happen anyway in most games.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the power of this tactic isn't in horizontal, but vertical growth - it's not just that you get the cities out there faster, but that the cities that build the settlers will still be growing WHILE you build the settlers.

Thus you'll have larger cities sooner. And you do tend to get the setlers out faster, which means you'll found your first cities earlier than you would without this tactic, thus giving extra time for those cities to grow as well.

And nobody's saying that you'd have to spam settlers and make huge number cities at the start - no need, or indeed reason, for such overkill.

As to the magic the gathering example:

His first turn? Swamp,Mox Sapphire, Mox Jet, Lotus,Mox Ruby. Tap everything, sacrifice the Lotus for 3 black mana, cast Lava Spike , and then plays a Tendrils for 10.

At the end of his turn, I'm down half my life. The play was perfectly legal, but it sure feels cheap to play against, and prolly makes him feel kinda lame for doing it.

Haven't played with actual cards, but used to have magic the gathering computer game some years back, that I played quite a bit, so I'm familiar with the rules.

I don't think that your comparison is valid really, because unlike Civ4, players in that game do a major part of the strategic planning before a single card is layed down: in making their decks.

So in that example, I don't see why your friend's early game would be in any way underhanded: he's compiled a deck that aims for fast, early damage, and that's as valid a strategy as any.

I could see that being a little cheap if your friend had much better cards available to him to make his deck than you do. If you had equal quality selection of cards to compile your decks from, then no legal tactic whatsoever is cheap, IMHO, because both players have each tactic available to them. His early success simply reflects either better choises made in compiling his deck (which is a major part of the game), a stroke of luck (which happens and is nobody's fault) or his deck might have weaknesses that you can exploit; he might have trouble follwing up his strong start with additional attacks before you can get your strategies rolling.