Chop chop

[Generaldoktor]

Which I've noticed too and which also means, if you chop the majority (or all) of your forests, you don't get new forests.

Even with governors not on, I've noticed some sort of "shadow governor" that moves your worked tiles around, frequently to maximize food. (Somebody suggested on another thread this is only for new population, not existing; I'm not sure.) If you chop your bare (no food) hills, it is very difficult to keep the tile worked with just a mine there. In the end, to encourage final growth, you may be inclined to abandon the bare hillocks yourself, at least until windmills come and give you back some food on those.

Hills with the one food on it, from Day One; (hill/grassland,) I have no problemo with chopping; I do it still mostly after Mathematics now, to get the maximum gain; unless there's an absolute emergency I can't just slave away. The city still gets the food and the hammers from the mine (and the prospecting chance and the quick hammers from the chop.)

[Yosho]

I'm not a big fan of waiting until after mathmatics; sure, you get more hammers then, but I'd rather have them NOW, so I can get my library or worker or settler sooner. 30 hammers when your city's only got 3 people, has a lot of unimproved land, and is only getting 3 hammers a turn saves you 10 turns, and getting the library or the worker or the settler 10 turns earlier may be a bigger benifit in the short and long terms then getting 60 hammers towards a courthouse or something after mathmatics.

About working mines; yeah, unless you're using farms, it's hard to work many mines in the early game, but one single mine might double a city's hammer production early in the game.

[Mihai]

Growing forests

So, if I understood corectly, a forest will grow just in the tiles that has no improvments or just a road and that is most likely to happen if that tile is sourrended by other forests. And that is supposed to happen one in about 150 turns.

Am I getting this correct?
I play a Marathon game in which I have a few tiles with no improvments and each with 3 forests on the sides. Nothing happend in 200 turns.

It takes longer in Marathon games, or the forest growing is more random?

It is interesting to know if you can make a strategy based on forests growing back.

[trev]

I chop all forests except tundra usually, my opinion is the savings made by earlier building of courthouses and other economic, science buildings, and units for stronger defence/offence more than justify any health losses from forest.

[Jaybe]

Mihal, I find that in some games forests grow rather frequently; while in others, rarely. Huge marathon fractal/continents. Inadequate sampling to get a real trend, since my games all last 2-3 weeks.

[johnmcd]

I think forest growth is tied to years, not turns, so more forest grows early in the game as more years are passing in the same number of turns.

[Generaldoktor]

I haven't been chopping until Mathematics, (as I actually said a couple posts up on this thread, some time ago.)

This allows me to monitor forest growth, though I haven't been real scientific about it either. I think it is random, but what JohnMCD says about it maybe being tied to turns might be true. I see a lot of the growth in the early game, but with my "hands off" policy towards the trees in the early game, that is the best time for them to grow.

I am saving more for later use than for health, though I do try to leave at least two, even in late game. But Yosho is right about it being more opportune to use them earlier. I am playing a very dangerous game now with a resurgent Catherine and "raging barbarians," with sort of a Castle-Builder strategy, (unfortunately mimicked by Catherine, on Noble, with some success,) and avoiding chops until almost the Renaissance Era has given me some powerful problems.

[Mihai]

Chopping forest means that you get the hammers now but for some cities that could mean that they remain with very few hammers after.

I was thinking to chop in such a way that I keep some tiles with (at least) 3 forest near, usually on the sides.

[SirIlya]

On Monarch I leave trees in pairs if I have flood plains to counteract or if a non-commerce city has no hills or hammer resources.

I find that even at the reduced chop, the acceleration I get from chopping early typically outweighs the health benefits for most cities.

That being said, if I have alot of forests I will save some till after Mathematics.

[sjm]

I'm all for Effective Forest Management(TM). At the beginning of the game, chopping can reap enormous benefits. You get a quicker second city, can chop an early wonder or get that library in your captial ASAP. Chopping is a good thing at the start. I'll beeline for bronze working, so that
a) I can chop
b) I know where bronze is (or if I need iron working)
c) using a+b I can send out a quick settler to grab the bronze

As long as you can build axemen, you're sorted for a long time militarily..

On the other hand, in the early game, your tile improvements are limited. Grassland forests mean that you can work the tile, whilst supporting the tile's worker and gaining a hammer in the process (as opposed to a cleared grassland tile). There's no difference between a grassland irrigated tile + a grassland hill mine or two grassland forests at the beginning of the game; except that one will give you a health bonus.
Clearing a grassland forest tile to work it only makes sense, if you're going to build a cottage there. I don't like plains forests though, so they're normally the first to go.

At its core, production is the single most powerful resource: investments in production reap long term benefits for research, income, military, culture, you name it. That's why chopping in the early game is powerful, but also why forests in the early game are powerful. Especially before you've churned out your workers to build mines! There's no point in chop rushing something that will not reap large immediate benefits- just as there is no point in keeping loads of forest around a size 3 city that has no means of working all those forest tiles and no need for such massive health benefits.

Furthermore, forests have an added bonus if you leave them - they are a sustainable resource. Selective deforestation will give you boosts to your production (when and where you need it), whilst still leaving a few forest tiles to be worked. In the early game, you almost always grow your cities using food resources (or flood plains), and cities soon reach their maximum size (happiness/health), so farming all that grassland isn't very useful until you have the means of creating specialists or can somehow handle the happiness hit from frequent pop rushing. Over time, forests will regrow, meaning you can chop the same forest several times over the course of the game. I'll chop down all jungle near forests as well, to allow the forest to grow where the jungle was. Just beware of auto-workers improving every available tile, even if no city can use them, which severely limits how forests can spread. You just need to keep enough green heartlands, as the probability of a forest growing seems to be related to the number of forest tiles it borders on. Don't just leave one tile, or you'll never see the forests regrowing

Leaving a decent amount of forest and letting it regrow can allow you to exploit the other great benefit of forests - late game chopping. If you've left enough forests outside of your cities' fat xes (I'm assuming that those in the fat x are all worked lumbermills by now), you can reap the benefits either grabbing the later wonders you still need to wrap up the game (e.g. 3 gorges dam, especially without an engineer) or in order to rush those last spaceship parts. By the time you reach the end game, any empty areas that were near a decent amount of forest will have become forest too. That can mean hundreds upon hundreds of hammers for your workers to harvest in a couple of turns And there's no point in leaving the forests for after the game is over...