Global warming

[uberloz]

Can someone answer for me why we aren't allowed to plant forests; even if only to combat Global Warming in this game?

The forests we plant don't have to provide any other usefulness than that. No hammers or food or whatever.

I just don't see how we can have technology in this game that's so advanced we can build a space ship but for some reason we just can't grasp the concept of planting trees!

[Autotropx Sox]

Maybe because terraforming a region the size of Texas on a standard map would be a task modern technology isn't up too nor is really feasible?

Believe it or not, mankind still can't make the weather.

[uberloz]

Originally posted by Autotropx Sox
Maybe because terraforming a region the size of Texas on a standard map would be a task modern technology isn't up too nor is really feasible?

Believe it or not, mankind still can't make the weather.

Ok. That doesn't make any sense.

Terraforming one tile with a forest isn't "feasible"?

But it's "feasible" to terraform one tile with a farm? Or a mine?

Civ 3 let us plant forests, why not Civ 4?

And why don't you think it would be a good way to help deal with the Global Warming you encounter in this game?

What's really funny though is when you said this: "believe it or not mankind still can't make the weather"

And yet you accept the Global Warming ( which is weather! ) that is clearly blamed entirely on the consequences of the decisions made by the A.I and human players. In other words: mankind did make the weather!

[Autotropx Sox]

Terraforming one tile with a forest isn't "feasible"?

But it's "feasible" to terraform one tile with a farm? Or a mine?

Civ 3 let us plant forests, why not Civ 4?

Civ 3 /=/ Civ 4

You aren't "terraforming" a tile by placing a mine or a farm, you are adding infrastructure on top of it.

And seriously, name for me one major historical example where humankind has reforested a huge region at least the size of Texas.

[uberloz]

Originally posted by Autotropx Sox


Civ 3 /=/ Civ 4

You aren't "terraforming" a tile by placing a mine or a farm, you are adding infrastructure on top of it.

And seriously, name for me one major historical example where humankind has reforested a huge region at least the size of Texas.

I will name the historical example of reforesting Texas as soon as you name for me the historical example of the Incas building a space ship!!

If you can suspend your disbelief long enough to accept that possibility in this game then reforestation technology won't be that much of a leap.

[greenday_234]

Interesting that no one made the "good arguement" against being able to replant forests.

It was opportunity cost. If you make forests replantable then they can't produce hammers with out being game breaking because whats to keep you from planting a stack of workers down on one square chopping, replanting chopping, replanting until you've completed you wonder.

The reason I'm guessing they chose hammers over replantation is because the player can get more out of them. You may reasonably expect to get 60 hammers out of a group of trees, but would have to plant thousands of squares in order to suck up all that Co2, something most players are extremely unlikely to do.

Heres my proposal, keep it so you can't replant trees but make it so that each square of trees you keep reduces global warming by some menial percentage. The best of both worlds. and it gives the player a little more incentive to hang on to those trees.

[Autotropx Sox]

If you can suspend your disbelief long enough to accept that possibility in this game then reforestation technology won't be that much of a leap.

Well, lets be glad Firaxis isn't creative, then.

[binTravkin]

And seriously, name for me one major historical example where humankind has reforested a huge region at least the size of Texas.

Chinese are doing a good job in their northern desert provinces.

And it makes no sense that global warming is caused by nuclear thingies. IRL it's caused by good ol' combustion.

[uberloz]

@Autotropx Sox:

Haven't you seen the in game message: A forest grows near 'x' city?

If you can accept the spontaneous growth of a forest that in your own words would be the size of Texas ( and how many times has that happened in History? ) why can't you accept the concept of people doing it on purpose?

You also seem quite at ease with the workers ability to cut down a forest the size of Texas with no problems.


Reforesting an area doesn't have to provide the tile with any hammers that can be harvested and reharvested or add any hammer to the tile itself ( especially since that would unbalance them as has been mentioned ).

But it seems like it would be a very easy and helpful feature to aid in reducing the Global Warming nuisance.

Heck, maybe to show just what an undertaking that would be we could make reforesting a tile take 20 or 30 turns with one worker ( diminishing with additional workers ).

[Autotropx Sox]

Chinese are doing a good job in their northern desert provinces.

Link

You also seem quite at ease with the workers ability to cut down a forest the size of Texas with no problems.

Yea, that's because there have been numerous past and present examples of widespread deforestation done both quickly and drawn out.

Look at Europe for example; prior rise of major civilizations like France, England, Spain, and Germany, most of Europe was blanketed by forests and a mere 500 years after, they were gone. Why? Because it is a lot easier cutting a tree down than it is creating a whole new ecosystem from scratch.

I don't think you get the complexity of what you are asking for uberloz. A forest isn't just a bunch of trees, it is an entire ecosystem which depends solely upon itself for survival and requires a lot of variables to be in place for it to survive, some of which is a relative lack of human activity, the right amount of animal activity, and an ideal climate.

Even with all of these things, it takes on the order of thousands of years for any sizable forest to grow self-sustaining and I highly doubt Humans have that kind of patience or drive to see it happen.

Conquer the Americans if they are in the game.

And don't forget to conquer those pesky British for starting it all

[gdijedi7]

Conquer France instead.

[binTravkin]

Even with all of these things, it takes on the order of thousands of years for any sizable forest to grow self-sustaining and I highly doubt Humans have that kind of patience or drive to see it happen.

Somehow it seems you're overestimating the amount of time required by an order or two.
Of course, if you plant forest where Manhattan is, it takes a thousand years to grow an ecosystem, but not because the forest and the ecosystem itself develops slowly, but because a lot of time would be needed for the soil to get clean enough for normal plant and animal life.
In fact some of the ecosystem is already in place in NY parks (never heard about eagles living in NY? See National Geographic for details).

A good example of reforestation of territories like Western Europe (where in fact forest have never been gone, it's just they form the minority of land area) is what is happening in most part of Eastern Europe (former Soviet block) - many extensively (mineral fertilizers, pesticides and whatnot in big rations) farmed areas have turned into wild grassland and bushes in just 15 years.
Give em 15-30 more years and flying over East Poland you will see a lot of forest and actually think it's a 'forest tile'.
And no, that part of Poland has never been your standard 'forest area' like many people from the west imagine Russia to be..

And another point - why the hell people are talking about 'forest in size of Texas'?
Maybe we should then talk about city in size of Texas, irrigation scheme in size of Texas and more (seriously, never heard about such a big completely irrigated area), mine-area in size of Texas (clearly there's no such place on Earth where mines form the majority of resource infrastructure and size is that of Texas), an ancient army occupying or controlling an area with size of Texas (biggest I can think of is Xerxes invading Greece, but then they never controlled more than half of it and Greece is less than 1/5 of Texas, and we're even not talking modern Greece here) and so on..

[greenday_234]

Off topic, but this thread is headed that way anyway.

One interesting thing about reforestation that people often neglect, is that these reforested areas are often sterile because the trees that are planted are all of a similar type and are planted equal distances apart, making it very difficult for the forest to continue growth and for animals to inhabit them due to the lack of a variety. So while reforestation is nice, its not a green light to hack down the worlds forests because we can just "redo" them.

[Blake]

Here in New Zealand many pine forests have been planted for lumber. The contrast between a native NZ forest and a pine forest is amazingly bleak. Pine forests are DEAD, the needles blanket the ground preventing anything else from growing. They don't provide food for the native life. And after the forest has been harvested there is a word for what the land looks like - raped.

Of course as bT mentioned it is possible and is done to cultivate new "native forests" with proper biodiversity, forests will also typically regrow if the land is left fallow (and there's some seed forest remaining), brush can spread quickly. But some trees spread very slowly (ie those which don't use any carrier mechanisms for their seeds beyond gravity) so the natural regrowth of the large forest trees can be VERY slow (and it's those large trees which provide the lumber). But man can speed up this progress by first planting the brush and then once that's established planting the trees (many trees won't grow when too exposed to the elements).

This is of course a lot of work and a long term project and there's also no profit in it, other than the +1 happy and +1 health which is I believe often the motivation in real life (reforesting is often done by volunteers).

Getting back to the topic of "Pine Forest", in CIV terms there would really be no difference between a forest planted for lumber and a workshop, both would reduce the food yield of the land while increasing hammers. The difference would be that Forest is planted on marginal land (ie hills), except for that you can just build mines. So reforestation-for-profit is really no different in gameplay terms than mines or workshops.

edit: by pine I mean conifers in general. Most forests are not actually pine but are faster growing conifers.
edit2: In their native environment the pines probably don't dominate & destroy the ecosystem to the same extent as they do in New Zealand.
A similar thing to this is the Australian Eucalyptus, in it's native habitat (ie Australia) it has pests and koala's and stuff which stunt their growth, but as an invasive alien specie they grow faster and larger, a side effect of NOT being stunted is that they are far less useful for Timber - they grow too fast and the wood cracks and stuff. Also the local wildlife (unlike Koala's) invariably can't eat Eucalyptus, resulting in "dead" forests.
Mankind does a superb job of ruining biodiversity, both intentionally and unintentionally.

[couerdelion]

It’s been mentioned earlier that the reason for not allowing reforestation is that it allows nearly unlimited production if you have enough workers. Even if replanting took 12 worker turns (post Steam), you would still only need 15 turns to generate 45 hammers. So each worker generates 3 hammers per turn and costs c 0.7gpt.

So there is no reason why you would not just spam workers just for production.

To make this slightly less of an exploit, you could allow “growing time” for a forest so that it would take several turns to grow to full size. At least this way, a city would need to keep space clear for foresting which might otherwise be used for productive tiles. But a new city could still be rushed up with a major chop-and-plant exercise so the logic would still point towards lots of workers again unless growing time for a forest were extended to something like 10 turns.

Even if growing time were 3 turns – leaving ample room for chop-and-plant strategies – this would add an extra dimension to the game which would require a more data to be held about a tile. Instead of a current forest indicator - I assume this is a “Yes” or “No” – the game would have to identify the “growth stage” of the forest and, crudely, this would double the amount of data required for tiles.