crawling forests

[Skanderbeg]

Do You crawl forests like I do regularly?
In early game I do this most for minerals, but in later game, with hybrid forests, I even use them for food or energy. Crawling them gives You great flexibility. If You get ecodamage, simply change from minerals to nuts or energy.
They are not as effective as mines or boreholes, but there's always a dry, flat square somewhere where You can plant a forest and crawl it.
Their greatest advantage is that they need few to none terraforming and don't cause ecodamage.
My last game, with Morgan, I used forest as an energypark for my superscience base. With ME, hybrid forest, and aquifer drilling, forest squares give 3 or 4 energy even without running FM or wealth. So I built hordes of formers and chased them into the forests.

[Sikander]

I definitely use crawlers on forests early. This is a major part of my industrialization process (and why I've been able to get all the SPs three times on Transcend with no crawler upgrades). Later on I may still have the odd crawler in a forest (especially a flat square with a mineral special and forest), but I don't use them as a deliberate measure. Forest can grow quite quickly, and is one of the best anti-fungus measures you can take. Once the forest grow over a square, you can reclaim it (along with 5 Mins) for any purpose you like.

I usually have a two stage terraforming process. The first phase begins as soon as my first former is built. This is where I road and forest every square in every base radius. Phase two begins when I have the WP, and it involves the building of mines and boreholes and condensor farms to give better (and crawler friendly) yields to my base squares. This phase can take awhile, as it is slow going until hordes of 'clean' formers are available.