Where have all the forests gone?

[Master Zen]

Hola,

In a previous thread there was the issue of why jungles were pretty much useless, as well as forests after railroads. I have done much experimenting and there appears to be no way to make the AI keep a balance of irrigation and forests. I tried doing the following:

1) Mining = 0 for plains and grasslands. Result: The AI chops em down anyway and irrigates the base terrain resulting in very large and unproductive AI cities.

2) Forest shields = 3. The AI starts planting forests in all plains and grasslands.

Since I don't like the look of mines in forests, the only other solution is to eliminate the "clear forest" ability. I wish Firaxis would do something to correct this, maybe for example giving railroad bonuses to the forests without having to improve them. This never happened in the previous Civs.

Anybody have any ideas or comments?

[Mad Bomber]

Raguil:

try reducing the # of shields you get for chopping it down. instead of 10 try 4 or even 2. This should make the AI think about chopping down any old forest it sees. Just make sure you up the stats for cash and pop rushing to compensate for the lost shields from the forest.

[Master Zen]

thanx, MB, it didn't occur to me that the AI chops down forests for their shields.

I actually have pop rushing to 40 instead of the default 20. I still leave the cash at the default 4, but I guess I better change it to 2 then.

[steven8r]

raguil_79,

I think that you can add bonuses to forrests w/ RR in the editor--IIRC.

[Master Zen]

Really? where? (gonna see...)

[Centauri18]

I didn't know you could do that.

[Master Zen]

Double-checked, couldn't find it. I think those things are hard-coded.

[WarpStorm]

It's not there. RRs only affect improvements (and forests aren't considered that. Got to cut 'em down in the name of progress.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by steven8r
raguil_79,

I think that you can add bonuses to forrests w/ RR in the editor--IIRC.

You can only do this by allowing forests to be improved (e.g. mined) which would make the forest look ugly and make 'em way too powerful

[HAND]

One bonus about forest during industrial age and later is that they can't be pillaged or destroyed by bombardment...Important considering my enemies tend to get bombers before me!