IFE - Infinite Forest Exploitation

[Drago Sinio]

There is an automatic clear forest command, Shift-F, though you would have to plant manually. That might reduce the micro management. Also if you have four workers assisgned to lumberjack one city, you could save a little micro management by having them each work a different square. That way you only need to issue orders every other turn, while still getting ten shields per turn.

Lawrence of Arabia: after you get a certain tech: ( replaceable parts? ) an industrious worker takes only two turns to plant or clear forest, not 8.

[eMarkM]

Now I have something for my hoards of idle workers to do. Seems a bit of a cheat, but relatively minor. Certainly building your infrastructure takes priority. I'm currently playing a modern age, continent wide empire and my most northern cities are doing the one shield/turn thing. And my workers have nothing to do but be on polluton patrol as I'm all built out.

If you do Shift-A (automate w/o destroying previous improvement) and your worker goes to a city and does nothing it means you've completely built out your infrastructure than I think IFE is a fine way to get production going in the one shield corruption plagued cities.

e

[barefootbadass]

I think you guys are wrong, that firaxis put these options in the game and foresaw this 'exploitation'. Look at the evidence supporting this claim: you clear forest and get 10 shields, you can plant new forest, and the 10 shields from clearing can't help with a wonder or forbidden palace(what about other small wonders?) or normal palace.

Also, once you have your 'lumberjacks' in place, it doesn't really take that much micromanagement(at least timewise, maybe your fingers get tired, you can quickly assign tasks to them with the keyboard). While your cities are limited to size 12 you can use this strat to work the other squares. Remember, the worker is a population unit. I do agree that the fact that it is all but essential to do this because of corruption being ridiculous is a problem.

Another thought, while corruption is so ridiculous, it seems that Militaristic and Industrious civs are going to be choice for the faster workers to IFE better and the increased likelyhood of getting leaders to rush things that can't benefit from IFE. I'm currently using the french, but after this game I may go to using the Militaristic Industrious civ. My elite units have won soo many battles and not one leader has been generated.

[friendj]

I just wanted to add in my two cents...

I am persia and tend towards the laying of railroad on every square... since i am in late game (1700 AD), and its hard to declare war, i have railroaded the whole place and have close to 100+ workers left to use...

so i lumberjack - at even 20 workers to a square... 2 to clear, 2 to plant, gains me 50 shields... i can force produce libraries and aqueducts in corrupt cities and newly conquered cities. i was even able to forcebuild a cathedral. cathedrals are around 160 shields needed - the force build took A SINGLE TURN with half my workers...

Remember 4 workers = 10 shields...
32 workers = 160 shields = cathedral

Compare this to the 3 X shields in gold for forcebuilding- which is 480 gold... those 32 workers only cost 32 gold... over a 90% savings in cost.

I just have to say that lumberjacking is more micro managment but much much cheaper than trying to forcebuild an improvement.

[halley]

I think a way to fix IFE would be to make shields from harvested forest subject to corruption, just like regular production. Who is to say our little lumberjack friend isn't going to walk away with some of the extra lumber himself?

[SirSebastian]

hmm...

I'd be willing to bet that this "seems" better than it is.

a) Someone proved that is IS effected by corruption

b) Aren't you paying PER TURN for that worker in gold? Why not forget the workers and make extra per turn and then buy the stuff? You won't get a headache, and you probably won't lose that much production if you're in a high corruption city.

c) That being said... the best point on this thread is that you shouldn't be able to create old growth forests more quickly just because you have a bunch of people planting trees.

[Mister_X]

I think a way to fix IFE would be to make shields from harvested forest subject to corruption, just like regular production. Who is to say our little lumberjack friend isn't going to walk away with some of the extra lumber himself?

I want to see that in real life. A group of lumberjacks feel that the company isnt giving them their due. So they cut down an ancient redwood, tie it to their chevy and haul it away.

I guess that would supply a few years worth of firewood. Bit tough on the car though.

[Grunthex]

Re: hmm...

Originally posted by SirSebastian
I'd be willing to bet that this "seems" better than it is.

a) Someone proved that is IS effected by corruption

I must have missed that proof. In my games, when a forest is cut down, the 10 shields are added directly into the production box, not that turn's production. Hence incorruptible.

b) Aren't you paying PER TURN for that worker in gold? Why not forget the workers and make extra per turn and then buy the stuff? You won't get a headache, and you probably won't lose that much production if you're in a high corruption city.

Not if you're using captured workers. You don't pay the little suckers. Best possible use for Industrious civs is the nice slave workers they provide ya.

c) That being said... the best point on this thread is that you shouldn't be able to create old growth forests more quickly just because you have a bunch of people planting trees.

This is true. But while we can...

[Rascalking]

SoulAssassin and some others have indeed struck upon a very useful solution for combating waste in the empire. With as little as 5-6 workers you can easily contribute 10 shields toward your city every turn.
The efficiency of the strategy increases with the industriousness of your particular civilization, your level of development (as workers get more efficient with certain techs), the use of captured workers, the level of corruption around the particular city, and the opportunity cost of the tile.
In my game on the huge adapted Civ2 map, my American Civ starting in America (by chance!) had colonies in Japan and Korea that despite my best efforts could only manage one shield per turn but with two settlers I planted in one turn, cut in the next and got 10 shields every other turn. It was the difference between getting a temple in 12 turns or in 60! There was no corruption effect. This clearly seen in cities generating just one useful shield per turn as you watch your completion time tick off ten turns per exploit.
It was also extremely effective having captured Aztecs deveop all the cities left behind in remote Canadian tundra. Too many workers with nothing to do by this point in the game, too large and thus corrupt, an empire, too important resources to raze the cities, and too risky to leave them undeveloped and low in culture.
IFE in this case worked fantasticly.
It's a shame that most of my time late in the game (Cultural Victory in 1975 ironicly) was spent planting and lumbering, though. That's not much fun.
So sombody please tame waste in the first patch!

Rascalking

[Sava]

An idea I have for fixing IFE would be to create a variable called "fertility". Here's how it would work.

In real life, deforested squares are not as fertile as other squares due to increased erosion from the lack of foliage. This variable would be assigned to each terrain square and would decrease or increase food and/or production. If you deforest a jungle, the grassland would not produce as much food as a naturally occuring grassland.

You could also add some new technologies and/or buildings that would effect fertility.

The way fertility would affect IFE. As a player plants and deforests, fertility would lower the amount of shields yielded from deforesting. Each time the player does the IFE cycle, the fertility goes down. But over time, if the player doesn't exploit the area, the fertility would slowly go up. This would create a new environmental aspect of the game.

In addition to fertility, I think workers should be given the "resource crawler" ability in SMAC. Cities in real life, especially in the modern age, don't harvest all their food and production from their immediate "radius". If there is a moderately sized piece of land in the middle of a continent, the player should be able to just send workers to that area to farm and send food to a target city. This would enable real life mega cities to be created and it would make the game more fun. This could adversely be a solution to the corruption problem. If the player is allowed to lay claim to an area, then building cities to extend the cultural "claw" wouldn't lead to widespread corruption due to too many cities. Cities could be placed solely by important resources and then the surrounding areas could be "claimed" by the player. Maybe a feature could be added to the diplomacy model that would allow the AI and/or other players to recognize the territorial claims. This would prevent "settler" races to control large sections of land. It would also prevent the AI from putting cities in the swiss cheese style holes in your empire early in the game.

[Sava]

By IFEing in the beginning, I start the unit per turn mania early. It snowballs with each worker/city I capture. By producing a mobile unit per turn per city, I can conquer everyone. When MP comes out, I will have perfected it.

[DanS]

It's better to liquidate your workers for military units. In deity, you don't have the luxury of time that it takes to build up this kind of IFE'ing.

Good luck.

[SandMonkey]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin
By IFEing in the beginning, I start the unit per turn mania early. It snowballs with each worker/city I capture. By producing a mobile unit per turn per city, I can conquer everyone. When MP comes out, I will have perfected it.

Don't you think that humans will be more careful with their workers? Especially if they know they're playing an IFE'er? Either that, or they're going to be doing the same thing.

[Sava]

Originally posted by SandMonkey



Don't you think that humans will be more careful with their workers? Especially if they know they're playing an IFE'er? Either that, or they're going to be doing the same thing.

Humans will make more mistakes than the AI. They always do.

[Strollen]

This isn't an exploit

I am pretty sure Firaxis intended forest to be used as a way of rushing production.

From the Civ3 manual Rush Jobs
To rush a job without using either of these costly methods, you normally have two options [ disband units]... The other methods is to clear forests in the city 's radius. The resources gaine from this action go straight into the contrstuction project.