IFE variant

[IronSpam]

I don’t know whether anyone’s written about this, but here’s a variant of IFE. I guess it’s the Infinite Forest Exploitation without the Exploitation.

I sent fifteen to twenty of my “French forest guerillas” (Industrious workers) across into English territory. We were at peace and had a right of passage treaty.

Just for kicks I started foresting their developed land , and it worked. They didn’t consider it an act of war or even show concern about the wave of workers.

If you‘ve got two industrial workers, they can get the job done in a tile per turn. These pairs can easily leapfrog over each other tile by tile if the target nation has roads or rails everywhere, which is generally the case by the Industrial Age. In about five or six turns, I completely forested in an area of five or six cities.

Some time later, all of those English cities had starved down from size twelve to between five and seven. I can’t be sure whether all of it was due to starvation; they were fighting a war with Babylonians at the same time. They just started to clear the forests the last time I looked.

Any idea whether this shrinkage will contribute to the likelihood of city defection?

I know it’s cheating, but if you‘re not at war, make sure you’re winning the peace.

[Velociryx]

LMAO! That's priceless! I love it! You could starve their cities down to nothing!

::shakes head::

An exploit, clearly, but too funny!

-=Vel=-

[wunder]

I LOVE IT!!!!!

[Excelsior]

That's hilarious!

I did the same thing in reverse once. The AI plopped down about five cities in the vast arctic wastes north of my empire. I hadn't bothered to colonize this area but I didn't want the AI to have it either, so I sent a horde of workers across the border and chopped down all of the forests in their territory. Since the only thing left was tundra, it made those cities totally worthless. Eventually all of the ciities joined me via culture at which point I replanted all of the forests.

[David Weldon]

Ahhh, c'mon guys, this isn't an exploit. Think of it as ... um ...

A really aggressive landscape artist who doesn't speak their language and therefore doesn't do what they wanted...

Or a wonderfully successful greenpeace lobby in the foreign nation's legislature...

Or an offer by your country to help with their city planning. Since it's governmental aid, it's SNAFU, of course...


P.S. since they won't even get any benefit from chopping down the trees a second time, this will be particularly devious after the patch...