When should you Chop Resources? - Civilization 6 Tutorial

hello everybody bradley here if you hang out in civilization online circles like the twitch stream that we have at twitch.tv van bradley link in the description or youtube videos or literally anywhere else where someone else that's not you is playing civ you might have heard the phrase before chop your resources or i'm going to chop this resource or i'm going to chop this to get that and i had a youtube comment the other day and i could not find it but it was very very funny because i'd done a video and i'm like i'm just going to chop all of this copper and someone in the comments was like i have no idea why vb is telling me to chop all the copper but if he says that we should chop the copper then i'm going to do it and then i thought well i should make a video kind of explaining why a chopping your resources is important b you should do it and see what potential benefits you will get out of it so i've set up this game here specifically for this tutorial so some of the decisions i've made are not good decisions i've just set it up on abundant resources so we have lots of choppable things on this map to talk about the different reasons why we might want to take that approach for those of you who don't know what chopping is at all though basically what it means is using a builder to get rid of a bonus resource on the map for some sort of kind of short-term one-time payment of stuff instead of a more long-form over-the-game kind of accumulation of that same stuff for instance if i take this builder right now without without any rhyme or reason and i uh build a quarry right here i will get plus one production then if my city works that tile for 10 turns that'll be 10 production or 15 production for 15 turns for every turn i work that tile i will then gain that one extra production thus giving me one extra production per turn my other option though is to harvest the resource most people call it chopping because you can chop the woods down and it's just something i say for all resources but you can call it harvesting the resources as well and if i harvest the resource i get 36 production right now now obviously if you're just doing some quick maths in your head if i just build a quarry here and then play the game for 37 more turns which is going to happen it's only turned 48 surely that is a better mathematical way to play the game than harvesting the resources for this short term payment and well mathematically you'd probably be right if we were going purely on the maths and the yields over time it probably isn't worth harvesting or chopping the resources a whole lot especially early on in the game like this when building this quarry you know over the course of the game is going to give you more than 36 production so why should we do it that's a great question before we get to the answer though i'm doing this out of order before we get to the answer for those of you who don't play steve often you might be new to the game it's all good how you unlock the ability to harvest these resources is slightly different based on the resource most of it happens in the super early game here if you go down to mining uh you can chop the woods and harvest the copper if you come up to masonry you can harvest stone and if you come over to bronze working you can chop the rain forest down and that's kind of your trifecta of early things you need for maximum chop ability or harvestability chop ability harvester what do you guys call it let me know in the comments always worth mentioning real quick that you can't chop luxury resources or strategic so i can't get rid of the horses i can't get rid of the dyes i can't get rid of the coffee over here it's just the stone i can get rid of the copper as a bonus resource i can get rid of that if you've got rice kicking around i can get rid of the rice i can get rid of this maze here bonus resource is good luxuries or strategics bad now there are a few key reasons to chop tiles and there are so many specific instances but i won't be able to get to all of them but i just want to break down a few of the big reasons why chopping resources is very very valuable now this isn't to say you should chop every single one all the time but just knowing what the chop does and why it's important is going to help you in your civ games make good decisions around your bonus resources so the first reason really really quickly is just you're not working the tile anyway if i'm growing this city here i have five population i have one two three four five six seven eight potentially potentially nine tiles that are better than this one right here so before i even get to this tile i would need a population of 10 to even start to work it and by then i may have grown up to some of these tiles and put some lumber mills down or whatever and so i'm not working this tile anyway if i just look here i'm not really working it i got a couple of more tiles i'm gonna work so hey why not just why not just click this button chop the stone get the 36 production and be on my way that reason doesn't come along too often but it does come along you just got a big city there's some useless tiles anyways we'll get rid of what's on the useless tiles for some kind of benefit the next reason though is specific to wonders wonders especially ones you really really need right so we really really need the oracle i've made my whole game plan around it this could be the oracle this could be the river valley this could be the hanging gardens whichever wonder you have picked you are placing it down and you really need it wonders are first come first serve only one person can get this and presumably especially if you play on deity presumably other people in this game are going to be going after this wonder so what can i do to make sure i get this wonder more quickly than everybody else in this game because once it's gone it's gone i don't get a redo if i if i miss the wonder i miss it well we can chop our resources and get all this production so while mathematically it might make sense over the very very very long term to just build this quarry here get this plus one production and be on my way and end the game with a 100 or whatever extra production this 36 production right now can be very valuable to secure me something i really need that i'm only going to get one chance at acquiring the oracle takes 290 production for us to throw down right now that is 16 turns if i chop this resource here and get that 36 production it is going to take turns off the oracle it's gonna chop right into it that took three turns off the oracle so yes i'm giving up over the long term slightly more production but what i'm gaining is the almost near certainty that i'm gonna be able to get the wonder that i want and the oracle is a million bajillion times more valuable than a quarry we are now here at the end of our oracle production i'm gonna chop one more stone just to make sure i get it if i leave this two turns it opens it up for someone else on the map to take this oracle away from me which i do not want and again the oracle is so much more valuable than the quarries that i could be putting down here so chopping this stone here is going to be awesome it's going to give us 43 production this time as you go through the game as you research more techs the amount of production you get per chop goes up so late game you'll be earning more production per chop than you would in the early game here but we're just going to chop that out you can do some quick maths if you want to make sure your chop goes towards it we have 264 production here we need 290 uh 43 will make up that difference so if we just harvest this resource but bing bada boom we've got the oracle we don't have to wait to the end of the turn we've taken two more turns off the oracle and we've secured it from our enemies while it takes an additional builder charge which can be a little bit of a burden on your empire if you were chopping things on hills so i didn't get the option right here but we did chop this a stone out of a hill right here if you really do need that production back you can also just throw a mind down there and at least make up the difference and be even all things considered so if you are doing this in a low production city and you get rid of something on a hill you can always just throw mine down to get some of that production back and it won't feel too bad the exact same logic applies to woods though if you're standing on woods like this they are going to give you production for chopping them as well remove feature woods 43 production the same logic applies here if we are removing this for production it's probably for a wonder or something else that we want typically the things you want to chop for production for are wonders because there's only one in the game and they are worth so much more than whatever it is you're chopping and settlers early on if you are chopping for settlers early on that's very very valuable there's only so much space on the map and the more of that you're taking up the earlier the better it is for you and so i would chop quite a bit of stuff to get some early sellers on the map just to make sure we are taking over as much space as possible as quickly as possible getting a city down early is more valuable than a quarry or a woods or whatever it is you're getting rid of it's important to note that not all resources give you the same thing some of them will give you food like this rice over here some of them like this copper right here will give you gold so right now if we harvest this that'll be 86 gold and if we put the mine down it'll be plus one production so this isn't really a one for one kind of trade here right we're not trading production for production like last time how i usually make this calculation though is if i chop this resource right here i can still put the mine down for the production right i can still get some of the production or at least break even with the production but this 86 gold right now is so valuable to just getting my early game infrastructure down if i harvest this here for the gold i can come here and i can buy a granary in one of these cities i guess i'm building a granary in every city kind of by accident here maybe i can come in and grab a builder maybe i can grab an archer to clear a barb camp having that big lump sum of gold that i can just spend maybe i can get that chop was enough to get four delegations with all of the sieves that i meet in this game maybe i can get a slinger upgrade there are so many things that one lumps of of gold is going to be more valuable than the copper right so getting rid of the copper for the gold that i can then use on literally anything in the game is more valuable than the copper tile which i can now just put a mine on and get the production anyway the next reason you might chop something out of your empire is that you simply want to put something on the tile but don't want to miss out on the chop anyway if i were to go right here and i want to build this theater square let's say i want to build it right here on top of this woods i click it and i go and build my theater square it's just going to get rid of the woods it's just going to get rid of them and i'm not gonna get any production so i might as well harvest the woods get that 48 production and at least have that in in the bank to spend on whatever it is i want to spend it on at this point it's important to know that if you are shopping for production it just applies itself to whatever is in the queue next so if you are not working on anything right now i've completed the granary i'm not working on anything if i chop this woods right now which we know we want to do because we want to put the theater square here and i want to get the 48 production instead of just missing out so we are going to chop the woods here nothing happened there was nothing to take turns off like we just had with the oracle so where does it go it goes into the next thing that you pick whichever it is so all of these were at eight turns to build now they are at five turns to build because all of this chop production just goes into whatever is next in the queue which means in this case the theater square we want to build is awesome but you can you can what you can do is you can actually take things out of the queue if i want to chop this woods but i don't want it to go to the ancient walls i'll finish the ancient walls later what i really wanted to go towards is a government plaza so i want to chop this woods and i wanted to go for the government plaza i will remove the ancient walls so now they will not go to the ancient walls i will chop this out for the production as you can see if i go back in i can finish the walls in one turn now i can apply that production to the walls i can also apply it to the government plaza here and have that be that and and then i can choose then if i go back here now the ancient walls let's give it a turn the ancient wall should be back at eight or six yeah there they are they're back at six they're no longer at one because i've used the production for the government plaza instead of the ancient walls and then when i'm done by government plaza i can just swap it back like this or i can swap the walls back early finish them up and then get the government plaza anyway so that was a quick little bit on how to apply the production to the thing you want instead of the thing you're working on another more niche reason we may want to chop something on the map is to gain appeal and this is an example of one of the situations that comes up in all kinds of games where you may want to decide to chop something on the map that i can't cover in this video but appeal is another one that happens uh quite often if we're taking earth goddess if we're trying to build national parks those types of things i take a look at my appeal right now this rainforest is giving a minus one appeal to all the surrounding tiles so this tile right here has an appeal average of minus one if i were to remove or chop this rainforest here this should now have an appeal of zero and it does have an appeal average of zero so if i chop all these rainforests around these tiles their appeal will go up maybe i'll get my earth goddess bona earth goddess bonus maybe i can put a preserve down maybe i can put a national park down whatever it is that's an example of a chop that we're just doing to gain something that's not production that's not anything else the bonus though is we also do get the production still anyways so now i can apply it to an amphitheater or whatever else i would like also worth noting that rainforests give you food and production half of each it's not as much production as woods but it's like a little bit of production and a little bit of food and then you grow and then you get to build things and it's awesome basically what i hope you take away from this video is that chops are very valuable they seem kind of counter-intuitive at the beginning especially because they cost builder charges and there is a cost to get builders builders are not free there is a cost to get them and you will need lots of builders to complete your chops so use them wisely but definitely use them you should be chopping in every single civ game to some degree use it to gain those wonders that you need use it to gain the settlers that you need early on use it to get the gold whatever it is just be very very careful that you're not overdoing it you don't want to take your whole empire and just erase everything on it for the sake of chopping i'm pretty happy where i'm at right like i don't need to chop this stone right here right away if i don't have a lot of production options maybe i look at these woods here and i go hey i shouldn't chop those i'm gonna use my builder chargers instead to build lumber mills later and give myself more production but when i look at these two quarries right here i have so many options i can put lumber mills here for production i can put an industrial zone down i can put lumber mills all over the place i don't need these two stone so i'm gonna get rid of these they're in a good spot i can get production i can put some districts down these stones are definitely getting chopped this copper is definitely getting chopped these bananas up here maybe not getting chopped maybe i'll build a plantation on them instead of chopping them and get some really nice yields on those tiles so not everything needs to be chopped just because it exists not every bonus resource needs to be removed but utilizing chops for specific needs in your game can be very very helpful specifically acquiring the things you need wonder settlers whatever those things are and also for for putting down districts or putting down other things that take tiles right we know we're gonna put a theater square here the woods was there we might as well chop it and get that production instead of just having it be wasted by putting the theater square right on top of it now there's no way for me to go into every situation that chopping is useful for or terrible for or whatever in this whole entire game but i hope what this video did do is give you a little bit of an overview of just what chopping is kind of how to do it the fact that you'll need builders to do it but what some of the benefits are because it does seem kind of counterintuitive and i hope you left this video going hey in my next view i'm going to try chopping up that wonder i'm going to try chopping out that settler i'm going to try chopping something up before putting a district on top and just see how that improves your gameplay because it will improve it again just be a little cautious this is not a hall pass to just chop everything on every map for no reason it's got to be specific there's got to be a reason for it but mostly a lot of the stone a lot of the copper a lot of these kind of extra bonus resources that you're not going to need some of the woods some of the rainforest they can be removed to give you another advantage that isn't having those things on those tiles if you enjoyed this video make sure to check out all the links in the description we have a twitch stream you should check out as well we hang out there we stream a few times a week it's awesome make sure to say thank you to anvars thank you anvars for editing this video thank you to you for paying on vars to edit this video let me know what you thought in the comments hit that like button hit that subscribe button thank you so much for watching and we will see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: VanBradley

Views: 160,142

Keywords: vb, vanbradley, civilization 6, civ 6, civilization vi, civ vi, how to play civ 6, how to win at civilization 6, civilization 6 tutorial, tutorial, civ 6 win, how to play civilization 6, tips for winning civ 6, tips to win in civ 6, how to increase difficulty, how to play deity, advanced tips, deity, early game, opening game, civ 6 tutorial, chops, chopping, harvests, harvesting, woods, builders, wonders, copper, bonus resources

Id: 0138KCCHu20

Length: 15min 33sec (933 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 04 2021