a lot of Jungle near the capital

Captain Pugwash

Warlord
Joined
Feb 10, 2001
Messages
243
Location
England
I would be interested to know how you guys handle this situation which happens quite often....

I start a new game; my initial position is OK but it contains some jungle squares. I build my first city there. After a few turns of exploration I can see that to the south of my city there is a vast expanse of jungle. To the north is OK and I can build some decent cities there.

As you know, the cities close to the capital are very important because they get the least corruption and become powerhouses later so I build some cities to the north, east and west. But what to do in the south where there is all jungle? Here are the options ...

1. Build a city close to the capital in the middle of jungle squares. It wont have much corruption but needs a truck load of jungle clearance to be made into anything. Will be weak for quite a while

2. Build a southern city beyond the jungle where there is a better location with grassland and hill...a better location but it will be a one-shield city because distance from the capital will cause corruption

3. Dont build a city at all to the south. Trouble with this is that nearby civs will build there for sure and a prime location near the capital is wasted

4. Abandon the game and restart hoping for better start position

What do you do in this situation ?
 
i would choose 1 since the jungle will be cleared sooner or later and also helps a bit in production
i think this really isn't a very big problem
 
My suggestions is to build two cities very close to the capital--one square away on the diagonal or two squares on the straight. This gives you a lot of early production from the two suburbs. It gives good defense if there are hostiles nearby. I would not bother building a city in the middle of the jungle until much later. You have better opportunities to the North and to the far south. Avoid building low production, no visible resource cities until maybe after you get six cities or more. Visible luxuries, horses, iron are top priorities. Only after I get these, do I build cities just to claim land in hopes of about future resources (coal, uraninium, rubber).

When you do build to the far south bring a couple of defensive units (spearman). There is no way to defend that city if an early expansionist comes looking for hide.
 
with bad starting locations if you can bothered playing at a disadvantage for a while try and conquer some areas with better resources and expand out of the lousy areas

once you got some areas in good terrain consider relocating the capitol

to be honest i often relocate areas fore switching governments to optimize production anyways

a cheap way is set up bout 2-3 cities and mass produce miltary units to get/find some good terrain then disband the cities (make pop 2 and build settlers (or pop and rush)

that way when the settlers set up in the new area the capitol automatically moves

it just means you tend to lose 20-40 turns to the other civs which on the harder lvls may mean your options are severly limited (more satisfying though when you manage to win/survive with this kinda handicap though)
 
I'd do number 2 but just to keep the jungle for yourself. After all jungles can hold some nice resources :).
 
I'm always finding coal in jungle lands. Hasn't failed yet. Every game I have played with jungle, coal ends up in a few squares. Maybe I'm just lucky though.

I never would start over (ok, sometimes I do). I think of it as kind of a nice challenge to over come jungle land and become victorious. :)
 
I had something similar happen to me. I was playing a regular Pangea with 7 rival civs. I got stuck in a crappy start with water not too far to the north, jungle and mountains to the south and other civs encroaching on all sides of me. What I did was quickly build cities on all the good spots, then moved and built stuff in the jungles and mountains. I built up a good size force with my good cities and used it to fight a war with the Russians so I could expand to the west. I continued fighting short, profitable wars until I had whiped out the Russians and Germans and taken over the entire western portion of the pangaea.

Another thing you should note is that if you don't build in the jungle, someone else will. In the aforementioned game it pissed me off to no end that the Germans and Russians would constantly walk settlers through my territory and plant cities in every available space.
 
Another thing you should note is that if you don't build in the jungle, someone else will. In the aforementioned game it pissed me off to no end that the Germans and Russians would constantly walk settlers through my territory and plant cities in every available space.

Yes, that is one of the biggest BULLBLEEP parts of the game, this diarrhea of settlers invading my territory and not leaving. Any open tile they will settle on - including tundra, desert, and jungle.

We ALL HATE IT. Next to Culture Flipping, I despise that most about the game.

That is why settling in jungle is necessary - to stop others from doing that. And once they get their towns up they start bulding roads. . . roads that could carry troops into your heartland in a war.
 
Moderator Action: Troyens, you've been warned about threadjacking. This is a 'How do I overcome' not an excuse to go off on the evils of Sid and his cronies. One more offense and you'll be off for a week.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

On a more relevent note I usually send my settler scurrying for better terrain if such a situation pops up :) There's usually some nearby uneless you're playing an archipelago setting.
 
Originally posted by Troyens



We ALL HATE IT. Next to Culture Flipping, I despise that most about the game.

I find that Culture Flipping is one of the things I love most about the game, just wish it were more powerfull... I guess it's probably because I devote a fair amount of production to cultural improvements, and I use it to peacefully conquer those rival cities that build in the annoying spots. All I do is put a city 2-3 spaces away and build up to cultural improvements ASAP. By the time you expand cultural influence a 2nd time, the city will probably have switched to you (if they aren't heavy culture builders themselves...). I've never lost a city yet to culture, though I haven't played past Warlord, so maybe that's it :)

- Windwalker
 
Monarch and below, I try to work with it. Explore fast, and resign myself to slower development and kissing ass for most of the game. It is actually fun for me to be disadvantaged.

Emporer level. I hit START NEW GAME! It is no longer fun to be disadvantaged. It just means I'm going to be kissing ass all game if I'm 'unlucky', and being slaughtered fairly early if I'm 'lucky'.
 
Depends on which civ you are using. If you have an industrious civ, spend a lot of workers to clear jungle. It's 12 turns a square, and then you have beautiful grassland to speed up growth (allowing you to build more workers...).
I have seen a lot of early jungle cities go well past 30 pop in the 1850's :D

So I would settle the jungle, if you are not in a hurry.

Once, I was able to build the iron work in a jungle city : coal is mostly in jungle.

loki
 
I'm no Civ III expert, but here's what I would do...if my capital looked to be the kind of city that might be high in culture (even higher than your typical capital), then I'd try to build one city on either the east or west side of the jungle. And I'd make that city high in culture. Then, when the AI moves in, you can flip their cities with your superior culture (at best) or get a quick trade route (at worst.)

Your mileage may vary. :)
 
I think you really have to go for number 1. That city will grow slowly, but will eventually become a powerhouse. I would assign 4 workers to do nothing but clear jungle in that area. If you focus them all on one square, they will clear it in 6 turns, which will pretty much keep up with the growth of the city anyway.
 
It really depends on three factors:
- what size map you're on
- what level you're playing
- how many good cities can you get to the (in this case) North

If you're playing on a small-sized map and at Emperor plus, restart unless there are at least 5 really good city sites available and you really like a challenge, at least that is what I do (oh shame). Being industrious would be another factor since jungles are not nearly so intimidating with industrious workers, which mine aren't. If you're going to give it a shot, then the advice on tight packing the initial cities is good.

On a bigger map, you have more time (and lower distance/# cities corruption penalties at the start) so a bad starting position can be recovered from. I still shamefully quit on huge + maps when I get the jungle to the South, desert to the North, Mountains to the West and sea to the East starting position, otherwise I give it a shot (one of the reasons I like playing fully expanded maps). In the case you outline, I would found my key builder cities (settler and worker farms plus unit factories) to the North and then build some cities south of the jungle to form a continuous culture barrier around the jungle which you can then clear and settle at your own rate and gain the benefits of all the strategic resources that will eventually appear there - as well as the luxury resources which are almost always found in a large patch of jungle.

As for the flame reply, well the culture flip punishes low culture/high warfare styles and as my style is the opposite, well I think it is just great. And for the settlers, I am glad the AI gives me a real expansion challenge, one of the real weaknesses of previous Civs. As well, 'bad' terrain has a higher probability of containing luxury and strategic resources than 'good' terrain, so the AI settling there is actually intelligent behaviour that we humans should emulate.
 
I built my capital and during the exploration of the sourrounding areas, I found the jungle, not a large one and with nothing in it so I just decided to use it as a natural barrier. I did build two suburbs at the edge of the for two reasons.


1) prevent opposing civs to plob a city there and

2) it was a three tile isthmus with a lake in the middle. Kind of like my own little panama canal. Turned into a great strategic location since the southern tip of my continent was a nice trip and to go around the northern tip was just unrealistinc

During the course of the game, the Zulus and Chinese did move into the jungle but by that time, I had three cities south of the jungle and my culture so so strong that they quickly came over to the dark side:satan:

I never restart a map unless I am in the Tundra.
 
In this situation I would take advantage of the fact that you can build a city on a jungle tile and clear it straight away.

Therefore I would build cities at the northern edge of the jungle, so that the city square and 2-3 other squares are available straight away, but the culture borders stretch 2 squares into the jungle.

At the same time, I would do the same at the southern edge of the jungle, to stop the AI moving into the area. Hopefully the jungle isn't too wide, and just building a temple in each city would be enough to culturally bridge an area of jungle 6 squares wide.

Then just improve the jungle suares when you get a chance - I used to avoid jungle squares, but now find they are worth the extra effort in improving them.
 
I have made a game as you. But I have choice another option. Expansion everywhere. My capital build the first warrior that be used to explore the territory and after that my capital build only settler for long time. In the second city I have built a barrack and this town has made my defences. When the third town is edified I build two settler by town and after I develop the city. My capital have returned to normal activity as build barracks after the 5th town.
For the implantation it is simple. The first settler producing by the capital is strategically placed. After the others are placed on north south east and west.

In my game jungle was on south between Zulus and me. So I have implanted cities to win territory against Zulus. After workers have transformed jungle into grassland. It was long (Zulus were annexed that it was not finished) but finally I obtained an territory with more megalopolis (result of grassland).
This city type (grassland everywhere around it) made trade cities that are great resources of money and conscripts. I loll on these cities to make money and I made other cities wich are great producer. All other cities are, for me, minor cities that can be negliged. But don't think it is the majority It's an exception that can find explication in territory occupation.

The third type of cities that I use are strategic towns. But that it is my secret so I let you thing about this third option.... ;)
 
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