Clearing Jungle

[DanaLea]

First of all, I know it's not called Jungle in Cvi6, it's "rainforest". But I still clear it.

Trying to figure out why I hate jungle, I think it goes back to an earlier version of the game where jungle caused sickness and clearing it was always the best idea.

I still do that.

I clear all rainforests. I'll remove it from under bananas before building a plantation, and cocoa too. I especially like to clear it for young cities as it adds significantly to the production of that monument or granary and often times a population point too.

But in my current game, I'm playing against America and Teddy is a naturalist as his second personality trait and keeps getting mad at me for clearing jungle.

So... give me reasons to keep it. And why I might want to clear it and when?

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

it gives +1 food and does nothing bad and you can build plantations and uranium mines on top of it

 

[stinkubus]

Gems and ivory also potentially come on rainforest tiles. These are some of the best early tiles in the game, and I figure if I'm working them from the beginning of the game the extra yield compensates for what you lose by not harvesting.

 

[CorneliusBrutus]

I'm not a high level player, but my stance is something like "keep it around unless you need to get rid of it". Which is to say, it's not doing any harm to anybody sitting there (not like the sickness problem you mentioned from in previous Civ, think it was IV), but if you want to clear it to put down another improvement, go ahead. The scenarios where you would want to keep it are if you built a campus specifically there for the adjacency bonuses, or you've got a shot at building Chichen Itza.

 

[UWHabs]

I'm not a high level player, but my stance is something like "keep it around unless you need to get rid of it". Which is to say, it's not doing any harm to anybody sitting there (not like the sickness problem you mentioned from in previous Civ, think it was IV), but if you want to clear it to put down another improvement, go ahead. The scenarios where you would want to keep it are if you built a campus specifically there for the adjacency bonuses, or you've got a shot at building Chichen Itza.

I mostly don't want to "waste" builder charges. So I'll basically never clear one if it's under another resource that I can use (bananas, for example), mostly because, hey, it's a free +1 food.

But I will plow the rest of them. If it's on a hill, once you get apprenticeship I'd rather a mine on the tile usually. Later on, I'll often use them for farming regions if that works out. And if it's just some random jungle tile that I can't use for anything else, then I just leave it. Remember, your city can only work so many tiles - no need to improve ones that won't get worked.

 

[CorneliusBrutus]

Sure, I think the charge to clear it is useful if you're getting rid of it for a district/wonder anyway.

 

[Victoria]

I will often builder chain clear the large majority and get my city over populated for a quick science boost. Naturally I will only do this when feeling cheerful. All rainforest hills are plains so chop em all. Hills with trees on are just a pain for ranged troops.

 

[Japper007]

I always chop every jungle tile. The amount of food you get from chopping rainforest is ludicrous, often giving you a population point per chop. I often find this food far more valuable than keeping a tile that'll be 2f1h and can't be improved beyond that. Not to mention the hammers you get out of the chop, often more than enough to be a return on investment on the builder charge.

One time in multiplayer i planted a city in a jungle belt near my opponent and send over a few workers to chop 5 jungle tiles simultaniously. That city went from 1 to 5 pop in three turns and my opponent acussed me of cheating.

 

[Leyrann]

I tend to keep jungle (just like woods) around until I have a reason not to. Typically, that reason is because all other tiles (the ones without jungle/woods) are already improved and I want to improve more. Then I just build a few builders in a row and spend two charges per tile. One for chopping, one for the improvement. Recently, I've also sort of gotten into the habit of chopping a tile before building a district on it if possible without investing too much, as you otherwise just waste some food and/or production.

 

[Rakish]

Another reason you may want to consider not chopping rainforest is builder cost increases each time you build/buy one so they can quickly get prohibitively expensive if you go round chopping and improving things that you don't really need/benefit from yet. This is especially true early because the more 3 action builders you make the less efficient your 5 action builders are going to be as they will cost significantly more.

There is also the fact that Cogs (now) >food (cogs later) in most cases so generally if i have the choice of chopping woods/stone or rainforest I'm leaving the rainforest be.

 

[Victoria]

Prohibitively and significantly?... I am not sure they are valid. The jungle chops increase in population and prod give early are fairly strong but I agree that if you can hold off until feudalism and chain builders then it seems the best all round time and comes around T100 depending on your culture strength which is a nice transition time.

It's interesting, I leave the woods and grow my pop first because I can overgrow my city and the woods chopping value is better later, the extra pop now just seems to work nicely when you can overpopulate your cities.

 

[Rakish]

Prohibitively and significantly?... I am not sure they are valid. The jungle chops increase in population and prod give early are fairly strong but I agree that if you can hold off until feudalism and chain builders then it seems the best all round time and comes around T100 depending on your culture strength which is a nice transition time.

true, those are are probably stronger words than intended describing the problem but if you have a large empire and liberally chop I've found builders end up more than double their starting price which can start becoming an issue for the more cog poor cities, usually meaning builders start costing money hurting your flexibility, and sometimes your efficiency as builders have policy cards to reward you for building them instead of buying.

It's interesting, I leave the woods and grow my pop first because I can overgrow my city and the woods chopping value is better later, the extra pop now just seems to work nicely when you can overpopulate your cities.

Yer its certainly not a hard rule but I've definitely noticed how extra pop is often enough not worth the trouble. if you gain it before you reach your cities cap your really just ensuring grow grinds to a holt quicker. If you wait till you get to the pop cap, and go over your usually waiting a while and the extra pop is not always that good anyway unless you have a strong tile for it to work and the amenities to cover it. having +5% or 10% (or just not negatives) from amenities on your stronger cities is from my experience better than an extra couple of pop on junk tiles.

While keeping the forest chops till end game is certainly tempting any powerful if you have something worth building, wonders, critical districts etc. most cities aren't doing this in most of the victory types. usually your just doing projects in most cities or building up your per turn income/faith/science/culture. so all those cities are in my experience better off chopping early to snowball faster, and combine with strong early policy cards.

honestly though most the time the decision to chop something just comes down to the fact its siting on a plains hill that needs to be a mine asap.

 

[Leyrann]

I don't know. Last game (science victory) I had over 20 cities at the end, all having most or all of their tiles improved, and builders didn't take long to bulid. Some five, six turns in an average city. I also avoided the long build times in new cities by basing my first 1-3 ending trade routes there, so that they could get something like a total of 8f8p from internal trade while still size one.