Dealing with Large Expanses of Jungle, Desert & Plains

[KingLoraxII]

I have been playing fractal maps and although I like them - they tend to squeeze the map - the polar caps & equator. This tends to put me with a rather large expanse of either desert & jungle and sometimes even end up with a large plains to deal with.

Specifically Jungle & Desert - how do you deal with them? they are so food & resource poor, that I cant figure out what to do. Just go warmonger for better turf & resources?

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

I have been playing fractal maps and although I like them - they tend to squeeze the map - the polar caps & equator. This tends to put me with a rather large expanse of either desert & jungle and sometimes even end up with a large plains to deal with.

Specifically Jungle & Desert - how do you deal with them? they are so food & resource poor, that I cant figure out what to do. Just go warmonger for better turf & resources?

Desert is just useless forever, there's nothing you can do there. But the jungle...with a little work is AWESOME. Nothing but green tiles, and usually lots of riverside tiles. Just build a little army of workers and start chopping that jungle. After that, you can build whatever kind of city you want, although it usually favors cottages.

Plains on the other hand, aren't usually useful until biology, when you can farm them to make them 3 food, 1 hammer tiles. Even then, there only marginally useful. If you have a high food tile or 2, then you can workshop the plans. This isn't very useful until you are running caste system and have guilds/chemistry. Then the plains can become productive.

 

[TerryM]

Of course, you would need Iron to chop Jungle...just a reminder.

 

[digitCruncher]

You don't need iron... you just need iron working...

 

[Point13]

Jungle aren't terrible, they generally have a lot of rivers and calender resources or gems, which are great for commerce. That and all grassland tiles underneath means jungle cities can become real financial powerhouses.

Imagine Elizabeth with a good jungle city and Wall Street.

 

[Iranon]

Plains are fairly good if there are food resources around - 2 fish, 10 plains cottages is great overall city with excellent commerce and more than enough production.
On mixed, land, I'd prioritise grassland cities and improve the land so they are self-sufficient without food resources. After they have grown into their caps I'd reassign the resources to newly founded plains cities.

Desert tiles are junk. Even desert gold hills are unexciting unless you have a big food surplus. 26 that requires 2 grassland farms to support means the overall output per tile is about par for the course but these cities often have limited long-term potential.

 

[Snowman084]

-i like to build a road down the middle of large jungles/deserts/ and plains. This helps me get lots of people outta my borders into these exapnses quickly, settlers and workers. Then i start clearing forest. Usually if the area is very large ill build next to resources first then fill in between later on with filler cities.

 

[IAM]

Some resources like oil can be found in the desert later in the game.

 

[Sisiutil]

Desert tiles are problematic, but it's rare to have nothing but 21 tiles of desert; there's usually some productive tiles that can be used, and a desert city can often be surprisingly useful. Here's a look at Sparta in my Alexander ALC game--an example of a desert city that turned out OK:



That's from early on. As I recall, it later became my HE city.

And here's Corinth from the same game, with 2 peaks, 4 deserts, and 2 desert hills, but it wound up being my GP farm:



Neither city qualified as my best HE or GP city EVAR, of course, but both were perfectly serviceable and contributed handily to a conquest win in that game.

Another tip: if you have a choice, try to place your city on the least productive tile. A desert tile contributes nothing, but place a city on it and it provides 2F 1H 1C (Sparta, above, is an example). Similarly, try to place cities on plains rather than grassland tiles if possible.

Finally, try to plan out irrigation paths. You won't be able to chain irrigate until Civil Service, but it helps if you've figured out the path ahead of time. Remember that a city tile (provided its on flat terrain, not a hill) automatically chain irrigates to any tiles around it, provided it has direct or indirect access to water itself. So this may mean that some of your cities end up on flat tiles rather than hills, for example. It also saves you worker turns by avoiding having to farm over cottages during the mid-game.

 

[KingLoraxII]

Thanks for the tips - those are really good. I tend to look at production & resources and forget about other ways to utilize the terrain. But especially use the "least productive tile for the city" - that is definitely something I need to keep in mind.

 

[batavier]

With large amounts of plains, you'll have to start farming them once you've exhausted all other tiles. As soon as you get Biology you can then change some of them in workshops.
A city with 20 grasslands can get 60 base hammers with biology and state property and a 20 plains city will get 50 with 10 farms and 10 workshops.

 

[BakingTheArt]

I can't remember who said this, but I'm a firm believer that there is no map problem a gigantic stack of axes can't fix.

 

[Iranon]

Isolated starts in the arctic?

 

[BakingTheArt]

In that case, throw a axe at your computer. The game obviously hates you.