How do you deal with low production starts?

[Hpuk]

I actually used the Liberty finisher to settle a GE once when I had no production. It worked okay, but it's still going to be low on production no matter what you do.

Playing as the Mayan must be rather powerful if you end up in a jungle. Since with a jungle start you dont have to worry about food

How's this? Jungle tiles have only 2 food, just like grasslands or floodplains, but you can't even increase the amount of food in any way. Bananas are not enough to put them above floodplains or grasslands in the food department.
With heavy jungle starts you have no food or production before you chop the damn things away.

Even Brazilwood camps are not nearly enough to make me want to have a jungle capital.

 

[kb27787]

I mean every rule has an exception (when you spawn with 4 citrus and 4 banana then all you need are a few hills and preferably a river and you're all set)... I've had some godly jungle starts in the past... (of course KSM saves the day as well)

And then there are those horrible spawns where your units are completely surrounded by jungle and can't see anything 2 tiles away with no lux/river in sight.

The only good thing is that defending in jungle is pretty easy (cities cannot be shot at by archers/ranged troops, making them really hard to take)

btw is it so hard to move your starting settler? (except for on deity, where a lot more land is taken up by those extra settlers) just get out of the jungle, find a river with at least one lux, and settle there. It is ridiculously easy to block settlers (or send them in pathing loops in a cat and mouse chase) in a jungle with just 2-3 scouts and you can expand there later.

 

[Danei]

Sometimes playing with a disadvantage due to bad start can be fun. Just remember that you had a bad start and don't feel bad if you lose. I also advocate liberty and expand fast, but not fast enough that you become everyone's worst enemy early on. You really don't know how a game of civ will turn out, a lot of times. Even if you were sort of behind in the beginning, you can end up with a lot of stuff later, mainly through warfare, but also by playing AIs off each other to keep them all off your case and weakening each other while you innocently grow. This is particularly doable in BNW, I find.

 

[TheWaffleTaco]

Reroll as austria is what i do ^^

 

[johnny_rudeboy]

I actually used the Liberty finisher to settle a GE once when I had no production. It worked okay, but it's still going to be low on production no matter what you do.


How's this? Jungle tiles have only 2 food, just like grasslands or floodplains, but you can't even increase the amount of food in any way. Bananas are not enough to put them above floodplains or grasslands in the food department.
With heavy jungle starts you have no food or production before you chop the damn things away.

Even Brazilwood camps are not nearly enough to make me want to have a jungle capital.

What I meant was if you did all the other stuff I said. Building trading post all over the jungle so that every jungle tile yield food, science, gold and culture. The only down side is of course lack of hammers but if you placed a GE manyfatory and built a workshop and ironworks in the capital that city will grow pretty big.

I tried it on King and it worked pretty well even do I did not finish that game.
I started on a hill however but in a jungle. Out of the 36 workable hexes probably 30 was jungle, 2 was some luxs and only 1 banana.

And since I played as the mayan I was able to get a GE and a GS pretty early for an academy and another free GP from finising the liberty tree (I picked a GE and used it to get Petra in my other city who was set up in the dessert). It was my other city who build the Pyramids as well to get the extra 2 workers.

But having a tile yielding 2 , 2 , 1 and 1 is pretty good. And once economics is reached and when you pick free thought from the Rationalism tree every jungle tile with a trading post will give you
2 , 3 , 1 and 2
And since you have a university and picked Free thought your city will produce 50% more science so in reality those trading posts in the jungle produce 4 1/2
10+ of those and you are shooting through the tech tree with some speed.

Might add that even do 2 is good for a tile with so much else on it, my problem was that even do every worker in the jungle supported him self food wise he did not produce any extra food.
The Granary is +2 and gave my only banana an extra but that is only enough to support my two specialist at the university. I solved this with food caravans to get my city growing. The hanging gardens would have been great but I did not go Tradition since, well, I needed that extra production.