How do you normally deal with "pure" jungle starts?

Salt has a base yield of +1 and +1, which is by default far superior to +2 of normal luxuries.
Salt is improved by mine, which is easily accesible, and the mine improvement gives you +1 AND +1 (!?), which is again much superior to the normal +1 most luxuries get when improved with plantation.
Chemistry will increase mine value with another +1 production.

This basically means that from ancient era, a Salt/plains tile will have a yield of 3 2 1. And then additionally you get the benefits of any normal luxury, ie. nationwide happiness and furthermore can trade it for gold or other luxes. Salt/desert tiles obviously are less attractive, but still, obviously better than Ivory/desert or Incense/desert tiles.

It's a mystery to me how game doesn't disciminate between salt and the other luxury resources, just like it does with Marble. Either they should have made it like that, or just a regular luxury (i.e. gold yields).

 

In most cases, ANYTHING with a river (common enough) and at least a lux is better than pure jungle.
And in any case if you play in pure jungle you're going to fall VERY far behind on deity anyway.

 

Not sure if a jungle start can support more population than a grassland start, not to mention a grassland start can potentially have more hammers and everything snowballs better. I think the trading post science jungles is more fantasy than reality.

 

I agree. In my experience, jungle have always been stunted, which cripples late game science. Doesn't matter if you get 3 science off that trading post tile...you can never produce enough food to grow the city to epic proportions to work all the slots off that terrible food production. Unless you're ridiculously banana heavy, you're going to need to clear away jungle from rivers, and if you're not on a river, well....good luck with all that.

This is actually the best argument I've seen for Liberty yet.

 

This is actually the best argument I've seen for Liberty yet.[/QUOTE]

agreed, looking at the liberty policies now, they actually seem to be made more for jungle starts and less for just wanting to spam the map to death. Good tip.

 

Bingo. Salt has the ideal ratios of what you want early game - plenty of food, some production, and just a touch of gold to keep you going. Other luxuries either have no food, meaning you trade growth off for production/gold, or they're plantations with a bit of food but no production either, and you still need to work surplus food tiles.

Anyway, to the OP: depends a lot of the the jungle and the Civ I'm playing. If there's bananas, river, and some nice luxuries I'll play it out. If it's pretty flat jungle lacking any production and a silly resource like dyes, I'm out of there and rerolling, especially if I'm not in a civ that has any Jungle advantages.

 

When would you build monuments/aqueducts if going liberty? I personally think that I am going to miss not having to build these in all my cities quite a bit :/ Monarchy is just fantastic too.

 

Jungle in moderation is excellent. The +1 pantheon is very good for the early game. Finishing Tradition on turn 80 is awesome. Besides you've got caravans to grow your cap if you're worried about the 2 instead of 3 /4 food from a farm.

It's the dense jungle that is a problem, just move then like kb said.

 

Play a Liberty game, build Pyramids if you you think you can reasonably get it.

 

i have a similar question but for huge deserts with no rivers, at least with jungle you can chop it ,maybe i should open a new thread.

 

That's correct, you need to open an new thread otherwise this content will be considered as off topic xD