I wanted to hear people's thoughts on the balance of jungles, especially when it comes to jungle starts. It seems to me that jungle starts are extremely rough, especially on higher difficulties. Imo, a jungle heavy start is probably the second worst start possible, next to a full tundra start. But even for tundra, there are many mitigating factors that can shore up its weaknesses (which I go into more detail below), while sometimes, you can just get completely screwed with a jungle heavy start.
For example:
Jungle starts can be incredibly
production starved
This is the biggest problem with a jungle heavy starts like the one shown above. In this example, I can literally count the number of hammers seen in the entire screen on one hand. Now, this is a bit extreme of an example, as it's situated on a peninsula, but in general, I have frequently found myself in a similar situation. The main causes for this are
gold is typically less valuable than 1 , especially when you lack to begin with. Logging camps are available a full era later than lumber mills, and to add on top of that, they take longer to build. I think this is a separate discussion, since these improvements come relatively late and I wanted to focus on starts, but I think this discrepancy definitely contributes to jungles being bad tiles overall. The one possible benefit is the 1
science from universities is often better than the extra production from workshops.
As opposed to other unfavorable terrain, there are few mitigating factors
Tundra tiles might be technically worse than jungle tiles, but their lack of
Food can often be managed.
Meanwhile, if you get lots of jungle, you just have to hope that there are also some forest plains nearby so that you can get some 1 food 2 production tiles, or hope that some nearby hills are not covered by jungle. Herbalists also give 1 production to plantations, and jungles have a lot of plantation resources, but again, jungle resources take longer to connect than other resources. Also, you have to spend your precious hammers to build a herbalist, which you can often delay otherwise. Speaking of plantations, plantations also often give gold, which kind of mitigates the production issue, but I find it is not nearly enough, especially factoring in the extra construction time in jungles and the opportunity cost of not building mines.
The main issue in my opinion is that the pantheons that are supposedly suited for the jungle, do not provide any production:
Furthermore, what about picking Authority as your policy, which gives lots of? The problem is that jungles (and other rough terrain) make authority worse, as your units are slower to move around. Thus, you are slower to kill barbarian camps and slower to tribute city states. You also have very little base production to begin with, which means less for units.
Personally, I've found the best strategy to pick Progress and go for Organization, which gives +3, but generally you want to go right side first with Progress. Tradition is also pickable, but only if you can settle the rest of your cities in relatively high production areas.
To summarize, jungle heavy starts without access to other types of tiles are often just terrible, and it is incredibly easy to fall behind on higher difficulties given the sheer importance of early production. I'm not sure what is the best solution here, but my best suggestion would be to modify the "jungle pantheons" to somehow mitigate the weakness of jungle starts (or even add a new pantheon if that is feasible at this point).
For example:
Spoiler example start :
Jungle starts can be incredibly
production starvedThis is the biggest problem with a jungle heavy starts like the one shown above. In this example, I can literally count the number of hammers seen in the entire screen on one hand. Now, this is a bit extreme of an example, as it's situated on a peninsula, but in general, I have frequently found myself in a similar situation. The main causes for this are
- Jungle hills do not provide any production.
- If you have jungle, you cannot have a forest, so you might not have any 1 2 tiles.
- Luxuries resources that give , like copper don't tend to appear near jungles.
- To get any production from your tiles, you need to build mines. Chopping jungle is available at Calendar, so you need both Mining and Calendar to build a mine on a jungle hill. Furthermore, building mines competes with connecting other luxuries/resources, so it comes with a big opportunity cost early.
- It takes longer to connect luxuries/build improvements on jungle, since you need to chop. So to summarize, without any bonuses, it takes 12 turns to build a mine on a jungle hill (which is your only option to get production from tiles in many cases), you need both calendar and mining to do it, AND that competes with connecting your other luxuries, which also often take longer to do anyway because of the same issue of needing to chop.
- To make things worse, it takes 2 turns longer to chop jungle than forests. This makes sense thematically, but it can be very punishing.
gold is typically less valuable than 1 , especially when you lack to begin with. Logging camps are available a full era later than lumber mills, and to add on top of that, they take longer to build. I think this is a separate discussion, since these improvements come relatively late and I wanted to focus on starts, but I think this discrepancy definitely contributes to jungles being bad tiles overall. The one possible benefit is the 1 science from universities is often better than the extra production from workshops.As opposed to other unfavorable terrain, there are few mitigating factors
Tundra tiles might be technically worse than jungle tiles, but their lack of
Food can often be managed.- starting in full tundra is relatively rare (rarer than jungle heavy), and you can usually move out of the tundra with your settler, since tundra doesn't restrict movement like jungle does, and because tundra only appears at the edge of the map. This is technically mapscript dependent, but its true of the most common, standard, maps
- You often spawn near the coast, which provides a source of Food (from the coast and also from potential fish) that tundra otherwise wouldn't.
- Tundra has a lot of deer, which again provide Food. Again, mapscript dependent but the standard maps have this.
- Probably the biggest factor: the tundra pantheons, Goddess of the Hunt and God of the Stars and Sky, provide Food.
- Flood plains and oases, which both provide a lot of food.
- Spirit of the desert can provide a lot of production and gold.
- Allows you to build Petra.
Meanwhile, if you get lots of jungle, you just have to hope that there are also some forest plains nearby so that you can get some 1
food 2 production tiles, or hope that some nearby hills are not covered by jungle. Herbalists also give 1 production to plantations, and jungles have a lot of plantation resources, but again, jungle resources take longer to connect than other resources. Also, you have to spend your precious hammers to build a herbalist, which you can often delay otherwise. Speaking of plantations, plantations also often give gold, which kind of mitigates the production issue, but I find it is not nearly enough, especially factoring in the extra construction time in jungles and the opportunity cost of not building mines.The main issue in my opinion is that the pantheons that are supposedly suited for the jungle, do not provide any
production:- Goddess of Renewal - in theory this would be great in a jungle heavy start, but again, it provides no hammers, and mockingly gives food on Markets, which is the exact opposite of what you are missing in a jungle heavy start. This pantheon treats forests and jungles equally, but there is a fundamental asymmetry between the two that makes jungles far worse than forests. Perhaps this pantheon should give different yields for forests and jungles?
- Goddess of Springtime - not specifically related to jungles, but plantations are mostly found in jungle. The gold is helpful, but again, we see food, exactly the opposite of what we need in a jungle. Again, the time and opportunity cost of plantations factors in here too.
Furthermore, what about picking Authority as your policy, which gives lots of
? The problem is that jungles (and other rough terrain) make authority worse, as your units are slower to move around. Thus, you are slower to kill barbarian camps and slower to tribute city states. You also have very little base production to begin with, which means less for units.Personally, I've found the best strategy to pick Progress and go for Organization, which gives +3
, but generally you want to go right side first with Progress. Tradition is also pickable, but only if you can settle the rest of your cities in relatively high production areas. To summarize, jungle heavy starts without access to other types of tiles are often just terrible, and it is incredibly easy to fall behind on higher difficulties given the sheer importance of early
production. I'm not sure what is the best solution here, but my best suggestion would be to modify the "jungle pantheons" to somehow mitigate the weakness of jungle starts (or even add a new pantheon if that is feasible at this point).
