Quick Links

In Urbek City Builder, the Rainforest biome unlocks after you've won at least one game each on Desert and Archipelago. You'll need all the tricks you learned from those maps, since the Rainforest combines challenges from both. You'll be contending with thick forests that can't be easily removed, while Food and space for building will always be in short supply.

Related: Urbek City Builder: Best Policies

As if that wasn't harsh enough, the Rainforest has one of the trickiest economies in the game. Wood becomes a precious resource despite being positively everywhere, and the way forward isn't always as clear as it seems.

Rainforest Basics

rainforest unique food type with mansion

The primary feature of the Rainforest biome is, well, the Rainforest itself. The map is almost entirely covered in thick woods which cannot be bulldozed, similar to the Granite deposits on the Desert map. The only way to make more room for construction is to build Lumber Camps and chop the trees away tile by tile. It's a slow process, so expect games on Rainforest to take longer than those played in other biomes.

You can still bulldoze the single "straggler trees" that appear in clearings - it's the thick forest tiles that you need to worry about.

Once you've built your first School, you'll be able to construct Slash And Burn camps. These buildings destroy forests in a three-tile radius around themselves. They remove trees faster than Lumber Camps or even Sawmills, but they don't provide any Wood income. Their purpose is to quickly create more space, and since they have no road requirements you can place them anywhere on the map to prepare areas toward which you're expanding.

Related: Urbek City Builder: Best Layouts

Seeds

black seed collector and commune

Scattered across the Rainforest map are small groves of trees with brightly-colored fruit. They can be hard to reach, as you'll need to chop through the forest to get to them, but building a Seed Collector within two tiles of these fruit groves unlocks extremely useful new buildings.

Red Seeds are typically the easiest to secure. Once a Red Seed Collector is built, you can start planting Red Orchards. These consume more Unskilled Work than Farms, but produce more Food as well. You can also unlock a special Red Farm House to enhance the production of large Orchard blocks.

Like regular Orchards, Red Orchards need to be at least five tiles away from any sources of Pollution - keep them clear of your industrial districts!

Yellow Seeds unlock a new housing type, the Large Wooden House. Wooden Huts and Village Houses upgrade into Large Wooden Houses, which consume a little less than twice the Food of a Village House but produce a little more than twice the Unskilled Work. They can be useful to fix your economy early on if you have an abundance of Food, but be warned - your housing will upgrade immediately as soon as the Yellow Seed Collector is built. Be sure you have enough Food production to handle the increased demand!

Lilac Seeds, sometimes spelled Lila Seeds in the game, combine with other seeds to create efficient means of connecting your road networks. See the next section for more details.

Black Seeds are critical to your economic growth, but are also the rarest seeds in the Rainforest. You need them to construct Goods Factories and Heavy Steel Plants, without which you won't be able to reach the higher tiers of housing. Whenever you start a new game on Rainforest, plan your route to the Black Seed grove and make it your long-term goal to reach and exploit it. If the Black Seeds are in an especially hard-to-reach position, such as in a corner with no accessible clearings, consider restarting with a new map.

Related: Urbek City Builder: How To Unlock Retail Stores

Watch Towers And Boats

tower road connection

Since you can't bulldoze the trees on this map, the clearing in which you start will be your only construction zone for the first few years. Once you've built up your population and built some Seed Collectors, you can connect distant clearings before you've finished cutting your way through the trees.

Watch Towers have a monthly maintenance of Work and Wood, but act as road connections to any other Watch Tower within their radius. Use them to bridge the wall of trees between two nearby clearings and give yourself more space. The basic Watch Tower has no Seed requirements; the Tall Watch Tower needs two each of Yellow and Lilac Seed Collectors to unlock, while the Very Tall Watch Tower requires one Black Seed Collector.

You can also build boats along the river and coast, similar to the Ferries on the Archipelago map. River boats require two Red Seed Collectors and one Yellow Seed Collector, while Sea Boats need one Lilac Seed Collector. By getting the full spectrum of Seeds, you'll have a much easier time getting to usable land from your starting position.

How To Manage Your Economy In The Rainforest Biome

dense industry with farming

The early years of the game will play like any other map as you establish basic resources, albeit in somewhat tighter quarters. Once it comes time to start building Iron Mines and Schools, though, you'll start to see the major differences to the Rainforest's economy. Iron Mines don't require a source of ore, but only produce five Iron per month. Iron Miner Houses are locked on this map, so these low-output mines are your only source of Iron.

Since Rainforest Iron Mines incur an upkeep of twenty-five Wood per month, you can't sustain very many of them. Expect your industrial development to be slow; you'll need to use a combination of Lumber Camps, Sawmills, and the biome's unique River Logging building to keep up with your city's growth.

Try to avoid using the Overexploitation Of Timber Policy, no matter how dire your need for Wood becomes. It dramatically increases the speed at which forest is removed, meaning you'll need to replace Lumber Camps more often.

The Sawmill Conundrum

Sawmills have their efficiency drastically reduced in the Rainforest, though this isn't readily apparent at first. Consider their logistical requirements; each Sawmill requires four Warehouses nearby, and Sawmills have to be spaced far enough from one another that they can't share Warehouses between them. Each Warehouse incurs a monthly upkeep of one Iron, so a single Sawmill eats up almost the entire production of a single Iron Mine. Combined with the Wood cost of whatever Energy buildings are powering the Sawmill, at the end of the day you get to keep less than half of the Sawmill's fifty-Wood output.

Try to only place Sawmills in locations where you already have Warehouses, or where you plan to make use of Warehouses later. Sharing with Coal Plants, Goods Factories and the like are the only way to make Sawmills worth the investment on this map.

How To Get Steel

As you approach the population requirement for Downtown Houses, you'll need to get a Steel Plant up and running. Steel Plants don't consume Iron, but instead burn up a very painful two hundred Wood per month. It's a necessary expenditure, so make sure you have Lumber Camps wherever they'll fit. The Steel Plant's high upkeep means you won't be able to afford more than one. This is a problem since advanced buildings like Hospitals and Airports cost large amounts of Steel, and you'll need extra storage just to stockpile enough.

Heavy Steel Plants require a Black Seed Collector somewhere in the city; try to have it ready to go by the time you reach about ten thousand population. The upgrade will make your resource management much easier, as the Heavy Steel Plant stops consuming Wood and instead uses twenty Iron per month. This also means that in most cases you can't achieve victory without a Black Seed Collector. You'll still need to ration your resources and leapfrog your timber industries for the duration of the campaign.

Next: Urbek City Builder: Desert Biome Guide