Oral Tradition: To Chop Or Not To Chop?

We are presented with the choice of chopping a jungle or not, in order to build a banana plantation, and we have a university and granary.

Which is better? 2 and 2 or -2 +1 and +1?

Going for science victory.

Oral Tradition should be +1
Granary works either way (jungle or not doesn't matter).

I'd probably leave it a jungle. It takes ages... years to chop the jungle and build a plantation and it might not even be an improvement. Depends on how much +% bonus that city got to science (however even with 0% bonus +2 raw science is nice to have). +1 culture doesn't help you much at all at this point in the game.

Almost certainly the food and science. Unfortunately you can't build a trading post there for even more science and gold, but you should leave the jungle untouched and find more food elsewhere.

Now, if you have a bunch of other jungle tiles around that city, and this is the only potential major food source, go ahead and build the plantation and plan to spam TPs on the other jungle tiles.

FeiLing said:

Oral Tradition should be +1

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Yeah I knew I probably did something wrong.

I think maybe putting trading posts on all jungle tiles is the best way, and chopping for plantations. Gives an even balance maybe.

The granary gives +1 food for bananas etc, do these have to be in the 3 tile range of your city for that bonus to take effect? i.e. does it have to be within the range of tiles that can be worked?

Civilopedian said:

The granary gives +1 food for bananas etc, do these have to be in the 3 tile range of your city for that bonus to take effect? i.e. does it have to be within the range of tiles that can be worked?

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Yes, the tile on which the bananas are located not only has to be workable, it has to be actually worked (a citizen assigned to that tile), so it has to be within the first three rings. But, the bananas don't have to be plantationed (is that a word?) to get the granary bonus.

That's why most players leave bananas alone - with granary they give 3 food plus the science bonus from the jungle. If you plantation them, you pick up one extra food (2 extra after Civil Service with water source or Fertilizer without), but lose the science.

Browd said:

Yes, the tile on which the bananas are located not only has to be workable, it has to be actually worked (a citizen assigned to that tile), so it has to be within the first three rings. But, the bananas don't have to be plantationed (is that a word?) to get the granary bonus.

That's why most players leave bananas alone - with granary they give 3 food plus the science bonus from the jungle. If you plantation them, you pick up one extra food (2 extra after Civil Service with water source or Fertilizer without), but lose the science.

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So is extra food never as good as extra science? Population has some sort of multiplier effect on science right?

Yes. Each citizen produces one base science, and you need citizens to work tiles, so a 2 bpt science tile that requires one citizen to work it (like a raw jungle tile, which gives 2 food -- enough to support the citizen working the tile), means that tile is essentially generating the base science output of 3 citizens (1 beaker from the citizen and 2 beakers from the jungle). But even that is not quite accurate, since jungle beakers don't benefit from the library and schools' population-based bonuses. Raw bananas are a bit better, since they will generate 3 food (1 excess to support 1/2 another citizen) plus the jungle beakers. A bananas plantation producing 4 food can support two citizens - one working the tile and another working some other random tile or serving as a specialist. If that is a science specialist, that equates to 7 base science production (2 for each citizen, plus 5 from the specialist). So, you do want to fill your specialist slots before assigning citizens to work jungle tiles. And, you generally want to exhaust other food sources before burning jungle to make a banana plantation.

Also, keep in mind that food surpluses will eventually generate an additional citizen, but don't yield any immdiat science, and that beakers today are worth more than beakers tomorrow.