Were jungle cities meant to be gold powerhouses instead of science ones?

The effort put in them to make good food/science doesn't seem to be enough/worth to compete with other cities that don't have jungle tiles, since the science from jungles just compensate the lack of growth, so, the gold from trading posts with multipliers from gold building may be their true nature?

No, science is their true nature.
Universities (+2 science jungle tiles) come much earlier in the game than Economics (+1 extra gold trading posts).
And building trading posts on jungle tiles takes a lot of worker time.

Tatran said:

No, science is their true nature.
Universities (+2 science jungle tiles) come much earlier in the game than Economics (+1 extra gold trading posts).
And building trading posts on jungle tiles takes a lot of worker time.

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But the bump in science doesn't scale with the time. For sure the multipliers from science buildings add a lot, but just to compensate the science lost from low growth, meanwhile, the gold from trading posts isn't there to compensate, but to add

Why would a jungle city have low growth?
With some good city placement growth shouldn't be a problem.
Otherwise you still have the option to send food caravans to cities with low growth.

Tatran said:

Why would a jungle city have low growth?
With some good city placement growth shouldn't be a problem.
Otherwise you still have the option to send food caravans to cities with low growth.

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But by the logic I proposed, the food caravan won't be as good as a regular (gold) one, since the other would just be compensating an already stagnating growth. Meanwhile, gold would skyrocket.

Also, jungle cities have low growth because jungle tiles without resources give +2 food. The same than a grassland tile not improved. And the idea is to keep them until education, what hurts the early game.

Hopefully you have some bananas in those jungle tiles. Refrain from improving them until you tech Fertilizer. THen you can choose if you want 4 food 2 science or 6 food.

The real problem with jungle cities is production.
I can't remember having food problems in my jungle cities.
The real boost from jungle tiles comes from the "sacred path" pantheon (+1 culture) en +2 science from unis.
Chopping/cutting the jungle tiles is a waste of worker turns and will only provide a naked plains tile.

Personaly I chop them like 95% of the time... I prefer t get more food and more growth... and that way more early.

Bigger city = more gold and more science!

Jungle tiles are a great strategy sometimes, chopping them isn't always recommended so bad that the workers aren't even that useful. I remember using a city next to a mountain and in the middle of jungles and a pair of jungle bananas nearby and then I eventually didn't cut the jungles with my workers that much. So I eventually got to universities with education technology and was using the jungle tiles as a good source of science income. Not only that but eventually I got a trading post on the jungle tiles that added a pair of gold to the double pair of science and food. I also got an observatory in that city and made up for a great science city. The only issue with that city was that its production wasn't all that good and enemy units were easily able to take refuge on the jungle tiles.

Unless there is too much Jungle tiles, I find trade posting them to be best. At 2f each they will support their own worker and with University you will get 2 science from all of them + 1 later 2 gold each from trade posts. Add Rationalism and you'll then get an additional science.

This makes it the biggest tile source of science in the game and with this having been on the CD version of Vanilla, it does appear jungle cities were meant to be science city power houses.
Gold powerhouses were everywhere in Vanilla, especially on the CD.

(If there actually is too many jungle tiles for the city to be effective even after luxury resources are improved, I would turn first turn fresh water jungle tiles into farms on plains, but still would limit this)

if your location is jungle-heavy you may consider going rushbuy economy
tradeposted jungle tile may provide 2 food/3 science/3 gold/1 culture = 9 total yield or 10 during GA

Jungles also frequently have rivers and lakes running through them, and always have grassland as their base tile. So if the jungle is sprawling enough, you can chop and farm the tiles along the rivers or lakes and still have plenty of 2nd and 3rd ring tiles with jungles in them (I'm assuming that you founded the city on the river in order to build a Watermill). This gives plenty of food and growth even if you don't have bananas.

I can see that jungle cities do have the potential for being strong gold generators. Gems and gold-generating plantation resources often appear in jungles. But this seems incidental...

megabearsfan said:

Jungles [...] always have grassland as their base tile.

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Jungle always has plains as a base.