BANANAS! 7 Food or 4 Food 2 Beakers? To Chop Or Not To Chop

Obviously if you don't care for the science (XB rush) the discussion doesn't even have to be.
But OP is clearly asking which strategy gives more science and not chopping is hands down the best strategy for science.

Unless I guess maybe if you have like 0 food and 2 additional from bananas plantation would suddenly make you grow again... but let's leave that aside, I'm not sure how you'd end up in that situation.

I just played a poland game with liberty. I had jungle start with three bananas. My pantheon was sun god.

I left jungle bananas alone, in the beginning. And I was conservative about not chopping more jungle than necessary (not even all riverside jungle,). I had lots of jungle banana and also normal a few normal wheat tiles in the mix as well.

For sure, regular flatland jungle makes for a great trade post tile. You support a citizen on that tile, while also making good bit of science and necessary gold. (in wide empire I feel like I want to take advantage of working good tiles, for more gold than otherwise possible for tall empires etc...)


Later on, at fertilizer I decided to chop those banana jungles just in order to get more food out of my tiles. Because I was Poland, I had full rationalism, and order with worker facilities and 5-year plan.

I really wanted to work those juicy mines and quarrys and also work all my scientists (+5 science is more than that university bonus for jungle, after all)

Higher growth eventually gives you more versatility. You can assign citizens and specialists more.

I also had somewhat overlapping tiles between my core cities. Therefore, I could still work full specialists in those cities, AS LONG AS I had the effective food in the capital.

At the very least, in lategame, I want to work: all the engineers, all the scientists. In all cities where I have specialist slots. Take advantage of those hard-earned-specialist slots, that's what I say...

On top of that, you're working guilds specialists for culture as long as necessary. The land needed more farms, so I simply built more farms and plantations.

On the other hand, you might or might not want to work all the merchant specialists. GMs are perhaps more valuable at the mid-game. When you need extra cash to upgrade quicly your army units. Otherwise GMs utility towards game winning is less, I feel.

So, you could try to leave about 4 jungles trade posts instead of working merchant specialists... You get more science, more food (?) and more gold out of working jungle trade post vs merchant. I actualy had full commerce and full ratoinalism, as Poland LOL. Together with 5 order policies, and patronage opener, plus full liberty at beginning.

Unless you're freedom and want to have better happiness etc... Then you oftentimes run specialists as you are able to.

In short, I view that with rationalism specialists + fertilizer

chop and plantation with bananas

This allows you to work more food tiles, hammer tiles and work more gold tiles, while still working effectively all of your +5 beaker scientist slots.