Bananas, improve them or no?

Actually, assuming you're in he jungle, one pop would more than break even on science. You get 4 science and 2+ gold from the pop (versus 2 science lost), at the upkeep cost of 2 gpt for happiness. And, your old pop working the bananas is still producing 2 extra food.

+2 food will never get you one pop higher in and of itself (it will approach that limit, but never reach it). But, you don't need one pop to break even. Something like getting your next pop 50% faster will put you slightly ahead. So, assuming post-universities, you'd need a really slow growing city for it to be worth it. But, pre-universities, its potentially pure gain for many many turns.

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The big problem here is worker turns. Workers always have things to do, and improving bananas is MAYBE worth it sometimes, but takes too much time for a marginal bonus.

Teproc said:

The big problem here is worker turns. Workers always have things to do, and improving bananas is MAYBE worth it sometimes, but takes too much time for a marginal bonus.

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That's probably the biggest kicker. Although if I'm in a lot of jungle sometimes my workers do kind of run out of things to do before I get trading posts. Happens a lot if you're rushing edu.

Never improve banana's.

The science points speak for themselves.

but it looks like people need more reason?

there is usually a better tile to improve, and one that can be improved faster. bananas give you three food, you should be working that early. the worker is off bringing another tile up to scratch or dealing with luxs or resources.


just dont improve them.

What annoys me with Bananas is that when you chop the jungle down, you get 1+ production, but when you improve it with a plantation, the production goes away, WTF?

Sharples said:

What annoys me with Bananas is that when you chop the jungle down, you get 1+ production, but when you improve it with a plantation, the production goes away, WTF?

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Exactly my issue my with improving bananas. If you've got them you're probably in jungle which means you're SCREAMING for that hammer, you've had to divert to bronze working early and now you're spending something like 13 worker turns only to lose that hammer again? Ridiculous. If those hammers stayed the same whenthe plantation was built i think bananas would be decent, if not competitive.

darkpigraph said:

Exactly my issue my with improving bananas. If you've got them you're probably in jungle which means you're SCREAMING for that hammer, you've had to divert to bronze working early and now you're spending something like 13 worker turns only to lose that hammer again? Ridiculous. If those hammers stayed the same whenthe plantation was built i think bananas would be decent, if not competitive.

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Good idea, I think I'll check the XML files to see if I can mod planting of plantations on bananas to not lose a hammer as a way to help the AI.

joncnunn said:

Good idea, I think I'll check the XML files to see if I can mod planting of plantations on bananas to not lose a hammer as a way to help the AI.

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That'd be a nice mod. I'd download it for sure.

VicRatlhead5199 said:

That'd be a nice mod. I'd download it for sure.

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Mine isn't in official mod form, but I found it:

The file that controls this is Civ 5 Improvements (the version in a subdirectory of the dlc - Expansion 2 folder for those with BNW)

It's this following block in lines 921 to 926 that causes the production reduction, and simply making a copy of it and removing it would get rid of the hammer penalty:

<Row>
<ImprovementType>IMPROVEMENT_PLANTATION</ImprovementType>
<ResourceType>RESOURCE_BANANA</ResourceType>
<YieldType>YIELD_PRODUCTION</YieldType>
<Yield>-1</Yield>
</Row>