This is normal. Removing jungles or forests early is always available, but grants no
I see. Thanks to you I now realize that to stop early Jungle/Forest chopping you need to set bCanRemoveWithNoProductionGain from 1 to 0. Originally, I just assumed that the CIV4BuildInfos.xml file was broken.
The reason why I care is that I want to prevent jungles and forests from being cleared until much later (around Steam Power) for these reasons:
1) The map looks nicer with some vegetation. Normally, the AI just chops it all.
2)There's already a jungle camp improvement, meaning you can save chopping for later.
3)Being unable to clear your forests/jungles means you have to work around them. You have work with what you got. This adds a layer of difficulty that I like. It also prevents farm spamming.
4)I made it so that you can't build anything higher than cart paths on forests/jungles, except for railroads, meaning that to get to places, you need to go around forests. I think this makes things more realistic. And not having paved roads on every tile is more aesthetically pleasing.
5)Normally, the Guerrilla promotion wouldn't be very useful because all the forests would be chopped. But with more forests it becomes more important.
6)I doubt a classical age civilization could clear the entire Amazon Rainforest.
7)Makes lumbermills more important. The AI wouldn't make many lumbermills, mainly cause it chopped most of its forests before reaching Machinery.
8)You can use Forests to create a nice defensive barrier.
Keep in mind I mostly intended this for the Earth scenario. This helps nerf civs with lots of jungle like India and Ethiopia, who usually run away with the game and have plenty of resources. This also nerfs the civs that would usually colonize Serbia and farm spam the crap out of it.
However, I did loosen some restrictions with Forests that I didn't with jungles. This way the European civs can still get access to resources with forests on them. This is all intended to change the balance of the scenario and give Europe the edge, without permanently handicapping the other civs (all they need to do reach a certain tech to take full advantage of their land). I haven't tested it yet, so I don't know how well it works.
I hope this wasn't too long of a read. Thanks.