Jungles: banana vs basic food

[ExpiredReign]

Doesn't the fact that, at any given time, the actual number of 'Jungle' tiles, and then 'Bananas' proportionally, available to any player is relatively small have any bearing on the extra bonuses they bring.

Isn't comparing 'Plains/Cows' to 'Jungle/Bananas' like comparing apples to oranges.

The science bonus or pantheon belief, in the end, is applied to so few tiles.

 

[albie_123]

I disagree, with the new mapscript it is very common to be surrounded by jungle at the equator.

 

[ExpiredReign]

That would be true for 1 of your cities.

I'm just going off Thal's %s in the Communitas Map.

10% of the entire map is jungle compared to 55% for plains/grasslands.

 

[albie_123]

Yes, but if it's available to players at start (which it is, with some Civs having a jungle bias), we should primarily balance around that rather than the few lone jungles.

This mapscript tends to put all the jungles around each other as well, it's very uncommon to get jungles in a small area (although it can happen).

 

[ExpiredReign]

Ok. Fair enough.

To be honest, I'm quite happy with the figures for all terrain/features as they are.
Still if I can see evidential reasoning for change, then by all means, make change.

 

[Bridger]

I was always a fan of the Civ IV system where jungles were very inhospitable at the begining of the game but they always contained a lot more resources than normal terrain. So the terrain was harder to start in but you were able to get a lot of luxury/health resources once you got iron working and you could start improving the jungle.

I don't like the idea of jungle ever being a "useful" tile though. Useful for science, sure, build a town in it, OK, but it should still be lower in food than grassland. 2 food jungles never made any sense to me. Maybe it's just the Civ IV mindset, but Jungles feel to me like you should *want* to get rid of them and convert it to something more useful. In Civ IV it was the only "bad" terrain that you could "improve" to be as productive as 'good' terrain (simply by cutting down the jungle). We don't have any terrain like that in Civ IV. All terrain is good except flat tundra and flat desert.

TBH I'm not super happy that there are only two types of "bad" tiles in the entire game: Flat Desert and flat tundra. Seems odd that desert hills function exactly as well as grassland hills. Same for Tundra hills. Snow hills give 0, and it feels like there should be a more graduated scale (tundra and desert hills providing only 1 hammer instead of normal 2).

 

[Tomice]

Fascinating - we almost have a draw between 1 and 2 food jungles right now
I'm also not sure if Ahriman's suggestion was really less popular or just unclear in it's description (should have been called "2 food per jungle, but no jungle-boosting belief and delayed science" IMO)

Guess it's up to Thal to decide once again

 

[Erikose]

Just finished a game as Brazil. Good start at the edge of a massive belt of jungle, with luxury resources accessible at intervals for decent city placement. I enjoyed the rare banana scenario, and never bothered building plantations after choosing the jungle pantheon boost. Alas, Dido wound up launching her ship just as my culture was taking over the world!

Really liked things as they are with rare bananas AND the pantheon boost. I had to make a choice as to whether to develop the tile, or keep it the same for bonuses. This gave me interesting choices, slowed down enemy avenues of approach, and great culture bonuses once I invested the considerable time and worker commitment to make the brazilwood camps.

Overall, good flavor and choices for a jungle loving civ. Would definitely vote for keeping vanilla BNW style pantheon buff to offset the early jungle difficulties, and pretty agnostic on the science issue. Lumbermills for jungle again for the win!

 

[cordsnwires]

Another possible solution would be to remove the built-in , but allow players to get it back with a new tile improvement (available at Education or maybe later), a Research Outpost or something along those lines. This would keep jungles as a uniquely useful tile while adding the opportunity cost of other improvements if you want the .

 

[Tomice]

Another possible solution would be to remove the built-in , but allow players to get it back with a new tile improvement (available at Education or maybe later), a Research Outpost or something along those lines. This would keep jungles as a uniquely useful tile while adding the opportunity cost of other improvements if you want the .

Probably a lot of work to implement, but a good thought!

 

[EricB]

What difficulty level do you play on where you lost to Carthage? I play on King difficulty, and I've never even come close to losing. It's always #1 in science, huge army, tons of gold flowing in, mega culture, #1 in tourism, etc. I've been trying to find ways to make the AI better for a more balanced game as it's just boring. Ideally I'd like it if I only won maybe 25% of the time.

 

[stackpointer]

What difficulty level do you play on where you lost to Carthage? I play on King difficulty, and I've never even come close to losing. It's always #1 in science, huge army, tons of gold flowing in, mega culture, #1 in tourism, etc. I've been trying to find ways to make the AI better for a more balanced game as it's just boring. Ideally I'd like it if I only won maybe 25% of the time.

I have the same problem and will probably try my next game at emperor. If you are doing some minor modding on side with the handicaps xml, you may not know that BNW added in a custom AI difficulty level called HANDICAP_AI_DEFAULT that the AI plays at (as opposed to chieftain) so you may want to take a look at that in the CIV5HandicapInfos.xml file.

 

[Dorevai]

Why do plantations on bananas remove the from the tile? It makes removing the jungle a completely bad thing since you won't get science later and can't get a regardless.

It seems like it should be a pro/con situation like every other time you remove the jungle. Instead I just leave all jungles on the bananas and get the science later. I have pockets of banana jungle surrounded by farmed plains.

I assume it's intentional that improving a tile and removing the jungle are now separate things anyway.

 

[mystikx21]

CEP doesn't remove the jungle on plantations, or remove the production if you were to remove the jungle. It's just a straight food boost to the bananas. I assume vanilla does this because bananas add a ton of food.

 

[Dorevai]

I know it doesn't remove the jungle. That's different. Plantations remove jungle in vanilla. But in the mod jungles are more pro/con because you get to retain them for all kinds of improvements. The exception is bananas. There is no pro/con. Do not remove the jungle. There should be a tradeoff.

 

[Zai]

I really don't think jungles need any nerfing. The religion bonus comes at the expense of other bonuses, this is already balanced IMO and even if I start near heavy jungle I might not pick it. The on jungles from universities adds flavor, pushing this back to a point where it doesn't have much effect just wouldn't be a fun change. Also something I have to think about a lot when I play a jungle heavy civ is where to drop my great person improvements, do I want to preserve my jungles and only place them where I have an open area, or do I want to sacrifice the jungles near a super city to specialize it more. If by the time I get on jungles I can already spam drop academies with as much science yield as all the jungle tiles around a city combined, there's no longer an interesting choice there. So I'm really highly anti-option 3.

I voted number 2, but wouldn't mind number 1 (especially with jungle lumber mills).

 

[Ahriman]

The religion bonus comes at the expense of other bonuses

What other bonuses (religious or other) do grasslands get that jungles don't?

 

[Seek]

What other bonuses (religious or other) do grasslands get that jungles don't?

Much more food for one - outside of the religious belief (+1 food for jungles in the current CEP build, correct?) there is no way to increase jungle food, which, at 2, only feeds the citizen working the tile. Chopping jungles is generally not much better than keeping them since there is always Plains underneath them, and Plains are barely better than tundra. Furthermore, Grassland will typically have stone and/or pasture resources to augment their production so it's easier to get balanced cities, while Jungle relies on having hills nearby to mine.

My view is that Jungles are already pretty bad in vanilla (without Bananas) so I don't think we need to change the balance. I voted for option 3 - keep bananas at the same rate as vanilla, remove the pantheon, and possibly move one of the Uni's science to Research Labs (though I don't really think this change is necessary, so perhaps I could've voted for option 2).

 

[mystikx21]

CEP also allowed for farming on jungles, but you could always just chop it and farm the plains instead. Production on plains can be a valuable point in their favor. I wouldn't say that puts them barely ahead of tundra. Tundra is basically only valuable if it is a hill or a tree.

 

[Ahriman]

Much more food for one - outside of the religious belief (+1 food for jungles in the current CEP build, correct?) there is no way to increase jungle food

Jungle gives more food than grasslands; as mystikx notes farms can be built on it, and it's bonus is bananas rather than cows. So just as much food potential as grasslands (and more with the pantheon belief)

Jungle also has more flexibility, because you can use the jungle for food, or chop the jungle to get production. With grasslands, you can *only* get production on forest or hills (or one on cows or horses).