Jungles have lots of great stuff besides bananas

[Lancer]

Hardwoods: mahogany, teak, jemolina (lots of others I can't recall)
Soft wood:coconut lumber
Bonus: bamboo, excellent construction material that grows like crazy. Also makes a strong, light weight scafolding.
Food, fruit, etc: Cocoa, (huge trade product) jackfruit, mangoes, coconuts.
Drugs: Many drugs are made from jungle plants.

Having jungle not produce even one shield is kind of silly.

[AeonOfTime]

bamboo, excellent construction material

I've seen documentaries on the uses of bamboo in asia - it's actually quite impressive.

As found on China defense:

Properly prepared bamboo has the tensile strength equivalent to mild steel (15,000 psi). In asia, it is common to see the use of bamboo scaffoldings in shipyard and building construction, even for skyscrapers.

In that sense, I agree - Jungle should produce a shield.

[DerSchwarzfalke]

Hear, hear.

At least make the tile worth something if it is going to produce nothing else but epidemics. It adds some balance.

[sophist]

Just because some jungle areas have such resources doesn't mean all of them do.

I think Civ has the opposite problem. Too many tiles can be developed. That's completely unrealistic. Most land in the world is not settled and not developed, yet by the end of the industrial era in civ3, basically all land has been settled and/or developed. There should be mechanisms to reduce the number of tiles that are worked.

[DeathByTheSword]

reduce most tile production and and make some tiles super productive...thus having some very wanted land and a lot of not wanted land problem solved...wars more frequent...

[MattPilot]

Originally posted by DeathByTheSword
reduce most tile production and and make some tiles super productive...thus having some very wanted land and a lot of not wanted land problem solved...wars more frequent...

I kinda modded it that way. You could only build cities on grassland, hills, & floodplains.

This worked great, until i found out small island with only plains or tundra started to form, where valuable resources were located. No way to get the goods off that island.

[sophist]

I don't think that's the solution either. It's a little inelegant. After all, it's not that we can't work any and all land, it's that we choose not to. Only agricultural productivity depends on the land. Shields come from labor, not mines; mines are used for resources. Health is a step in the right direction, but the game needs to make terrain more diverse and alter the significance of terrain (some parts more, some parts less) in order to achieve a more realistic (and enjoyable) balance.

[Lancer]

That's true, most of the land is various types of desert, but civ only has one type.

Another jungle goodie: coffee (doh)

[Zkribbler]

Juan Valdez says coffee comes from mountains. D'oh d'oh!

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

A possibility is to have Hard Wood, Soft Woods and Bamboo-along with a variety of fruits and alkaloid drugs-be bonus resources that can occur in a number of terrains, but be especially likely in Jungles and Forests.
Having these bonus resources might give a boost to hammers in the case of the different woods, but a bonus to food in the case of fruits.
Just a thought.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[DeathByTheSword]

biggest mistake ever to turn shields to hammers IMHO...hammers just dont sound as good on the net while talking about civ as shields do....

[sophist]

According to Wikipedia, coffee grows best at about 1400m elevation with 100cm-150cm of rain. Sounds like jungle type territory to me. Too bad Civ4 doesn't have elevation.

I think hammers are better than shields because they represent labor better. Production isn't something you dig out of the ground. I prefer a model where land produces no shields, hammers, or whatever; all those should come from the labor of your citizens. Mines would only be for harvesting resources.

[inca911]

Originally posted by MattPilot
I kinda modded it that way. You could only build cities on grassland, hills, & floodplains.

This worked great, until i found out small island with only plains or tundra started to form, where valuable resources were located. No way to get the goods off that island.

Aren't you forgetting about colonies?

[yin26]

How about you get certain bonuses for Jungle tiles only as you progress in the game? For example, if I elect not to cut down forests early in my game, I might, after a certain medical discovery, get health bonuses within my cities due to the drugs I'm now able to make use of. We see this dynamic with oil not appearing on the map until you discover it, etc., but that could be applied to jungle tiles, too.

This would add a little more challenge / planning for a pay off that you would not see until later in the game. So the slash and burn players would be up against the resource harvesters (assuming the slash and burn players don't get too big of a headstart!).

You could also go into enemy territory and torch his trees! Pure evil.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Well, that was kind of what I was getting at, Yin. Bonus resources-some of which appear as a result of technological advance, but certainly a system which forces a player to choose between an immediate production benefit from cutting it down, or a later benefit via the potential appearance of bonus resources.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.