clearing jungles

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by couerdelion
remove stone as a strategic resource or replace with the requirement that the civ must have a hill or mountain

That makes sense. How hard it is to get some stone, anyway?

However this makes the 50% construction bonus too strong. I'd make it a requirement instead.

[Quillan]

I've seen colisseums in barbarian cities before.

[Veritass]

Jungles are our friends...

They should not be called "jungles" because that word has bad connotations. The new politically correct and environmentally-sensitive word for "jungle" is "rainforest", and the term for "swamp" is "coastal wetlands". This should be fixed in the next patch. You will note that all environmentalist literature uses the new words: nobody wants to save jungles and swamps, but everybody wants to save rainforests and wetlands.

[psiekier]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger Bears are stronger than lions, and lions don't live in jungles.

How about a bear holding a shark - or would that be some kind of defensive city structure?

[Martin the Dane]

Re: Jungles are our friends...

Originally posted by Veritass
They should not be called "jungles" because that word has bad connotations. The new politically correct and environmentally-sensitive word for "jungle" is "rainforest", and the term for "swamp" is "coastal wetlands". This should be fixed in the next patch. You will note that all environmentalist literature uses the new words: nobody wants to save jungles and swamps, but everybody wants to save rainforests and wetlands.

Hmm. Let's see: the definition of rain forest has something to do with the amount of rainfall IIRC, and swamps does exist quite far from costs. This Christmas I visited Tanzania, where I saw swamps more than 1000 km from the nearest cosat, and jungles with very little rainfall.

By the way I hate politcal correctness. In Dansih we have a saying that translates to: "call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade,"

[Willem]

Re: Re: Jungles are our friends...

Originally posted by Martin the Dane
This Christmas I visited Tanzania, where I saw swamps more than 1000 km from the nearest cosat, and jungles with very little rainfall.

Besides, it doesn't rain in Civilization.

[Generaldoktor]

Re: Re: Jungles are our friends...

Originally posted by Martin the Dane

Hmm. Let's see: the definition of rain forest has something to do with the amount of rainfall IIRC, and swamps does exist quite far from costs. This Christmas I visited Tanzania, where I saw swamps more than 1000 km from the nearest cosat, and jungles with very little rainfall.

By the way I hate politcal correctness. In Dansih we have a saying that translates to: "call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade,"

If there's a biologist out there, I defer ; but I watch a lot of nature shows and recently bought a book on Florida microecologies, (I live in Florida, but the pics are beautiful even for places I haven't been.) I'm going to have to say based on this cursory research that jungle is very unproductive agriculturally. This is why there is so much clear-cutting presently in the Amazon; the soil has little value itself due to all the rain it previously received and the nature of the previous foilage, which contributes virtually no nutrients. The soil gets ruined quickly by the first crops, then they cut some more, etc. Making grasslands underneath for jungles is a definite gift, or else misinformation by the designers, who are probably more focused on the hard sciences.

CTP had swamps, I don't know why they aren't in Civ. They show up in the real world in river basins far from the coast, like Okefenokee in north Florida/south Georgia, or I believe along the Mississippi a good distance from the gulf. Cold weather "rainforest" exists in Washington state and I believe Hawaii has some too. Then there's Southeast Asia, a nice jungleland many Americans and Frenchmen might remember well...

There are a few hardwoods that can come out of jungle, so maybe half hammers for a chop compared to forest would be a good idea. But it may have been eliminated as a play balance measure. (We get a lotta "chops" anyway and AI are never going to be as clever about it. )

As far as bad health, I think there's enough literature from the colonial period of how unhealthy they are. Even Florida's marshlands weren't really settled until air conditioning and mosquito spraying kicked in in the early 20th century and Spanish, French and English lost thousands of troops and settlers to disease while settling South America. And where did all those Mayans go, anyway?

[MasterDave]

Re: Jungles are our friends...

Originally posted by Veritass
They should not be called "jungles" because that word has bad connotations. The new politically correct and environmentally-sensitive word for "jungle" is "rainforest", and the term for "swamp" is "coastal wetlands". This should be fixed in the next patch. You will note that all environmentalist literature uses the new words: nobody wants to save jungles and swamps, but everybody wants to save rainforests and wetlands.

I don't want to save rainforests or wetlands.

PAVE THE EARTH

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Re: Re: Jungles are our friends...

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
I'm going to have to say based on this cursory research that jungle is very unproductive agriculturally.

Maybe, but that does not mean that a jungle itself is unproductive. For starters you get a lot more trees per unit area in a jungle than in a forest.

Originally posted by Generaldoktor
This is why there is so much clear-cutting presently in the Amazon; the soil has little value itself due to all the rain it previously received and the nature of the previous foilage, which contributes virtually no nutrients.

No. The problem is two fold. First, the massive amount of rain will wash away the top soil quickly without the trees. Second, the peasants there have no idea how to keep and renew the land.

This is where forest management comes in. You don't clean cut a jungle to make a farm (not in real life anyway), you use it for other things, such as timber.

[Willem]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Jungles are our friends...

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
No. The problem is two fold. First, the massive amount of rain will wash away the top soil quickly without the trees. Second, the peasants there have no idea how to keep and renew the land.

It's also a problem of the soil itself. Rainforest ecologies grow so rapidly that everything that falls to the ground gets used up again by new growth. So there's very little build up of top soil to begin with.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I have no idea why Firaxis made jungles so bad. It seems rather absurd to me.

because they are bad. Why do you think everyone cuts them down. Has there been a successful civilization that lived in the jungles? The Mayans? Who else?

[Dis]

Re: Re: Why are they so bad?

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


-1 food and -0.4 health? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. Jungles are the most productive places on earth.



Sure, they are the least productive places

hey! I live in the desert . With modernization and food transport, we can have productive factories and such. Though mining is still our #2 industry (behind gambling )

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dis
because they are bad. Why do you think everyone cuts them down.

They are cut down to make cheap beef for McD and BK. No thanks to el cheapo US fast food chains.

Originally posted by Dis
Has there been a successful civilization that lived in the jungles? The Mayans? Who else?

What is "successful?"

You have the Incas and the Aztecs, for starters.

[Urban Ranger]

Re: Re: Re: Why are they so bad?

Originally posted by Dis
hey! I live in the desert . With modernization and food transport, we can have productive factories and such. Though mining is still our #2 industry (behind gambling )

Las Vegas is the most energy wasting city in the world. You should move somewhere else and do your part to save the Earth, Dis.

[johnmcd]

On the barbarian's and culture element, I did a fairly long thread called 'My Lunch with the Barbs' which goes into what the Barbs can and cannot do. Basically, they can do most things, including founding a religion.