Sid Meier's Civilization V

Sid Meier's Civilization V

Prehistoric Era (BNW)
apshai  [developer] 8 Dec, 2013 @ 4:45pm
Banana Camps - New Improvement Question
So I am thinking of a way to solve a particular issue. I've created a slow resource revelation system, whereby resources are revealed based on technologies.

As an example:
Gathering > Bananas
Harpooning > Pearls, Crab, Fish
Art > Dyes

The problem is that, as in the first Banana examples, plantation technology had not been developed, yet. But gathering allowed for early humans to take advantage of these resources on a limited basis.

Solution #1
So I've thought of thought of adding a pre-improvement that will give limited bonus. In this case a "Banana Camp" may only yeild +1 Food instead of the +2. I know the plantation is +2 Food and -1 Production but the worker also has to remove the jungle effectively making it a +1 Food tile. So this solution doesn't have much of a negative compared to later plantation technology. If removing jungle produced a production gain (like forests) then this could possibly work.

Solution #2
We could still have the "Banana Camp" but because plantation technology won't be invented until later, the resources "dries up" periodically. Meaning that part of the time it WILL NOT yield a +1 Food gain. This will probably work better. I just need to figure out how to make it happen technically -- my guess is I'll have to do it in the LUA.


Ideas? Suggestions?

(I am going to borrow civ artwork and maybe just change some color and/or textures around for this. It takes me tooooo long to do 3d-art. I'd love some volunteers!)


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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
DerEider 9 Dec, 2013 @ 5:40am 
Just a thought ... Call it something other than "camp". Banana Grove comes to mind.

The Hammers production amount should be lower than required to build a "Camp"; perhaps 50%. Then the +1 Food would seem fair. No jungle clearing should be required.

They are simply going to be grabbing wild Bananas from the trees, not cultivating the crop.
apshai  [developer] 9 Dec, 2013 @ 7:19am 
Good point about the name. It's better not to confuse it with existing names. And to your point about production -- I agree -- maybe a didn't properly convey that message in the post. The _plantation_ is the imporvemnt that affects production and requires a higher technology. The early "improvement" (grove?) is just really an establishiment of an area to pick bananas (which can dry up).

- Banana Grove (doesn't convey the message that the people are actually impoving or changing anything -- but may that is OK)
- Banana Baskets
- Banana Hut
- Foraging Site (could be the generic imporvement for all foraging/gathering "improvements" that have a cyclical and non-permanent resource bonus)

DerEider 9 Dec, 2013 @ 7:50am 
Yeah !! I like the generic Foraging Site concept for any food resource at maybe 50% of its nominal value; Bananas, Wheat, Citrus, etc..
[ESC] Klocknov 23 Dec, 2013 @ 3:38pm 
I am with DerEider on this.

A dry-up idea does not sound the greatest, since if you need that 1 food to be in the positive the dry-up period could affect he city more then the growth period helps it.
Tirollu Doruk 12 May, 2014 @ 11:22am 
Why not just completely ignore it? Don't add the Banana Camp or any other building and let the abstraction do its job.
See, at the beginning you don't get any bonus at all from Bananas. It doesn't mean they aren't there, it just means that your people don't/can't use them in any way beneficial to them. However, once you discover the technology for that specific resource, it means that your people have learned how to actually use that resource. So they simply start gathering it and it benefits them in a way. Thus, what you tried to represent as a "Banana Camp" is actually very well represented in the game itself. This is because since the unmodded game actually starts with your civ having the agriculture technology, the devs probably assumed that it means they grow whatever crops they find in the area around them in a limited fashion. So although it does help in keeping the settlement well fed, these crops don't really help it grow. For that purpose, we have plantations and farms and pastures etc.

TL;DR, I propose that you simply don't add any Banana Camps and abstract it as having the food provided by the actual resource BEING the food you'd get from a Banana Camp.
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