Clearing Forests

I'd really like to see more terraforming magic.  It would be desirable to get rid of forests simply because they spawn monsters and inflict a terrible speed penalty, let alone the fact you can't build on them.

I haven't checked to see if the burning sands desert conversion spell will convert them or not. Mana is generally too precious to use in this fashion, anyways.

Nope... that's where monsters and things spawn I think. And it kinda doesn't make much sense to cut down all the forests. The world was destroyed and everything, everyones trying to put the green back into the land. As far as them limiting citysize goes, it's not much of a problem. You can always get rid of mountains, or raise land from the waters to get more spots to put buildings on. The only dumb limit is the 50 squares thing. It doesn't make sense "sorry not enough space in the city to build your barracks". I thought the whole point of cities were that they were always growing. You never saw people in New York go, "Oh we have 50 buildings, guess we can't build anything else". It's really harmful if you build a city near a huge clump of resources and get them walled in. That's 4x blocks you don't get to use anymore per resource.

Conceptually, it's frustrating to have your SOV be able to raise mountains out of the sea, or cleave them in two to walk through them, or scorch large swaths of landscape with great gouts of flame, but they are stymied by some trees out of an inability to engage in a little gardening.

The trees are sacred.  Maybe it's like how some religions believe the cow is sacred and even though they may be starving they refuse to eat the cow.

My sovereign doesn't give a crap about trees.  I'm in the process of conquering the world so I can devote all available people and resources to a knock-down, drag-out war on nature.

Are they sacred to my evil empire who spawns giant swaths of scorched, ruined landscape as their terrain type?  Because I'm pretty sure Morgus the Unclean would be ok with clearing some trees.

It makes less sense to be a demigod with the power to manipulate the land, but can't touch forests. It should be an option to cultivate or destroy. Besides, agriculturally cleared land is what rebuilds civs, not pristine forests. Of course a rebuilding civ would cut trees as needed.

I personally like having trees around my cities, makes it look more realistic. Also makes deciding where to build important.

Even Morgus trembles before Al Gore.

Once in the Beta I was able to nuke huge tracts of forests with the Earthquake spell.  Only got that spell in that one game however.

Agree that we ought to eventually be able to clear forests.   Maybe let pioneers clear them?  Maybe cut them down for a one-time materials bonus ?   Maybe fire-magic could have a "forest-fire" spell ?   But not a high priority compared to stability & performance.

Bust out the spell that turns a square into desert (I forget what it's called, barren land perhaps?)  It sucks mana, but clears the trees faster than any logging crew.

Blistering Sands I think.

Yeah, I was thinking that, but mana is generally too precious to waste on landscaping.  Maybe once they tweak the regen rates.

Not in favor of giving the task to pioneers though, a la Civ engineers, unless it's  completely automated. The game definitely doesn't need more individual unit micro. Especially when working in a forest where a gang of spiders is likely to spawn on top of him every few turns.

If it was given to Pioneers you'd need to protect it with troops for this reason.  Which I think would be legitimate.  After all clearing a forest is a hostile act and you're bound to piss off the inhabitants of that area.  That is their home after all.  So yeah, I think it would be justified in having to tie up troops to perform that role.

I'd like to be able to click on the forrest tile & have the 2 options; Logging Mill a +1/2 Mats building (would be nice if it was locked as wild so can never be part of a city) or Clear Forest which would take some Guildar and take say 10 turns, once its done you'd get some mats & a clear tile.

As well as giving the pioneers pack a clear terrain ability that can remove forest & city ruins.

Also Cities not being able to be built on roads needs to go.

Do not want more troop micro.  Do not want.  Late game slows to a crawl controlling units swatting down spawns everywhere. If I recall, this is the reason they didn't want road building and such tied to pioneers like Civ, either.

So not only would the process need to be completely automated while still giving you the ability to exactly control the tiles you wanted cleared (maybe you only want a path through a forest cleared, not the whole forest), the army escort has to be smart enough to follow along with the pioneer, without breaking their auto-clear function.

Or you could simply add another cost efficient spell to your SOV who already has other terraforming spells, and is in dire need of more spells for his spellbooks, and not add another unit onto the field.

 You can easily mod a new spell that clears trees. 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

<Spells>

    <DataChecksum NoParse="1">

        <Ignore>DisplayName,Description,IconFG,IconBG,IconColor,SoundFX,ParticleEffect,EffectScale</Ignore>

        <Translate>DisplayName,Description</Translate>

    </DataChecksum>

    <SpellDef InternalName="ClearForest">

        <DisplayName>Clear Forest</DisplayName>

        <Description>Clears aways pesky forest</Description>

        <Image>BG_ReviveLand.png</Image>

        <IconFG>Spellseed1.png</IconFG>

        <IconBG>Spellseed1_BG.png</IconBG>

        <IconColor>245,245,245</IconColor>

        <SoundFX>Cast_ReviveLand</SoundFX>

        <ManaCost>5.0</ManaCost>

        <Range>3</Range>

        <Cooldown>0</Cooldown>

        <SpellLevel>5</SpellLevel>

        <SpellType>Strategic</SpellType>

        <SpellClass>Terraform</SpellClass>

        <SpellTargetType>NeutralGround</SpellTargetType>

        <ValidTerrainCategory>Forest</ValidTerrainCategory>

        <SpellDefEffect>

            <EffectName>Revive_Land</EffectName>

            <LocalPosition>0,0,0</LocalPosition>

            <EffectScale>0.25</EffectScale>

            <EffectDelay>0.0</EffectDelay>

            <SnapToTerrain>1</SnapToTerrain>

       </SpellDefEffect>

       <GameModifier InternalName="PlaceTerrain">

            <ModType>Map</ModType>

            <Attribute>PlaceTerrain</Attribute>

            <TerrainType>Land</TerrainType>

            <Value>0</Value>

        </GameModifier>

     </SpellDef>

    <Spellbook InternalName="EarthSpellbook">

        <SpellbookNode InternalName="Node12">  

            <NodeID>12</NodeID>

            <SpellDef>ClearForest</SpellDef>  

             <StartingResearch>1</StartingResearch>

        </SpellbookNode>

     </Spellbook>

</Spells>

I'd like to see the ability to make and destroy forests. You should also get some sort of bonus for having them next to your city. I like the old lumber yard you could plop down on some trees. Maybe have a pioneer go and cut them down for ten materials or something.

Clear forest was one of the first spells I made testing the mod waters. 

 I just found out in one of my games that blistering sands will clear forest (and leave a desert tile) as will casting greater raise land and then lower land (this will leave a clear tile). The former also costs 2 or 3 less mana.

Elemental: War of the Druids?