First off, apologies if this topic has been addressed, I searched through the forum and it seemed to me like this hadn't been specifically addressed - I know there are some plans in the works for special/unique sites, but so far details seem hard-to-find. So here're my two cents
In playing the game, I noticed there were occasionally huge swathes of forest covering parts of the continent.. this works well in the context of the fantasy world and in the medieval context, but it occurred to me that gameplay-wise, exploring this kind of feature is simply not very interesting. So what do they do in fantasy? Usually, if forests aren't covered in elven metropoli - which don't really work in the Elemental world - they have something going on at the center, a la the evil trees/Tom Bombadil in LotR, or even the Great Deku Tree in Zelda - gameplay wise, I thought that maybe it might resemble the landmarks in Alpha Centauri, where certain terrain provided bonuses (e.g. Monsoon Forest was a forest in which each square gave extra food, the Uranium Flats were a desert that gave out extra energy).
Maybe it could be coded such that whatever the largest group of contiguous trees on the map had something in the middle, and this could be randomized, e.g.
If you guys were feeling really ambitious, we could expand this concept to other terrain types too, what with the large areas of swamp, desert, hills, mountains, and/or even ocean~!
Sounds very interesting and would make exploration that much more fun. I foresee a possible problem though with navigation. I don't know if units can move through those clusters you are describing (it might be that they can) especially if they're all close together, unless some tree-chopping was implemented.
Other than that, it's something simple and so probably not too difficult or costly to add, but with worthwhile rewards, especially if the deep forest type encounters are very difficult. Nice.
Good concept, and I think it 's critical that large swathes of forest provide landscape beyond simply trees. I would personally like to see numerous hotspots where certain creatures live, foes and neutrals alike. Perhaps there are sub opponents in forests. For instance, units that roam the forest that are aligned with each other, but don't have specific cities. Once you attack one or treat too far, you end up at war with them.
As for Istari's point, perhaps only certain units--- or a party of limited size--- can make it through dense forest.
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