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Wood Elf Cities and Towns (Settle Anywhere)

I like to paint the map. But I also like to play Wood Elves, so I made a mod that lets you settle any region as the wood elves just as you wood any other race. But, there's a catch...

In order to

1. Prevent Wood Elves from becoming overpowered and
   
2. Preserve the Wood Elf fantasy of dwelling in and cultivating the forest,

I have added a new Wood Elf mechanic to the game called forest cover, and created an altered set of Wood Elf buildings specific to these non-magical forest settlements.

When you acquire any settlement besides a magical forest from a non Wood Elf race, that settlement will begin as a level 1 outpost -just as before- since wood elves refuse settle outside of the forest. In order to progress beyond this stage you must spread a sufficient amount of forest cover to that region. Once this threshold is reached, your outpost will be automatically replaced by a "Wood Elf Hamlet" as now that the region is suitable for long-term Wood Elf habitation, some of those assigned to your outpost have taken up permanent residence. At this point your settlement functions as a full-fledged settlement just like that of any other race.

The Mechanics
In order to produce a permanent town or city in a region outside of a magical forest, you must reach a threshold of 80 forest cover.

Forest cover is spread in 2 distinct ways:

1. Forest cover in a region increases by 2 for every Wood Elf character that ends their turn in that region as they or their retinue plant forest.
   
2. As the forest naturally spreads, forest cover is also increased by an amount indicated by the following table for each adjacent Wood Elf settlement of tier 3 or higher .

In order to track your progress, an icon will appear next to the nameplates of each of your settlements that will indicate your progress when moused over.

As Indicated above, I have made a number of alterations to the wood elf buildings available in these new settlements to keep the Wood Elves balanced and ensure magical forests still feel special.
All magical forest buildings remain unchanged.

Infrastructure
I have created a set of infrastructure buildings (money, growth, order) whose ultimate potential is benchmarked against that of several other races, and which should provide similar benefit. However, in keeping with the theme of slowly cultivating the spread of the forest, these buildings only reach full capacity once that region is fully developed.

Recruitment
The recruitment buildings available outside of magical forest are the same as those within, with the exception that hero recruitment and capacity increase has been moved from tier 2 to tier 3 (except for Drycha and Durthu Branchwraiths) in keeping with the theme of the forest's potential being unlocked only when fully developed.

Outpost Buildings
Outpost buildings have been moved from the Infrastructure tab to a new outpost tab as they aren't really all infrastructure anyway, and that tab would otherwise get rather crowded. In addition, you are restricted to only 1 outpost building per settlement to prevent massive buff stacking.

A couple tweaks have been made to the effects of some of the outpost buildings as well to prevent them from being overpowered when spammed in conjunction with a full-fledged settlement. For instance, the worldroot's 50% recruitment discount is fine when you can only recruit globally, but not when combined with a full suite of local recruitment options.

The Arborist's Enclave
The Arborist's Enclave is a new building I have added that will cause a normal settlement to spread forest cover as if it were a magical forest.

This mod is multiplayer compatible.
I do not recommend using this mod with other mods that introduce/remove other wood elf buildings. It likely won't crash your game, but unless created with this mod in mind, they will likely not be correctly restricted prior to the hamlet's establishment.

• Add a ritual that will rapidly spread forest cover to a specific region (to help colonize a strategically important area or pesky island)
  
• Add a slider to adjust the needed forest cover threshold (my mod-fu is not yet good enough for such things...)

While I primarily made this mod to enjoy the game how I like it, I hope that others will like it too, so let me know what you think!

Does spreading the forest take too long? Or maybe too short?
Does adding additional settlements make the Asrai too powerful? Or did I perhaps not go far enough?
Do you like the forest spread mechanic, or do you just want your settlements right away?
Have you encountered any bugs? I have done 2 full playthroughs, and tried to squash them all, but you never know...

Spreading the forest can take a long time, but the rewards are well worth it...


Happy (Wild)Hunting!