FYI, I am going to be releasing an update soon that adds climate suitability to wood elves. Wood elves are ignored by the system in the vanilla game since they do not build cities in the majority of regions. They are restricted to outposts, which don’t interact well with the vanilla suitabilities. Since this mod is not restricted to these 3 base suitabilities, I was able to create special suitabilities for them.

In general these just add small public order penalties. -1 for regions with plenty of vegetation and -2 for more regions that are barren. These are small, but add up with each region taken in a province. Plus, there are no public order buildings to build in settlements. This encourages you to build up the Oak of Ages and relevant techs before trying to paint the map. You should not have a problem taking individual regions to resupply armies or open trade routes in the early game.

Wood elves don’t populate conquered territory. They give it back to nature and set up outposts to look after it. The power of nature is strengthened by the Oak of Ages. If the nature of a region is not very strong, a power vacuum is created and a province rebels.

That said in the vanilla game you are forced to paint the map a bit you get enough amber to raise the Oak of Ages and your city/cities to a sustainable level. This is not very lore friendly, and is made more difficult with the changes in this mod. To help with this, Magic Forest climates will add an extra five Amber to your totals. This will allow you to build up Athel Loren without having to take over a continent. It also fixes the issue with confederating with other wood elfs tanking your amber economy. You will still need to hold a lot of territory or alliances to complete the Oak of Ages and win the campaign.