Currently there is only the Flatten Terrain tool, which limits the potential of settlements to mostly flat terrain while avoiding mountains. My suggestion is to add raising terrain in addition to flattening tool, and maybe add the option for riverbank management for late-game optimization or if boats and docks are added.
Update:
A few days after this post, the developers replied to a Reddit post stating that it’s under consideration for v1.3.
I agree in essence. Instead of a flattening tool that only lowers the ground until level, I would prefer a ‘leveling’ tool that both lowers high points and elevates low points. Ideally, the tool would allow players to select whether they want to elevate or lower the terrain. That way swampy areas could also be filled in for use.
Isn’t that what the current tool does? i.e. raise the lower part of the selection and lower the higher part. Obviously that does not help much to simply raise or lower sections of territory.
Yes. Sort of. The results vary based on the degree of slope and size of the area. From my observations (which could be faulty), the flatten tool will lower the terrain until it is close to the lowest terrain level before raising that low section. There is no player control other than to ‘flatten’ an area. This works fine on small slope areas, but lowers a lot more land area in more mountainous terrain before reaching that low point where any terrain is raised. This often requires several iterations of flattening. Perhaps by design to reflect more labor involved.
The tool does what it says it does, it flattens/lowers terrain. It could be more efficient when dealing with high gradient/large area flattening. The ability for the player to raise land would still be nice and allow removal of swampy areas.
I find the flatten tool to be frustrating especially on severe slopes when it can take 10-15 times using this tool across many game years to make it flat enough to place a building, usually a mine on a mountainside. There’s no situation where I want to partially level the ground, it should level where I tell it to and be done with it. I would accept that it will take much longer to flatten a more severe slope, but having to do it over and over, then having to test if it’s flat enough after each time, that’s not fun to me.
A better solution to this is to let us place the building and then, in addition to chopping stones and trees, the laborers will automatically flatten the ground as part of site preparation.
As for raising terrain I personally haven’t come across any time I said to myself I wish I could raise that higher. Maybe for filling in swampy areas like someone said but most of those can be built on as is.
Ther ability to raise terrain under towers would be very helpful. Or Barracks/Forts if using them defensively.
The main reason I long to raise terrain is to fill in swamps and shallow back-bays that are inconveniently located in the way of my expanding city - much like they did back in the day.
Or even to expand the shoreline out into shallow water, creating just a few more key buildable tiles when space becomes tight.
Sure, I can see how it could be useful in those situations. 