I see many posts on the forum complaining about the flatten terrain tool and request for easier terraforming. I actually like the way it works and requires you to work around the terrain that is there. I’m sure there are examples of man-made mountains or cliffs in medieval cities, but it would require monumental amounts of labor to create, not to mention material (soil/rock). Just thought I’d offer a counterpoint to the complaints/requests for more or easier terraforming. Curious to see if others agree.
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Yeah I’m half onboard. I wrote a steam guide explaining how to use the tool most effectively. It almost halves the work required, so it probably isn’t how the devs intended it to be used. Once you get the hang of it though it isn’t terrible, but it is still very tedious.
I would like to see the tool significantly improved in a way that retains that creative constraint that you are talking about. Ideally I would like to be able to go into a landscaping plan mode where I can easily set the final goal state. To keep it constrained the raising and lowering would need to be balanced for the goal to be valid. Then once you set that goal state the builders would slowly go about moving dirt from here to there until it was achieved. This fixes the current issue of extreme tedium and micro while retaining the interesting parts.
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I’m still figuring out how it works, but seem to be able to manage getting things done. My only gripe with it is the occasional “unpathable terrain” that can happen, leaving a villager stuck or stranded. The town I have going now has a big mountain with a ton of iron ore on it, and a huge deposit of gold on the other side- and it’s not that far from the actual town.
Goal for this game is to terraform and mine the heck out of that mountain, up one side and down the other to the big pot of gold waiting there. We’ll see how I feel about the Flatten Tool after I give it a serious go. I have a feeling I will regret this undertaking, lol. 
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If you take a look at the landscaping (terraforming) tools in the TQ & GD editors,
there’s a few more options that I would like to have implemented in FF as well.
- Raise/Lower (variable radius, variable gradient towards the edges)
- Smooth / Jag terrain (invert smoothing, variable radius)
- Stamp (copy height and paint with that, variable radius)
- Ramp (start and end points, fill a slope in between these points, variable width)
There should be a way to calculate the amount of “fill” and add that as a workload to the landscaping operation.
Also I would imagine that the landfill volume is based on available resources (Sand, Clay, Rock or “generic landfill”)
If that doesn’t work for UE4, I’d be okay with an editor (an extra mode / creative tool in FF or via a mod on Steam workshop, plugin etc.) to paint the greyscale heightmap for the playable map ,
save that, then create the actual game (modified seed).
Loading greyscale images as an alternative way to freeform terrain manipulation would be huge!
At their respective px size formats for Small, Medium and Large maps.
I’d be happy if ‘X’ number of hits on any given terrain would result in a flat surface.
I don’t care if it’s more for steeper.
This ‘20% less-round than last time’ is a fractally-diminishing return on your efforts that will never achieve a level grade.
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Many medieval castles were built on man-made hills called mottes surrounded by ditches. I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to have at least that much control over the terrain. Sure, it should be labor intensive, but when compared to cutting and transporting stone, it doesn’t seem that bad.
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Yes good point, I think for me it’s mostly about balance and immersion. Motte and bailey that takes a long time to construct? Cool. Man made mountain with sheer cliff faces to make your town look like Helm’s Deep? Perhaps not realistic.
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Totally agree with you, take the landscape as it comes and terraform little bits where possible/needed. Personally I don’t like the unnatural high slopes etc, I’m more an organic builder.
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it would be nice to have options. then people who don’t really want to terraform could just keep the terrain as it is.
I’ve actually stopped playing for a bit cause of how frustating it is that I can’t control terrain.
I’ve spent many hours in the game and there’s not enough challenges now so it would be nice to create cool looking cities and have some control over how the terrain looks
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I like adapting to terrain and all that.
I DO NOT like fighting with UI, and never is that immersive to me.
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If I did not “fight the terrain” there would be no buildings, I use Alpine maps. I do not usually try and make mountains and hills flat but normal and reasonable ground that the computer complains about being to steep. Steepness is a very confused word in the form, some see it as mountains and hills but it is not that. 
Second there is no one a done in the game to level the area to build, I have to look up the history of ancient towns and see how they did it , which you would think that would be the out come.
Well, in medieval times, monumental amounts of laborers were a thing, and they got lots done. You can go back even farther… and building pyramids is pretty much akin to creating a mountain, all done with even less technology than medieval times. It is pretty amazing what can get done by a group of folks with a Pharaoh or Lord standing over them, telling them to get it done.
That aside, just being able to flatten an area or create a decent path up a mountain without fighting the UI/mechanics would be a very nice change. As someone above posted, I too am taking a break because I love the city building aspect, but feel like I have to really fight the game to get even close to what I am intending, all while things are falling apart in my city, because I am on the outskirts focusing on trying to flatten an area enough to be able to build on while the years roll by.
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15-20 years of making a self-sufficient starter town to support 50 laborers flattening non-stop.
Then 80-120 years of just … waiting.
It was extremely boring.
The dark Ziggurat citadel of Naga Thul will be completed. But no thanks to the terrain tool.
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Personally I like how the flattening is done in “Surviving Mars”.
You can make flat areas, create ramps. Each time you do it, you either have excess rock that you need to store in some place … or a lack of rock that you need to take from said place.
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Just a simple comment on the great terraforming debate… (*disclaimer - I am definitely in the ‘pro’ camp for improving/expanding the terraforming tools in the game).
It seems that complaints/suggestions on the flatten terrain tool have been one of the most repeated items showing up in the forum since the game’s release and regardless of whether you are fine with the tools available (or don’t use it at all) or would like the Devs to improve them, I think everyone can agree that even if you watch/read all the available guides/tutorials - any kind of terraforming, whether it is trying to level a mountain or flatten a 4x4 area for a house, is extremely tedious and often doesn’t work as expected.
My suggestion for the Devs is simple - please improve/expand the terraforming tools - I believe that a large number of players would greatly appreciate it - and for those that feel it’s ‘cheating’, unrealistic, etc. to make terraforming a bit easier – I say just don’t use the improved tool… This is a solo game - I can play it in a way that I enjoy and you can play it the way you want to and everyone can be happy!
As always thanks again to the developers for all their hard work on the timely updates for the game so far, I’m really very hopeful for what’s in store over the coming weeks/months.
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I agree with the OP. It’s good the way it is.
The UI of the tool suggests that the area you select will become flat, meaning, you can build on it. This does not work most of the time and I think that is what people are complaining about. Selecting an area to flatten should, well, move dirt from the high areas and place it in the low areas, possibly making sharp edges of small cliffs to even larger cliffs if you flatten against the side of a mountain. I think there should be some bonus of stone material if you are doing this on mountains as you will inevitably unearth some stone. It would also be neat if you could lower terrain intentionally, not just flatten it, and maybe even unearth ancient relics or something. Having a museum of historical artifacts you find could be another way to boost moral in the village.
What I really expect when I select squares to be flattened is that a 3x3 building should be able to be built if I select a 3x3 area to flatten, plain and simple. After several attempts to flatten the same spot it still can’t be built is what seems like a bug to me. You can tell your workers to repeat the process but you watch them walk away and do other things for a while and then different workers come back in, taking even more time on distant areas where you are just trying to get a mine in.
Maybe a new pathing tool for mine cart rails can be made so the mining camps can be placed where they can be built, and a pathing tool like when building roads can be used to lay down rails for running carts of ore back and forth from the mine to the mining camp. Then we can have fun with it and make a mine cart rollercoaster running all the way down a large hill in zigzag paths to descend less steeply.
Flatten does not equal level using the tool. There still may be a slope from a different direction. I find I have to do a larger section first, and then a redo of the size building I’m putting on it. So in your example, a 4x4 or 5x5 and then the 3x3.
That Ziggurat is really cool. Great discussion with a lot of differing opinions! Excited to see where the devs take it.
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