How best to plant trees throughout a large region

[Varnado]

Hi there, this is my first time asking questions on the forum but I've been a reader for a long time now, since before I started playing SC4 last October. And I've got to say, the tag line under the logo on the left of the site banner is well deserved. The collected custom content and the screenshots here are something else, and it's a real privilege to see so many giants of the SC4/custom content community still posting regularly on this one website.

With that out of the way, I'd like to ask for advice on how to fully tree up a region. When I finally got around to loading up all the tiles and planting god mode trees in them in my current region of 88 tiles, it took several hours, and that's even though many of those tiles were nothing but water. And there are many custom regions out there with several times this many tiles, a couple of which I'm trying to start using.

It takes me at least a couple minutes to plant each city tile. I try to plant everywhere I can since the round god mode brush doesn't not really match the shape of any real life forests I've seen, and it's not really conducive to creating complicated irregular shapes--at least without also creating highly variable tree types and tree densities around the edges. So when I go to "foliate" a region I weigh down my shift key, so the god mode brush is always on the largest setting, and cover what I can in the hopes that the tree controller and the shape of the terrain will create a reasonable, realistic kind of diversity throughout the city tile, which usually doesn't work too shabbily.

Are there any other techniques people have to suggest for creating semi-realistic forests on a large scale? I've seen a lot of custom forestation patterns in MDs around here so I know it's possible. Is there a way to plant the forests more quickly than by what I'm already doing, or is this just the way it is? One last thing, does your choice of tree controller significantly affect how much time it takes you to "finish" a city tile? I use the Pacific Northwest controller and love the results, but I do feel like it can get pretty laggy, especially when there are already a fair amount of trees on the city tile. Are there other tree controllers out there that offer a similar level of diversity of tree species while also offering better speeds, perhaps due to leaving out seasonal deciduous tree mechanics?

Thanks for reading, I'm sorry to make this simple question so long!

[Kergelen]

Welcome Varnado,

As you said to create forest on a large scale the best way is using the God Mod tool. Yes, it take some time to plant all the trees and the only mod that help to plant trees quickly is the Standalone Flora Brush Mod. If you want to detail the forests or to make different forests patterns you need to use MMP ( Mayor Mod Ploppables).

The other new tree-controller is the "Aerden Tree controller" that contains different seasonal versions and one evergreen version which you could be interested. There are also "older" tree controllers by c.p. and Heblem that aren't seasonal (the seasonal flora are relatively new) and probably (I'm not sure because it's been a while I don't use them) are faster to plant because include less species of flora.

[whatevermind]

^^ What he said, mostly. 

As far as forest realism when it comes to diversity and density of trees, the best thing for that is a good tree mod. That's really the only way to efficiently mix and match a wide variety of trees within your region, and get them planted quickly (via god mode brush). The alternative is to plant them all one by one in mayor mode, which is what some people do (especially for MD's), but it takes a lot more time and planning. Another option is to simply mix the two - hit your cities with the god mode brush of your favorite tree mod to create a background forest, then come back later in mayor mode and plant isolated accent pieces for the picture perfect finish.

I'll also point out that the Standalone Flora Brush Mod features really tiny brushes at closer zooms, which combined with the GTM Mod lets you use the god mode detail brushes in mayor mode to plant small bits of infill forest that matches your tree mod without having to individually plop the trees (timesaver).

To answer your other question, yes, the tree mod you are using can affect how quickly it plants. Those mods that create denser forests (such as the Pacific Northwest mod) will take longer to use because they plant a relatively high volume of trees in your city. Sparser tree mods can go much faster, but you get less trees (either less dense uniform coverage, or small pockets of dense forest surrounded by emptiness, depending on the mod). As far as I know, whether or not a tree mod is seasonal, and how many species of trees it offers, has very little impact on planting speed. The additional dependencies they require will marginally slow the entire game down, but I think that's negligible relative to the impact on speed of trying to plant huge numbers of trees at once.

[Varnado]

Welcome Varnado,

As you said to create forest on a large scale the best way is using the God Mod tool. Yes, it take some time to plant all the trees and the only mod that help to plant trees quickly is the Standalone Flora Brush Mod. If you want to detail the forests or to make different forests patterns you need to use MMP ( Mayor Mod Ploppables).

The other new tree-controller is the "Aerden Tree controller" that contains different seasonal versions and one evergreen version which you could be interested. There are also "older" tree controllers by c.p. and Heblem that aren't seasonal (the seasonal flora are relatively new) and probably (I'm not sure because it's been a while I don't use them) are faster to plant because include less species of flora.

The standalone flora brush mod is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I've been using it and it definitely makes things move along faster.

Heblem's tree controllers are great, they're what I used to use before I switched to the Pacific Northwest tree mod even though I had to search out and find unlisted dependencies in order to get them to work right on slopes.

^^ What he said, mostly. 

As far as forest realism when it comes to diversity and density of trees, the best thing for that is a good tree mod. That's really the only way to efficiently mix and match a wide variety of trees within your region, and get them planted quickly (via god mode brush). The alternative is to plant them all one by one in mayor mode, which is what some people do (especially for MD's), but it takes a lot more time and planning. Another option is to simply mix the two - hit your cities with the god mode brush of your favorite tree mod to create a background forest, then come back later in mayor mode and plant isolated accent pieces for the picture perfect finish.

I'll also point out that the Standalone Flora Brush Mod features really tiny brushes at closer zooms, which combined with the GTM Mod lets you use the god mode detail brushes in mayor mode to plant small bits of infill forest that matches your tree mod without having to individually plop the trees (timesaver).

To answer your other question, yes, the tree mod you are using can affect how quickly it plants. Those mods that create denser forests (such as the Pacific Northwest mod) will take longer to use because they plant a relatively high volume of trees in your city. Sparser tree mods can go much faster, but you get less trees (either less dense uniform coverage, or small pockets of dense forest surrounded by emptiness, depending on the mod). As far as I know, whether or not a tree mod is seasonal, and how many species of trees it offers, has very little impact on planting speed. The additional dependencies they require will marginally slow the entire game down, but I think that's negligible relative to the impact on speed of trying to plant huge numbers of trees at once.

Well the whole point I switched to the Pacific Northwest tree mod was because it has both a wide variety of flora and allows you to plant fairly dense forests. I suppose with SC4 mods it's practically a given that you have to deal with some slowdown to get the very best results. Being able to plant an entire city tile with forest in less than a minute is great but it's a hollow victory when half of that is 20 foot tall trees that occupy entire otherwise blank tiles to themselves.

Sorry for taking almost a month to getting around to responding to the replies.