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Realistic Forests

This mod reduces the obstruction radii of most trees so that small units can move through them. In addition, trees do not obstruct units, i.e. units can hide behind trees.

This mod makes forests a tactical element of the map. Foot units like infantry and archers can move through dense forests with relative ease. Cavalry can also move through but have pathfinding difficulty making them much slower. This gives ranged units a notable advantage over cavalry when hiding in dense forests. Because forests are now porous, they can no longer be used as invulnerable walls.

Units can also be hidden in dense forests to set up ambushes.

Notes: The Jungle tree types still have obstruction radius = 1.0 so they are not porous, unit can still hide behind them though. The pathfinding in AoM apparently selects the route of least resistance, not necessarily the shortest route. This means that units will still walk more or less around the edge of dense forests if you only set one waypoint on the other side. However, if you micro your units throug the forest using 2 or 3 waypoints, they can get through fairly quickly (but still more slowly than walking over open ground).

Feel free to use the basic idea of this mod in any of your own mods. In fact, I encourage it. I think this porous forests is a fantastic combat mechanic that should have been part of the original game and it would be cool to see it implemented in larger mod projects.