Mangrove forest (prev. Tropical and subtropical foliage)

[Mefisto]

Now I see. It may look redundant. OK. I'll fix this.

[Mefisto]

OK. After tweaking and fine tuning I think I've got a version I'm satisfied with. Below are mockups (altered maps of first scenario for HTTT and first scenario of LOW). I removed the great baobab because it appeared too big and obscured not only the units on north of it but also on NW and NE. So for now this is it.
Mixed subtropical foliage is called "Savanna" right now but I can rename it "Scrub" or "Chaparral" as now the semi-dry grassland has this name.

[Adamant14]

Those terrain looks great.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

This stuff is beautiful.
Awesome work, Mefisto.


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[Mefisto]

Thanks. Here is latest version of whole exotic foliage for anybody who wants to play with it.

[Sleepwalker]

Yes it's all great stuff, I can feel the hot dampness of those misty rainforests.

[Mefisto]

I consider the forests finished unless somebody tells me what still needs some improvement. Right now I am working on other tropical things: mangrove bushes and rice fields. For the rice fields I would need new background which I'm working on - not water because embellishments badly work on water (no transitions). Mangrove is more advanced, as you can see below. I will be grateful for critique.

[homunculus]

There is something that I see in many of those images, at first glance they resemble this to me: http://www.flickr.com/photos/designshard/3452032703/.
It looks as if you had started from a dark background and smudged a soft lighter shade on top of it, avoiding the edges.
I don't know why it is like that exactly, maybe you have added a darker shade behind the lighter edge to make it stand out more, or something else that creates this effect, but at a quick glance I cannot avoid getting this first impression.
When I look more carefully, certainly I start to interpret them as trees and things.
But a quick glance seems to matter most of the time while playing.

[vultraz]

Hm...I think the mangroves are too light green, and could be darker. But besides that, great so far

[Jetrel]

I was asked to approve these for commit - I'd say everything before these latest mangroves is good to go in.

[Mefisto]

Thanks. The mangroves are still in very early stages of development so I think that I will be refining them next few months. I'm glad the rest have been considered commit worthy.

[Alarantalara]

All five forest sets are committed. I also changed a few maps to take advantage of the new images.

[Mefisto]

Thanks.

[Mefisto]

Mangrove enhancement continuation. The results are below. No "small" variant as mangroves by definition grow at the shore. Of course this means that either i need to compose single bushes into smaller groups so they don't bleed into nearby castles or just let them be and do not place castles around. The first option is simply ugly so I went with the second option. The mangroves fit well to ruined and slightly submerged castles and mesh perfectly with bridges and tropical villages. Maybe I should make them slightly denser, I shall see. Comments please.

[LordBob]

When zooming in it's obvious that you've done tremendous work on the roots of your mangrove, but once in full scale only the foliage stands out and they're hardly recognizable as such (they're obviously a different kind of tree, no problem with that, but at first sight I only recognized mangrove because you had mentionned it).

I'd try increasing the contrast of the roots/trunks so that individual roots stand out more (like your palmetree trunks), maybe while decreasing the saturation of the leaves, and possibly leaving bald patches where roots have grown beyond the actual tree

That's my two cent anyway. I'm afraid it implies a lot of trial and error.