Building and removing hills

[Danno]

I tried searching and found some mentions, but not quite a topic like this... So, here goes.

I'd like an option to build and flatten hills. You might need some new skill to perform these actions.

To remove a hill, you'd perhaps need some advanced digging skill/tool. Maybe you'd just need a shovel and be unable to do it by hand. If it's a shovel, maybe you can right-click hills while it's equipped to get a "Remove" option. If it's a skill, then I guess you'd click on the hill with the skill. Now you'd be filling up your inventory with soil. The hill would have some set number of soil in it and you'd have to keep at it until it runs out. Perhaps you could use prospecting to see how much soil is left, I dunno. To prevent hills from being removed too easily (in case they were being used as natural defense or whatever), perhaps they'd have a minimum of 1000 digs before flattening... maybe a capacity of 5000 or something and the amount is randomly generated when the hill first came into existence (or if/when this feature was added).

To build a hill, you'd start up a little construction site and have to add at least 1000 soil to it. Perhaps you'd have to also pound the soil down, maybe add water, leave it be for a while, add more soil, pound it down again, etc. until the hill is a solid hill and not just a loose pile of dirt. This could also involve clay, I dunno. Perhaps it could also be vulnerable in this state... like, people can attack it to scatter/destroy the soil, and even destroy the fresh hill if they keep at it long enough. Destruction could be significantly faster with a shovel.

And all this effort is just to add/remove a single tile of hill, mind you. I dunno if additional hill tiles should be easier to build like with fences. If so, I suppose they'd be able to hold less soil than the origin the farther out you go so that the hill is a hill, not a platform... but they should still have a decent minimum amount in them so they aren't simply treated as weakpoints... Though I suppose they realistically would be, but I suppose people would also build on top of hills rather than hoping their enemies don't simply go over them.
And maybe you wouldn't be able to build hills like this on certain terrains (mountains, caves, swamps, whatever).

[DatOneGuy]

I hate hills in general, they need to be able to be changed, no matter how hard it is.

+1 to the general idea of removing hills

[rye130]

One problem with making hills, is they shouldn't be able to replace walls completely, removing them needs to be easier then destroying a pallisade or else pallisades will become useless.

Another point to add is that this change would need to take place when a map reset happens, as I believe many settlements us the hills as a naturally barrier and suddenly changing that could suddenly make a brick wall city with hills protecting part of it, defenseless.

[DatOneGuy]

One problem with making hills, is they shouldn't be able to replace walls completely, removing them needs to be easier then destroying a pallisade or else pallisades will become useless.

Another point to add is that this change would need to take place when a map reset happens, as I believe many settlements us the hills as a naturally barrier and suddenly changing that could suddenly make a brick wall city with hills protecting part of it, defenseless.

Doesn't necessarily need a map reset as long as those people are actively playing and paying attention to announcements, if it's announced it's not a problem.

[Paladir]

Wouldn't there still be some of the hill left after you dig part of it out?

[Danno]

One problem with making hills, is they shouldn't be able to replace walls completely, removing them needs to be easier then destroying a pallisade or else pallisades will become useless.

Another point to add is that this change would need to take place when a map reset happens, as I believe many settlements us the hills as a naturally barrier and suddenly changing that could suddenly make a brick wall city with hills protecting part of it, defenseless.

That's a good point. Well, my idea as is for building hills would be a huge hassle as opposed to removing them. It depends on how fast the shovel would take it down. Maybe even a stone axe or other tools could help remove the hill faster. I dunno, it also depends on how much of a natural defense you want to allow hills to offer... or man-made hills could function a bit differently from real hills.

Wouldn't there still be some of the hill left after you dig part of it out?

I dunno, depends how you/the developers would want this thing to work. It would take a ton of effort to level a hill like that, but it also takes many years for a tree to grow to full size, not 1 week.