Groundworking and levelling terrain for building

[Bert Preast]

It seems the most efficient place to build a cabin is right by the shore of a river, lake or sea tile.  This is not very realistic, as if you build too close to the water you would be sure to flood at some time.

I would suggest that to discourage this, a contiguous wooden building should only be possible on a flat bit of land, which is usually found a little uphill from the shoreline.   

What would be great though is if we could do groundwork - that is raise or lower the level of terrain with a shovel and about maybe eight times the effort needed to dig a pit.  Even better would be if raising or lowering the level of one tile forced you to correspondingly lower or raise an adjacent tile - all that earth has to go somewhere or come from somewhere, after all.   

Building right by the shore should still be possible, but this would make it a lot more work to simulate making some rudimentary flood defences with the moved earth.

A small hunting cabin should usually be unaffected by this, which is good - but I think a larger house needs to be made more challenging to build.  Groundwork can do this!

[Erkka]

I think historically at that time period people didn't level terrain. The same effect was achieved by just adding more or less corner stones under each corner of a building so that the bottom logs are horizontal despite the terrain being sloped.

The same idea can be used to reduce the risk of flooding damage. For example, see a picture of an old watermill

[Bert Preast]

Nice pic, and I can see that working if a corner of the building needs a prop.  However, my cabin crosses three contour lines where I feel that some groundwork would be essential!

[MrMotorhead]

I agree that building sites would have been carefully selected for flat and level terrain.  Building on a slope is a huge headache and I'd never do it if there was any way it could possibly be avoided.  Almost all the land is unclaimed so we can choose any location for our cabins.  Also, I can't remember seeing any NPC building crossing terrain boundaries.

I think if any change was made in the game, it would be that player constructed buildings should not be allowed to be constructed on sloped terrain.

[Night]

On my todo list for mod extender features, should be less work than containers.

[JP_Finn]

I agree that building sites would have been carefully selected for flat and level terrain.  Building on a slope is a huge headache and I'd never do it if there was any way it could possibly be avoided.  Almost all the land is unclaimed so we can choose any location for our cabins.  Also, I can't remember seeing any NPC building crossing terrain boundaries.

Careful site selection is advisable, but for example the starting scenario of unfinished cabin; it often spawns on slope. Villages and settlement tiles of mostly flat ground with occasional single slope up at an edge (unless bordering hill/mountain tile) won’t be a problem.

I think if any change was made in the game, it would be that player constructed buildings should not be allowed to be constructed on sloped terrain.

Unless there’ll be added an alternate option for palisade/barn wall building from log wall, prohibiting slope building would remove building predator/invader safe(-ish) homesteads.
I’d personally prefer the slope building as is.
_{IF anything, enable multistory building, for hill fort towers, to partial lower floor on slopes and so on. (That’d require adding controls to look up and down “z-levels”... sounds like a lot of work)}