Clearing areas don't work. To make them useful for not just keeping passages free but also improve building placement and upgrading i suggest the following:

http://www.globulation2.org/wiki/images/7/74/Paved.jpeg

turn them into paving areas.

* paving areas will get cleared if needed
* paving a square costs only time. maybe seconds
* paving areas request one worker per x unpaved squares
* paved areas can be walked on
* paved areas can be built on
* paved areas block resources
* paved areas give no speed bonus
* paved areas can be unpaved
* paved areas look discreet like in the pic (brown)
* paving areas look something like in the pic (yellow)

paving/unpaving is done with area tools and not with a 1x1 building.

With these paving areas we could modify construction and upgrading to be more realistic and handy by:

1. make the construction site into a paving area
2. when completely paved make it forbidden
3. turn it into a 0.9.3 construction site

Benefits

1. Construction would be more easy to use as it would allow to place/upgrade buildings not caring about clearable ressources what is micro management now.
2. More realistic as it would not be possible to block enemy units/ressources without actually having a glob that walks there.
3. Planned constructions would not be visible or attackable by the opponent.

When an area is walked over frequently, the grass should turn to earth (can be in several stages). This also adds a gameplay element:

a) Resources can only grow on grass, so no resources will grow in your frequently walked areas (like your town!)

b) Buildings can only be placed on earth, so grass has to be removed first by your workers, so it takes longer to build in a remote area than to build in your town.

Grass can grow back of course, and it grows back a lot faster when it's next to a resource (so your resource areas still function, even when crowded with workers).

There are additional benefits:
- If you add a clearing area, your workers will turn all grass into earth so resources don't overgrow.
- This adds extra variety for scenarios and maps.

* It should be possible to record games to a condensed record file and play them back.
** The recorded games start by with a save-game right at the start of recording and then list all of the orders that took place for each team. It should be simple enough to implement.
** There should be a menu option to start recording right after the game begins
** It should be possible to record net games.
** During playback, the game should keep you from making changes.
** You have no local team, but instead you can choose whos angle to see the game from while observing it
** The "condensed file" should be zipped with GZip or 7Zip or similar to conserve space.
** Random numbers must be synced!

We can have a new building, the singularity obelisk. It would allow any globule to instantly travel to any other obelisk. This would allow the unit to get a shorten way in some situations, for instance to go from one island to another.

This can be not-too-hardly implemented by modifiying the gradient computation system so that when it encounters an obelisk, it looks around all other obelisks belonging to this player or its allies (obelisk sharing being a question to discuss) to see if there is a lower value for its target (or higher, depending the gradient algorithm conventions).

Of course, an obelisk would be hard to build, and perhaps would consume, let say, papyrus ;-) (so that the Archwizards in it can write and cast spells to maintain singularity). We could even imagine to make the obelisks quite dangerous so that if they reserve of papyrus fall to zero singularity collapses and make a lot of damage around.

The ability to split your worker force so that certian proportions ''prioritize'' certain activities over others (they will still do any activity). This is so that players don't need to micromanage unit distributions as they apply to specific buildings as much as is now generally required. It ensures that at least a certain fraction of the workers will take care of certain groups of activities, even if assignments overwhelm the number of available workers. This should include:
:*General Chores -- the general chore maintence of buildings (e.g. keeping inns full, feeding the swarm, etc...)
:*Construction/Upgrading -- the construction of buildings, the upgrading of buildings.
:*Clearing -- Clearing or maintining land, in any manner assigned
:*(Possibly) -- Military upkeep activities, normally I'd group this with general chores, but keeping things like towers full of ammo can be damn important.
*E.g: If I have 50 workers, and 10% are clearing, 60% are taking care of chores, and 30% constructing... and I assign 5 people to build a new building (and nobody else is building) then I should be guarenteed to get those 5 wokers, and those 5 workers should peel off ANY OTHER ACTIVITY in favor of construction (except training, feeding, etc... but I'll deal with that later). This should significantly improve glob response to certain work activiites, and reduce the periodic lack of control that results when the numbers go negative.