Still feels a bit... overly simplified? stilted? in places, but much less so than my prior attempt for sure.
Also really wishing that the game used like, a density-map (like how it defines resources) with a map-defined list of trees or such for forests, using a contiguous mesh/very low-poly assets for distant forest & dynamically placing proper trees near the camera, instead of having every single tree be a separate object. As the map stands, it uses like 800k trees, and what density I do have is only possible due to 1) a mod that raises the editor limit from 250k to ~1M and 2) some low-poly tree-cluster assets I found on the workshop that greatly reduce the tree count needed for a given visual density (though they have some kinda ugly middle LOD states).
Did a bunch more work and honestly really loving the vibes this has; the tree assets I found are excellent for this, and so is the map theme off the workshop
Also did a fair amount of "smoothing" w/r/t tree density and it feels much better and less artificial