Oh, more posting! Did some more stuff...
1) Did a spawning spot model for land and sea. I used the CoP wallpaper as starting point, but made it look a bit more "organic" - it fits nicely into the fungus. If you think it's too easy to overlook, you may want to bump up the size a bit. Bot are 300ish in polycount.
2) I didn't like the banana nutrients (I really don't like too much things from vanilla popping up, especially if re-purposed, it sort of breaks the feel), so I took the tobacco resource (from the Crossroads scenario) and recoloured it in the style of the SMAC nutrients (also fiddled with it a bit to get a nice patch of plants together). It's small and lightweight - 87 polys and crops fungus/woods around it, so it should be noticeable.
3) When I modified the fungus (see above), I saw that it not only used the jungle as base, but that it still had all the trees in it, just totally transparent, which is - of course - a heap of unnecessary polygons. I removed these invisible elements and used a bit of the fungus texture, that wasn't used before (a yellowish patch), though I darkened it a bit. The new fungus models have only around 2/3rds of the original polygons - and even the file size was halved. And since fungus is so prevalent, it reduced lag on the map during scrolling noticeably!
However, there's one bit I couldn't work out: The sea fungus version has orange stalks sticking out of the water - during the change, they darkened (because something seems to cast a shadow) strangely enough, it doesn't happen with the land version. I don't understand why, so I can't fix that - you have decide whether to use it, but the reduction in polygons is quite a bit.
For all three things: If you want changes, tell me, then I'll work on it.
And to end off, another little question: I figured out how to modify stuff so it conforms to the shape of the terrain, which is nice for improvements - meaning the borehole model (SMAC mine) can now look pretty good on all terrains, including peaks. Which means one could use it as a mine (for nostalgia reasons, of course) - once there's a new borehole graphic. Interested in it? Because then I might tackle that at some point... (just to let me know whether it would be helpful to try it at all - I still want to keep fixing the older models first).
Cheers, LT.