I can confirm Salt being a red blob of doom (tm)
Also elven workers need a ton of turns to improve one tile, even after researching the right tech. (eg. normals speed, Animal Husbandry is researched, but a pasture still takes 11 turns at workrate of 100)
I know in FFH elven worker were supposed to improve tiles slower than "normal" workers and thus got a base workrate of 80, but in FF (or Rife now) it seems that the calculation to build improvements in A.F./Forests is still broken - elven workers build improvements at the correct speed when building on non-forested tiles, but take quite long (11 turn for pasture, eg.) in forested tiles and extraordinarily long (20+ turns) in Ancient Forests.
So how about a small quickfix of a base workrate of 100 untill you guys find a solution for the forest-problem ?
Also a small nag (normally i don't nag around):
Is there a way to disable all those new, shiny and beautiful animals ? They really look cool, but seeing STR 9 Lizards on Turn 40 just makes expansion quite impossible - even svartalfar with hunters (if those would be available that early) can't kill those - how are other civilizations supposed to get a second city ?
Or is there a way to tone down the Str of those packs ? (e.g. Str 3/4/5/7/9 instead of 3/6/9/18/33 ?)