so? now what?

[wig]

I've cut wood with things other than metal tools... If it must go for balance reasons, so be it, but forest removal with the rise of metal weaponry is quite the logical placement from a realism stance. You do not want to try keeping land clear with stone tools. It's a . .. .. .. .. . just keeping the trees out of an area with sharp steel ax. Even with bronze, you're looking at sharpening the poor bastard after just a couple 8 inch diameter trees. Clearing actual forest was a monumental task before metal. Perhaps if you put it with the cavalry line it would make sense, an elephant makes short work of a stump.

We're just throwing around ideas here, I think. If you wanted to keep Bronze Weaponry and Remove Forests together, you could move them both off the the melee line. Put Bronze working in the Engineering branch at a reduced cost and split Training Yards off to their own tech. Then you could beeline the Cavalry branch, for example, and still have Chariot with Bronze weapons without having to research axemen.