just reloaded the game again and started a new campaign and the auto click started working with area of effect so i don't know what it was before, but it's fixed now.
as for the brute force clicking to improve soil, i apologize if i didn't express myself well enough. To me, there is just a feeling of disconnect between a few of the game features and systems when playing for a while, like it's trying to be two games at once. putting so much effort into establishing an ecosystem is great and i love a lot of the base system there. i am also aware that soil improves over time but it has been extremely slow even with everything up to oak trees and flourishing animals around, taking over an hour for lush soil to get to get any notable progress in my experience, to the point that it isn't really an option or even mentionable next to just spamming clicks for 20 minutes, and cannot spread said healing effectively. My point is, the disconnect I'm feeling is between the fact we spend so much effort growing, evolving, and specializing tiers of plants only to get upgrades for our clicking and their own survival, not to actually make progress on the whole map if that makes sense. i understand this is partly a clicker game, but even cookie clicker had automation options, though that isn't the best example. Even if i do push my vitality click and transform the whole map, it just doesn't feel satisfying or a coherent part of the progress loop given the premise of regrowing a devastated world, especially on larger maps or harder ones.
My suggestion to separate soil upgrades from clicking was my thoughts on a way to fix this, by making the player rely on the life they establish themselves instead of brute force it gives a more central feeling to curating, specializing, and upgrading plant tiers to create a functioning whole ecosystem as it would be the needed way to progress and vitalize the map instead of what follows behind it in a way. Same goes for my suggesting the same with the cloud tools, needing to have the proper hardy plants to start the process on barren tiles, and then carrying over such evolved plants over to more challenging maps like the dune grass and the desert to start out, instead of just upgrading the tile and making it rain would feel more satisfying and add more of a real challenge to the game other than grinding, while locking it behind the Will power system allows you to get the same use but rewarding the base premise of building up life and revitalizing the world and prestige upgrades.
my point with the animals was also pretty unclear looking back, as i am aware they spread seeds, i just meant having some more unique behavior like burrows or nests and species specific effects that can help with the curating of the larger system if you create a place said individual species thrives, but i understand this is still in development and i don't mean to say this is needed now, just an idea.
I hope i communicated by main issue more clearly here. Keep up the good work!