Same issue for me. I did a complete uninstall of the old version and cleaned out all my old Stardock locations (games and Program Files). After running again as Administrator showed up the forests for me, too.

I did some further testing and once I ran as Admin, I didn't need to run as Admin any more to see forests.

From what I've heard, I think saves contain XML data. If that XML doesn't include forests (like when you started the game), they won't appear. I would think that if you started a new game/scenario, you would be able to save/load them. You might give this a shot and confirm/deny this.

So strange it's forests that don't appear. Are there other things, too? And why just those?

I am having all the same problems mentioned in this thread.  I cannot see swamps or forests.  I had no problems when running as an administrator.

I have Windows Vista, and I'd venture a guess that others having this problem may also be using Vista?