gavin_sidhu wrote:Dont think you will do much about this, but I still think that some of your bonuses are off.
Changes most needed:
Scandnavia - 3 territories, 2 border territories that border neutral territories (thus not hotly contested) with a bonus of 2? should be a 1, only way to make it a 2 would be for Sweden to border Germany or Poland.
I agree that this is more than a 3/2 continent earns in Classic but I think it's fair relative to the the other continents/sub-continents on the map, i.e. Australia and Central America are also 3/2 +2.
gavin_sidhu wrote:Changes moderately needed:
Maghreb - 9 territories, 5 border countries and bonus of 5? I think it should be pushing for a 6. I guess its okay because it is bordering neutral countries on the east.
Far East - 5 countries, 3 borders, bonus of 4. Africa in Classic has an extra territory and one less bonus. Bit hard because of Indian Subcontinent however.
Middle East - 7 countries, 4 borders, in the middle of everything, but only a bonus of 4? should be pushed to 5, especially if Far East bonus is left alone.
Using my
highly scientific 
bonus calculator which uses territories, borders, countries that can attack the continent and the number of other sub/full continents a continent borders I get scores of Mahgreb: 4.5, Far East 3.5 and Middle East 3.8. So I think we're aligned on the relative difficulty of the three. That being said I think that as with Scandinavia the import thing is that they are balanced vis a vis the rest of the map. I think they are though I think it's a close call. What I'd like to do on all the bonuses is see how people play and then adjust if we find there are significant balance issues.
gavin_sidhu wrote:Also your North American sub-bonuses are weird, both subcontinents have all territories as borders, which is odd. I suggest you make the Great Lakes larger to block Upper Canada, because that continent is very weird.
I tried a few methods to change the composition of the Canad and US subs to achieve a different border to territory ratio but wasn't able to come up with anything that met both the accuracy and playability tests. My expectation is that trying to hold just Canada or just the US will be a bad strategy. On the surface I think the best NA path will be to build a strong reserve in Central America and then move north along either the west or east coasts with the goal being to capture Canada/US 'together'.
gavin_sidhu wrote:Don't expect any of these changes to be put in place because your so close to finishing, but after staring at the map hoping it would become quenched, the ideas came to me.
No problem I'm starting to second guess things myself

. Anyway I expect there will be things that need tweaking once players have had a chance to evolve strong strategies for this map so these changes may well make World 2.1
Cheers,
Zim
P.S. The 2's works out to Australia 2.00, Scandinavia 1.60 and Central America 2.05 so Scandinavia is the closest to being a one per Gavin's suggestion. I think it's still a marginal 2 but it's closer than I thought when you factor in the value of it's neighbours...
P.P.S. I expect this map will be almost exclusively (80%+) played on Large. Andy, can we check this in the log files after a week or two?
P.P.P.S. Question Reverend Kyle?