Hi Charles,
These are interesting changes. Some flash feedback:
- I think this makes the Italian position weaker. Italy simply can't have France building fleets in Alg given access to the STS. And with Tuscany, A Rom is channeled - almost forced - to either go to the Balkans or Swi only. There is not an attack avenue on France. So this map would seem to prevent Italy from channeling force and instead to make a series of very defensive decisions: to parry French or Turkish naval threats? Can't do both, and whichever is ignored is in trouble. Indeed, this makes France and Turkey - in my view - natural allies. Good news for France, terrible for the USSR.
- Making Sue a build location is interesting, but I think is a case where more strength on the board translates into diplomatic weakness. If I'm Turkey I no longer want Sue out of greed but out of self-preservation. That is a much sharper motive, and one that might railroad more behaviour particularly in light of the fertile FT possibilities and increased shared interest.
I suppose my biggest concern is that the USSR remains underpowered, and the changes may further compromise their position. Surely if you can justify Turkey being a 3 SC power Russia could be a 4. No special rules, create an SC for the Urals or something and done. This seems the one gaping hole, despite your bullishness over their 6 SC high water mark in 1937. In fact I would challenge a truly top, expert player to take the current position on a challenge and see what they could do with it. I think it is terribly weak relative to the situation of the other powers.
Another small change to consider with USSR is to not have Len and NRG touch. It only compounds the potential or deep misery for the Soviets, the nice jumping off point to blitz the British in the mid-game notwithstanding.
Despite my sharing the concern of others that France was underpowered, as you know Charles France is one of the powers I most want to play in this variant. Well, I have to say, even these subtle changes make me think that now France could be a premier power. Not sure the impact that would have on poor little Italy, but it may help justify having Italy control the Nationalists, providing an interesting counterweight in the far western Med.
Dirk

On Sep 17, 2010, at 1:06 PM, Charles Féaux de la Croix wrote:

Hi guys,



I've now decided to run with the various changes I discussed in my
past mail and implemented those on the below v1.4 map. Here a
summary of the changes:



- Both Algiers and Suez are no longer marked with a red
circle as they're now regular HSCs.



- The Tyrrhenian Sea has been divided into Northern and Southern
Tyrrhenian Sea spaces.



- Tuscany makes a comeback.



- The Adriatic now adjoins Greece.



- I've removed the Abruzzi buffer province that was geared to
facilitate an amphibious landing in Italy. Given the redrawn
Adriatic adds to Italy's defense worries in the East, I felt I
might help out Italy be removing that landing-site.



- I also cut out the now fairly redundant-seeming Ligurian Sea
space. As the SC-space ratio is already pretty high at 1:2.56, I
felt it wise to not further increase the number of overall spaces.
Standard has a ratio of 1:2.2. Plainly 1936 is a whole lot more
fluid variant, though some of 1936's spaces (e.g. Iceland, Kuweit,
Caspian) are only of very marginal use. So the "effective" ratio
is arguably somewhat lower.


All-in-all, I'd say that Franco-Italian tension is increased in
Africa (owing to the threat potential of the Algiers HSC), while
round Piedmont it has been reduced by a fair amount. To the East,
Turkish-Italian rivalry over Greece has been intensified.



I'd be interested to hear your take on these recalibration measures
in the wake of Algiers and Suez being promoted to HSC status.



Charles



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