Thanks for the kind words everyone!
SC "Beautiful and creative as always"
You are just trying to make up for treacherously attacking my poor blood priests.
They just wanted friends!
Glad you liked the Ringworld map Keir, I did not want players/AIs to get REALLY bottlenecked and climbing the spokes seemed a cool answer. Though if you read Niven's book by the same name, you get a better feeling of how far your army is climbing in one turn 
(Hey, in my ringworld there are working elevators)
"do the portal things do anything?"
Yes, each Sky portal is connected to the 3 land portals of the same color. Although the sky looks chock-fulla-bottleneck, it is accessable from so many places on the ground that even the most defensive player will have to work hard to hold the place. But if you do, you have a great shortcut around the map. And both sea and sky portal spaces are all no-start.