[Jazzepi]

I've never played in a two province starting position game outside of SP, but it seems fairly silly. There's no reason to do it, he game is balanced for a single starting position. If you give people two provinces to start with, those with awake pretenders, or fast expanders, will be hurt.

Since you already want to increase how often the magic sites occur, which makes site searching rainbow mages more effective, there's no reason to make them /even better/ by giving out a free province.

I have a hard time believing that R'lyeh having 1 resource illithids is a reason to start with two opening provinces, and you shouldn't be changing the game just to balance against /one race/. I find this quite offensive. LA R'yleh doesn't even have a reputation like EA Neiflhem, so I'm not sure what, outside of your own experiences losing to R'yleh, you are basing this on.

Also, you shouldn't be changing the settings just to boost a race you are going to play in the game, and supposedly hamper another that could quite possibly be in direct opposition to your own. That's just silly. If you want more resource points, then buy productivity +3 for an extra 45%, and make sure that you attack a forest/mountain province first, don't adjust the game settings.

Jazzepi