[Valerius]

Cleveland, I really like your idea of 27 hour hosting and think it will work out well. But if, as seems likely, 24 hours isn't enough time for everyone to get their pretenders submitted I wonder if it might be better to start the game on Mon./Tues. with regular 27 hour hosting rather than wait until next weekend to begin.

As regards the map, I think there should be at least one land nation starting on the SW landmass. Given that the water nations are getting 15 provinces each I don't think they should have easy access to land. And there should be a land connection to either end of the SW landmass. Also, the land start north of the SW landmass seems too good - lots of space around it compared to some of the other starts.

Lastly, I also tend to prefer the hand-drawn maps. Both because they look better and because they tend to have better balance than the random maps. So perhaps we should consider one of those.