Re: NewbsWithLowSelfEsteem: All ages! Madness! [Recruiting]
Some input and past experience on maps in regard to land/water ratio:
Crown5 has 245 provs total, 17 of which is water. the map averages 15 provs per player with 16 players. While it seems a lone water nation gets 17 water all to itself, but since your version has no river connection, a lone water nation can be looking at 5 water provinces at most if he's lucky enough to spawn in the middle pond, or sitting in a lone or 2 water prov pond if unlucky which pretty much means it's doomed, though more likely in a 3 water provs pond, which isn't much better. having only 1-5 water provinces realistically to start in is a huge handicap, a lone water nation should be fine there, fixed start in the 5 provs pond is also a good idea to prevent a 1-3 prov pond start. Oh, last I checked it was wrapparound. This would be a challenge map for water nation (with river connections removed).
Galadia has around 13.5 provs per player for 16 players, with 40 water provs, I'd say 2 water nations is too little, 3 water nations would be preferable, which was the case in a MP I was in, with UW mod enabled. 2 Water nations would be conceivable I suppose.
Cradle of dominion as you say has no wrapparound (I do like wrapparound), for a lone water nation with 15 ppl it is quite good though, you get quite a good swath of water to yourself, but being squeezed in the middle results in heavy dom invasion even if you temple up with high dom and allows being ganked geographically (both I had ran into in past MP games in this map with water nations), a pretty good balance I'd say.
CBM 1.81 also enables some UW mod spells, which mitigates the water nation entrenchment problem by quite some bit, as UW combat penalty can be negated (I recall a bonus to non-water troops fighting underwater with the spell too, I'll have to check to make sure) via battlefield spell, and also a vine ancient that can be cast into the water to create a cheap leader with magic leadership (kind of as an enabling water pd for land nation if I understand correctly). I should boot up 1.81 cbm and take a look...
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