Faerun - Pending Update, Need Opinions

[The Panther]

I am playing an MP game (as Atlantis) for the first time on the large Faerun. We used the Soapy mods which prevent clam hoarding. It is turn 83 or so and I have about 100 provinces, second only to C'tis. I must say it is a fine map and very pleasing to the eye.

The problem with Vanheim has already been noted. As Atlantis, I encircled Vanheim and then killed him at my leisure. It was no contest for him and I lost almost nothing, taking all the Vanheim islands (15 provinces) in 5 turns.

I thought the Calimport defenders were fine. I took it kind of early just to keep Marignon from grabbing it and getting the Navigators. I took some losses but it was worth it to me, and that was the location of the first fort I built. Any tougher defenders would mean it would sit there a bit longer unclaimed. The way it is now makes for interesting strategy between Atlantis, Marignon, and Machaka as to when to try to grab it and suffer the necessary losses during the early game.

The defenders on Mezro Jungle need to be modifed. I attacked it with a priest on hold and retreat about 5-6 times. This caused just about all the non-poison immune troops (including most of the commanders, the Jade guys, and Amazons, iirc) to eventually die to the hydra poison cloud. All that remained was to get the poison resist spell for my W9 Mother Guards and take it much too cheaply.

Vanheim had not taken Myrloch Vale when I killed him. I hit it with 8 ghost riders and killed most everything, allowing me to capture it without loss. It did seem very tough for sure. Certainly Vanheim thought so, for he left it alone.

I also took Waterdeep on turn 70 or so (nobody up there thought it worth capturing obviously) and it was an easy battle due to my huge army by that time. I remember sacking a few dozen earth trolls and water trolls to get it. No big deal to me, though it obviously was to Pangaea and Ulm who both left it alone.

I cannot comment on the other side of the map, not having seen much over there.

As for the map being too big, it really is. The main problem is that any MP game with 17 players will have frequent stales, some people going AWOL, several quitting to AI periodically, and such typical things like that. In my current game, there is much of this going on (as usual). Thus, there is really at most 10 players truly playing in any large game, which means big maps play even larger than they really are. My gold income has topped 8K and my gem income is nearing 300. That makes for very long turns. I pity poor Huzurdaddi/Soapyfrog playing C'tis, for his micro-management requirements are even worse than mine right now. Even on 48 hour QH with at least 1 person staling every turn, it is still too much to me to squeeze in full turns every time.

Well, I do thank you for all the time you put into making this map.

Panther