You've been geekbuddied, thumbed and tipped! Thanks for making such a fantastic map. Is this the highest res available? And the cards? Are they available on here too.
If I can't manage to upload a higher resolution map board here, then we can work it out on the side. Give it a little time and patience, but feel free to pester me directly in a week or two if nothing has happened by then.
There was considerable discussion where I found myself defending this map, which in turn might shed some light on its design. I decided to cross post it here...
sundaysilence wrote:
Is that the key then to that version? The naval links?
Take careful note of the roads: they weave in and out of provinces, and if they stay in the same province for more than two cities, they tend to dead end. Thus, if you want to really score big on roads, you find yourself also crossing numerous provinces, thus getting in everyone else's way. If, on the other hand, you want to dominate adjacent provinces, you'll find most roads just passing through, keeping you from leveraging them significantly.
Huge chains are possible in this map, but you really have to concentrate on them to avoid getting cut off, meaning your houses and preoccupation will inadvertently feed the province and emissary scores of others.
House power is most easily built in the Peloponnese (the southern half of the map), with many forks that take a concerted effort to cut off. In Laconia (Sparta), the road network is nearly invincible, and following the road also gives you the double benefit of dominating the province as well. This, obviously, is meant to represent Spartan land superiority.
Expanding out of Laconia, however, pushes you through some dangerous chokepoints.
As far as diplomat scoring, simply dominating two neighboring provinces is a waste - you only get one point per diplomat played. The key to scoring big is what I call "triangular" links - if you can dominate at least three countries who are all related to each other, your score multiplies exponentially.
Study the map carefully for triangles - you'll notice several (1-2-8, 10-11-9, 7-8-9) are centered on the high scoring naval power of Attica (Athens). Also note, if you want to score more than one of these Athenian triangles, you'll be dabbling in rough places like Boetia (Thebes) and Argolis (Argos/Corinth), pitting you against local tyrants setting up their own diplomatic networks and controlling the road system.
The exponential scoring of triangles will give you a runaway victory and is hard for your preoccupied opponents to recognize, but it is also very risky - if someone's on to you, they can (at considerable expense to themselves) wreck you, since just one broken link destroys your scoring, and all your emissaries mean you have no significant house score to fall back on.
Note that, despite the huge size of Attica, the roads are horrible, and they don't leverage well into its hostile neighbors of Boetia and Argolis. On the flip side, notice that there is only one triangle (14-15-16) that can leverage the house power of the Peloponnese - most diplomatic potential is cut off because there's actually no relationship between neighbors Arcadia and Argolis! Those Argive and Corinthian wannabes were infamous pains-in-the-butt to Sparta.
sundaysilence wrote:
Or are you referring to the Web of Power map which if I recall does not have as many emissary links?
The WOP map does have the same number of emissary links, but what it doesn't have is enough roads. This is because of the double house scoring system it used to try to balance house scoring with diplomat scoring. The Fortress rule now obviates that, but it requires a thicker road network to make Fortresses worth the effort. Of course, you could always draw in a few extra roads on your own...
sundaysilence wrote:
HOw many are you playing with in the photos above? 5? Gee I would have thought this game would not work very well with even four no less five.
The Greece map is vast and does best with 4 or 5. I'm concerned, however, that there may be too many cities for 3, but ran out of time and energy to address that (having moved on to several other half-completed "Man" projects). It plays well with 3, but settlement is a little too open and sparse.
dcorban wrote:
When I play [China], players are lucky to get even one section of road. The other players are very quick to block off both ends.
Oh, that's very true in our China games as well. You get a province and a little section of road, stick a fort in it, but find your effort can't be leveraged to push into your neighbor because the road spent its entire time in a tiny neighborhood. Your guys end up "clumped" in one or two provinces, and it's nearly impossible to push through neighboring "clumps".
The scoring results of such games are tiny little sections of road and mostly non-exponential single emissary links with little magnification from others. Thus, the contribution of diplomats and road scoring is strictly linear, resulting in close games but, IMHO, uninteresting ones.
As a quick survey, how many times have you seen anyone score more than one diplomatic triangle or score a fortified road greater than 6 cities?
For me, the best games are when it's not only profitable but hard to stop foreigners from setting up diplomatic networks in your provinces. Why? Because dominating your provinces almost gave you this great road network, but you gotta keep playing houses to fend off people trying to cut you off, thus giving some other guy a free hand dropping diplomats into your province.
An easy fix would be to re-route the roads so they hop from province to province a lot more; certainly, in 6 or 7 cities, roads should generally be crossing at least 3 provinces.
I don't know about the diplomatic links... I'd have to think about that. I don't have the graphic capability to edit the China map, but I'd certainly make the rich but mountainous South a lot different from the wide open North.
Lookin great 
