Thanks for considering and responding to my observations, even though I'm the only one voicing these concerns at the moment.
No offense intended, but it appears to me that you have confused balance in the historical scenario with balance in gameplay.
The Spanish and English fleets are ONLY facing off in the historical scenario - in the game it's individual ships facing off regardless of nationality based on drop.
The Spanish and English fleets don't balance each other out because the drops aren't set to give one side all Spanish and the other all English.
I think you have to look at this map as 12 starting spots, not two nations.
You have to look at how possible drops affect the balance between players.
2 of the starting spots have an advantage no other spots have. Those 2 don't balance each other out because there is no guarantee of how they will drop. (1 player could have both, 1 could be neutral, etc.)
cairnswk wrote:NO the beacons didn't carry troops, but they did provide a warning, which in those days was instant messaging and as good as having extra troops avialble.
Again, the metaphor breaks down for me because the whole point of the beacon chain is to warn and give an advantage to London or the English fleet.
But the gameplay on the map isn't about English fleet vs Spanish. It's about 12 starting spots. The player who drops Penzance gets an advantage. (Ironically the chain gives an advantage to troops attacking London - opposite of the historical function).
Yes, other starting spots along the beacon chain can grab a piece of it. I've cut the chain and had it cut on me, but you have to fight through neutrals to get to it from other starting spots, while Penzance can take three n1s for +1, etc.
If someone uses the chain to attack you across the map, you have to fight through a lot of neutrals to get to Penzance and stop it - rather than counterattacking along the attack route and fighting your enemy all the way, which would be the ideal strategy.
If the beacons were 2-way a player would have to weigh the opportunity of attacking against the possibility of a counter-attack.
cairnswk wrote:I don't agree about land armies not being part of the ships bonus, the spanish carried their supplies aboard in the SS vessel, the English have to get theirs from somewhere.
I don't understand. In the same nation bonus the only "land army" included is LB Army Brussel. Do you mean the bonus should include the English LBs?
I think you mentioned adding the de Parma army territs to the bonus? Of course it could be a "same nation territ" bonus and you could include the English land territs since they provide supplies, but it just seems simplest to me to make it ships only. This part of the discussion is just about clarity in the legend as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'm all alone in being dense or detailed enough to have gotten confused trying to figure out a +1 bonus.
All this is fairly minor as you have pointed out. The bonuses in question are small and don't always come into play.
However, since I love this map so much, I would love to see a couple tweaks to "perfect it" in my opinion.