Well, when we do our next play test at Redscape (what am I, nuts?), I will be removing any extra stuff on the map anyway.

I don't mind some nice graphics provided they fade well into the background. Anything that makes the board look more professional sounds good to me.

The new map:

* Massilia was a little bit hard to put into right place, but I did my best. I had to tweak some borders to get it to look good. The only difference in game terms is that the city site now resides on the flood plain - it´s still black, though.

* The only other change (apart from cleaning up the mapedges) is the naming of big geographical places. Whaddayathink? I also removed the rule texts from the trade/census part of the map. I also like Jonnos ideas, but have no time to implement them. If anyone else feels up to it, feel free to work on it.

I love it... it's a beautiful map.

The only thing I don't like about it, is the blown up section of Greece. I understand the need to do it, it just doesn't seem to fit to me.

It's one of those things were we either had to blow it up (or figure something else out) or change the starting civs around Hellas around...

Entirely redoing the starting civs was a little impractile and would probably end up being rahter unhistorical.

Not sure what you mean... why would the starting civs need to be changed?