The ship-building rules look to be changed to interact with coastal areas:

From the ACEP rulebook:
] 21.2 A ship financed completely from treasury may be placed in any
] coastal area containing at least one of the player's units. A ship
] built totally or partially by levy must be placed in the coastal
] area being levied. All tokens spent on ships are returned to stock.

If an area is not "coastal", then you now can't build ships there, whether it was levied or not.

Which means, if the small lake that is bordered by Armenia, Lesser Armenia, Nineveh and Elam is not coastal, then no ships can be built there. If no ship can be built there, then instead of a enabling access across to threaten people on the other side, the small lake turns into a perfect barrier.

In my opinion, either going back to the original wording of just "area" instead of "coastal area", or perhaps just "water area". As you've got to have it built in an area with units, that means any such area will end up being a water-and-land area anyways.

4.32 A white line dividing two water areas, including lakes, indicates Water boundaries.

I have always played the one one boundry between Armenia and Nineveh as uncrossable. I'm pretty sure the rules are explict about that. However... I don't like it. It's odd that there is only one instance like that. My guts would tell me just to leave the rules the same and change the map so there is a land connection between the two areas.

I am not sure I am following you. (I'm going to assume you meant Lesser Armenia and Nineveh.)

In my opinion, as massive amounts of people can move by ship across oceans, there is no reason not to let them move across lakes. In this case, I think a boat should be able to ferry people from Lesser Armenia to Nineveh and from Armenia to Elam.

In the case of the shipbuilding rules, if you compare the ACEP rulebook to the original AdvCiv rulebook, the rules have been changed. I'm actually arguing against the change in the rules that has already been made, instead of making a futher change.

This is the rule I'm talking about from the original rulebook:
] A ship financed completely from treasury may be placed in any
] area containing at least one of the player's units. A ship
] built totally or partially by levy must be placed in the area
] being levied. All tokens spent on ships are returned to stock.

Has been changed in the ACEP rulebook to:
] A ship financed completely from treasury may be placed in any
] coastal area containing at least one of the player's units. A ship
] built totally or partially by levy must be placed in the coastal
] area being levied. All tokens spent on ships are returned to stock.

Instead of arguing for a change in the rules, I'm actually more arguing for a return to the original rules (or perhaps instead of changing Area -> Coastal Area, then Area -> Water Area, if there was some problem being solved by the original change, which I haven't seen yet..)

I don't see the purpose of having a lake divide two regions. I think forcing players to build boats to cross it is sorta silly (its not even that big of a lake in r/l if its the one that it seems to match in my atlas). I think simply shrinking the lake and reafferming the rules that ships cannot be built on lakes would clear this up simply and neatly. I'm looking for clear, consise rules with little or no exceptions. If you remove that huge lake from the map or shrink it enough for there to be a land border you can do away with ships on lakes completely.

I understand where you are coming from now.

How about instead of altering the geography (place and size of lake), instead just slightly move the border so it doesn't sit on lake (looks like an extremely small shift would do it.)

I think the placement of the lake mattered much in the original game (the border placements seems extremely intentional.) I am thinking that it attempted to give a route into the Babylon start area so that Babylon would have to worry about neighbors more. Given that Babylon can now have someone behind them on the ACEP map, it probably isn't needed as much anymore.