After reducing the number of bonuses and ongoing rearrangements etc.- here a current preview:
https://www.warzone.com/SinglePlayer?PreviewMap=104836

Edited 3/3/2024 21:34:10

If all territories are worth the same, wouldn't it be better to move the bonuses out of view? They're just adding a lot of clutter to the map.

Oh goodness, no - your right. I was simply to lazy/unsure in implementing my favored bonus system:
1 <<99k
2 100k<0,9M
3 1M<5M
4 5M<10M
5 >10M
(6 >40M
7 >80M)
Mostly because of overpowering specifically indian and chinese territories. Aswell there are likely cases of difficult border constellations which I definitly wanted to check afterwards.

Woa, that map looks wild.
Both in a good and a bad way!

For the bonus values, personally I think it's best to default to balance across the map, where every region is of approximately the same value.
Even if you intend for the map to be mainly used for diplo games or custom scenario games or things like that. Because the people who host diplo or custom games know (and are willing) to manually amend the bonus values.

But there will also be people who jump into the map blindly, for a quick strategic game, or the auto-games when it wins Map of the Week, for example. And they will not first amend the bonus values.
So the "base" map should be as suitable for strategic games as you can make it, even if the intended purpose is not necessarily strategic games.
In my opinion.

Yeah, guess I got your point - the focus on population can only be a rough orientation otherwise provoking even more 'mapwide' unbalance.

By the way I was for a while now thinking about making the seas only accessible via ports and islands.
Due to my lack of experience I can't tell if this really would be a good asset to the gameplay.
pro:
- real bottlenecks
- more focus on the cities
contra:
- precedents like Greenland/New Zeeland V Borneo/Madagascar
- likely more (bonus-)isolation of areas beyond Afro-Eurasia

But maybe this would just overcomplicate things ....