I gotta say, I love it so far. But it is so much more challenging when you reach the point that there are a hdanful of strong players but no one player has pulled so far away to be a major threat of a win yet. The weak are slowly getting eliminated and the strong are getting stronger while bumping into each other and trading tit-for-tat.

So anyone who wants to join in, lets talk about the merits of this game and the challenges involved in having so many more options when there are half a dozen or more players with 8-10 SCs or more.

I would guess the large number of navies make it easier to send false convoy moves and making intentions clear?

I got effing South Africa in a gunboat and had to just watch as I was taken out. Absolutely crap version if you get SA.

Yeah, that does suck if your neighbors go after you. But you can still communicate intent and possibly allow a neighbor to work around you and together grow. I can't discuss the nationality I'm in at the moment, but I have a lot of neighbors and I've managed to help a neighbor of a neighbor grow at the expense of the guy who was attacking me by issuing supports wen I read the N of N's intent. That has refocues my enemy elsewhere and allowed me to regroup.

*refocused

No you cannot. I signaled my intentions by supporting neighbours from the very first move, but the divided nation of SA cannot support itself - you simply cannot get enough reinforcements down to protect either the South African part or the Antarctic part. Worse still, you are sitting next to Kenya which has arguably the best starting position of all - a complex mix, but with SA being so piss poor weak and Kenya being able to both feed again and again on the African continent and also keep launching fleets so easily and into such rich waters - it is a stand out to progress.

What this means is that even though I support FA to move quickly to take extra territories down south and show friendship, he still wipes me out and there is nothing I can do - I cannot have more than two units there in time and I block the SC with any defence; and even though I signal to Kenya by supporting him as well - he just doesn't stop and rolls straight over me. Again, I cannot get the builds. Worse still, with only two home SCs in Africa anyway, you end up having to block at least one of them in order to mount even a half-hearted defence.

If you get one build (if!), do you plonk that on the ice of Antarctica to try the futile exercise of holding your single SC there? If you place that unit (if you can) on the mainland of Africa instead, the Antarctic is the proverbial dead duck in less than it takes to shoot a penguin.

SA is a total joke in gunboat. Simple.

Yeah, I wasn't thinking about the split nationality. I think that needs a rework on the map.

I would suggest the map is also so large that people won't play SA enough for weakness to be come 'common enough' knowledge that it gets favourable treatment to help keep Kenya down

Yes, a real problem indeed.