T.A.M. actually stands for:
Tight Asset Management
It is a team management and leadership philosophy stressing extremely detailed and super efficient control of all of a teams assets including its human ones. Every gold piece, every gem, every move, every increment in PD, every unit recruited, every spell that is scripted, every research point spent, has a very specific, discreet, and expressly defined purpose and is painstakingly plotted and planned for each of the team members every turn and in advance. The team members function as an extension of the captain, and as a single unit with few decisions made by individual members. I'm not knocking it, it can be a very powerful style, especially if fully implemented. Just not my style of play.
How dare you Chris? I am offended.
Yes, I admit I enjoy the fantasy role playing aspects of themes (which are actually inherent in the game itself) and just get a bang out of ancient or medieval warfare in general. I also tend to be a casual gamer, so trying to correct every perceived imbalance (I've noticed a few other balance mods coming out now, BTW) and getting into the all the technical details is sort of secondary for me. For those who are hyper competitive by nature, the need to having everything balanced the way they want is important, but this can turn into something of an all consuming, never ending obsession IMO, especially considering that opinions may differ.
I do think that game 3, will do a better job if not as good a job at balancing the various factions while still preserving and maintaining the very real and unique advantages and disadvantages of each team which is the goal behind the theme concept (expecially in the pretender selections). As for the nation match-ups of this game, even if Ashdod or Mictlan was allowed to take the full dreaded bless, or the nations e on each team were somehow different, it would likely not have changed the outcome which had more to do with other circumstances in my opinion, including the loss of the Sangiunarium, team leadership style, player experience and skill level, the strength of the AI, team placement, geography, etc.
Our team did do some initial strategy and laying out of goals, research and so forth for each player, but we certainly were far more laid back than the other teams it seems.
As for just mountain provinces and no border mountains at all, for some nations, that might make a difference, for others maybe not so. If it benefits one team more than another, that could certainly be viewed as imbalancing, perhaps why the compromise of mixed mountain and border mountain masks was agreed to.
As for water, well I suppose it depends on if your going to have water nations or not, how the water is distributed on the map, and how easy it is for certain nations to exploit it. Frankly, I think that with our central sea, the coastal provinces surrounding it, the swamps, and all the freshwater sites, there will be enough water for the teams who need it. And since I can find no custom map that really suits our placement needs (excepting a smaller version of AOM Ogre), and a random map with water here and there would not be distributed equally for every team, I think it's the best way to go. If anyone has image editing and artistic ability, though, and is willing, feel free to contact me to volunteer. I'd certainly love to have each teams quadrant made more thematic, terrain-wise.