Hello, all! Everybody's old favorite Faerun emerges in its third incarnation. Smaller than ever, the new version only has 283 provinces.
The new version still has all 17 nations on the map and now has victory points assigned to several provinces in the map file. There are a total of around 80 VPs from provinces and when you add the national capital ones, there should be around 100 VPs to go around. With victory condition maximum being 50, this means that there is no need to conquer everything. Suggested VP condition is 35 and up, since smaller numbers favor the western portion of the map too heavily.
Start locations have been somewhat modified so that placement is more evenly distributed and separation between neighbors is equidistant throughout the map. In almost all cases, your neighbors are four provinces away and everyone has three or more neighbors.
Vanheim is an exception, since they have to fight Atlantis from the get-go, and Ulm has fewer neighbors in the NW corner.
Many parts of the map around the Sea of Fallen Stars are now more accessible with the islands turned to port provinces that allow crossing the sea, so it does not act as an impenetrable barrier anymore, but as a series of chokepoints.
Overall, the need for diplomacy is greater since the placement on the map means that any given nation potentially has to fight off three invaders at once.
And where can one download the new map, you ask?
Here There Be Dragons. My homepages, sadly lacking as they currently are.
So, go and take a look and tell me what you think. Currently there is only a single map file, but I may release a no specials version if there is demand for one.
Edi
EDIT: Attached a no specials map file to this post. It's not in the archive on my site and uploading a repackaged version would take too damned much time at the moment.