[Ballbarian]

Thanks Gandalf, that will be useful as well.

A note of interest:
I started a single player game shortly after uploading the patched map file as base Pythium vs 11 ai oponents. Pure bad luck started me in the rough start position that I had mentioned. I now control most of the swamps, a large chunk of the wastelands and some mountain provinces. My gem income is very respectable, but of course gold is scarce and starvation is an issue until I can find more nature sites for bags of wine. I now border 3 rival nations and things are not looking very promising. If I can hold them back for a few more turns I should be able to break out of the mire and start taking some gold generating provinces. All things considered it has been every bit of the challenge that I had hoped.