West Indies

I had a LOT of fun playing this map. The only thing I see, which is subjective (good or bad, all opinion) of course - is you can cut the map in half at Panama (or Costa Rica or Cauca) and Dominican Republic (or Haiti). So with two borders you can have up to an 11 troop bonus holding everything East of Haiti and Costa Rica. Then again, if you manage to carve out that much territory, maybe you deserve it. In that aspect the gameplay late in games is very familiar to USA players. You can cut that map in half with two borders as well.

Kind of agree with cbt. If you get that bonus, you probably deserve it lol. The other option is to change the connection line from haiti/bahamas to dominican republic or puerto rico/bahamas. That way you'd at least end up with three potential borders. This map division was always inherent, just based on how the real life countries are. I'm not really seeing anything to terrible in the games being played though. Seems to be working out all in all.

If Hood is happy the way it is and has no intention of altering the gameplay (being as it is not an actual issue that has occurred to warrant an edit), I will take this map out of Beta and make it Active?

Hood is a happy chappy. :)

West Indies is now Active. Congratulation to Hoodlum on another great map.

Curious why it is called West Indies vs Caribbean Basin.

ive never heard it called the caribbean basin so never considered it. down these ways, i know of the west indies because of cricket

I hadn't either. I was researching the west indies and it is really only the islands on the right side of the map. I came across a handful of maps that include the area of the current map which would be the Caribbean Basin. We don't have to rename, just think it is slightly more accurate. It is almost like calling the World Classic map the Australia Map. :)

More properly this map should be called Caribbean, and the Caribbean map should be called West Indies. But not exactly really... The fact is that Antilles, Caribbean and West Indies geographically are almost synonyms. [quote=From "West Indies" article on Wikipedia:]<"The subregion includes all the islands in or bordering the Caribbean Sea, plus The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, which are in the North Atlantic Ocean. [u]Occasionally, this term also includes modern-day Belize, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.[/u]">[/quote] So yes maybe West Indies might be a larger area, but definitively not all the area included in this map. This map includes also Central America, Mexico, southern US and parts of South America. Caribbean Sea (or Basin) would be geographically more correct, and still we should discuss if the Caribbean Sea/Basin also includes the Gulf of Mexico or not... Imo when you say "Sea" more likely you are excluding the Gulf of Mexico, when you say "Basin" more likely you're including it, but I don't think there is an agreed convention for that. But, the West Indies name is a clear reference to a [u]specific historical age[/u]. This map is in fact historically themed with a piratical look, so I wouldn't remove the West Indies name. Perhaps a solution could be to call it: "[b]West Indies & Caribbean Basin[/b]". Just an opinion.

Sorry, I didn't realize it was a reference to a specific historical age.

@@dough_boy Oh well, you don't have to be "sorry". Actually you raised an important and reasonable question about the name of this map. There is indeed a significant historical-geographical imprecision in the current name. However, I don't really like the solution I suggested myself, so I don't know ... @@Hoodlum Yes, the cricket team is one of the few rare examples of modern use of the term "West Indies". But if you notice, that name refers only to the Caribbean islands and Guyana: nothing to do with Mexico, Colombia and United States. If anyone has a more appropriate name to offer he is welcome for me. Dough_boy proposed "Caribbean Basin", which is not bad in my opinion, although unfortunately the historical reference would be lost. I also liked having the "West Indies" vs "East Indies" pair, and this makes me a bit reluctant to change the title.