(After every map there will be Citations from the players)
"Italy is the only Great power that I think is too unbalanced and that needs fixing."
"I think Italy and Russia should be given better chances as far as their unfavourable geographic position makes them more vulnerable from the very beginning. The map should remain the same but they should be given a bit more SPs to take in the start of the game or even in the setup to make them more desirable allies."
"A little, thats why the playtests, right?"
"Maybe Italy needs an extra SP to capture early on or an additional home SP."
"It would nice to be able to have a few more SP's available to Italy to grab up. Give them a better chance. How often does Italy fall within the first 6-8 turns than does actually finish within the top !?!"
"I think the problem is more precisely between slow and fast countries, but the setup isn't too bad that way. It's hard to see how Italy and China could be made better off without having an historically ludicrous setup."
"yes. England and Germany when teamed up is nearly unstoppable."
"Yes I think the game is set up so that it is very difficult to win with some countries, but I am not sure that it could be easily fixed, so I am of the opinion of letting it stay the way it is rather than changing it to something that could potentially be worse. And besides you can always play italy if you want a challenge."
"No, No!, NO!! I am very strongly against 90% of the changes proposed in the new maps. The only changes I would make would be to give Italy one or two extra supply points that they can CAPTURE (not that they OWN at the start). Other than that I say leave everything exactly as it is. I am especially against the way Africa and the Pacific Ocean are proposed in the play tests, I think almost of these changes are a very bad idea and add nothing to the game. In some cases they make the game more sluggish, and nations like Japan are going to be very difficult to play (and personally I think Japan's current setup and the sea areas around it are perfect)."
"No, I think that the magic that GD has was created by its diversity in countries, you know something for everybody."
"Not really, because the imbalance makes game play interesting. If everyone started out equal there would be no incentive to play other countries as each game would be virtually the same."
"NO, NO, NO, do not change a great game. I am a conservative by nature. That means, just like the US Constitution, do not change unless there are absolutely good reasons and we have had lot's of time to debate the issues."
There are more players happy with the existing setup than players unhappy.
Most of those who are in favour of changes, are only in favour of small changes, too.