Thanks for the kind words, I put a lot of time into making this map good-looking and balanced. The way that I balanced it was, I started a game as Hannibal (Carthage), walled off North Africa with a wall of ice or mountains, and let the game go on until about 1950 (when the turns started to get tediously long). Then, I would 'retire', and take a look at the game's statistics up to that point. As Hannibal's in-game presence wouldn't really affect England, Russia, or Austria etc etc too much, I could get a sense of who did the best. My goal was to, after performing multiple trials, have a variety of winners and losers by that point in the game. If one faction was doing too well, I would remove some resources; if the faction was lagging behind, I would add more resources. Finally, to get a balanced Carthage in there, I did the same thing, just with England. Viola! a map where every leader has a chance of winning!
And of course I placed resources somewhat strategically; lots of horses in the Pontic-Caspian steppe, lots of gold/silver in the southern Carpathians, wine in the Mediterranean, etc.
I don't play this game at all anymore, but I am sure adding in a new leader, changing a civ, or making basic improvements won't be too hard, once you get a hang of editing the .xml files for the game. It isn't as difficult as it sounds; I could do it when I was a lad of but fourteen years! Have a good one.
I will try it when I get back home and will tell you my opinion.
