Leoreth,
I am one of the biggest fans of preplaced cities but even I think what you did in India is not only overdid but also quite inaccurate. I'll start out with some inaccuracies:
-The city of Kolachi is west of the Indus river (which is also better for gameplay) and the more appropriate name for the medieval city would be Daibul.
-Cochin is too far north (even though the cityname manager doesn't recognize that) and would be better represented one tile south.
Here is what I don't like:
-First off, all those cities not only make the game deterministic but also look and feel quite ahistorical and atheistically unappealing. So I suggest you get rid of some of them:
1) Goa: Outside of the fact that Goa was the capital of Potuguese holdings in India, i could not find any history of the city so it is extremely ahistorical to preplace, it is something like preplacing New York before the colonization. Goa isnt that much of an important city to begin with, i did'nt see any major history on wiki and it isn't exactly one of the most important cities right now either. The only time it makes sense to see Goa around is if the Portuguese found it.
2) Karachi, because it wasnt an important city and more importantly unlike Delhi or Calcutta it is not important to have Karachi neither in gameplay terms nor historically. I would much rather the AI having a choice of founding cities there especially since more important cities like Multan will not get built by preplaced Karachi.
3) Peshawar; again it is not important to have Peshawar. I would like if the AI founds it once in a while but it shouldnt be preplaced because there are as important/ more important cities in the vicinity like Lahore and Kabul which will never be founded if Peshawar is preplaced.
4) Hydrabad should be left for the Mughals to found because if im playing the Mughals I want the option to found cities. Its not like the Mughals never founded Hydrabad; actually it was present in a significant majority of my games. What you can do is make Hyderabad more likely to be founded (settler map).
5)Calcutta is a special city as i think it definitely needs to be in the game (due to it being the most important city in colonial India and one of the most important in post colonial one) but i think it should not be be preplaced but rather always founded by the British. The way you can do this is if any other city is already founded before the conquers events, you can check the tiles surrounding Calcutta and raze that city and then a British settler should spawn accompanied by a cultural border.
I like that you have cities in Southern India; i once thought of recommending this idea (but forgot). I would like to expand on this by recommending more historical city names and one more city in Southern India:
I like that you have represented the two South India cities as it represents the various Kingdoms of Southern India (Chola and Vijyanagara) but after doing some research the cities you have chosen had little to none value in Medieval India so what i suggest is that you change the names to cities that were important in that time period and when the Europeans conquer the region you can change their names to their current form.
Madras: should be changed to Kanchipuram which was a major center of religous and political power in Ancient India and is located in the same "square" as Madras. Once the French, Mughals, British (or any other European or Islamic Powers) conquer the city it can be name changed to Madras.
Cochin: should be placed one south for better gameplay and geography as it is too north right now.
Bangalore: I am surprised that you have included all major Indian cities except this one. Bengalore is the largest city in southern India and an important colonial city of Southern India. The medieval city in its location would be Vijayanagara which was an extremely important political and economical center of Medieval India.
Heres what a final map of southern India would look like if you implemented my suggestions:
The only problem is Goa which would not be able to be founded if the Portuguese land; i myself would be fine with that since Goa isnt that important (comparitively) and the fact that Cochin served as the capital of Portuguese India for quite a while. But if you insist, you can move Vijayanagara one tile north (in blue) and spawn the Portuguese where the green is.
BTW, Heres a better settler map (with minor terrain changes) for the Mughals:
Its surprising how much you can learn from wiki in a matter of half an hour.
But don't hold me to it if it turns out to be wrong
And liberating their core cities should still be necessary because I guess they'd be unstable very soon if you continue to hold them.
