Rhyes (and all here)
First let me say that your mod is the only one I play now.

I absolutly love it.
It seems like your goals now are more toward tweaking the technicals & tightneing documentaion. So I understand you are not looking for map quibbles...
But in the months I have been playing, the North America thing has been driving me mad! I even read through all 27 pages to see what others had said about it and I understand why the continent was made the way it is - to slow the americans from dominating.
The problem is that the west coast is almost pointless because there are so few decent settlement points. I first had the problem playing as the chinese - I went to settle there (there is some (pseudo)historical basis for this & the japanese doing so as well) and found too few tiles that I could build on. Alaska has one site, the pacific northwest has a few and californa has a few but they are all massively limited by the mountians and desert squares. Additionaly, the maze like plateaus & mountians create a choke point of one desert square to allow passage to the interior.
I have been experimenting with tweaking the map (for personal use) and adding a square or two to represent the bounty of the area. Anyone have experience with this? Or any other changes?
I thought about these additional N America tweak suggestions - I may try these as well:
the addition of the Ozark moutians & Black hills on the map.
A majority the of the continent east of the Mississippi river should be forested. Someone else noted this earlier and this was the situation.
Canada has too much Tundra, espc. the lower part and the area surrounding Hudson's Bay.
Has anyone thought about creating the missisippi river as actual coast, sea or even ocean squares? That might slow up the American expansion and a few strategically placed ocean squares in the carribean would help as well.
As for the entire 'should there be an america at all' thread, there probably shouldn't be - it is historically incorrect in the early stages of the game (might as well start with Afrikaneers too). But if you want a european civ in North america, you might think about the Irish (c. 484) or the Norse(c.1000). Cut out the Americans. Maybe a seperate civ would start in Iceland or Ireland with one ocean going vessal and one settler and one military unit. Have to make their way there, etc...
just a couple ideas I had. Oh, and two things - first, this is bugging me. From earlier in the thread - China and India had contact (how do you think the chinese got buddhism?) early on. In 645 Hsuan-Tang returned from a pilgrimage to india, 800 years before Emperor Zhu Di sent out the treasure fleet. I'm Just a stickler for historical accuracy.
lastly - why do you refer to Livorno as 'the italian stalingrad'?
anyway, thanks for the mod and any opinions about the changes I may make would be appreciated.