Here is an attempt at a 'strategic' game board. The concept is to force certain offesive/defensive decisions on the player, without really changing the rules -- you react to the map in a particular way because of the geometry of the map, not an arbitrarily determined set of rules.
The terrain is nothing special; the map is a bunch of squares, basically. In the interest of fairness, any one chunk of the map will look pretty much like any other.
a few points on the map:
- its a big map (200x132) but it has holes in it; a lot of the map is ocean squares, making the landmass look like a big net.
- each game board 'square' connects to four others, but only at the corners. With narrow land bridges between squares, small groups of units can easily defend all the territory behind them.
- game board squares are set to allow for a fair density of cities, with almost no overlap, if you can restrict yourself to one city per square. You don't have to place it smack dab in the middle, though that is the way I set up the map.
- it might be handy to use the inland seas for transports, but the only way to link them is by building cities to act as bridges.
- only 16 of each strategic and luxury resource has been placed on the map. With 16 players, if you can grab two of anything, then someone else is going hungry.
