Um, did my post disappear? Anyways I just finished playing The Watering Hole as Hanna the Irin, won through a Religious victory. Marathon speed, Noble difficulty...
While I had a real easy time due to an drowned adventurer, I won before I could unleash my zombie hoard on the Eloheim and Balserphs. You might want to disable religious victories. Since one can't build settlers, putting barbarian cities on the two unoccupied islands and on the two northern islands would be nice. I really want to contend with pirates, and it would also be nice to have to take more on than one city when fighting ones rivals.
As far as aesthetics go, I liked this one. The "unique" feature you made was nice, and I love "Mad Dwarf Island".
I'm alittle worried about balance though, the Lanuan are really well off, and their hold is only slightly mitigated by their positions and the fact they have to compete for heroes. A quick and dirty way to help out may be to give everybody the seafaring tech.
Edit: Wow, I guess my post didn't disappear after all.
