Was excited by the news and just played a game. Old map has 27 bonuses, with around half of them pickable. New map has 37 bonuses, and also more pickable areas. so chances of starting near each other is less. The madagascar sri lanka link is way too powerful, i daresay it might even make gift card redundant. The old template was more intense with fighting from often game start to finish. In my game everyone was spread out and had big incomes at first contact, it was over in 2 turns after that.

My first suggestion is to make at least 3 picks, I'm sure there are other improvements too.

4 picks.. so is really balanced.

If we want to remove it, we should pay for a hacker and take down the map!

Or ask Ra nicely

I think the whole reason to switch to a larger map was so that we could have 3 picks

but 3 picks will be not enough for cover the Whole map. 4 is much better...

Sorry, I meant to say at least 3. I think most 2v2 templates that are currently used on that map use 4 picks.

3 picks means 12 picks total to 37 bonuses. iirc there are no inefficient bonuses on the Final Earth map so you need 16 picks total for it to be balanced. I also suggest turning off the 1s and making wastelands like 15x3. If you want to keep wastelands of 10, needs to be like 9-11 of them.

the +1/3 are really bad, no point to turn it off.