First, let me introduce you to something I just stared working on.
I know the map may look a little similar to the European map we already have, but this map is focused in on the Mediterranean (and the Black Sea), and game play of this map would focus entirely around getting across the Sea.
Now the real point of this thread is to ask the question of Straights and Canals. I want to know if theres any way to use the XML to make my idea work.
It may be obvious, but I want to have the port countries (noted with a Ship icon) be able to all attack eachother. Meaning, you could attack from Tripoly to Italy to Greece, even though they share no physical borders. That of course is no problem to do with the XML. The real question comes with attacking from Portugal to Italy, or Saudi Arabia (I know the port is currently on Egypt, but i'm going to move it) to Greece, or Romania to Tripoly.
What I want to do to make gameplay more interesting is make it necessary for you to own the straights to be able to attack. Through out history, Galipoli has been very important to hold because of the link of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The Straight of Gibraltar has also been fought over heavily because of its link to the Atlantic. More recently, even before the Suez Canal was built, France and England were already fighting for the rights to the land so that they could get their own companies to build it.
So since they're of such importance through out history and the real world, it would seem silly for them not to be important on a map like this! So what I want to do, is make it so that you can only attack from Portugal to Italy if you own Gibraltar (and likewise, you can't go from Italy to Portugal without owning it). Also if you wish to go from Portugal to Saudi Arabia, you need Gibraltar and Suez.
Basically, to attack from one port to another, you have to own any straight/canal thats along the way (noted with glowing borders). Its a pretty simple concept so I dont konw why I spent so much time explaining it, but yea. I don't know of any way to make this work with the xml that I used in making my last map.
Don't worry too much about people not understanding this when they're playing, I'll worry about all that after finding out if its possible. Really thats all this thread's purpose is right now, so don't put too much effort into commenting on the map so far, its an extremely rough version.