I was never aware of this. There should be a list of stuff like this posted.
I'm planning to add more stuff like this to the wiki..
About archipelago: if you start on one, you receive one or more ships to compensate for your starting position, so this is why you started with them. Normally an alliance does not start with any ships.
I think the archipelago is a really cool idea, but the inferior starting position it gives you has been an issue from the beginning. Starting out with ships was a first step toward making it a viable starting position, but judging by your stories, and also based on my own experiences, I think it requires a bit more effort to even out the odds. So let's brainstorm!
One key problem is that the surrounding sea is not great terrain. Sea has stats 3/0/2/0, which is inferior to most common land-based terrain. For example, compare it to steppe (3/1/2/0), savannah (3/1/1/1) or river (2/1/3/0). Compared to plains and farmland it is even worse.
Worse yet, sea obviously cannot be improved by any method. And archipelago cities are also quite often at distance 2 from ocean, which is even a worse terrain type (1/0/1/2).
So all in all, it is not surprising that those cities have an underwhelming feel to it. One solution could be to improve the stats of archipelago terrain. Currently archipelago is 1/4/1/0. I just played around with the terrain editor; if archipelago would be upgraded to 2/4/1/0 (+1 food), this would already make quite a difference, raising the max size of a typical archipelago city from 13 to 15. That may or may not be sufficient to compensate..
As noted above, S'Sirthe starting on archipelago are especially problematic since they have a hard time paying the upkeep of Zaratans, as archipelago cities produce very little mana.
[Last edited by grobblewobble at 04-09-2010 12:35 AM]