Good work, BLH.

Marcus, that's good news. I remember being impressed when I heard about the spies that were put on the startegy map, then 'killed off' before the game starts to increase the usable map by the player.

I just hope that culture takes a backseat to trade in the final run-up to the development of EBII.

The main reason is: trade has immediate effects if it is cut off: it can be extremely political. It works on a day-to-day basis, and has a year-to-year scale as well. Culture on the other hand is a generational effect, that changes over the millenia (historically anyway, pre-industrial revolution. Some (I'm not one of them) say it's even more immutable than languages.