Now that I had my first real weekend to focus on the new game, I noticed almost by accident that playing the game on the cloth map is superior in almost every way to playing zoomed in!

Why it's better to play on the cloth map:

1)  You don't have to rotate the camera to right-click your destination if it's behind a mountain.

2)  The Grid on the cloth map view is much more reliable and responsive to clicking precicely where you want to go.

3)  The cloth map is the ONLY map that shows you with good precision where the forests start and end.  This is critical to ensuring that you get the most of your move points.  If you zoom in from the cloth map to the main window, you will see that the forests ACTUALLY extend about 1 square further than they appear to on the main game screen.  So if you want your hero/character/whatever to move along the border of the forest but still get his/her full move points, and you attempt to do this by eyeballing the main screen, you will find your guy getting tripped up in forests when it’s not obvious that they should be.  Zooming out to the cloth map always gives you your full move points.

4)  The cloth map is the only map that reliably shows mountain passes in a way that allows you to optimize your moves.

5)  Selecting a city to see its build queue is actually quite difficult on the main screen.  I’m always accidentally clicking caravans and heroes and buildings when I just want to see the city.

6)  Any kind of strategic positioning of units is difficult when you are zoomed in so close.

7)  It is very easy to see the destination markers on th cloth map, but VERY DIFFICULT on the main screen especially if the destination is hilly and/or has buildings on it.

Problems with the Cloth Map that should be fixed:

1)     If you’re playing a race with a darker color, it can be difficult to differentiate your pieces from the enemy’s pieces.  The NPC icons on the map should be changed to look more different than the player(s)

2)     The goody huts are hard to see on the cloth map, you have to really squint

3)     The caravan lines / roads are nearly impossible to see on the cloth map

4)     When a unit is in the city and you right-click to move him out of the city, he will move there, but then the cursor gets locked and you can’t give him further orders.  You need to click off your unit then click back on and give them the new orders. 

5)     (PROBLEM WITH BOTH MAPS (BUG)).  There is no way to build on a resource if friendly unit is standing on it, including a caravan.