I highly recommend taking this to http://www.vdiplomacy.com/

The way neighbouring countries are connected makes it very easy to add this kind of 'special' connection. Actually it just means not connecting the territories.

There are great discussions and tutorials on the dev forum, or vdip.

To be clear, I do not intend to make this an online variant. It was supposed to be played face to face. I was looking for specific changes of the map. For example, I just realized that a player can have a unit in Algeria and Tunis and they will be able to hold their position no matter what.

This can be solved by splitting Tunis in half horizantally so that if someone has a fleet in Western Mediterranean Sea and Fossa di Panteleria, they could attack with two strength against Tunis or slip in to the bottom half of Tunis and follow with a third fleet, and the defender can't cover both choices. Or one of them is not an SC but that seems more drastic.

I like the first idea. Thank you.

I'm no variant expert but Thyrrenian Sea seems very large. You're talking a single space between the SCs on the mainland and on the island. Seems like a particularly powerful and hard to stop convoy for minimal units.

It was originally split into east and west. Do you think I should change it back?

That's my instinct.

Here's a bit of a breakdown of things I noticed by going over some potential starting moves for each player:

Green: Cagliari is in a really weird spot. I would guess that this is the reason you merged Thyrrenian Sea, because that's it's most useful spot to go. Although, it's weird that two nations that look so far apart could bounce in the first spring. However, I really like the interplay Green has with blue in the early part of the game, and the variety of opportunities they have to cooperate or stab each other in the first year or two.

Blue: Looks like a pretty limited power, in that they will likely have to fight Green or die trying in almost every game. This power definitely seems limited by the historical nature of the variant.

Brown: Looks like a lot of opportunity to grow, but a pretty central and demanding position to play.

Yellow: Similar to brown.

Red: Starts out more distant from the other powers than it looks. While Green and Blue will likely be having some life/death fights in the first couple of years, this guy can kind of ignore people for a bit, and then start attacking having already expanded a bit. Giving red more early game interaction is another good reason to keep Thyrrenian Sea large.

White: Like Red, seems to have opportunities to expand with minimal interaction before coming in aggressively. This could be fixed by making Cre or Pad a starting SC for white, or by starting white in Brescia, so that he can interact a bit early.

General impression: I expect the game to start with Green and Blue fighting, and Brown and Yellow fighting, while White and Red grow and then start coming in bigger than the other powers. Of course, this is just an opinion, I don't know for sure.