Hi, Thanks for the comment, and glad to hear you’re enjoying it! Great question and sorry for any confusion there. Previous versions were while the game was in development, but the latest version is the released edition, so the version conventions were reset and it’s the “first edition” (technically it’s “version 4”).
No problem! Yeah, I liked seeing them in maps too, but the issues were:
- Cliffs were mostly just used as coastlines, which can still be drawn as cliffs in the current edition. When they weren’t used as coastlines, there were too many edge cases involving rivers. Also, their readability on maps involved a bit of artistic technique (one of the missions of the game is little drawing skill is necessary to play).
- Ports are also nice, and I think they can be still added to seaside towns during touch-ups after scoring. The reason they were removed as a feature is that sometimes you’d have to draw more ports than there were seaside towns, which always looked a bit strange.
Still, it might be nice to incorporate them in a future expansion or something! Again, these features (and others like walls, pyramids, compass roses, etc) can always be added during touch-ups after scoring :)