thoughts on a new scenario

[Ari Rabkin <asrabkin at twcny dot rr dot com>]

I'm writing a new scenario, named Lincoln--the American Civil War
at a comparatively high level--
week long turns, division sized units, etc.

A few questions: 
    1) how do I get a good map?  world-50km is just not detailed enough.
Any good ways to generate a detailed map of the eastern US at 10-30 km
scale?  Given the terrain, I can add rivers, cities, etc.
    2) to accurately simulate the blockade and southern raiders, I need to
simulate trade with europe.  Civ-2 does this rather well...any way to
represant something like Civ-2's trade in Xconq?
   
Lastly, it'd be cool to have something like Civ2's events mechanism--
something like (trigger (condition) (effect))
so that under some specified condition, some piece of GDL could be
evaluated.
    This would allow cool things like, if Atlanta is captured, then
suddenly southern attrition rates rise.
    Could this be added to the kernel?  It would help many many games.
 
Events would solve my 'trade' problem nicely, too.

Thoughts, anyone?

-- 
Ari Rabkin      asrabkin@twcny.rr.com

     HISTORY, n.    An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant,
which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
            --Ambrose Bierce