Yep the mapping expirience was what I was going for, faction wise and geographically. Glad you enjoyed the time being lost.
The faction interacting side off things is kinda a hellish thing to implement and I went with a very simple way of doing it with war but I think it can create interesting scenarios(at first I wanted to try with a trading route but that was even more complicated)
I'm humbled by your words , thanks for playing