War in Iraq!

The Iraqi expansion story begins in July 2005. I don't know if i was inspired by the actuaity or not, probably inconsciously. I was checking the different type of hexes in the game age of steam, plains, hills,montains, rivers,forests (in my Brazil expansion, not yet published). No desert in all age of steam expansions... I have to create one expansion that will take place in the desert...
One year before, i made my first age of steam expansion in North Africa during the french colonization with water (blue cube) and negros (black cubes), but many testings did not make this map working very well. So i gave up with desert hexes but thought that black cubes could be Oil in barril.
Add these two ideas and the actuality of the war in Iraq, and War in Iraq was born. I wrote the background in the same time. The size of the map has changed probably 5 or 6 times and oilfields hexes too. It was difficult to balance the difficulties to build near oilfield (only possible with the engineer) and the plenty of goods you get when you have connected one oilfield.

I immediatly draw two flags that work as black citis, one european flag , and one USA flag to simulate that you can go out oil from Iraq. You can also get bonus at the end of the game if you manage to deliver oil to this country.
At this time, it was clear that we can not urbanize in black and we remoeved the four black tiles when we played with this expansion.
Koweit should play a particular role. It is the only one city in purple at the beginning of the game.
Bagdad should attract players and should divid the country into two countries. Io was inspired by Paris in the France expansion from Warfrog. So Bagdad had 4 colors in my first Iraqi expansion. But my group thought it was too attractive and i finally made design colors for Bagdad that begins the game with no cube (do not forget , the war is not over!)

In the Iraqi expansion, there is a new special action US Army. The name has never changed. my idea was to allow player to pass through city with cube of the same color on it. I thought it was a good idea if you ask for  the supply of US Army during the delivery phase. I apologize if this idea hurts the american's conservatism.
After my tests on this map, we thought that two flags (two black cities) for 3, or 4 players are too drastic, so we allowed players to urbanize in black in this country. The iraqi people can use their oil as they wish. I added also a third external link that will be created when Umm Qasr will be urbanized (happened not very often). The costs of these external links should be very expensive, but not too much because of the role of the engineer. So $5 worked very well since the beginning of this expansion.
This expansion is suit designed for 3 or 4 players because like in Ireland there is no 5 and 6 black city in th goods supply (probably destroyed during the war...)

This expansion is sold on the back of Age of steam in NYC Subway that will be released for ESSEN 07 in October .