The standard map has 58 land spaces and 19 sea spaces. Almost a 3:1 ratio. While I haven't counted I am pretty sure that WWIV (and World Diplomacy IX, for that matter) has a far greater than 3:1 land:sea ratio.

Not to forget the Sea provinces that count as SC's

I'm not able to count the true ratio at the moment but I think the ratio is mightily less that a 3:1 ratio present in the original game.

South America does not border SWI. Did you mean SWA?

Just to be contrarian, might more sea territories make jumping continents more difficult as they would be further away?

It might make it more difficult to 'jump' continents with more sea territories, but I think that the whole Naval aspect of world domination is being underestimated in WWIV. to start with there is vastly more ocean regions on the globe than there are land regions, and while this has been addressed by giving regions like Tahiti and Reunion (ETC) a Supply Center, the whole map is still unbalanced by having a disproportionate amount of SCs on landed continents (straight away disadvantaging powers that begin with the only option of being a naval power)

Consider the Atlantic: (yes sorry SWA not swi)
SWA has 5 Sea territories adjacent to it. It has 7 Land territories adjacent to it SIX of which are Supply centers. If a power wants to take SWA then it has to attack a territory that can potentially be held next to indefinitely by a power that has SthAmerican SCs protecting SWA.

My solution would be to cut every sea territory in half and then we might actually have some naval warfare occurring in this variant.

(I like the land based battles, but sea combat is lacking in my perception.)

I agree with Kaner

I agree that there are too few sea territories. But, I would suggest that cutting them in half might not be the right way to do it. My reason for this is that a land stalemate is easier to establish in real life. Stalemate lines located in the middle of the ocean are not very true to life. If anything, fleets should be able to hold off a naval invasion on to land, but permit passage of fleets into the middle ocean. So, I might suggest cutting the middle ocean spaces into thirds or fourths, but leaving the coastal spaces alone.

As far as making it difficult to jump continents. I agree it would take longer to cross the ocean, but that seems realistic also. For any country to mount an invasion on another continent, it would take time. It might make the middle ocean SC's critical strategic objectives. They could be staging areas to create armies for an invasion.

I'm thinking the issue with a more realistic representation of the seas is that the game already takes for-fucking-ever. Not knocking it, but boy did it take some time to finish the one time I tried. (I died in the first 5-6 years for my only defeat; the game ended after 11. I died after a month and a half in the game and the game ended some 4-5 months after it started, and it ended prematurely at that.) So while adding sea spaces would truly make it the ultimate global variant we'd all love to see, it might take some time to get through a game.

Thats no problem if it also makes more fun.