Well, I personally don't mind neutral zones. When I initially fixed this bug for HotA, I immediately wrote code that made the zone without cities neutral in 50% of cases. In HD, only the pure bug fix was included. Perhaps I should have described the effect of the bug fix in more detail when I provided the code to baratorch. In any case, as I said, baratorch now has the option to include that code in HD to add neutral zones (by changing the chance of their appearance to any value), if he deems it necessary.