[Daynarr]

Is there a Map Designing pdfs available for Dom2? In Dom1 for SP use, I had a standard set of options to add into maps so I could be assured of fighting competent opponents - let's face it, even the impossible AI would kill itself with max turmoil and max Bogusluck, so I just force every race to get the optimal dominion for it's race. Even for a vet, this with a full host of impossible AIs you can expect a pretty tough game -well, unless you really exploit the known imbalances (lAE swarms, IDs, FIs, etc).

There is PDF included on CD. In one of most recent patches, AI on higher difficulty levels has been prevented from choosing high turmoil/misfortune combo. You can assign specific scales and dominion strengths for each nation if you like but game designers feel that AI should be varied opponent instead of choosing same scales over and over again so you will have to make changes in map scripts if you want AI to use most powerful dominions.

But, there was some problems that prevented further balancing:
a) I could hardcode a province to have a particular castle, but couldn't change a race to use a certain castle. So unless I hardcoded each start position (bad), some races still pick Watch Towers or other bad castles, and are slow starters and never catch up.

You can still place a certain castle in certain province but I don't know if placing some castle in starting province will force that nation to use that castle as their default. Placing a good castle in starting province should be enough for AI to give it a good start. On higher difficulty levels, in my experience (for Dom II of course) AI will choose best castles. I have yet to see Difficult AI use Watch Tower. Probably possible but very unlikely.

b) I could fix populations in certain provinces (change each area to be roughly equal in worth to non-Ermor), but I can't balance resources out around the capitols without changing the tga files.

No option for specifying resources in provinces. You can assign some special sites that give bonus resources, though.

c) No way to give weaker nations bonus startup troops without hardcoding the startup provinces (which again, is bad since I'd know where the other races start).

That should be possible and very easy now. You can set specific commanders, give them names and items, assign bodyguards (important for independent strong commanders) and place specific armies in each province. If you place them in province owned by specific nation that will add them to that nation. You can also assign multiple starting provinces for each nation as well. However, if you want nation to have random starting position I'm not sure you can assign troops to it.

Also, are there any new fun startup options - like developed start (ie all nations start with a certain number of provinces, etc), fast research, exposed magic sites (all sites become revealed when conquering a province), etc?

You can assign owner for each province at the start - developed start. There is already a number of scenarios in game like Wars of Orania that do that.
Specific magic sites can be set to explored and unexplored.
Research has 4 speeds (not 5 Pocus ):

1 - Easy Research. Cost of research is 1/2 of normal.
2 - Normal Research. Same as it was in Dom I.
3 - Difficult Research. Cost of research is 2x of normal.
4 - Very Difficult Research. Cost of research is 3x of normal.

Research speed effectively tips the balance between military/magic in game. All of those who feel that magic is too strong can now increase research cost at the start of the game, which will "nerf" it down effectively.