Thanks for all the info Daynarr. I love the new Research speed levels, and I am glad the higher AIs are better about selecting their Dominion scales.
Dom1 had the ability to add hardcoded commanders, troops, castles, sites and such to specific provinces which could be assigned to a nation. From your post and the mapeditor, it seems like Dom2 will likewise allow that. But it doesn't seem like (at least initially) you can get a map to give bonus startup armies without hardcoding the races with fixed province ownership to allow fast start (or more balanced) startups, or set national castle type at all (ie the castle that will be built by that race), or start each race with more than one province randomly (ie everyone start with 5 provinces that are random assigned but grouped).
The good news is with the game going Gold, at least now Illwinter will likely start adding features shortly
So perhaps sometimes soon these issues will be addressed... The advanced start might be tricky to add, but the castle and startup troops would seem to be not that complex (said as a person who has never seen their code, of course!).