[DrPraetorious]

I did give in to temptation and look at my own start location, I'm afraid - I had to look at the undocumented ones (Lanka, Eriu, Tir) to make sure I had the nation #s right - but I can't remember where they were - and that the map file loaded correctly with the mod (it does.) Other than that I have no idea, and I uploaded my pretender before I generated the map, so it can't have influenced my decisions (I took more productivity than I'm going to need.)

Some general facts -
* Every land start has at least three land neighbors, not counting swamp or wasteland. Most have more.

* Every sea start has at least three sea neighbors.

* There are at least three provinces between every pair of start locations.

* Nations with an amphibious or maritime component (unless I missed one) were guaranteed coastal start positions (there were more than enough to go around.) The coastal starts still have plenty of land neighbors.

Coastal may mean next-to-a-single-province-lake, or right on the ocean. Script doesn't care and I didn't check.

Other than that, I handed out positions in the order in which they were seeded, which is close enough to random.