All the start locations have >= 4 neighbors, and there are at least 3 provinces between each pair of start locations - by this criterion, I fit 27 *exactly*.
I placed the four water starts manually. The two which are in the "middle" of the water (i.e. have two water neighbors instead of 1) are also slightly less choked-off, so I think those are more or less fair.
The 23 land start locations were placed by my algorithm to minimize the variability in remoteness (the sum of the shortest path distance to all other start locations). Given that the map is not wrap-around, though, obviously it varies a lot.
I *could* give them another bonus. Possibilities include:
* Another slight pop boost for the least-remote land start locations (mentioned by Velusion).
* 1 or 2 of their neighbors could be made site-rich and/or large.
* I could give them +X% to the size of their initial army to help fend off their many bloodthirty neigbors.
Alternatively, the map is playable as-is. Should I post it or do people want their start locations kept secret (with the exception of the water, which is pretty obvious, I haven't peeked).
P.S. - Which nation #s are EA Tir and EA Lanka, again? I don't want to peek but I'll need to load up the map in order to check that I got them right otherwise
