Yeah. Many start spots have a neighbor node.
Start spots all have the same number of (non-water) neighbors, and are prevented from having a gate in the start spot, and prevented from having bad terrain or bad neighbor terrains, or multiple neighbor gates. Also edges are avoided. I can imagine that especially version 3, where nodes let you recruit and aren't guarded that well, that starting next to a node you don't have magic access to could be a big advantage... but that's why there are versions 2 and 4!
I like to think of this map as being "mostly balanced" whatever that means. I guess it means its not symmetric. But a perfectly symmetric map can only be played by a very specific number of people.. this map could go for 2 or 16...
Thanks for the feedback, and let me know if you have more observations as you go along.