Some info on the Faerun map:
- 50 VPs is the max you can set for required victory.
- All start provinces have at least 5 non-special neighbors on land, but the ones with seven or more are nostarts because they give too much of an advantage. Water starts should have at least 4 water neighbors, though in some cases you may have three. If all water nations are in play, there is the possibility that two start in the Sea of Fallen Stars (the inner sea), leaving the third with unopposed free rein in the ocean unless Agartha starts on the coast and makes a quick play into water.
- Rather few provinces have populations set in the map file. The map does tend to produce a lot of high population provinces.
- The east has more chokepoints than the west, but tends to be poorer in terms of magic sites if site frequency is 40% or below. There are also fewer special provinces in the east, and the specials function as barriers and chokepoints for a fair while into the game. The bigger special provinces will require some careful planning unless you just want to throw troops at them until they die of attrition, but that's not viable when you need to fight other players at the same time.
Everyone should also redownload the map, because it was updated last week to fix a few map bugs, three rather important forests were plains in the older version.