Ok, I have sent Calahan his instructions on how to generate the AI pretenders. He will contact each player with the pretender options when he has the time for the generation. It's not as easy as it sounds, so let's give him time to work his magic, okay folks?
To pass the time, we can hit the issue of the map.
I have 3 options ready, each one has its pros and cons. Let the bickering begin! You can see details of the map in the llamaserver map browser
http://www.llamaserver.net/mapModBrowser.cgi
1) Shahrivar. About 15,27 land provinces per player and 12 water. Absolutely beautiful map, but it has some pre-placed magic sites. Most of them are okay, but there are some school bonus sites and one site with strong indy mages. I could replace these sites with something more reasonable. It's not wraparound, thought.
2) Wraith Bunny. About 14,95 land provinces per player. Simple map with quite balanced outlay, but it's not wraparound and lacks "oomph"
3) Random Wraparound: Small_001. - Only wraparound on our size. Seems balanced enough, but is ugly as hell.