*** NEW MAP FILE ***
Gents, as we are not going to get beyond 15 players, we are going to move to the World of Warhammer map (which has a better province / player ratio). I have tweaked the map to:
* Restrict the start areas so that every land nation has four land neighbors, and every sea nation 4 sea areas
* Set the northern and southern wastes to be out to be no-start areas
I've run a couple of tests, and in both cases the starts worked out correctly, so I am cautiously confident.
The map files can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?asoubbc0b4bs2y3
I'm now going to tweak the setup of the game, and push start to get things rolling. Any issues, post here and / or PM me and I'll see what I can do - with this many players, I suspect we may have at least one restart :-)
EDIT: The game is now started. Good luck! (Unless you plan on attacking me, in which case I hope your home province gets hit by an earthquake on turn 1, and a plague on turn 2 
)