I am expecting to completely redraw the province borders and terrain. I start by placing the optional preset starts and then draw the provinces, and then terrain. It was a good way to balance things in the Greece Stain map. So, I am not bound by any concerns about map size. If I wanted to make it a 5-player map, I could.
I like to follow these guidelines:
1. No present starting position is less than 3 provinces from another, except perhaps through a sea province (sea starts at least 3 prov from each other in all cases).
2. # of land provinces = approx. 11 per player; # of water provinces, a bit less.
3. Balance the farm, mountain, and forest provinces so no one start position has an undue resource or gold advantage.
4. All preset land starts have 4-5 neighbor provinces (not counting sea provinces).
Other issues to watch out for?
Pasha