The next release supports an additional flag (_OR_) which will allow your province to appear in a province with any of the selected terrain types. I have already updated SemiRandom and the Province Editor to support this, and will likely have the new versions posted by this weekend.
In Dom3, terrain values in a map file can contain flags for site types. This just means that the selected province has a greater chance of magic sites of the given type. The "many sites" flag in a province means just a higher chance of a magic site appearing in the province.
It is also of note that the Dom3 random map generator places these flags and will sometimes include an icon in the map image indicating (for example) a volcano for a fire site.
In SemiRandom, you can tell it to place your province only in provinces that contain the given site flag.
Patterns are just geographical locations that SemiRandom is able to detect in a map. So if you want your province to appear only next to large bodies of water, you would choose "Coast", if you wanted it to appear only in an isolated water province surrounded by land, you would choose "Lake".
A general description of patterns follows:
Island - land completely surrounded by water.
Lake - water completely surrounded by land.
Volcano - mountain with no mountain neighbors OR firesite.
Peninsula - land surrounded by water with only one land neighbor.
Valley - land surrounded by edgemount or mount with at least two being mountain and at least two being non-mountain.
Coast - land which borders at least one water neighbor.
Lost - land with no neighbors.
Climates are just a SemiRandom thing. The default settings in SemiRandom/RanDom are for the southern 25% of the map to be treated as Hot or tropical climate, and the northern 25% of the map to be treated as Cold or arctic climate provinces. All remaining provinces (in the middle of the map) are considered Mild or temperate.
You can also define climate bands, where there are arctic north & south poles and a central tropical equator with 2 temperate bands separating them.
The climates only affect provinces which have a climate requirement defined. So cold provinces can only be placed in cold climates, hot in hot and mild in mild. If no climate preference is selected, then the province can be placed in any of the climates.
Wow, I just gave a really long answer to a couple of simple questions. Pardon my rambling.
