(spoilers?) GOTM organizers comments on map design?

[beestar]

I'm curious, do the GOTM designers ever discuss the maps they make for each game?

For example, was there a specific rationale behind the choice of opposing civs, where to place them, how were resources tweaked to help players (or hinder them)? I would be very interested to know what kind of decisions need to be made and whether the maps are mainly Civ-standard random, or have to be heavily tweaked.

Discussion would probably be considered spoilering - would it fit in the end-of-game spoiler threads? I'm not 100% sure as those are mainly for discussion of how the game went, and they also rapidly expand to 10 pages so any designer comments would be buried.

 

[Memphus]

From what I have observed the longer the game has been out the more 'tweaked' the map and the start becomes

I.E. COTM and GOTM (civ3) amps are played around with quite a bit

However the GOTM is still pretty basic as everyone is getting their feet wet, However be certain that ocne we drop back to a lower difficulty the maps will be much less 'random'.

For example for this month civ 4 GOTM:

Game settings:
Civilization: India (Leader: Gandhi; Traits: Spiritual & Industrious)
Rivals: 6 (Random)
Difficulty: Emperor
Map: Ice-Age
Mapsize: Standard
Map Configuration: Wide Continents
Climate: (N/A for ice-age map)
Water level: Medium
Starting Era: Ancient
Speed: Normal
Victory Conditions: all enabled

The rivals are random, but their placement might not be (although I am inclined to think it is)

And as for the map I am sure it is slighty modified from the random generation(in our favor) but not heavily.

However the Month where we find ourselves on a set up like:
Conquest 09: Scandinavia we know the map has been not so randomly generated