2 starting locations are really close and borders are touching at the corners. Screen shot is below (turn 2 in-game) and service number is: 224910004eceb2bbd8853.
What mods do you have installed? I'm getting the same maps you are, but different starting positions.
To answer your question: Since you selected more islands, Totestra/Perfect World tends to make maps with more stringy continents. This is because of how the simulated plate tectonics works: creating more land masses results in the land masses being more stringy.
The largest landmass on this map is quite stringy and it's a little tricky for the map generator to find starting locations on it, so players are closer together. To fix this issue, either choose a larger map than "standard", have fewer players on the map, or select "Start anywhere reasonable" for the "Civ placement" option. Or just regenerate when you get a start you don't like, the way the pros do. [1]
Edit Playing with this map seed some more, another reason why this continent was so stringy is because a lot of meteors broke it up. To reduce the number of meteors, choose the "Pangaea rule" of "Allow Pangaeas". Note that allowing Pangaeas makes it more likely that everyone starts on the same continent and that there is no "New world" to explore in the midgame (it can still happen even if we try to break pangaeas; Perfect World is somewhat unpredictable)
I have uploaded a new version of Totestra today with a single update: A new preset map seed to reproduce En Dotter's map with the player start issue.
- Sam
[1] The Hall of Fame files include a tool that will regenerate the map for you until you get something with just the right starting resources.