...main issue is actually that when the map goes overboard with one terrain type, that type is concentrated in one location. so you generally get a quarter of the map forest, or a quarter ocean (with a few stray tiles, of course).

one way I thought about fixing that would be to just have a check per quadrant. you tally all the types of tiles, if one is grossly out of whack, regenerate. so a corner/quadrant that had 10 ocean would trigger a regen, for example. that way no one starting spot would be too screwed. remember, the generator works good in most cases, what we want to do is fix the outliers.