by Machenoid » Sat Sep 12, 2009 1:10 am 
Completely random; no sense of direction or methodology.
I suggest that instead of using an entirely random macaroni-stamp generator, the generator be given rules to follow that are simple to learn for players, so they can expect where to find something they want without actually making the looking too long or difficult. For instance, the map could start to be generated from two kinds of points, which are lakes and mountains. Shallow rivers then would be drawn between these points and altered based on the distance they travel. After a certain distance of being drawn from the mountain to the nearest lake, they would slowly replace the tiles that make up the river into deep tiles (deep water eventually completely replacing the shallow water)
Depending on which way the river 'moves' along it's generation, any sharp bends could have an increased shallow area on the inside of the corner; a double sharp bend could be forced to create a ford between the two bends. As well, if the distance from the mountain to the lake is short enough, the end of the river could end in a delta. After the rivers are generated, a large number of shallow stream points are created, that will attempt to generate a 2-3 tile wide shallow stream to the nearest river point; moving from the closest points to the river out, and reducing the width of the stream until it disappears completely.
Then, it would be a simple matter of determining how much water, access to streams, and distance to the mountains/lakes is provided to the surrounding area to figure out what land be placed where. Mountains would be surrounded by forests and lakes would be surrounded by clay pits and swamps. Between them are the grasslands, with some local variation based on rivers and streams and their proximity.
The end result would hopefully be:
Not as crappy as my MSPaint image, it's just an aproximation of where the various macaronies would be placed by the generator, but the general idea is many times better then what we have now. Most of the colors should be self-explanatory (light green is grassland, dark green is forest, yellow and purple are the two barren grasslands, etc) If you zoom in, you can see dark gray spots on the mountains; those are the initial points. From there, the dark blue squigles (that are hard to see, sorry) are rivers that move towards the nearest lake with the light teal color squigles being the streams i mentioned earlier. While i was doing this map i realised that streams should in fact start at the furthest point from the river, and then work towards the river, having the computer try and use as many points as possible. In the image, i used all the points i could because if i didn't the top right would be devoid of streams (as well as the bottom center) As well, clay pits in this example are in the areas without rivers (due to the lack of anything growing on them i treated them as deserts in this case) but they could do just as well at the sources (or dead-ends if you prefer) of streams.
Additionally, resourcing issues could be further mitigated by letting some creatures and items spawn more rarely in their neighboring environments (sheep would uncommonly spawn in non-fir forests)
Yes it's a lot of work, but compare the first image with the second image, and i think you'll agree that the effort would be worth it.
tl;dr
Garbage in, garbage out. Not-garbage in, not-garbage out.
The only way to get a "better map" is to improve the generator. If a reset happened right now, we'd still have the same "problem" of uncommon or even rare levels of critical resources because the generator would just spew out another grassland-barren hell hole.
