They weren't for me. In beta 4, I had the same two large maps every time. You can view the entire map with CTRL-U using the "cheat optiion" (elemental.exe cheat).

wth?

Can we get some more confirmation on this?

It randomly generates map, but the continents land masses use seeds.  And if you want true fractal randomness, you can delete the seeds but all balance goes out the door.

AHH, I see that makes sense from a programmatic stand point.

I'm not clear on this. When I start a game with a large map, I get either one of the same two maps which have the exact same shape, same forests, same mountains. Are you saying that it's only the location of items within these maps that changes? That the seeds for the shape of the map, the locations of mountains and forests are fixed for game balance?

I've generated these maps multiple times they appear exactly the same.

I was generating these maps just for the fun of it. I am disappointed. The fun of truly exploring an unknown land won't be there.

umm that IS very disappointing. im surprised this wasnt made clear to us (or maybe not that surprised). uuughhh, random map stuff was one of the main features that differentiated these games (along with civ) from the typical world map of total war, paradox games etc.

They are random, just not 'that' random

Yes but apparently a lot of balancing is tied to the seeds they created, so making your own may result in a very random experience. Read as: no viable resources to start a town and get your feet under you.

What happened to the "huge" map-size the manual mentions? At the moment, the "large" size seems to be the largest -- outside of the editor.

I remember that arch-designer Frogboy mentioned somewhere, a year or so ago, that he was aiming for truly epic, gigantic maps -- their size only limited by the amount of RAM the gamer had available. Considering that many players' computers now exceed 2GB of RAM, disposing of a 64-bit OS, I wonder why we are currently limited to those so-called "large" maps. 

I trust Stardock's never-ending development efforts, so I suppose that this map size and randomizing situation will evolve in the coming months. 

The stickied FAQ on the main forum home page notes that they are planning a 64-bit version of Elemental, but that it wouldn't be ready at release.  So I'm guessing that the "huge" maps will have to wait until the debut of the 64-bit version sometime down the line.

I, too, hope that somehow Elemental will evolve into having random maps that are balanced for gameplay without having to resort to community map makers.  If Civ 4 could do it, I have every confidence that Stardock can, too.

How pls.

So we can just make new "shapes", I.E. Land Mass shapes, and have the random seeds do the rest? Like place mountains and forests and all that at random?