Arctic Islands is an all new custom random map type with a unique "Capricious"-style randomization of the land features, not resources. The map features islands surrounded by ice, with the geography and size of the starting player lands, plus the size, number, location and terrain of extra resource islands all varying randomly.
Because of the ice between the players, there are no natural barriers to rushing. The ice makes it difficult to wall in, but also difficult to forward build just anywhere, so both offensive and defensive strategy are a bit different.
Resources are similar to the standard ES map types, with the following exceptions: each starting player has an extra pair of sheep nearby, there are no extra distant forage bushes, there may be a fair amount of extra gold and deer and stone on the uninhabited islands.
This map should be played at a size appropriate to or larger than the number of players or there may not be enough land space to accomodate all player starting areas and distortions of them will occur. For example, don't try to play 8 players on a 6-player map. Crowding may happen also with larger number of players if "Team Together" is not checked at the start of the game.