How do you make custom maps?

I would like to know too. Will there be a map editor as there was in the previous game?

I've been looking at it since I bought the game this weekend. I've managed to get a five star/nine planet map built, but it's not reading all the properties properly, so I'm still working on it. I'll note, in case it's not up somewhere else, that the custom maps in the Data\CustomMaps folder are actually straight up XML files, even if they're given the extension *.GC2Map.

Here's critical notes I have so far:
1.) Opening/closing tags are
2.) The tags describe the general details of the map that you are specifying. The Width and Height tags indicate the dimension of large grid (15x15) blocks. Size... not sure yet. Stars and Planets indicate the number of Stars and Planets you will be describing in your file. It is very important that these numbers be correct, or it'll throw off your design. Resources, Anomalies, Ships, and HomelessPlayers I don't know much about yet.
3.) The group seems to be required... I've just copied and pasted as is, since I have no modded civs.
4.) The tag describes your stars.
If you use the name element in the lead tag tp specify a name you want used, you need to set the

Man, this is really frustrating. A game like this is simply SCREAMING for a map editor of some sort... i wouldn't care how clunky it is, as long as it's somewhat serviceable I'm happy...

They've planned all along to release a map editing tool... but all focus is on making the game stable across the board and adding features to it. They have an extremely finite amount of resources (development time) to spend working on the game, so it's hard to justify spending time on a map editing tool when there are some pretty nasty bugs cropping up on weird hardware setups/configurations... you know?

Have patience... it will come eventually.

Maybe the Stardock crew could release what data or plan they had in mind for a map editor and let the COMMUNITY tweak it while they focus on bug fixing and other things?