I like the idea. +1 
A truly random arrangement might put several bases for one side close together. But that wouldn't garuntee anything.
I actually think the arrangement would have to be
very carefully chosen. With the example posted above, I tried to:
a) give each country a roughly equal number of bases (+/- 2).
b) if one country had a particular base sandwiched between two enemy bases, then make sure that each enemy country has a base in a similar situation.
c) give the bases closest to the HQ to that country, whilst ensuring that each country has a base on each HQ island.
Of course, if HTC were to actually adopt this, I'm sure there would be some other factors to consider, seeing as they're probably the only ones who actually understand all the dynamics of the AH gameplay.
Some other things that I think should be considered are that most bases would need to be airbases, not ports or vehicle bases. Otherwise you'd just get V-bases and ports continually being trashed by bomb****s and dweebs like me in B-25s. Vehicle spawns would probably need to be adjusted as well, to try and keep things roughly balanced.
Another possibility for an arrangement like this would be dedicating areas of maps to GV fights. I've seen this on some of the bigger maps (like that 512x512 one which has the basic layout of Oceania), but with this idea of scattering the bases around, you could take one corner of a map and just dedicate it to GVs, with little impact on the overall battle. For example, in that layout I posted above, if you took the bottom two rows of sectors and perhaps the four central bases in the row above that, and made them all V-bases, you could have a zone of the map dedicated to GV fights, and pretty much immune to interruption by fighters or bombers (since any airborne enemies would probably choose to attack the V-bases nearer to the airbases, for the sake of convenience).
