In recent game play I decided to explore various options and features I have up to now ignored. The advanced setup menu for a game has many from which to choose.
I have now tried all options for world age, start position, temperature, rainfall, and sea level. I thought the “Legendary” resources start position was fun, but so far have not been using it or any of the others regularly.
Back when I was chasing achievements, I played and won starting in each successive era, on all game speeds, map sizes, and, when Gathering Storm added disaster intensity levels, I tried them all too. For quite a while I played with disaster level 4 (highest) because it produced more natural disasters and they started earlier. I found ‘farming’ them for diplomatic points to be a quick way to move toward a Diplomatic victory. Then I got tired of the many disasters I had to deal with myself, especially volcanoes destroying or pillaging any improvements in a 2-tile radius of them, so am mostly back to level 2 (default) level now.
I am not a fan of any of the other map options, such as wet or dry. It could be that I need to study various civilization unique attributes more to see if a particular option would maximize the benefits. The only one I have used to advantage so far was Highlands map with more hills playing Ethiopia.
To date, I have not tried different options for world age, temperature, rainfall, or sea level.
As I continue to play the game, I will probably explore more of these advanced options just for some variety in game play.
Tech Muddler 