Is this ticket still valid and needed?
A civic center and starting entities is the only thing that the player must receive on every mapsize for every playercount. This seems to be the case already.
Enemies starting on tiny maps right besides each other, having few space to build or gather of the few resources without being attacked is differently is challenging, but was perceived entertaining (refered to as "pizza maps" from the resulting territory shape).
Various gamesetup options (regicide, diplomacy, last man standing) also alleviate the drawbacks and add to the experience.
