I've been playing Huge and Irregular shaped maps recently.   I like the variety and not knowing where the map will end.

From this mod:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/446059/page/1/#3378984

I also use dense monsters and frequent quests.   I've turned down Random Events to few though as I play epic games and getting the Plague and hordes of skeletons every single game after only a few turns was getting old.

Medium map with default number of AI players. All setting to normal/average, except wild lands and monster density which is set to the maximum.

lol what a word, had to look it up.. but anyhow - i'm not a native.

but i like your idea! - i have to try less ressources too - i agree that there is too much of everything on bigger maps.

I tried hitting CTR + N a few times on the DLC-map Curgen's something. It seemed to produce different resources and even the tile yields (to my surprise) was different on the same staring position. So it seems even the tile yields can be random.

Very shortly after starting on a good spot on the map,  I realized I was squezed between two nations, the sea and Wildland. This was very early and I saw two Pioneers coming from the enemies. This would limit my space to a very small land (on a large map) so I thought "to hell with it". My Sov and first Champ each had a fresh Cavebear (as I'd been very lucky there at least) plus Sov's Militia and Spearmen. I declared war and killed the Pioneers. Then I marched to their capitals (and only cities) and to my surprise took them without problems. So a bad start turned changed to an excellent start. (This is only at challenging AI-level and difficult+2-monster-level and I'm working my way up the difficulties...)  

N/A

I think I will never play random maps. AI may start in a poor location and the game will have no challenge.

Next time I will use the editor to generate a medium fertile map for 6 players. I will manually put starting locations in best places.

There will be two teams: 5 Kingdom players (me and 4 AI at Challenging level), so that I could buy exclusive things from them; and 1 Empire AI at insane level. This will be Trogs (Warrior caste (+1 exp level), Lucky, Tough, Quick, Masterwork chainmail, Uneducated). Trog's behaviour seems to be the most aggressive of all AI and they specialize in research of new weapons and armor asap.

These Trogs will have three strong heroes, hordes of mites and some banshees from the start to explore quickly and have better rating to prevent from signing non-aggression pact with human player.

Trog's starting location will be placed in the best region for expansion (center of the map). Kingdoms will start in some safer positions (left side of the map) so that they could last longer. I would place some additional warg dens, clay pits and wild grain in Torg's territory.

Trog's sovereign will be Armorer, having Death and Earth magic (for better production), +3 Attack and +1 hit point per level.

Other settings will be the following: all on dense, monsters on Easy to make exploration stage quicker and making monsters less harmful to AI.

I hope this will be a good fight!

Is there any difference between 3 AI opponents as a team or just separate? If I have high rating I can sign non-aggression pact and live comfortably. If I have no weak allies I'm free to expand. While when I'm surrounded by  my allies, I have less freedom of expansion, while that singe opposing force will grow considerably. I think that all aggresiveness is deteremined by player's rating. If there were 3 opponents, they would not be able to grow to full power.

I've read your note about teams are not teamworking. So it will be better that opponent should be one and there may be many weak "friends-traitors". Strong opponent will fight them one by one and human player will not be strong because of his neighbours-teammates.