Let's nitpick it even further

Why is the player faction first? ;)

Your crazy.... the random map generator cannot be trusted not to be stupid.....

putting you on a tiny island but not quite small enough to give you a boat - NICE, or doing that same stupid thing to other AI races you wanted to be powerful.... all the while ignoring several huge continents where it deploys no players at all F-STUPID!

Also perhaps it is because my memory is bad, but i have to say, snooping with the editor absolutely does not take away from my enjoyment of exploring the map!

On the other hand, where i have not looked first with the editor, i have spent my time investing in a game only to discover that its all set up stupid.

Also i don't want one of the two alien races near me because i will be forced to wipe them out when i want both alien races to be powerful throughout the game.

Edit: i should point out that i don't snoop with a game like civ4 because its generally much more balanced in its random deployment.... i'm talking about geographic position that is

I haven't started messing with the setup options, but this sounds great. I love these little bits of immersion -a lot of thought was put even into finding the right name for everything.