@fdrpi
actually it is less creative than you might think, but I see were you are coming from.
See, around 10 years ago the whole gaming industry changed significantly. With the advent of Online-Gaming it became possible to attract a much larger number of players than ever before.
This lead to a significant change in game design in order to make games suitable for a mass-audience, which is not just large but also diverse. Diverse in terms of age, education, overall intelligence, taste etc.
After some trial and error a certain company, which is called after a weather phenomenon, hit the jackpot.
What is the secret to attract everybody from the farmer in Wyoming till some youngster in London to play WoW or Diablo?
It is constant rewards.
The principle of almost all new games from MMORPG's till Desktop Strategy-games is for you to constantly get more. More loot, better armour, more buildings, more resources, more troops, you name it.
Of course to this leads to a well known bottleneck in game-design, called power creep. In order to make the game still challenging, even after you got bombed with upgrades, you need a constant supply of new and stronger opponents or new targets.
One of the most refined examples for this concept is certainly the Elder Scrolls series, where they constantly supply you with new weapons, armour and skill points but also increase the power of even the most meagre skeleton almost at the same time. So at the end the difficulty level stays constant, while you still get constantly rewarded.
(you actually might call this concept ******ed. What is the point to constantly upgrade yourself, if it doesnt make a difference? But that is what the people want.)
Don't get me wrong, these concept are not new. They are as old as overall game design, but for the first time these concept are present in almost all games, and that is a new quality.
So I assume that you are used to this concept as well (it is the normal standard for you) and you miss these elements in the scripted maps of RfE.
Lets make another excursion to the past.
When I was in school we already had computer games, but they were not such a mass phenomenon as nowadays. There was however another game product, which was as popular as Onlinegames are today: Trading Card Games!
I played Magic the Gathering in those days and MtG has a radically different concept. MtG is not about who has the most stuff on the table, but it is about who can keep some stuff on the table. In MtG you don't win, because you put more cards on the table than your opponent. Quite the opposite it is very foolish to do so and you get quickly punished for such mistakes. You win, because you successfully managed to protect at least one of your cards.
What is the connection between Mtg and a map script, where you can have only 3 good cities and you feel cramped? Well, the point is that, if everybody else has only 2 good cities, then you are still in advantage.
You see only your own game position and you think it is bad, because it is less than what you are used to. But in reality your position is quite sufficient and it might even better than your neighbour's position.
Hence I advice you to try to play these maps before you judge the script...
... and hope I haven't bored you too much and that I made at least some sense.
But you know, it is lunch break and I also need to see something different than Financial Statements from time to time.