I think it's pretty clear that the people who designed Civ 5 didn't agree that the ability to regenerate maps was one of the most important features of the game.
I don't think the Civ 4 designers thought so either, I think they thought it was a minor feature that some people might like and didn't cost them very much to implement, so why not? That's a whole lot different from considering it one of the most important features of the game.
DaviddesJ, perhaps I didn't make myself fully clear, but when I said:
... random hand-waving about what the designers might be thinking, is not as satisfying as you might imagine when you are writing it.
...I was asking for less hand-waving about what you theorize about the designers, not more. Can you see that now? Your "theories" don't rise to the level of anecdote, let alone evidence. Don't get me started on the confirmation bias involved in your flights of (limited) imagination. Just go ahead and assume that every time you assert things were intentional, I am going to counter-assert they were unintentional.
It gets fully ridiculous in the second paragraph where you are trying to distinguish among different levels of the designers valuing features based on your feelings about the designers. I guess if you are going to indulge in hand-waving, might as well pretend you can measure it, too? In for a dime, in for a dollar.
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PS: Oh, and just for the record, could you please quote me where I said it was one of the "most important" features of the game? Wouldn't want to think you were committing a strawperson...