New Mode - Unsettable Continent prior to Colonialism

[AntSou]

A mode which when chosen makes a certain amount of continents unsettable until the Colonialism civic is researched. Dependent on map size.

E.g.
Huge map - 6 continents. Mode makes 2 of them unsettable.
Large - 5 / 2
Standard - 4 / 1
Small - 3 / 1
-------------------------

Additional:

In addition to being unsettable, all tiles of this Continent are impassable prior to Exploration.

 

[Zaarin]

Hanno the Navigator, Greenland, and Vinland object on the one hand. On the other hand, all the civilizations of the Americas and Atlantic Africa object. Now, if there were some way to make civs on different continents develop along different paths (e.g., it was rather crucial that both Africa and the Americas were millennia late to the agricultural revolution) that could make things very interesting--but also probably well beyond the scope of a game like Civ.

 

[Txomin]

In a historical viewpoint there's problems with the idea as Zaarin said, but I think there's potential for fun gameplay here.
If they went a fantastical route they could have it so that players start on a continent(s) with only ocean around it and then after a certain point in the game (maybe age or tech related) a new continent rises from the ocean and suddenly there's this new large space to explore and settle. Mysterious continent from the ocean is totally fantastical but could be a fun special map mode.

 

[Banazir864]

Doesn’t Terra already do pretty much the same thing? The only major differences are the precise time when the new continents “unlock,” how many new continents there are, whether the new continents can be contiguous with the old ones, and whether Kupe is OP.