Well, I could be mistaken, but I'm under the impression that strategic resources are more readily available on the smaller maps. This is not new with the 1.17f patch. I haven't studied this in detail though, so it's just a hunch...
I'm currently playing on a standard size map where I control, say, about 70 % of a rather large continent. Now, there are 3 luxuries that I had to go find elsewhere, but with the strategic resources, I have at least 2 or 3 of each type sitting right there in my homeland. I haven't needed to search for any of them! (Game was started with version 1.16f.)