Wow, that's some treasure of info, many thanks
Conflicting civs were to be expected. Duplicate civs can be removed from the modpack of choice; they are at least all modular in mine. The Maya and Mapuche I took from ANAC and put in the "Earth" component, so they are only activated when you want to play the included maps.
The DLC behaviour is interesting. I guess if one removes the free versions from my mod, the DLC versions will take over on the map; convenient! The Inca I tried to prevent conflict with ANAC (used most of it to make my version) and changed the tags, which explains why it doesn't overlap with DLC Inca. Not sure that's a good thing, it means someone with Inca DLC has to edit the map to use it. I think I'll revert to the ANAC tags, so whichever mod is installed/loaded first will "win" to get its features applied. (And I'll change the leader.)
I'm always surprised there is compatibility with full fledged modpacks at all! It's not something I'm keen to ensure, as mods keep changing. Though most problems are lua-related, so I put all stuff using lua in separate folders that can be safely disabled/removed with little side effects, for people that don't want to give up their favorite mods. These are NACSM, CultureFromPop and a bit of Thal's in the "Addons" folder.
A map pack for this mod would be nice!
Not redundant, the map is only 1/3 of the mod components (and it can be disabled); I put more work in the other features and new civs.
I had done some of the enlargements you suggest, though no doubt not as thoroughly. E.g., the case for China sounds very true. Before it founded its second city in the dead center, making it impossible to found more cities 3 tiles around because of the limited land mass. Unfortunately the minimum distance of 2 tiles doesn't solve much. The AI seldom settles at that distance (from its own cities), usually preferring 3 tiles. They do found close to competitors though, so in the case of China, Tibet and/or Mongolia will sweep in and fill the places China won't. Of course leading to war because they are so close
So I doctored the start to make China found a little more east or west, fixing the problem
Interesting what you say about Polynesia. I gave them a workboat replacement (available from the start) with scout AI that can enter ocean (my version doesn't have this ability for other units) and, after reading your post, doubled their naval exploration flavor. I'll see what it does. I'd prefer to keep Papua a not very accessible place.
For me the problem with France is that they expand too quickly, taking up the place of the other Euros
I had that problem with Japan though, but now I ramped up their expansion value way higher than any other civ. A modest increase did nothing, but now it seems to work.
Thanks again!