What's everyone's preferred difficulty and map type?

I feel like the game works best with king or emperor and continents. I like having a little society develop independently on the other side of the world while you're busy in your own little sphere (and I'd love to see this aspect of the game enhanced), and Emperor is usually just stacked enough that you can play flexibly and don't have to hustle too hard or go conquer everyone, but still have the potential for some interesting situations to arise.

For map types like continents I wish you could disable knowing how many civs are in the game/yet to be discovered and getting any updates or information about them until you encounter their borders or one of their units.

 

King, large, continents

 

Deity and mostly continents

 

King and Shuffle. I hate that they get an extra settler already on emperor. In civ5 that only happened at deity.

 

Deity and pangea

But I often mix it up and play king, emperor or immortal as well on more water based maps

 

Diety
Fractal
Marathon
Small Map
Max Civs & City States