I don't think it's current absence is an indication they don't care about TSL maps - I think it's more likely that the opposite is true. Sure it doesn't seem to be a priority for them, but I imagine they want to give themselves sufficient time to do it well.
- How should the globe be divided into homelands/distant lands? Eg. Americas + Afroeurasia/Oceania, Americas/Oceania + Afroeurasia, or Americas + Afroeurasia + Oceania (which would probably some extra work to make possible)
Humankind map generation #1 bug is that you have to assign all landmasses to different continents.
The distant lands/homelands is a likely candidate for messing up the world builder the same way.
But really with cities that gets +6 borders and cant settle 1 tile away they should make the map 4 -6 times bigger than what it was civ III maps. So we are talking 1500x6000 hexes. Civ VI TSL map was an atrocity, unplayable. Impossible to border trespass. If the opposite is true it's been 20 years not been enough? It's not just proportions. A Snoop that could move 8 tiles per turn (8 nodes) would take 400 turns to make the trip around the world. A Modern Sea vessel could make 30 tiles (30 nodes) and would take 100 turns.
Earth circumference is 21.600 nautical miles, so it would be about 1/4 scale. Each tile equal 4 nautical miles.
AMD just reinvented VRAM wheel with tree generation also.... So massive forests and no stutter...
I played 1500x3000 mod Earth map in Civ III, with sea vessels moving FAST. It's an experience. 2X horizontal is BIG, but really it should be 3X or 4X for a TSL Earth. Random maps could be whatever in between. 1200X720, etc. The limit then was the Monitors resolution...
Now we have Ultra-Ultra Wide Monitors, the Whole map could be showed. They could double Mountains heights to 2 tiles, and it would be at scale with the Everest.
Distant Land should really be just Antarctica, literally a continent that wasn't on the map in Ancient times and then it appears out of nowhere... that's the only way it feels right for me... some penguins wouldn't be happy anyway, but relegating the Distant Land problem to Antarctica might be the only solution.
With 8 nodes Snoops or 4 nodes Scouts on sea kayak, it would literally take the whole play through just to make a round-trip, there would be no need for un-natural invisible barriers to exist. Transport Airplanes and Floating Palaces of modern Age (Canard), and later Mag rail would make everything work.
You need the basis for this to work. They paddled the opposite direction since civ V.
Here is HK TSL Earth map, which can be edited at will.
First img is Everest top left, and a +11 praire, about 2x a basic tile width in height.
Second img is Vesuvius Vulcano, the Alps looks like +5 height. They interchanged the Etna with the Vesuvius for proportions, and it's
like 8.000 mt in height, complete blown out proportions here but generally far more organic.
Except Italy is just one territory, then there is Sicily, Corse, and Sardinia on the other side, and you can build only one city per territory... good maps design but the 1 city x territory is just too terrible.