I fail to see how this is, in any way, similar to the horse armour debacle (which was blown far out of proportion).
Its a very minor addition to the game that few people will actually want to buy on its own merits and they're charging five bucks for it. Useless paid DLC like this gets called Horse Armor.
Except, uh, it's clearly not useless. It adds new generation stuff, and I'm pretty sure that you'd have to adapt to play on those maps - if you got that mountain chain going in your game, it'd be a pretty good argument for using Carthage (to MASSIVELY cut down on your time spent getting to the other player(s)). But then again...
The game already had randomized maps. It already had maps in the shape of continents. If I want to play on a random map, I can do that. If I want to play on a real map, I can do that also. Heck, the Workshop contains so many different maps that I'd never run out if I wanted to use them. If I'm playing on a random map, why would I want to know the shape of that map ahead of time? The basic purpose of a random map is to surprise you, so you can play explorer and discover things for yourself. The value of such a thing is limited. I'm not saying it's worthless, but its value is very limited, because you get an even better affect already by using the random map generator. Remember, horse armor was not worthless either. It just was not what people wanted. I think the same thing is true here.
So why are you talking as if you have? Saying "Oh, this seems a bit pointless" is one thing, but you're making specific comments without actually having used it. Maybe it is completely pointless, maybe it adds new dimensions to play. I've not tried it (despite owning it), so I can't say for certain, but there's still things it can do if the shape of the map stays the same (which it did beforehand with the Earth-type map). From what I can gather, the shape remains the same but the details are randomised, so it's a blend of two existing forms.
Can you elaborate on that, please? I don't have the game so I haven't checked it and I'm rather curious about it—there are screenshots out there but they are merely still images and I don't have any in-game comparisons with "normal random terrain" due to not playing it.
I'd probably have to play the maps a few times to really even get a hint of how the randomisation works, but it's interesting to have a set map which is randomised. Just 'cos you know the layout it doesn't mean you know where anything is, so it can easily pose new challenges each map. But to be honest I need to finish this one first!
I just don't see the advantage to playing on an actual randomized map. I generally only play on randomized maps or on the Earth map or one of the various Earth maps that are available in the workshop. And I've also tried a lot of the scripts for creating randomized maps from the workshop. I get it, as a novelty, but I just don't see it as being sufficiently different than playing on a randomized map without the DLC that I'd get $5.00 worth of play out of it.
Not having played the DLC, I can tell you, based on the sales pitch for it what is different (correct me if I'm wrong). In a random map, you select the world type which can be continents, archipelago, islands, etc. Lots of choices, especially if you use some of the map scripts that modders have come up with. Then the maps are totally made from scratch. With the DLC, I assume that they take the fixed outline of whatever map they are using, and just randomize where the mountains and rivers and forests and desert and tundra are on that map. In other words, it's the same as any other randomized map except that you are fixing the borders of the land masses. The only thing I'm unclear on, is what happens if you pick a non-island map using the DLC -- is everything beyond the border turned into water or what? Can you not journey beyond the real-world political borders of nations?
I don't know about this one, but back in the days when I played Civilization 2 and 3 with my friends, we preferred random maps over set ones. Sure, it could be unfair, but real military campaigns aren't fair either. And with that, getting an outline that is always the same but with everything else being randomised, would probably be an interesting choice for us. So while I do understand where you are coming from, I don't think I would consider this particular DLC anything like the ill-mentioned "Horse Armor".
Based on the Scrambled Central Europe Map, there's an impassable fog barrier around the whole map, and it's a rectangular shape. So it doesn't conform to real-world political borders.
