I know it's an industry trope to have all these map/game settings:  Map Size, Terrain type, Game Difficulty, Number of Opponents, Game pacing, etc...

And frankly, I love that FE provides so many different options.  It's really cool, but reading the thread Frogboy started on Map Size and some other comments has started me thinking about how differently the game plays when you change any one of those settings.  We're all playing the same game, but having completely different experiences because of the settings we've selected.

While I do enjoy having those options, it's never been obvious to me what kind of game experience those settings provide.  If I put 5 players on a medium map with sparse resources and high monster density, that's going to be a startlingly different experience to a game with 5 players on a large map with normal resources.

When I start up a game, my instinct is to always go for the big map with a multitude of opponents.  I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about map size or terrain style or monster density, because I am not really sure how those changes will affect the game.  The only way to know how they'll affect my game is to play a bunch of games (to reduce the randomness) with each setting, and frankly I don't have that kind of time.

I'd like to be able, when starting the game, to pick from options that describe the kind of game I am starting in an intuitive way. So instead of offering a New Game screen with a plethora of options, hide those options in "advanced" and give me broad choices that manipulate multiple settings to give me a specific type of game.

Scale: the size of the map and number and density of players (Apocalypse, World War, Bar Brawl, Chess Match, Lonely, Vast Empty Space)

Scarcity: the quality of the land, monster density and the ratio of resources to players (Abundance, Enough, Not Enough, Almost Nothing)

Speed: the pacing of technology and production (Rapid, Rapid Advances, Rapid Development, Steady, Slow Advances, Slow Development, Slow)

Difficulty: the level of difficulty and monster aggressiveness (Same as now)

So my instinct would lead me to World War/Abundance/Steady.  (I would think of that as the "standard" FE game.)

A different type of game would be more of an "Every Man for Himself" that uses Apocalypse (which moves players closer together) and Not Enough (which reduces the amount of resources) along with a Rapid Speed which would put you almost immediately at war with your neighbors.

A completely different type of game would be the Chess Match (which is a 1v1)/Enough/Slow Development, which encourages smart steady play and optimal use of resources to eventually overpower your opponent.

To finish off the New Game screen I would add a list of presets (like the three described above) that list common options.

While the idea as presented might be a little bit rough, I feel like it's a better alternative for casual players to experiment with the settings than the multitude of options that is the standard for this genre.  The greater danger is that casual players get stuck playing in a game-style that they don't enjoy because they chose settings that made sense for some other game (ahem, Civ) and they don't know how to set FE up in a way that is fun for them.