Close, but not quite.
Regarding band-aids and patchworks, that comment was wrought from years in these forums and earlier, where practically any and every idea or suggestion outside of ‘new civs’ is shut down immediately with “just mod it in if you want it.” So, I’ve grown a little jaded to that comment 
, as it’s the most easy cop-out possible to say, highly frequent, and takes the burden off the developers who could be adding more to the title from their highly capable and professional level… and also by fixing the simplest of things imaginable if they were provided some time and money to focus on cleaning up the title and adding a few more extra things here and there to satiate players who use the part of the game that is not campaign- or rank-related.
This isn’t to say some modders aren’t dev-level good in terms of skillset or knowledge. I just would like the official vanilla game to have more of the asked for and more of the polish asked for, rather than a ragtag group of modders modding it in – which, as you know, are not officially supported, can break, can break the game, and are 3rd party and therefore susceptible to malware type stuff.
and the game doesn’t magically display map icons that no one has made. Instead of supporting custom random map scripts, you think the devs should have added official maps satisfying your very specific preferences (no snow, no sand, no islands, not much water, no balanced layouts) that, as far as I know, you only expressed for the first time yesterday.
I made some of the custom maps above, and I have no idea why the tiles look like <?> or how to fix. And some of them were from the community, and maybe some were included with DE? Can’t remember. Not high on my priority list to make custom map tile artwork for any and every custom map I make or for any modded map I download that doesn’t have one, if that’s what I need to do.
I’ve asked for no snow and no sand several times before because of how bright and uninteresting those terrains are to me, including here with a proposed lobby solution (for snow at least, but would add sand) - Would you like to see new paid content for this game? - #26 by Darkness01101, see screenshot here:
And here (A call for customization - it's 2024 geez - #5 by Darkness01101).
Water is a new one to express, but I don’t like maps with waterways because according to the tiles at least, your towns are in striking distance of ships. And since the AI love to spam ships, those games aren’t fun for me.
Oh well, I’m not a dev. I don’t get paid to know the engine possibilities or design the solutions. Just giving my feedback like everyone else in hopes it can be implemented by the pros someday.
Yes, somewhat narrow preferences, but would the game really go downhill all the sudden by giving more options for players to create the type of maps they want to play from unranked private or SP lobbies? And would it really hurt to take some resources away for a short time (we’re really talking days or weeks here) from creating the 80th new civ? Not in my opinion.
The game has a ton of arena style maps. Is it really that big of a stretch to ask the devs to make some natural looking ones, so it looks like we are playing battles on realistic landscapes rather than unrealistic gamey landscapes designed specifically for video game players? I doubt any past war or battle had such finely crafted landscapes bisected or divided into equal partitions provided to them.
If it’s so easy to make maps as said above, then devs can crank some out and add to the vanilla game for all to rejoice and play if they want, imo. Yes, only more streamlined by a click or two since it would be a filter on the main level, but it makes for a more professional presentation, rather than having to go to the Custom sub-area to look through there for the map you want.