I think it needs resources balanced a bit more like Land Nomad. Right now, you can tower forever on 6 tiles, then go into castle age dropping castles back to back. Not to mention How much gold you can camp on. Every the game unbans the map on me in teams, I try to stick to it and enjoy it, but it makes being sandwiched game-ending. I don’t have this problem with land nomad. You have to keep moving and expanding. Definitely feels more balanced and doesn’t favour civs like Mayans, Sicilians, or Spanish, which thrive on the abundant fish and mines.
Imho Land Nomad is a dumbed down version of nomad, without the water you lack a strategic element.
And differently from pure water maps, on Nomad you can’t just spam fire galley to win, so it’s not like the water makes it suddenly similar to Islands.
Abundance of resources is hardly a problem imho, if anything it helps mitigate a bad starting position. On land nomad without water if you start in a bad spot, you’ll end up dead fast since there’s no water escape.
Also, Land Nomad heavily favours other civs like Mongols or possibly even Tatars/Celts due to herdables.