A more diverse starting area?

[Professor Paul1290]

I kind of feel like starting the player out in the ice age doesn't give the best first impression of the game.

Not that the ice age isn't interesting, but compared to the some of the other areas it seems rather dull, even if understandably so.

Perhaps the first settlement should somehow be made more likely to have a greater variety of region tiles nearby to give the player a better first taste of the game?

[x4000]

Each of the first regions of the game are actually linearly scripted out.  First ice age, then whatever region level 2 is in your world, etc, etc.  I'm happy with the progression, but bear in mind that all the assets and such aren't done for all the various regions yet.  At any rate, not starting in the ice age would be rewriting the entire story, which I'm definitely not inclined to do.  I think what you're mainly reacting to are the low number of unique assets in the ice age, which is just a factor of early beta rather than anything else.  Several of the other regions have 10x or even 20x as many unique assets at the moment.