I had to ditch the game since the starting planets were way to far apart
There are sooooo many ways to claim any random setup is the most "lucky" one that to me, the actual number of bonuses on the HW is just a tiny part of a much bigger picture; thus, why i made that snapshot last year about receiving three major resources nearby a starting location in the link of my initial reply to this thread.
I'll even step a bit further into this kind of reasoning by stating that ZYW "settings" are a specific type of situation that allows for some scoring possibilities that no other conditions could ever give.
Not diminishing its value, but i'd say that any other settings are as challenging as anyone can make them once they find a clear path to highest scoring methods. Be it, duel or full roaster of opponents, Gigantic or Tiny, etc.
What surprises me though is how FAST a ZYW can be completed while epic size games are not necessarily guaranteed to result in some higher scorings.
