Our own earth is quite unbalanced. You won't find mega cities in the Sahara desert, and the Amazon basin remains inhospitable to man to the present day. I actually tried to emulate that on both maps I posted. If - as a human player - the game assigns you to start in the Mahgong Delta, it's best to - quite literally - run for the hills with your second settler. That's where your production has to come from (until you build the Industrial Zone in the Delta). A possible strategy to use for your Delta city is to purchase all your settlers there, because the hit you take on your pop will almost immediately be replenished. But, again, I made that Delta quite intentionally not a very sought-after spot, in hopes that it would make it likely that much of it would remain untouched (and keep looking beautiful). If you look at a satellite photo of Brazil today, that's how the Amazon basin still looks (apart from all those raging forest fires). It's also a desired effect of this map that your cities may develop quite differently. Some will stall out, some will end up winners. Your capital city may not be your biggest city. That would mirror most state capitals here in the US. What historically looked like a good idea, turned out to be not such a desirable location. What is the capital of Washington State? It's not Seattle (750,000 residents). It's Olympia, population less than 46,479 as of the 2010 census. Isaac I. Stevens choice turned out to be - well - not a great one. In designing my maps, I hope that what develops mirrors many of the things we see in the real world.
Now: once we're talking about the AI Civs, unfortunately all bets are off. The AI is ill-equipped to recognize some of the things a human player will spot on this map. So - yeah - of course stupid France would get mired in the muck... But, that's something none of us can change, and we'll just have to live with when playing Civ VI on maps like mine.

My mods retain the game's logic for selecting starting spots. Here's an enlightening post about starting biases for the different Civs. That's how your Nubia ended up where it ended up: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1688993712
I found - only anecdotably, but I still believe it to be true - that starting your game with a "Legendary" start instead of the "Standard" start will unshackle the game from some of its constraints and open up more possible starting locations for you. As to the paucity of fresh water on this map; that's also inspired by real world conditions. In my home state of California, there's a perpetual political fight over how to divvy up the state's water resources. Fresh water is actually scarce in very many places on our planet. While the map may lack lots of fresh water sources, it has many, many mountains. So your strategy will be to settle so that you can have an Aqueduct district. Very true to real life: in Los Angeles, we "aqueduct in" our water from over 400 miles away! Be flexible in your use of your initial settler. Look around and see if it might be a good idea to move it around to a better spot. In my trial runs, the starting location the game picked often wasn't the most beneficial. Definitely move your warrior first on start, to get a look what's in the vicinity before you plop down that settler. You play on King level, so I realize I'm not sharing anything you don't already know... ;)

Final thought for the time being, and I'll be candid about it now (I didn't dare being this frank so far out of fear of getting pilloried for it): yes, Mount Everest (and some other natural wonders) are placed pretty much out of reach. And again, that's intentional: there are no cities in the Himalayas, and I wished for this map to stay true to that. So, that's one up for aesthetics, and - technically - a loss for playability. But I hope people will be forgiving, and be content with just discovering it in its beautiful setting.

Well, one more ;)
What you say about Nubia having a tough go of it due to its starting bias likely placing it in the desert is true. Yes, some Civs on this map will require very capable stewardship. But - given all that I dislike about Civ VI - what it retained from its predecessors is that it gives you a whole lot of options to tackle adversity. With human-controlled desert cities, yes, the Petra wonder is practically essential. Be sure to tailor your tech tree accordingly, to grab it before an AI Civ does. You'll have to sacrifice to get it, for sure, and the competitive nature of the game will force your hand on some of your city-building choices, but that's what makes winning against all odds in the end so rewarding, doesn't it?

: P I love your passion and reasoning, I wanted to say that right off the bat.

It's not that I disagree with any of your logics and intentions, and I love playing the game like that. But I do want to warn others, because it changes the game quite a bit. I mean, balance is really nothing that exists in our current world either, so in that regard it's very realistic. Some people might not find it fun, however.

I also want to add that I always set my starting location to legendary, and in my case of Cree I don't mind where I ended up. Had I been France in that game though, I would not have easily "run to the hills" to get production, since there were no real hills nearby without having to fight other players for territory.

So yeah, it's different, it's realistic in a sense, but it doesn't always suit the game as is.

Personally, I would love to have more mods that are synergetic with your maps, to get an even more realistic game going.

As for the natural wonders, I for example love what you did with Yosemite Valley on your other map (played as the Dutch and started quite near to it). It's perfect that it has only a few tiles available, and the rest are blocked by mountains.

When I played your second map I just felt a bit lachrymose that I couldn't play it again without having seen everything before : P I wouldn't mind a monthly fix of these kind of maps, but the work you put into them must be tremendous.

Also, thanks a lot for your detailed reaction, it is greatly appreciated.