ORIGINAL: Westheim
So, if you start with few cities you basically have no chance of winning a game, since you will never be able to produce in captured cities (beyond the few you start with). Sounds like it breaks the game for me.
It is interesting that you mention 'few cities' because in some of the test games I've played against the AI and a couple of ongoing games against human players, these are the options that were chosen: medium map and deserted lands (few cities). On a medium map, this means each player has three cities. You find that you have to carefully manage your production as you can't do everything at once or quickly. If you establish an alliance and trade research, that part of the game can advance more quickly, especially if players refrain from going to war early. The geography of the map (mountains, rivers, etc.) and the layout of the land masses has a large bearing on a particular regime's war planning. Maps are always different, skill of players varied, and coupled with the variability of timing of operational events as players move and engage, this all comes together to impact game play. This is why I enjoy AT/ATG random games so much.
I think I understand where you are coming from in your comments but I believe you'll be surprised at how fun and operationally interesting ATG random games can be. Loss of a city is damaging to the player that lost it and enhances the capabilities of the regime that captured it, just not to the extent of the original AT. What I usually do when I capture an enemy city is set it to produce Political Points and then reduce by the same amount the number of PPs at one of my native cities so I can construct more combat units.
With all the options available for random games in ATG, re-playability is really a very strong point. I'm excited to see this game get released and hear the feedback from a much wider audience of players. Like almost all computer games, if something isn't working as intended or isn't resulting in fun game play, the game gets tweaked till it does.