Factorio Forums

It's been a while since I played, and I thought I'd been keeping up with all the updates, but I may be wrong. I distinctly remember usually having a nice assortment of lakes and rivers around the starting area, and they gave a lot of distinctiveness and personality to the map and how I'd build my base. Were these removed to make room for more forests and cliffs or something? I generated a dozen maps or so and saw nothing but a small pool near spawn, with water settings set to default.

There are many problems with 0.16 map gen. You should have a look to the 0.16 map gen feedback topic to get an idea.
Luckily, the devs are working on a better mapgen for 0.17, so the current situation is temporary.

Global warming from too much factoring around.

I figured out, that the map generator seems so place more water when you set the starting area to a bigger size - that worked for me quite well even through i had to review a few maps before i chose mine.

If you don't "have" to do vanilla achievements without mods, use RSO. I think there is an option for water in the starting area.