I dunno about others but a problem I have with Factorio is that I can’t help but hyper optimize. And I’ll do that whether you give me a small or large area. So I’m hoping this means having many smaller factories instead of one giant sprawling map.
I found that working on some of the more "tutorial/scenario" type mods/maps helped a bit, but since the game doesn't really have time limits there's really nothing preventing you from perpetual optimization.
You can take the Nilaus route where the thing that you're actually optimizing is your blueprint book over multiple playthroughs, so that later ones you're basically plopping down blueprints and editing them as you see ways to do things better.
