I am looking for peoples thoughts on the best settings to play.

I normally go for large, Empire difficulty, Pace normal,  Continents, 6 or 7 competitors

But the issue is the game appears to become unbalanced in the final stage industrial or contemporary when either I or an AI just start to run away with everything and results in flight in 1600 AD or getting the warning the that someone has hit final era by turn 170...

Does moving the pace help? should the map be smaller ie perhaps everyone is just growing too strong? 

I think the explosive snowballing is hard baked into the game, but one setting I have found that helps is turning the new world off.   While it's fun to have that element of discovery, the opportunity it provides for who ever gets there first (usually the human player) to intensify their snowballing is too great.

I am playing with Large maps, 30% land (key), Slow pace now, and it seems better paced, but I did not reach the final eras yet. New World off for the stated reason. HK difficulty.

I am happy someone made this thread. I have also been wondering what people play on.

First of all for Speed i have found out normal to be the best one, i have experimented with the other speeds and normal seems the best.  

I always play on Huge with max competitors. I play on 3 Continents usually, but with only 30% Land. I find this is the best since it drives conflict, since there is little Land to compete for and makes games less boring. Also when playing on Low land percentage, territories seem richer and generally there are very few territories without any resources in them.

For other Map Setting i always play on Wet Climate(more forests is great) Many Rivers and Steep Elevation. There a lot of bonuses in the game relating to rivers and mountains, so like to give them more chances to spawn. Also you will still have many territories without any mountains or river even with max Settings. 
I put Ridges and Cliff to Few, because i find them annoying and Lakes to Few but Big, since Lakes don't seem that useful.

For Difficulty for me personally i have to play on Humankind, since otherwise the AI just cant compete and i always find myself being an entire era ahead.

Ok thanks for the advice.  I have started a game on the slow rather than normal and will see how I get on.  Hoping it that it allows a bit more play in later years.  I played through the Neolithic and it took a few more turns for sure but I actually preferred it.  So far so good. 

I thought I would come back to this thread having played a few games through.

So my current favourite is to take off the 300 turn time leave the other victory conditions on.  I play on a large map with 2 continents and no new world with a total of 7 AI.  I actually find the game works quite well and you get a challenge and in all eras.  Yes I still feel that as I reach the end era I am able to start researching techs in two turns which is a bit fast but some of that is my fault as I do like to swap to a French/Japanese culture at one point to help boost at one point.  Game are usually over by 350 ish turns I have won by completing all tech, space and just collecting all the era stars.  

Omuth wrote:

I thought I would come back to this thread having played a few games through.

So my current favourite is to take off the 300 turn time leave the other victory conditions on.  I play on a large map with 2 continents and no new world with a total of 7 AI.  I actually find the game works quite well and you get a challenge and in all eras.  Yes I still feel that as I reach the end era I am able to start researching techs in two turns which is a bit fast but some of that is my fault as I do like to swap to a French/Japanese culture at one point to help boost at one point.  Game are usually over by 350 ish turns I have won by completing all tech, space and just collecting all the era stars.  

Good to hear, I was about to try something similar. One question: how interesting is the naval aspect of the game? I suppose 2 continents or more requires to fight for naval superiority and naval bombardment. How well does it work?

I agree with Omuth and these are my preferred settings. Normal speed, large world, turn limit turned off, 7 AI and 2-3 continents.

Sometimes I use random number of continents to spice things up. I also use random settings for everything else like islands, lakes, world temperature, etc. The only thing I don't randomize is new world and strategic/luxury resource levels.