https://imgur.com/a/OY2h9UO
That's flying around on just one of the past maps for about five minutes. For every settlement that you pick out there is going to be a sea of land-scars, half done / griefed builds, and builds that shouldn't exist / terraform into the environment very poorly. I agree with what Cloak mentioned partly, but I do think that there are more routes towards achieving that than in the past. Not only, with enough players and resources, can you set out to do it on your own, but with how many tiles are purchased currently by nations there is a lot of space for groups to establish themselves. It's a very healthy conversation to have and this is just my opinion on the matter which leans towards no freebuild. This is mainly just from a past moderation perspective because actually maintaining these areas and cleaning up inactive builds / land-scars is legit a full time job.