Though the most experienced Settlers players I know all agree that the initial placement has a tremendous impact on the final outcome of the game, so in fact Settlers *does* have an asymmetric setup, one determined randomly and for which there are no compensations.

In a typical wargame, the starting positions are more carefully considered and the victory mechanism more carefully balanced to compensate for the different starting positions. (There are exceptions, of course. My college gaming group traditionally would abandon any game of Kingmaker in which a player started with both Percy and the Chancellorship; our ritual response to this unbalanced random start was, "We compliment you on your strategy.")

This is not surprising; most wargames, with their (usually nominal) situational simulation, will start with differing forces with different advantages. Only a nonhistorical wargame like Kriegspiel or Victory: The Blocks of War is likely to give the players symmetry.

Most German games are abstracts with themes pasted on (thinly or thickly). In an abstract game like Settlers, 18xx, or anything by Reiner Knizia, there is no "simulation" reason to give players asymmetric starting positions.

One interesting hybrid case is Prism Games's Time Agent (by Tom Lehman). The mechanisms are wargamey, while the game itself is very abstracted, and the starting positions are *wildly* asymmetrical, with one player much stronger than all the others and fighting to retain its supremacy when almost any action in the game will reduce that player's position.