Being able to join the game and see your initial position and chat with players before the game starts is a bad idea.
Because the optimal strategy is to join and leave a game to get information of other starting positions and optimize your own starting position.
It also gives a strategic advantage to people that join early versus those that join last.
You can already see a tendency of people not wanting to be the last to join, or leaving and joining games over and over.
I think that will only get worse as players get more experienced.
I suggest that people join a game but can't talk between each other or see their starting positions until every player has joined. Then they have the four hour period before the game starts to actually start diplomatic talks and strategizing.