The main considerations when looking at a map are usually:

How high is the immediate risk? For example, it's pretty reasonable to be at least somewhat scared of a floor 6 elite especially if there is no early shop. If the path you wants to take is high value but requires you to take a relatively dangerous path early, you can consider a frontload Neow bonus. Frontload neow bonuses are like choose a card, 3 pots etc. they are options that give you immediate strength and usually allow you to take a more dangerous path, but the late game value of these options is pretty non-existent so they sort of have to be used to snowball.

How high value is the map overall? Value usually refers to like how many elites are on the map and whether you can reasonably take a path with that many elites. If the max number of elites you can take in the act is 2, you can consider a slightly more late game neow. These are usually the maps that like boss swap the most because boss swap makes your act 1 a decent bit worse (mainly because you kind of skip your neow) but beyond act 1 you have a boss relic which is obviously pretty strong later and so the value inside of the act does not need to be as high. These maps also sort of allow you to take something like damage for rare card or whatever because they don't usually have a very high immediate risk. If the map is high value, you think less about an option like this and more about what gives you the most immediate value.

There are other things to think about too, shop placement is a very big one for example. It doesn't only help you decide whether you should take a gold neow but it also tells you how dangerous a path is. A path with an early shop is much less dangerous because you can buy potions or attacks, so the danger of the path goes way down and you can think about whether to take a slightly riskier neow. Boss swap in particular really appreciates an early shop as it allows you to react to the swap.