It's also worth noting that clearing the save via the control panel doesn't actually wipe the world either. It only wipes the character data/tribe data of characters created. The world remains the same with all edits made by previously created characters.
The seed changes in the panel and the seed changes in the ini, however the in game map stays the same regardless if changed directly in the ini or via the control panel.
Having the same issue right now myself, changing the seed via the control panel or cleaning the save information doesn't appear to generate a world currently. I've also tried manually changing the ini seed and it does not clear the map/generate a new world based on the seed.