No it is not essential to life. Being a perfect sphere would not change anything.This being said... do I need to have an oblate spheroid shape or not? If it is essential to sustain life, then I guess I should keep some similar proportions. Once I have the numbers, I will be able to do what I call a dual perpendicular rings with 4 dots (so I can have my four middle points) which will allow me to have a better feel of the distortion when drawing something which normally would be spherical but on flat.
But it make sense for a physics perspective.
As the planet is rotating, it is slightly stretched by the forces of gravity.
The faster the object rotate, the bigger is the difference between the 2 measures.
For example the star Achernar diameter at the pole is half the diameter at the equator.
So I guess Venus is almost a perfect sphere.
It depend if the planet is simply bigger or if that also comes with a change in gravity. Bigger and heavier planers do not always result in higher gravity (ex:Neptune gravity is only slightly higher than Earth's despite being 17 times heavier).Actually another question I have is if the planet is, let's say, 1.1x times bigger, how would that play on the distribution of climate? Would one particular type of climate expand more than the others?
If the planet is 1.1 time larger but also 1.1 time heavier (same density ass Earth) then I think the gravity will remain the same.
Regrading the size alone, the biggest difference would be somewhat larger deserts. The distance from the ocean is not the only factor explaining deserts but it's an important one. Assuming the continents are larger, the interiors are further away from the oceans and thus drier.