Bigger map, bigger gains!

[gsmoove23]

I usually play monarch, standard random map and 8 civs. The other day, for the first time ever I went all the way up to 16 civs on the huge world map and now I'm dominating the game early on, something I never get to do. I managed to get a huge tech lead throughout the industrial age and now most of my core cities have everything built(I'm a builder) and amazingly I have one of the strongest armies in the world just because I have nothing else to build(usually I have the weakest army). Now I find myself just itching for a war to exercise the troops when normally I'm keeping my head low and hoping nobody notices me.

The best part is, since the Middle Ages I've been able to keep research at 100% and rake in huge per turn payments for techs I've sold. Having 15 civs who want to buy my tech is beautiful. This way I can just sell a little, get a nice surplus in gold every turn and still keep a nice tech lead.

I'm just curious if other people found larger maps and more civs easier or its just something I'm doing different. It might just be my position, I started in India as the Iroquois, and now hold from Arabia and the Tigris to SE Asia and up into Tibet, with profitable little colonies in Alaska, Madagascar, Japan, Sumatra(or somewhere near there) and England.

Just curious or maybe I wanted to share my joy.

[bbaws]

I usually play huge maps myself (too much time on my hands). As it gets easier, or as I get better at the game, I reduce the zixe of the map gradually till it is time to jump up a difficulty level. Huge maps are the most forgiving for builders (I can't NOT build) and tiny maps are best suited to warmongers.

[DaveMcW]

On huge maps the tech rate is slower and it takes longer to build up a competitive research infrastructure. So if the human player stops expanding and starts research early, they can take an early tech lead.

Depending on the difficulty level, the computer may or may not catch up when they are fully expanded and built up.

[vmxa1]

I fond them easy to play, but too much work and time. I went back to std.

[gsmoove23]

Thats why I never played them before, cause it was just too much trouble considering my strategy of expanding as much as possible. Now though, I've changed to just expanding til I have a respectable core of cities with a few widespread luxury and resource colonies so the huge map isn't quite as time consuming as I thought.

The only real problem is when I find my gold per turn running low and I have to go through 15 different negotiations to bring it up to an acceptable level.