I think immense in GCiv3 is much larger--or at least it gives the appearance of being so. Plenty of room to expand, that's for sure. No real problem loading the map so far (knocking wood).
I'm sorry if this isn't germane to the discussion, but crimsonsun_2000 mentioned the length of the game and its pacing and its possible impact on strategy. Here, I think, is where choice of map size comes in--and the type of map you choose to play on, as well as the number of opponents, will very much impact on your gameplay and strategy. Colony rushing and war tech rushing becomes much more important with tiny or small maps than with the humongous map sizes. Map size I th
Yeah, I noticed it freezing yesterday as well. I'm thinking it might partly be due to background programs and running an immense map--although I've got the processor capacity and plenty of RAM as well as an NVIDIA GTX 770 video card, so I'm running a pretty up to date machine--it runs DA:I and E:D without too many problems. Next time it happens I'll submit a ticket with a zipped dump file.