When I play games, I like to start with every civilization (but since I play with minor civs and raging barbarians, many of them get destroyed early). However, I do not like the largest map size.
So my question is:
How do I play on the second largest map without worrying about exceeding the maximum civ limmit and going to the largest map?

Can someone word that better for me. After I finished typing that question, I'm like awk. But I don't know how to phrase it better. :dunno:

BTW, if it makes a difference, I playing on either Quot Capita or Legends of Revolution.

Just make a custom game and you can do anything like that, including 18civs on a Duel map.

Yeah, that's what I do on a custom game, but once I exceed I think 12 civs, in jumps to to the largest map. When I get all the civs I want, and then choose a smaller map, it goes down to the max civs for that size.

Set your map size first, then add more civs. The map size stays the same. Hell when I do testing to make sure I haven't introduced any obvious art bug for Legends of Revolution I commonly put all civs on a duel size map, lol.