Arkenor
Warlord
MY opinion: When i was in the Non-commissioned Officers Advanced Training Classes, our class had a Quote: K.I.S.S (Keep it Simple Stupid).
I only play with less than 9 civs, and have a HARD time on Marathon. On a Huge map, but if you like longer PreH Era than go to Giant , but thats really too much. IMPO
Giant is my usual play size. It used to be OK, but C2C is seemingly a lot hungrier than it used to be, so I'm going to need to use a smaller map to get the same performance, by the look of it.