Nope, I delete (I backed it up first) my hall of fame and game now loads from steam extremely fast like usual (since I got my new computer).
Now I'll put my old file back and see if it gets slow again.
edit: verified, my HallofFame.sqlite is causing the massive slow down in my game. The question is why. Something got corrupted. An entire morning loading save games wasted. Sigh. I didn't load saves games with lots of mods, because I couldn't be bothered to track them down, but I did load some with ynamp mod specifically games played on greatest Earth map. Or maybe it was the number of games in the hall of fame causing issues.