CivIVMonger
Emperor
I picked the standard number of opponents.
The number are a bit higher than I thought. I have 68 cities momentarily of which I settled 43 myself. The biggest competitors have 39, 38 and 33 cities, mostly settled by themselves (and the game will probably see some permanent alliances being formed). It's a huge big and small map at immortal difficulty level with no tech trading (with BetterAI and Bug Mod) on which I aggressively settled on my starting continent and aggressively settled some islands. Some cities are a bit marginal, which I settled in Arctic regions (not the first ones I settled of course). All of this aggressive expansion had the downside of a high tax rate. I had a tax rate of around 50% for a large amount of the game and around 70+% after the first expansion rush (now around 27% as my economy has become stable a while ago but the corporations start to cost lots of money). Big and Small maps might be a bit land heavy maps. But mostly it's just that Huge Maps are just that: HUGE.
There are some mods that allow even larger than huge maps, but I'm not sure if my computer would take the strain.
I like controlling a large empire with lots of cities instead of a collection of cities numbering 6 or so on a smaller map. It just wouldn't feel as an empire. Capturing 2 cities from an opponent would already cripple them. But everyone has different preferences and luckily this game has lots of options.
Ummm... Tax rate?
