reccomended map size? Huge Earth advice?

[Rynian]

I loved playing the huge earth and crusades scenarios, even though I always lose.
I wanted to move on to trying a more traditional civ game, and was a little shocked.

When I start a game on a huge map, there are only 12 civs, and it takes ages to find a neighbor.

Is there a way to increase civ numbers? Or are the civs super spread by design?

On the other hand I COULD keep playing huge earth, but I run into the same issue a bunch, germany's starting position sucks and Im too stubborn to switch civs.

The AI swoops in and expands super early, but german lands kind of suck, so expanding big just destroys your science and money. A bit torn between just playing a tall citystate until later on, and just conquering the neighbors ala bismarck, or expanding early and letting science exchange pick up the slack. The change in mechanics confuses me at which is more realistically viable. My gut says the former

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Firstly, you can have as many (or as few) AI civs on any map size if you start with custom game rather than Play Now.

Secondly, thanks for noting the number of civs on Huge size - turns out, it was the same as for Large, and this is definitely a typo in the map size file. It will be increased to 15.