Does increasing the civ limit but not using those civs slow down the game? As in, is a 18 civ game with a 32 civ limit much slower than an 18 civ game with a 64 civ limit?
If there's no difference, it would be good if you could release a version with a really large limit (as large as possible, 250 maybe, even more?) and let players choose their own limit based on their hardware/map size.
I think it would be cool to have a 200 civ game, on a normal map. A few "superpowers" and lots of small one city civs. This might seem unrealistic on current hardware, but hardware is only going to improve as time goes on.
Anyway, it would be great if you could release a version with the highest limit you've got to run a map and maybe one turn (disregarding how long that turn takes to process).