What about the little guy?

[flairin]

Some AI civs like to expand rapidly early game (France though prob will change, Greece, Persia, etc)... so through t120 or so you could raise quite a number of cities

 

[Matthew.]

Smaller-ish empires are currently stronger than larger, so a boost to larger empires in BNW will likely just equalize. From what I've seen so far, I don't get the impression that smaller empires are no longer viable, only that larger empires (especially in the culture game) are penalized less.