[HoneyBadger]

Playing on very large 1500 province maps with many opponents is also a completely different game from playing on a 25 province map.

I'd play larger if I could.
That's the kind of game I like, and very-long-term is the kind of strategy I follow.

I also tend to play ocean races over land races (except for Mictlan) so a lot of units and strategies which I otherwise would use, aren't as available to me. I do consider globals (except gem-producers) to be wasteful, but I don't believe juggernauts or abominations are amphibious (maybe abominations, but I don't know).

And playing R'lyeh, how exactly are you going to manage to pull off a blitz game? All you've GOT are SCs (another reason to play huge maps). So I'm stuck with 1 very good SC capital only commander per round, kinda crappy to very crappy everything else, and summons. 12 abominations at a time might be great, but by the time I've crossed the board and it's down to me and one other nation, the other guy is going to be pretty damn tough too, and I'm going to lose abominations and juggernauts-lots of them at 25 pearls a pop.

If I can take out a hundred of the other guy's troops per SC of mine, and still keep the SC, it could very well decide the game, even if I'm putting all of my astral pearls into SCs. After all, I'm going to have a lot more of them than the other guy, because that's one thing R'lyeh's good for.

If somebody handed me 300 astral pearls at the beginning of the game, sure I'd use them differently than I would if I were producing that many every turn and had most magical research done.

People need to get around the idea that every MP game is a blitz game.