[Illuminated One]

What bugs me about difficult research is that it takes ages before you can use any sort of fun strategy with many nations (i.e. I don't consider the army part of dominions standing up to the magic part or to other games - and the lower level spells are often not useable on their own or because of AI reasons), otherwise I'd think it's a very good idea.

Considering map size - what matters not is player to province ratio imo but the total amount of provinces. If you play with 10 players or with 4 player on a 150 province map, the player owning half the map has always the same amount of micro.