[thejeff]

Gandalf, knowing your SP preference for truly huge maps, I'm curious what you consider "small or medium maps"? In terms of total provinces or provinces/nation.

That aside, my understanding is that the biggest danger with either M3D3 or M3T3 is not the long term effects but the good chance of a crippling event (plague, pop-loss, strong unrest) in your capital in the first few turns. I suppose a large map would give you more time to try to recover from that and an SC pretender would let you make some gains anyway.

Even in the long run, playing T3L3, I've had gold problems with Pangaea. Pan are expensive.