I would tend to agree with Chris on the map size thing. The game will never finish well, and we don't want to include AIs anyway, so why not scale down to a smaller map based on the number of people?
Also, if you've been gone awhile, there has been a schism in the community between the people who can still talk on this board and those who have been banned. If you want to recruit the Banished Ones, they can be found here:
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/...hp?showforum=3