I play huge multi-star maps with 10 players FFA. Half players hard and half on cruel. Anything above hard will increase A.I. research and income speeds. Even playing on normal with a bigger map should work. You just need the time for player fleets to build up in size.

The trade off is late game lag which a lot can be fixed with the Optimization Project Mod.

I hate cruel AI, only cause you have to 1) cheat them, 2)Map has to have only one early chockepoint and 3)Game takes needlessly long :/

Not cheating...

That's called "resourceful hax" in my book.

Richter {^}

There inside the Sins root folder eg...

C:\Program Files\Stardock\Sins of a Solar Empire

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