No your not the only one of this opinion. I expect that larger maps will have more micromanagement. That said I'm normally against delegating micromanagement aspects to the AI and I like playing larger games in a 4x tbs game. I actually like micromanagement (one of the things that drew me to this game) and I kind of take the view that if it's so much it becomes tedius than I'll just play a smaller map.

Unless there is zero micromanagement in city management, large maps will inevitably have more of it then small maps (since they have more cities).

Unfortunately, as mentioned by other people, everything being so automated that the player has nothing to do winds up not being a lot of fun either. This will put a constraint on the map sizes that you will likely want to use.

MoM can be quite a chore as well when it reaches late-game stages.  90% of the time is spent watching those silly animations that pop up when each city finishes what it is building and choosing a new building/unit for that city.

The solution, of course, is robust build queues that can be named, saved and applied to cities both singly and in groups via a flexible multiple city management screen.

The tedium of micromanagement is really not a game design issue at all, merely a user interface design issue. The creators of MoO3 did not realize this and unfortunately that game is the tragic result.

I guess the other major issue with MoM, for those with optimization-OCD (like my friend) is the problem of waste. All excess production, food and research when the current task completes is wasted. This is quite simple to deal with using a carryover system.

I had high hopes that the addition of Planetary Governors in GalCiv2 would work like this, but it didn't quite work out that way. Here's hoping Elemental includes something clean and simple along these lines.

The optimization thing is not such a big deal for me because I tend to role-play more than I think about a score or winning or whatever. But I love playing the largest maps that my computer can handle, and I appreciate every little thing that can help me avoid performing tens (or potentially hundreds) of uninteresting tasks that are all based on a 'single' decision, e.g. upgrading something.