I am several hundred turns into a HUGE map game and only met Iridum, Drengin and Altarians.... I am nearly done with Age of War. I feel we are either moving too fast through the tech tree on larger sized maps or we need a better pacing in Age of War. I like feeling i have milestones of achievements in getting techs in this age. Its so so.
Also at this point I only have at most HALF of the map opened up and I have Hyper warp! Hats of to making BIG maps..I love it. Now we need to 'slightly' adjust pacing a bit.