Well, for next game I suggest
either
1) commander as first hero, to show that he can be viable from the start.
or
2) scout with swordsmen - for "Pure" players.
As for size - it took months to finish small shard, I fear that colossal would be a dead weight.

I can live with both starting heros you suggested for any karma/Unit Setting, i think the only really difficult starting hero is the mage expect for starting positions with a high crystalincome at the 1.&2. Ring.

And for the size...the Problem is..that we lack interested Players...you take the "crown" at a regular base and i can&will too...but...how many people are otherwise intersted?

Aside from this..does it make any difference if we play 2-3 small maps within a year or if we play one Large Map?

Problems with bigger map:
1) sometimes it needs many turns for moving from one part to another. 10 turns per player isn't enough.
2) It changes slowly. Difference in the status on, say, 150th turn and 160th would be insignificant. Especially on the straight line. People would lose interest.
3) too many events. Writing them one by one with choices too tedious to be fun. For example, In my 134-143 turns I skipped most of the events (I refused to take offer from devil 3 or 4 times)

Hmm...i can see the point...

to 1) ...we could just change the rules to 25 turns, or even more if we find out that is doesn't work.

to 2)...your right but only as long as more players are interested then we two ;)

to 3) ...thats really true...we could "erase" some kind of events from the "to be written down"-list..but then we would loose deepth
.
.
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then..large or avarage with 25 turns?