My original desire to play on immense/most-things-rare map was spurred by a desire to make "range" technology more meaningful during the development stage, and to allow me to control access to my empire by controlling "choke points." One choice that made the game absolutely crawl was my choice of very slow tech on top of all that. I have already reconsidered that choice for my current games.

Anyway, I think I like the distance scale. I think I just need to make habitable planets more common, so that the game is a little bit more enjoyable. There's nothing like kicking yourself in the butt to "crawl out of your little corner of the map" only to discover that there's nothing really worth having (that you don't have to take at the barrel of a gun.) If you like games that transition immediately to combat, that's OK. But, personally, I like for there to be a "peaceful" expansion phase.

I have found that ascension victory is good to have "on" for this kind of map. It forces you to make the attempt to (at least) get into contact with everyone early, so that you can track who is trying to ascend. AIs will cap ascension crystals once they have a top-tier military, and it behooves you to make deep-range probes for this purpose. Or dive into wormholes. I really love that part of the "immense" game (and gotta love those Terran sensor arrays). My last game, I had to take-out the Torians because they were 32% ascended when I made contact, and I didn't have much of a military. I couldn't bribe any of their neighbors to attack despite my super diplomacy, so the task fell to me... the 7th-ranked military out of 10. It took me almost 30 turns just to get my fleets into place once I had them built! Talk about a long haul. It did give my scientists time to create tidal disruptors, which proved crucial in taking the homeworld. Maybe one of these days I'll do an immense AAR, although it probably won't be all that interesting since I don't play suicidal yet.