Huh, 4-5 independent provinces between capitals, sure encourages rushing. No wonder you people are so into those blitz games if that's the way you like to play it. As to the map, pretty and apparently quite deterministic in balance.
Just one thing, there was already a map named "Clash of the Titans" (see
http://www.illwinter.com/dom2/maps.html ) for dom2 to be used in 2-player games that imports nicely to dom3. I was just wondering whether the identical naming could be a problem or not.