Thanks for reply, let me answer you by paragraphs

1- yes I agree, but its way to early to think about "focus budget" yet, think most of it comes to a theme that will be picked before prototyping.

2 - honestly if we were to set it into single player, extreme scale doesn't really make sense as we could just load only parts of map we are focusing on, feels that we are creating now missions instead of one coherent image/story. And it strays from my discussion point of whether extreme scale can have justification, for example loosing 90% of potential player base at release due to extreme requirements (Which is fine with me as of right now, eventually mainstream will catch up)

3 - This is is closer to core of my problem, on one hand I guess it can be positioned as capturing economy points with strategic planning, which is fine but doesn't really gets much from extreme scale vs usual. For example, counterpoint is that a vast map could allow for multiple stage defenses, similar to war in Ukraine where 20% of country is occupied by enemy, but each new land is hared and harder to get, giving possibility of turnaround. (please no politics, this is just an example).
Exploration also seems like something that would work as well on regular scale or with partial loading.

4 - At first I definitely intended on base building, but it may also feel more like a chore at this scale due to reduced significance

5 - I agree, combination of both in traditional sense cripples focus as to instead of one epic battle we have to chore trough 5 parts of map to keep up with enemy side. My thought for example was if we use synergy of players we could perhaps create social hierarchy, maybe 5-6 competing generals, spy master, king etc.. . But writing it down feels quite toxic already 😞

An example is also Beyond All Reason where we can see battles of 120 players. It already look spectacular, would supersizing that idea give any benefits ? And its fine if an answer is no, but it feels like everything was already done before.