So I'm a chronic saver and reloader. Some people call it cheating. I call it suckafatone. 
 
Anyway, I noticed that my save files are growing exponentially in size, causing the time it takes to save to increase by a good 15 seconds. This became kind of irritating, because it affected autosaves as well, which in turn increased the wait time between some turns. 
 
I did a little testing and discovered some funky shit. Basically, when you decide that you don't like a move you made and load a save file, the next save file you make will grow in size. 
 
This was my process. Maybe some of you could try it and tell me if I'm crazy. 
 
1. Start as massive a game as is allowed. 
2. Save the game before making any moves. 
3. Without exiting the game, find the save file and check its size. 
4. Load that save file. 
5. Save over that file, again without making any moves. 
6. Check file size again.  
 
In closing, I would like to say that I had a save file hit 4mb at around 700BC, and I would ask some of you to tell me if your saves are also bigger than you think they should be. 
 
Oh, and if you're experiencing some ridiculous wait times between turns in the late game - is stuff being animated, or is it all just kind of frozen while you wait? 

Yeah I'm experiencing the exact same issue.
Saving all the time is not a problem, but after quite a few loads the save/load times become longer and longer for both saving and loading. It's pissing me right off.
What kind of retarded asinine system is this?
I would understand the game taking slightly longer when you have bigger maps and more shit going on, but this has nothing to do with that, you can literally get minute long load/save times on normal maps still in BC...

As far as I can tell, the only way to avoid this is to exit to windows and start the game up again whenever you want to load a save.  
 
But then you run into 5-10 seconds of unskippable intro. 
 
Game needs some patches.

" As far as I can tell, the only way to avoid this is to exit to windows and start the game up again whenever you want to load a save.   But then you run into 5-10 seconds of unskippable intro.  Game needs some patches. "

That's weird, so you could potentially keep saving and quitting without making a move and your file size will keep growing?

heh,i guess having 12GB of ram pays off, i can cancel out of the intro in the first few seconds, and load times are generally within 10s

My load times are insane.  The last time I checked it took about 4 minutes for me to load a save.  I can save quickly though (like 3 seconds) but if it auto-saves while i'm in the tabletop game viewing mode then the game crashes to desktop.