Two words... Star... Trek...

Paramount raised the license fee by 2,000%, so it might have just been the dramatic price increase that made people want to abandon it and not just the total cost.  But for the price to increase like that, it tells me that the fee is a flat fee and not a percentage or maybe a fee with a percentage? But if it's a flat fee, it could be a significant (or moderate?) investment from EA, but if EA could get the license near the end of the year, they MIGHT be able to stretch the debt/loan across to quarter reports in 2 separate years, which would make their the year's revenue appear to take less of a hit, which would appease greedy shareholders.
But I think Paramount and took a slight dip in revenue for 2025, which explains the cost increase, so I don't know how it would go, you're probably right.

But I think an 800x800 lot should be doable for them, they already have a good culling system in EA's Frostbite Engine - there isn't really any info on The Sims 4 engine (SmartSim?).
I'm sure The Sims 4 has some kind of octree/box-sphere frustum culling now, with the multiple floors and such.
But if they're clogged down with slow code, they use Python, then personal quarters with specific rooms, like the engine room, medical bay, cargo bay, etc. should be sufficient.
I suggested 800x800 because I was thinking the Starship is huge, a quick search said it's 947 feet long and the saucer is about  834 feet wide, with eleven decks.  So it would be an extra 3 floors than the game already has.  I THINK each square is 2x2 feet, so the saucer would be about 417x417.  lol
BUT nobody has ever actually made a set with all of the Enterprise, so I don't think Maxis would have to build the whole thing, but it'd be awesome if they went for it.

And the excessive Sims would probably be a hard drive issue.  I imagine they don't want to use terabytes for millions of sims that aren't going to appear in the game.  lol