[Edi]

Well, the basic map should be played with just one starting province.

However, there is now also a multi-province quickstart Version that gives everyone except Abysia 4 start provinces (home +3 extra). Abysia gets just two extra ones, but it also gets an extra non-national commander and a couple of holy units that should be tough enough to compensate and nicely beef up its starting forces but not give an unfair advantage. As soon as Gandalf gets around to reading his email and uploading the map file to his server, you should have that available too.

Edi