I'm in as Pangaea. I'm going to keep trying these guys until I find something that works.
I've never used Zen's stuff, but his ideas sound good to me. I think he tries to make national troops more viable.
I kind of like the idea of building from a single province, but I can see your point that starting with 9 provinces might result in early wars. Then again, it might not and some people might decide to avoid war.
The Zen link I found was
http://www.techno-mage.com/~zen/. Is this the one everyone is going to use?