Indeed, some people really live for the exploration phase, enjoying discovering what's going on, and the first contact with "neighbors".
I definitely love that too, but I also love the war, as most seem to (why we're here, ne?), but I would say that after some odd million SP starts, I've more and more thought that closer to 20/nation gives the best feel to the game. 15 is fine as well, but it very much pushes people towards conflict before what I consider to be the "mid game" is reached. And early game wars annoy me to no end.
All things considered, I wouldn't really fight for the map to be even larger than 900 provinces though. Of course, there IS the Oeridia map..... o
