[TheDemon]

Not to mention, in the endgame most of the VPs will be forted, so the enemy can airdrop their own team in. Provided you're airdropping enough guys to break down 20 forts in one turn, in which case you should have won already.

I'm just finishing a similar game: Faerun Adventure Map, 50 VP victory, all-EA on Something Awful. We're down to the last 6 and there wasn't much problem with East/West balance. One thing we found is the West is far more dense, province-wise, than the East. That is, although there are more sites, there's a corresponding increase in province density, and therefore nation density. We ended up with one dominant nation in the East, two in the Northwest, one in the Southwest, and one in the South.

In the water, all 3 nations started in the outer ocean, and once they had beat each other up enough that 2 went AI, Sauro came in and killed the last one in like 3 turns. I'm not sure on the balance of the water starts, although the map has lots of water, a lot of it is fairly linear and within 2 or 3 provs of each other without any other way to expand.

It's turn 77 and some of the VPs are still untaken thanks to their insanely tough garrisons. For most of the VP provs, even the one and two VP ones, you really have to consider them as chokepoints and work around them. The 3 and 4 VP provs needed a half dozen SCs and chaff or a 400+ man army. They're not to be taken lightly.