Well, we now have a 21st signup, (Welcome Camobeercan) but signups seem to have slowed to a trickle, and I fear if we keep waiting more people will bow out than sign on. Seems people are too sensible for a game like this one.
Additionally, the water nations are horribly unpopular, with 0 out of 63 nation picks being a water nations.
I believe we now have a couple of choises on how to proceed:
1) Forget about the glorious madness that's the Faerun map,
choose a different map that's suitable for ~20 people, and play a regular largish game. (Preferably a map with not too many water provinces I suppose.)
2) Play the game as planned on the Faerun map, but utilise the dead seas map, which makes water provinces essentially worhtless. The 21 signups exactly match the number of land nations in the EA, so this could be a decent solution. I/we will have to check how the dead seas mod interacts with the fixed special provinces though, and whether all mods are compatible. (If someone could kindly point me to that mod that would be fantastic by the way, as I never downloaded it before, and couldn't find it with a quick search.)
3) The most proactive option: we wait a while longer, and see who turns up.
I'll run a quick vote untill tomorrow, and we can kick things of from there. I don't think it would be a good idea to let things drag on much longer. (Feel free to suggest good maps in case we go for option number 1 btw.)