ppl are real quiet here 
ok Squirrelloid, to your three concerns:
-Its a lot of provinces for 9 people
Yes. 23 provinces per player when including UW. 19 if UW are worthless. Sounds good to me.
-There's a lot of ocean with no UW nation. Do people want me to make the seas dead?
Yes please
-There's a *lot* of manysite locations. Possibly cool, definitely not balanced geographically.
As you said, check map editor if you like.
I say, let's get this going. Once you kill the UW I'll put up the game.
Let's aim to start it this weekend, ok?
Oh, and since we are 9 players shall we set 5 VPs victory condition?