Twelve to fifteen provinces per player works out pretty well. Starting with only a few provinces between you and your neighbors is ugly, but this *is* a game about horribly murdering each other after all :-)
If we can't agree on a good "set" map, maybe we could consider picking one of the random maps from here:
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomizedMaps.htm
Either way, I vote LD makes a call and we run with it :-)