I concur with all the points Sedna offered (especially the one about Alneyan being such a great host; feel free to send me your prayers, gifts and firstborns).
- A quicker turnaround and fewer yarns would help keep the interest of the game high: we all, to various degrees, failed to keep up with that kind of pace, while quite a few players dropped from the game: Puffyn and myself are indeed the last ones, so Puffyn will be the only player having made it from turn 1 to turn 60 (hopefully).
- I feel a public map would be better, perhaps by adding a neutral nation with the Eyes of God enchantment as well (making it easier to take a screenshot of the map). Borders should be clearly visible, but perhaps scores should be off with this sort of setup (or made available every five turns or something along those lines).
- A nation giving gifts should not be difficult to implement, and would not have to be handled by a third party. This nation could simply be visible for everybody (it won't affect the game), so everyone would be able to check for astral gems mysteriously disappearing; it would also work well with the Eyes of God option above. In modding terms, this nation would start the game with a 0 pearl Wish spell, and would thus create a few hundred astral pearls (Wish would go back to the other nations afterwards).
- Something else I was thinking of: what about implementing a political aspect to the game, limiting the number of provinces that may be taken in a single war? The purpose would be to help those nations that are much weaker; in Yarnspinners, wars end only with the slaughter of the weaker nation (Mictlan, Atlantis, Ermor, and now Vanheim and Man collapsed, though I must say I underestimated the might of Machaka. I didn't make any such mistake with R'lyeh though). The specifics on how that would work are left as an exercise for the reader.
