Maybe we could make the 1500-province map a No Independents map? That would solve the garrison problem!
Though, all we'd really need is a map with 20-some individual planets (we are aiming for about as many nations as your average base era, right?). Larger games might get a bit crowded, but we can call that a feature of the mod
Well, no independants maps don't really have NO independants, you just can't recruit any. You still have to take over provinces normally. Unless we wanted to create some kind of "really no independants" map, where you rush as many commanders as you can across the map to gain provinces as fast as possible.
I think as long as there's one major planet per nation that's probably fine, although we might want one major planet and one minor planet (i.e. a 7 province and a 3 province). I doubt we'll ever need a 1500 province map, we really don't need more than 15 provinces a player and we'll NEVER have 100 dom3k nations.... Unless aezeal comes back fresh and full of ideas from playing dawn of war, like deciding he wants to create tyranids and eldar or something, I don't think we'll ever get above 15 nations, really. So we're probably not looking at anything beyond 250 provinces.