Agreed.

We would suggest a clearly defined map scale. maybe 2x2km per pixel?
That would leave us with a world of roughly 9922x7016km. Minus a little for the ocean of course, but still manageable. There might be other continents, but they wouldn't be relevant for a long time. Going with those dimensions, Kalesia would roughly be 3000x2800km. Enough for a large empire that wouldn't initially be explored.

We'd recommend sticking mostly to Othea for the start. But someone should build up that nation enough to have a playground society for the players.

We'd keep at least some of the Empire, but we'd try to keep it more mystic. If those mountains are as forbidding as they look, there probably wouldn't be much contact between the Empire and Othea. People would have heard of it, but not really know it. We'd set the Empire up as villains in relation to the Othean gov't, but not as evil to the populace. That leaves the players with a difficult choice of whether to support the local government or the invaders who treat the people well. Both of those can backfire. 
Our second imagination is that Amaryth gets taken, but that the rest of the nation isn't as easily conquered.

Is that set of ideas one others think is decent?