I made some changes to the geography because the coast looked a bit boring, and also some cities were too close together.
White is basically neutral land, lacking in real governance/power
Grey represents minor city states, who, without player intervention, can be left to muddle along not doing anything interesting.
I propose we center play (to begin with) around the light purple city state (in the red box). Expansion/Rebellions could go overland to the north, or overseas to the west, or even overseas to the south.
The game would probably naturally expand to fill the larger red box, offering both the yellow and pink states as more serious enemies, a variety of islands and city states to conquer, and the large orange blob to the NE as a source of !!FUN!!. For reference, the larger red box is about as large as the map of elbreth in the first post.
Other:
-Made Vasir a large city. Not sure if thats appropriate, but it seemed like a good idea. Also, Vasir's wiki page mentions that it owns islands, but I wasn't sure where they were supposed to be, so, yeah.
-To the south is a proposed location for the lowlands (the bright orange country), and also the fringes of the light orange nation's natural enemies, the light green nation.
-I still think the coast needs more inlets and islands, but such details are better sorted on the fly, methinks.
-The unowned land above the northern borders would, I figure, be a wasteland inhabited by barbarians/worse