Exactly why will reducing kingdom sizes only work for a single age? Are you so sure Utopia will continue to lose players? Even if that is so, then with 25 prov kingdoms the problem would be bigger still, less and less kingdoms to compete with.
However, to keep the kingdoms filled the devs have to take measures to keep kingdoms filled; making sure that every age, or even during an age, half filled kds are merged together. (As i mentioned in another topic, deleting "cheaters" is all fine, but when that results in a kingdom loosing half its provinces the entire kingdom is virtually dead (I'm sure this causes more players to quit than reducing kds to 20 provs, sure it wil generate more provinces as deleted ones, with nothing to loose, create new provinces hoping to land in a decent kd, but does utopia really need these ghost provinces). Thus care must be taken that such kingdoms get new players (players, not just scripted provinces or multies/farms whose priotiry lies with their main province) fast)
As for the lucky few 25 prov kingdoms that are forced to loose players, just give the dropouts an invite that doesn't use the host kingdoms invite. That way, 20 dropouts can be used to create a new top kingdom of choice in a single age. Taking into account the way the top is currently trading/rotating players amongst itself i seriously doubt many players would rage quit. Instead i assume we'll simply see one or two new abs kingdoms formed and a few "independent" top kds.
Personally, I'd prefer a full reshuffle and a strict limit to the invite system (maybe 2 per age). Then start afresh with a few ages without shuffling the player base. But i'm pretty sure that really might cause players to quit.
