It's not really appropriate to delete 25 individual players for the actions of a kingdom. Those 24 players who weren't deleted had the opportunity to defect to other kingdoms, if they wished to preserve their province rankings / did not endorse the cheating. The kingdom, however, is being actioned for cheating which means all of those rankings at removed at EOA.
Yes, this does mean that getting actioned for cheating in yr0, even if all 25 provinces were deleted, would still result in rankings removal at EOA.
The action taken at the time of cheating (deletion of provinces/suspension/WW removal) was appropriate to remove the in-game benefits they had received from cheating. The removal of rankings is appropriate, as we do not tolerate cheating and there should reasonably be lasting consequences to it. It doesn't matter whether those kingdoms would have finished #1 #7 or #140.