Hax I've been meaning to ask you about coding the provinces do you mean by writting them down in province_names WordPad file with the numbers?
Step 1:
Fix the actual map in photoshop (like you've did know)
Process it, fix ID_layers, add rivers and borders (you know. the blue/red one) if there's any one who's up for that massive task
Fix connections
BUGHUNTING
Step 2:
Fix all the cordinates (XY) for where the sprites/counters, symbols (AA, harbor, nuclear site etc etc) will display
Step 3:
Write down all the province names in the provincenames.csv
Step 4:
Decide terrain for all provinces, one by one.
Distribute IC; oil, energy, metal, etc in all provinces
Distribute airports, harbors, AA etc
Fix infrastructure for every province
Step 5:
Add all provinces to their right owner: add claimed provinces to other nations file and BUGHUNTING, because this one tends to fuck things up.
Add all provinces to the revolters (decides when you can relase a nation, create a nation via events, etc)
Step 6:
Balancing, balancing, balacaning... and yeah, bughunting.
Then there's a huge discussion how to handle and balance IC, resources etc so that we don't have a map with 1500 provinces and there's only IC in 10 of them.
So, a bit left until the actual "mapwork's" done.
EDIT: Then there's the next question that arises:
With so many provinces, we'll need atleast one unit in every province if we won't have a single militia battalion conquering half of i.e. Serbia in a couple of months, because you can't tell the AI to not attack and keep attacking an undefended province if they are at war, while they fight in other areas, so that one will be a rather tricky one, because with so many provinces and so many units, it will get laggy and it will be very hard to create an balanced AI. Not impossible, but it will be lots and lots of work, balancing and testing required. Those kind of things I think will arise a bit further on the road, but it could be good to start thinking about them now so there's somekind of plan when we're there.