As an old player coming back after years, I have to say that being limited to 2 nobles + 1 advy is a great stepback: for true newbies it might means ending up in slow paced realm and getting a wrong idea of the game, for older player it's a just an apparently pointless limit which may lead to poor roleplay choice in order to grind those fame points.
Having said that, I think Indirik suggestions sound good: it would only mean changing parts of continents instead of fully deleting them.
I am also strongly against the idea of choosing the continento to be closed by running an invasion lottery: Beluatarra's invasions were funny because you could actually side with the invaders and players were also fighting other players who taught that using the daimons for their purpose was good for their realms. When the existance of the continent itself is on the stakes who are going to side with invaders? It would only end in frustrating PvE and lots of drama for the power of daimons doomstack and such.
So I'm up with reducing the overall numbers of region, like Indirik suggested, rather than deleting a whole island. Especially if the one to be deleted had to be chosen by invasions
