The start is very unbalanced, it didn't matter that much in the singleplayer version, but in multiplayer its a pain. Namenly victory mostly depends how close your starting regions are. Make a placement round where you can place dice on regions around the clock. 2nd round go against the clock so its fair for the last player (similar to setllers of catan)

So place dices in following order

1 2 3 4 5 6 6 5 4 3 2 1

Make 2 regions by turn, so start is faster. let the player decide between 1 and 4 dices how many he wants to place, cap if its more than x dices...

think this will make the game much less exciting. linking is the first job you have to do. you also have to give up fields you can't connect.

sometimes its hard to give up fields, because nobody wants to take them! :) (an special "abandon field" feature would be needed then)

As my experience, if I win or not mostly depends how close my starting fields are. Or if people are willing to destroy my abondond fields (otherwise they just suck up dice, and then get destroyed never the less)

Not a bad idea, if players took turns picking countries. You could possibly eliminate some of the early mover advantage if for example those who picked countries last got to move first.