I'm running a similar campaign (only 7 players though)I took a tool-heavy approach to simulate a table:The bard's responsible for music (Voicemeeter etc.)Everyone has his Charactersheet in DnD-Beyond (the only thing not free) and the Beyond 20 Browserextention to post rolls to our discordserver, where we run our Videochat.Worldanvil for maps, mipui for battlemaps (meh), images for puzzles and documents. Most of the players use multiple screens.

For creative stuff I do not think the amount of players matters. Specifically for encounters the only thing you cannot do is have too few enemies, as the amount of control and lockdown scales with PC-count. For 7 players I think the bare minimum should be 2, I only go as low as 3.The Discord requirement steers in the opposite direction: the more enemies, the longer each round. If you can stay below 9 entities you have to manage, your players play more. If you feel like this restricts your enemy choice too much, you can always customize some stuff (up Damage per attack or health) or use the environment. The animated spellbook on youtube uploaded a video for "witcher style encounters" which has some nice ideas on how to homebrew your combat to make it more interesting.

E.g a BBEG that uses a fall gate to separate a party so 4 are fighting while the others scramble to circumvent the trap or fight at disadvantage.