Earlier today I saw an 1v1 map here in the foundry. The idea seems to be abandoned right now, but the subject (1v1 maps) are an interesting thing anyway.
I disagree with the site policy about making all maps playable with all settings. However, I understand that it is how things are going to work in the near (and not so near) future and I had an idea about making maps playable for 1v1 and also for more players.
It would be enough to add a new tag to the positions part of the XML. We can tell the engine which territories are starting territories. We can even say how many starting positions each player gets. Going one more step beyond would be to tell the engine which positions are suitable for 2 players and which positions aren't.
Imagine that we divide a map in two different areas. One for each player in an 1v1 setting. We define the two "ideal" starting position for this 1v1 game. And then, we add 6 more positions to fit 8 player games. Now, we mark the two "ideal" starting positions as "2 player start" and as result, when there are 2p games, the engine will always assign the two "ideal" positions and never the 6 "not so ideal" positions. For 3 or more player games, the engine would assign all positions.
Do you think it's a good idea? Should I try to figure the XML tag for it?