[Maltrease]

I think if both people agree on map types you can come up with some fair matches. You might counter a strong bless rush nation vs a "take time to develop" nation by making indies relatively weak, and set the provences to 80 or 100 (for 2 people).

With b0rsuk's idea you would have 1 person pick all the variables for both nation and then let the second player pick the nation they want to play.

While a mirror match (with a mirror map) would be the ultimate balanced test it doesn't sound nearly as fun to me.

Another idea that might be a lot of fun is to have each person pick 2 nations. So its a 2v2 but each person controls their 2 sides. This might work out some of the rock paper scissors issues while still eliminating the unpredictable nature of diplomacy.

The nice thing about a 1v1 duel is even if you have a hard time cordinating a time to play together you still get to take 2 turns at a time.