[Baalz]

Sounds like fun, I'm in.

I'm not sure how you do it, but I've seen it done in other games where you have set starting positions for a specific nation. You could (if you were inclined) arrange that allies are adjacent. That would be particularly necessary if there are more than 2 teams.

I'm a fan of random nation selection, perhaps after the teams are assigned random nations are assigned to each team, who then decide which player gets what nation?