Tournaments - help needed

[Tris]

You just gave me an idea:

Create a standard game with (for example) 5 nations in. You are allocated a nation, your opponents chosen randomly. The game runs for a set number of turns.

Now your score (however you want to determine it) is compared with the scores of the other people who were playing the same nation as you in the set game.

This has several advantages:

You are not advantaged or disadvantaged by the turn limit, research speed, starting provinces etc etc - because even if your race is disadvantaged, you are playing against people who are in exactly the same situation.

Over several rounds it tests the overall skill at playing Dominions. It is impossible to win the tournament by practicing with only one race, and playing them to death, or with one powerful combination of spells. The winner will be great at playing Dominions, not just playing Jotunheim, or Marignion or whatever.

It means you can have a large tournament without it taking forever. At most 17 players can play in a Dominions 2 game, but if you run the same 10 player scenario 100 times then each player is playing against 100 others.

You don't have to knock people out - which means having a bad game doesn't mean people have lost completely. Instead give people ranking points based on where they came out of the people who played their race. (1st = 1, 2nd = 2, 3rd = 3 and so on). The player with the lowest number of points after X rounds wins.