[Trumanator]

What about something Baalz suggested in another thread, a kind of "Cold War" scenario, where you have a few vets who are required to be hostile to one another, and the newbies will sort of coalesce around them as their "sphere of influence" so to speak. Would make for a very interesting game. As far as maps go, personally I would prefer something other than Cradle since I'm currrently playing a game on it already, but anything is fine.

Edit: if you want to use fixed starts, know that Cradle only has 11 land starts and 1 water.