I am playing imperium rome two player
And the starting territories we both got means that I felt I could sensibly resign there and then without even playing a turn
Now I like random distribution because it leads to some really interesting games.
So my idea is that to then even things up there is a bidding round where you say which side you want and then how many extra armies you are prepared to let the other person start with so that you can have the starting set

that you prefer
This way we would still get the random territory distribution but then use skill to decide it's value of one set over another