Are you good at coming up with bad starting locations? Here's a variant where you pick where your opponent starts!
Use this template:
http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?TemplateID=249187 (this is just Strategic 1v1 with in-distribution neutrals set to 0)
During territory selection, both players decide what territories their opponents will pick. Once they've both decided, they let the other player know in chat what to pick. You must pick the territories your opponent states. Gameplay is normal for the rest of the game.
If you don't trust each other to not modify the picks once you see the other person's, here's a way to make it fool proof:
1. Open this site, which allows for encrypting text:
http://www.fourmilab.ch/javascrypt/javascrypt.html
2. Enter a password in the yellow box (do NOT use your WarLight password or any of your normal passwords - make up something new)
3. Enter the territories your opponent should pick in the green box
4. Press Encrypt
5. Cop/Paste the encrypted text from the red box into the game's chat.
6. Once your opponent has also pasted their encrypted text, tell each other the passwords you made in step 2.
7. Take the opponent's encrypted text, enter it into the red box.
8. Enter the password the opponent told you into the yellow box, and press Decrypt
